Mr Mojo Read Free

stopped all that, and regularly patrol the graveyard in the hope of rounding up any suspicious characters who haven’t got the message.
    Père-Lachaise has become just another stop on the backpackers’ tour of Europe, like the Pompidou Centre, the Eiffel Tower or the Grande Arche at La Défense. There are still those who make the pilgrimage because they are Doors fanatics, or because Morrison is their idol, but usually the visitors are there out of idle curiosity. If you’re ‘doing Paris’ then you have to visit Père-Lachaise. The grave is still a shrine, but it has become a meeting place for tourists, like London’s Carnaby Street or Covent Garden.
    Twenty-year-old Jacqui is from Sydney. She’s here because to her Jim Morrison represents the ideology and the freedom of the sixties. ‘And’, she says, ‘he was a pretty cool guy. Very sexy. I’m surprised by the grave,though – it’s very bare, very poor. I thought it would be much more elaborate. The bottles on the grave are very symbolic. I’ve just had a drink sitting on the grave – that felt very cool! I’ll definitely come again if I come back to Paris – you know, pay my respects, have another drink, and another smoke! They say he’s still alive, making music with Elvis in Africa, but I don’t know . . .’
    Lee Demelo, twenty-two, is from Ontario, touring Europe for the first time, stopping off in Paris for two weeks. ‘Basically we’ve seen all the sights and we wanted to take a day off to come here, because it’s the thing to do. It’s not what I expected, you know? You walk in here and there’s all these humungous tombstones, and you walk up to Jim Morrison’s grave and there’s nothing, really. I suppose it’s not important, right? It’s just the mental concept that this is where he’s buried, or supposed to be buried, right? All the people at the youth hostel have been here. It’s great – I’m the only person out of all my friends from Canada who’s been to Paris, and I’ll be able to go back and brag about how I went to Jim Morrison’s grave. That’s cool. We’ve taken some pictures to prove we’ve been here.
    â€˜He means so much to people, you know? The Doors’ albums still sell, and they still mean a lot to people. They’re not like one of those groups that come and go . . . they’ll always be there. I’m not really a Top-40 kinda guy, and the Doors mean a lot to me.’
    Blue is an ageing French teacher who lived in Paris at the same time as Morrison. She has brought a single red rose to adorn his grave. ‘I’ve been about a dozen times since he died – whenever I’m in Paris I make a point of coming here. I come because to a certain extent he represented our generation. I was never a fan of his music but I liked his poems – and I could see he was trying to do something new with his poetry. But no one ever understood him, and he started to manipulate people when he didn’t become appreciated. I know a girl who knew him closely, and she said he was more concerned about his poetry than he was about anything else he did. When he got them published he was happier than when he got his first record release.
    â€˜It’s a pity he became so manipulative, because I really think he had something, but he turned into quite a monster, I think. A shame.’
    By now there are twenty people mingling around the grave, swapping stories, drinks and telephone numbers. There’s Adam from Iowa, Jim and Sheila from Birmingham, England, Bruce and Mikey from San Francisco, and a gaggle of college students from Los Angeles. Three middle-aged Parisian women sit on a nearby grave, sharing a bottle of cheap cognac and talking about nothing in particular. No one there knew Morrison, but this is the place to be. Two boys and a girl sit opposite, collectively rolling a joint.