July 3 Anniversaries

Jim Morrison died in Paris on July 3, 1971. He was 27. I remember walking through the kitchen as Dad washed the dishes and watched TV, and the news came on about Morrison's death. The singer's companion Pamela Courson said she found him dead in the bathtub of their Paris apartment. The official cause of death was heart failure, but no autopsy was done, and so the possibility of a heroin overdose was not investigated at the time. His death continues to be a source of speculation, and his Paris grave is a place of pilgrimage for fans. Courson herself ODed from heroin a few years later. Here's one of the last photos of Morrison--photobombed by a little guy in the window.

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I'd forgotten that July 3rd is also the anniversary of the death of Brian Jones, two years before Jim Morrison's death. Both men were 27 when they died. (See the end of this post.) Jones formed the group The Rolling Stones, gave it that name (from a Muddy Waters song), and recruited Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. (Then they found Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.) Jones had a great sense of style and was a talented musician on multiple instruments. Although Jagger and Richards began to write most of the group's songs, Jones remained the initial driving force of the band for several years. His chilly expression stands out on the early album cover photos. Tragically, Jones began to slide into drug abuse and became more undependable. He was fired from the group in June 1969. On July 3, he was found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool. An autopsy confirmed that drowning was the cause of death, and that his heart and liver were enlarged from drug abuse. Rumors that he was murdered persist.

A related tragedy is the deaths at age 27 of several musicians:  Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison,  Pete Ham of Badfinger, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and others. Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and World War I poets Rupert Brooke and Isaac Rosenberg, also died at 27.

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