Where The Time Has No Name
Day 23 • September 29, 1994
Paris, France
Part 2: Visiting Jim Morrison’s Grave
I didn’t have much time.
I’d already spent a few hours at Versailles — as much as I could spare — and I still had a lot I wanted to see in Paris. But there was one place I was determined to get to before the day was over.
Père Lachaise Cemetery.
I was riding the metro across the city with my Sony Discman in my jacket pocket, The Doors album spinning. Light My Fire was playing as the train rocked through the tunnels. I was 22 years old, young, single, and completely on my own in Paris. The music in my ears, the camera around my neck, and that feeling of being young and free made everything feel wide open. I was horny and happy and alive, and I felt like anything could happen.
I’d been a fan since I was 15 years old. I was at my cousin Mollie’s house and found my uncle Rob’s copy of the first Doors album in his record collection. I took it into Mollie’s room because she had a record player, closed the door, and sat there listening to the whole album from start to finish. That was how we consumed music back then. There was no streaming, no Spotify, no endless playlist at your fingertips. You put the needle down, played Side One, flipped it over, and played Side Two. It was a ritual. And magic was exactly what I felt the first time I heard the entire album — from the high-hat tapping and organ opening of “Break On Through” all the way to Jim’s haunting voice singing the final verse of “The End.”
The Doors felt different than other bands. Darker. More poetic. Sexier. And Jim… man, I looked up to him. Artistic, rebellious, poetic, and unapologetically sexual. He was everything I thought a rock star should be. At that point in my life, after Bono — who was the living embodiment of everything that was sexy and powerful in rock music — Jim Morrison was my ultimate historical hero.
By 1994 he’d already been gone for 23 years. He died in Paris in 1971 — the same year I was born — at just 27 years old. Found in a bathtub after choking on his own vomit following a night of heavy drinking. He didn’t set out to die that night. It was just a bad night of drinking that had lethal consequences.
That part always stayed with me. Because I came way too close to the same thing more than once back in college. There were nights at ASU and UNK where I got blackout drunk and ended up vomiting, and I was lucky — really lucky — that I woke up the next morning. Standing at Jim’s grave later that day, with his music still in my head, I felt that truth deep in my chest. It could’ve gone the other way for me, more than once. But it didn’t. And here I was, alive, in Paris, riding trains and taking pictures and living.
Because he died in Paris, he was buried at Père Lachaise. For a lot of people my age, his grave had become a kind of pilgrimage site. A place to go pay respects to someone who represented freedom, art, danger, and the beautiful, tragic side of rock and roll.
Visiting his grave wasn’t just another thing to check off a list. It felt necessary. It felt personal.
I was young. I was free. I was in Paris. And I was going to see Jim.
Pilgrims at Père Lachaise
This photograph shows the scene at Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, in September 1994.
At that time, visitors could still gather directly around the grave with no fences or barriers. People sat on the stone steps and on neighboring tombs, leaving flowers, candles, and small offerings.
The surrounding graves and monuments were heavily covered in graffiti — names, messages, drawings, and directional arrows left by fans over the years. This graffiti often served as an informal trail leading people to Morrison’s final resting place.
The group gathered here reflects the ongoing pilgrimage to this site that has continued since Morrison’s burial in 1971.
In the early 2000s (around 2004), cemetery officials installed permanent iron fencing and barriers around the grave and surrounding area. The decision was made after years of complaints about fans damaging neighboring graves through graffiti, trampling, and littering.
My Photographs from the Père Lachaise cemetery
Looking Back from 2026
Day 23 • September 29, 1994 Paris, France
James (Jim) Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, in 1943. A poetry buff, singer, performer, rock star, and all-around charmer, Jim moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was 20 years old and began to study cinema at UCLA. While he was in college, he met the other members of The Doors - Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and Robby Krieger - showed them his poetry, and began putting his words to music.
The following years would prove extremely successful for the band, and they were soon top-tier rock stars in both the music scene and American popular culture. Their songs, including “Light My Fire”, “Riders on the Storm” and “Break on Through” provided a soundtrack for both my high school years and this very day as I walked over to the cemetery.
After recording the album “LA Woman” in 1971, Jim Morrison decided to take a break and head to Paris with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson.
Shortly thereafter, on July 3, 1971, at the age of 27, Jim Morrison died from an apparent drug and alcohol-induced heart attack and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.
I had been looking forward to this expereince for a long time.
Jim Morrison had been a hero to me since I was a teenager. His poetry, his voice, and the raw, dangerous energy of The Doors had spoken to something deep inside me during some of my darkest years. So when I finally stood in front of his grave at Père Lachaise that afternoon, it felt significant.
But the experience was more complicated than I expected.
As I walked through the cemetery, I was immediately struck by the graffiti. It was everywhere — scrawled across other people’s headstones, family mausoleums, and monuments. At first it felt exciting, almost electric, like the graffiti-covered walls at Windmill Lane in Dublin. But then it hit me: these weren’t just walls. These were real people’s graves. Strangers’ final resting places. And fans had treated them like they didn’t matter. I found it disrespectful, and I still do.
I didn’t need a map. I just followed the trail of graffiti until I found him.
When I finally stood in front of Jim’s grave, a small crowd had already gathered. Some people sat quietly. Others moved around the stone. A few were crying. I put my Doors CD into my portable player, hit play, and took my place among them.
I stayed for an hour or so, and during that time I witnessed several amazing scenes.
There were a few people crying, a few others sitting quietly. Some people looked as if they had just arrived a few minutes before me, while others looked like they had been there for days.
I watched a group of Japanese tourists approach, take their pictures, and leave, all within a few minutes. It seemed as if they came just to check this spot off their list of things to see.
A young man, about my age, sat near the grave smoking a joint. He smoked about half of it, then carefully placed the still-burning joint upside down in the dirt on top of the grave and said, almost tenderly, “Jim, the rest of this is for you, man.” Then he stood up and walked away.
The most touching and poignant moment though, was witnessing a young man, about my age, who was smoking a marijuana joint. He smoked about half of it, and then placed it, still burning, upside down in the dirt on top of Morrison’s grave and said “Jim, the rest of this is for you man,” and quietly walked away.
What a spot-on tribute to the king of counter-culture and an icon of the 60’s hippie and drug movement.
After a few minutes, something even more apropos occurred.
Another man, also about my age, who had just arrived on the scene, looked down and noticed the half-smoked marijuana joint.
He reached down, scooped it up and lit it, saying out loud, “Jim, you wouldn’t want a perfectly good joint to go to waste, would you?”
No, he wouldn’t, of this I am certain.
Still, a wave of melancholy came over me as I stood there. Jim had only been 27 when he died in Paris in 1971 — the same year I was born. I thought about how young that really was. I thought about my own close calls with alcohol in college, the nights I had gotten blackout drunk and woken up the next morning not knowing how close I had come to the same kind of ending. Standing at his grave, I felt the weight of that. It could have gone differently for me, more than once.
After a while, I knew it was time to go. I had come to Père Lachaise to see Jim, and I had done that. Now it was time to keep living my own life.
As I walked out of the cemetery, I already knew where I was headed next.
I wanted to see another icon — someone else whose image and presence had fascinated people for generations. But unlike Jim, she wasn’t buried in a cemetery.
She was waiting for me at the Louvre.
Her name was Mona Lisa.