Customer Reviews

Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (Plume)

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

I-slept-with-a-rock-star stories are a dime a dozen in the rock bio world, and it takes something unusual to make the storyteller seem like anything but a groupie. Patricia Kennealy-Morrison has something all right, but her obnoxious attitude and sketchy details make it hard to regard "Strange Days: My Life With And Without Jim Morrison" as much more than a curiosity.

Kennealy-Morrison was a journalist/editor working for Jazz'n'Pop magazine in the late 1960s. She was sent in to interview legendary rock bad boy Jim Morrison of the Doors, and was immediately impressed by him (the feeling was mutual, she says). They soon struck up a friendship, then became lovers while remaining on opposite sides of the United States.

Morrison and Kennealy-Morrison wed in a witch handfasting some months later, despite the fact that Morrison was still with his longtime lover Pamela Courson. Kennealy-Morrison chronicles the remainder of their increasingly volatile relationship, her abortion, Morrison's mysterious death in Paris, and the production of the distorted movie adaptation by Oliver Stone.

Never has so much been written over so little. Not very often, anyway. Morrison's brief involvement with Kennealy-Morrison is blown up into an affair to rival Guinevere and Lancelot (her own comparison). What an unbiased reader sees is a rather average rock romance, full of the necessary sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. And lots and lots of Kennealy-Morrison's everyday life.

Kennealy-Morrison has a curiously self-centered view of the world: whenever anybody is less than friendly to her, they must be upset over her gender, brains, religion or relationship with Morrison. Her attitude (a bull getting ready to charge at a matador) wears thin quickly. She heaps scorn on almost all rock'n'roll stars, on any girl who slept (or wanted to) with Jim, on any friend of Pamela Courson's, on Doors fans, on rock audiences... pretty much everybody. Special vitriol is reserved for Pam; rather than take Morrison to task for his behavior, Kennealy-Morrison vents on the pleasant, clueless Courson.

While Kennealy-Morrison is clearly knowledgeable, she seems to use her IQ solely to set herself above the groupies. She lacks the class, wisdom and vibrance of other rock paramours like Marianne Faithfull. If this book is anything to go by, her intellect is stagnant and unsophisticated, and her personality is childish (she beats a groupie for coming on to Jim). In fact, her claims that she's a strong, decisive, take-no-guff woman becomes funny when you see that she was allowing a ridiculous amount of garbage from Morrison. There's no denying that Kennealy-Morrison is a talented writer. At times her lyrical, detailed writing makes this seem almost like a novel. It's especially vibrant during scenes like Doors concerts and the famous Woodstock. But too often her words are used as arrows rather than paintbrushes.

"Strange Days: My Life With And Without Jim Morrison" is a weird read. In the end, it's hard to see it as anything but Kennealy-Morrison's side of the story, but without any wisdom brought by time and thought. This is not the place to look for the "real" Jim Morrison.

This woman is belligerent, obnoxious, delusional, angry, over-bearing, and a self proffesed know-it-all. If Morrison spent even half the time with her that she alleges, he must have been a very patient and tolerant individual. Or comatosed on booze. I read a third of the book and had to toss it because I couldn't tolerate her. She is so bitter, angry, and pushy, that she strikes me as one who would have been a consummate nag.

I have a suspicion that in reality she was just one of hundreds of convenient pit stops Morrison made while drunk. I also am left with the strong feeling that she knows this to be the case hence her flitting between love and deep rage toward this man. Unlike his other pit-stops, she can't let it go for some odd reasoning that only she knows. For some reason she seems obsessed with convincing the world that she has laid claim to the guy and nobody else should even have the right to mention his name.

She has a deep rage toward anybody who is not a Morrison fan. But she off-sets that by also having a deep rage toward anybody who is a Morrison fan. So in essence she has a deep rage toward everybody.

She seems to be jealously guarding this image of Morrison that exists only her mind. Hence her hatred for Doors fans. As for her referring to 'Doorzoids' as 'losers' that's ridiculous, coming from a woman who is obssesed and jealous of a relationship between a man and a woman who have been been dead for alomost 40 years. If anybody needs to get a life it is Miss Kennealy who does.

This woman is obviously not the person whom she is trying to convince the world that she is.... She's more like a nightmare run amuk.

Although I feel this book is fairly well written and informitive, it really isn't what I had in mind when I ordered it. I was expecting more of an insight into Jim Morrison and, less of a look into Patricia Kennealy. It does shed some light on another side of Jim which many other books haven't touched upon but, for me there just wan't enough of that insight. Instead we are treated to a running list of what Patricia wore at any certain event and, what drugs were consumed. I don't know about you but, I have a hard time remembering what I wore last week never mind, 30 years ago when I was stoned! From that perspective, I just had a hard time believing some of the other things that the author claims to have happened and, I question weather her perception of said events might not be clouded. I'm not calling anyone a liar but, it just seems to me that after 30 years the mind can have a very selective memory.

Wow. Patricia Kennelly/Kennealy/Morrison(!) is kind of pathetic and insane. I think Jim Morrison slept with her, and even found her intellectually stimulating, and maybe got really drunk and handfasted her, but for her to throw her entire life away on the memory of someone who left her to abort his child alone and then willed his entire fortune to a woman he was living with when he died struck me as very,very sad and crazy.

"It's how it was with us" "I wanted my life and he wanted his." That lie gets really thin just about the time she starts stalking him to L.A. and hanging around Pam's house. If he really sent her all these gifts, letters,etc. then why didn't she put any of them in the book? She had no problem betraying his memory by publishing thier handfasting certificate so I am not buying this 'private person' 'astral alimony' 'I'm the lizard queen' sh%t. I think there are no letters, hence the only 'proof' of thier 'union' is one hideously ugly picture of her with him (she is prettier in others so I really believe if she had a better one she would have used it) and a sketch that could have been made by anyone.

This is what I think. I think she kept showing up everywhere he was in New York (wearing those 't^t' shirts she keeps bragging about when not discussing her incredible brilliance) and Jim fu&ked her a few times. She was smart and he liked that. She was a witch, which intrigued his religious and pagan curiosity.
HE WOULD HAVE TRIED ANYTHING ONCE, including a pagan wedding ceremony, but if he were actually her husband he would have stayed with her and seen her more than (her timeline) once every few months. He would not have been living with Pam Coursan. He would not have died living in another country with Pam Coursan and he certainly would have acknowledged his WIFE in his will,in death.

'The ring that came in the mail' sounds like such BS. She had it the whole time.He probably never even wore it. It's just so sad, this rearranging of history to justify a twenty year obsession with a dead man who was never worthy of her love.

I also don't like the way she wrote. You can tell she writes historical romances (or science fiction or whatever she calls it,her writing style is trashy) by her melodramatic prose and only SHE could take a chapter about Woodstock and make it yawningly boring and irrelevant. Woodstock! "I crept on cat feet and knelt before my beloved" (the 'beloved' who left me behind to live with another woman, the woman I tried, sadly and vainly, to steal him from-so crazy and sad.)

I have felt this way about men before, lying drunken,poetic men, beautful men, and I have lost myself. I have done drive-bys and showed up places they'd be and blew one nights stands into love and I understand, she was effing Jim Morrison but the thing is, I grew up, I moved on and really, Patrica seems like the type to read her Amazon reviews and if you do,honey,PLEASE move on,too.

Because if you don't then you're nothing but a 60's throwback Mrs. Havisham, dancing around your loft in your tattered 'tunic' and thigh high boots, deluding yourself into being a martyr for something that never was.

Like plenty of biographies/autobios I've read, this book left me with a weird feeling. Why? Because I am STILL sifting through both sides.

Ms. Keneally-Morrison chronicles (in a hefty tome) her romance and pagan marriage to Jim Morrison, a major rock star who died in Paris of a drug overdose, with his other girlfriend Pamela. She goes over the course of a few years, starting with her critical review of his work and ending... well, long after he died.

Problems: Well, one is that Ms. Keneally-Morrison appears to have a bit of a persecution complex. She compares moviemaker Oliver Stone to Satan and doesn't hesitate to lambast those she dislikes. In addition, I found it distracting that she keeps bringing up her religion, her intelligence, her inner strength, and so on in portions of the book that it doesn't belong in. A leetle defensive?

On the flip side, I do not believe she did this for the money. I think she did it for love, but unfortunately I think that she's become... well, obsessive is the right word for it, both about Morrison's memory and defending herself against any critics/dislikers, and sometimes against loyal fans (this was quite disturbing). She even goes to the extreme length of writing a work of fiction very strongly based on her outlook on the relationship with Morrison.

I really know almost nothing about Pamela--but from the sound of what I've heard, she was very much in love with Morrison, and hardly the demon incarnate that Keneally-Morrison seems to see her as. For instance, she criticizes Pamela's drug usage, but how many did she, personally, use herself?

Jim himself is... is... is... well, he doesn't sound like the guy the rest of us have heard of. He doesn't seem to be the same person in this book, in speech or manners or attitude--I think the outlook is rosied, significantly. Shy?

I was also very disturbed by an admission Ms. Keneally-Morrison made on her website: that she put little verbal traps throughout the book, so that her detractors would say "AHA!" when they saw them, then be let down with a crash. I was also a little creeped out by a self-interview she gives herself at the end of the book...

Since Pamela never wrote a book, I can't tell what her personality was like, except by the claims of people who knew her, which is admittedly easier to believe than the lone POV of Ms. Keneally-Morrison. For both sides of the issue, I advise that you also read "Angels Dance and Angels Die," a very sad and sweet book. In the meantime, I hope that Ms. Keneally-Morrison can be counseled and find peace despite her past unhappiness.

The title should have been "My Ten Days With Jim Morrison and the Rest Of My Life Obsessing Over Him"!!! That is what the book is about. A woman's ten days with Morrison, how she manages to blow those 10 days extremely out of proportion, and the rest of her life obsessing over this "relationship". Kennealy is usually going far out of her way to approach Morrison, not the other way around. Morrison eventually doesn't call her in NY, doesn't respond to messages she leaves, so she hangs around his hotel until he shows up. By chance, they run into each other just as she's giving up and about to leave. That is when their relationship is "good". Next she is pestering Jim in FL, claims to be invited, but I have my doubts. She admits Morrison ignores her for several days in FL. It keeps getting better! After FL Morrison ignores her for several months. Get a clue already? No way! Finally, she is stalking Morrison all the way to CA, not invited at all. Hanging around the apartment where Morrison resides with live-in-lover of six years, Courson. Decades later Kennealy is munching on sour grapes. The author is clearly very bitter, thinking she was more worthy of Morrison than Courson. It doesn't matter that Morrison clearly preferred Courson, no matter what Courson's faults. It doesn't matter to the author, because she was and is obsessed with Morrison. He lived with Courson, traveled all over with Courson, willed his estate to Courson. Did none of those things for the author. Those are big clues, all of which go over the author's head. End of book, she is claiming she didn't want to be around Jim all the time, she chose not to live with him. She huffs and puffs this indignantly. More like Morrison chose not to be around her, she couldn't stand this, so began stalking him in CA. She writes about this as if it's perfectly normal behaviour. Thinks it makes her a strong woman, not a desperate woman. Especially when she is stabbing a dagger into a desk at his office!!! Doesn't think she deserves a strait-jacket for this, just a medal!!! If anyone ever did this at my office, I'd be calling the cops. Luckily I purchased this used, so not a dime went to the crazy-delusional-arrogant author.

Paris,july 1971.Imagine yourself working as a lowly gate keeper at Pere-lachaise cemetry.You've just got the kettle on when you alight upon a vision.Black dress and full veil,shoeless and wracked with grief.You do your best to understand.She is obviously both foreign and distressed.She is angry,she wants to rip your throat out,but why?She has the bearing of a widowed Queen,the air of a grief stricken consort to a dead king!You do what any self respecting french gate keeper would do before such majesty.You shrug and point her in the wrong direction.
And so it begins.The dreadfull self deluded ramblings of a plain jane,so bitter that her place in the story of Jim Morrison was a mere footnote.An extra in a cast,screaming to themselves "It should have been me!!"
Her self aggrandisement begins even before the foreword and its a warning to all readers on just what is to come.
Throughout,she refers to herself in royal terms,dramatic visions of wolfpelt wearing ancestry on an altogether higher plain than the lowly Morrisons.Her descriptions of her costumes,her superior intellect,her hair,her bearing...she makes Lady Mcbeth seem shy and retiring. When finally she happens upon the graveside we are informed that she plans to comport herself as a widowed queen.Unfortunatly for Jim she becomes a drama queen,throwing herself on the grave for a full seven days.We are told that few come near her in her grief, out of respect,but this is Paris!Capital of France!One of the biggest personalities of rock music has just been laid to rest and none but a handfull of people can be bothered to stroll by? Such overwrought behaviour does reveal the mindset of Patricia Kennealy,then and now.Such grief may make sense in someone who had shared twenty years of their lives with a husband who has been martyred to save their children.Jim Morrison had barely spent twenty days with her,inbetween a trial,recording L.A woman, various gigs,interviews and photo sessions in one of the most difficult years(1970/71)of his life.
Patricia is also a priestess in a New York witches covern that appears to consist of four people.She persuades Morrison to take part in a handfasting ritual,a non binding wedding ceremony played out with robes and swords.Kennealy tries to instill in this hokum great import,but anyone who knew Jim Morrison would not be surprised at his participation.It would have appealled to his sense of curiosity and made a good bar story.
The overiding impression one has of Patricia Kennealy is of a woman out of her depth physically and emotionally.She cannot compete with her rival Pamela Coursons beauty and sweetness of nature,so tries to belittle her intellect and accuses her of murdering him by supplying him with a lethal dose of heroin.Her jealousy regarding Courson starts to become unbalanced,and an uninvited trip to L.A to find Morrison and reveal all to Courson backfires spectacularly,with Morrison's indifferent attitude culminating in a drunken grope with him and a woman called Tiffany.Humiliated,Kennealy starts a fight and the pair of ladies end up on the floor punching and pulling hair.
It becomes clear Kennealy has no understanding of the unwritten bond beetween Jim and Pam,and thinks that by destroying postumously,Courson's reputation,she may have her rewards in this life or the next.
Morrisons actions during their alleged torrid affair speak volumes.The broken promises regarding her abortion,(she alleges the child was his)his subsequent avoiding of her when she was stalking him in L.A His non commitment at every opportunity,and especially his flight to France,dont read like the actions of a man in love.Indeed the odour of fatal attraction pervades this book.She has contradicted herself in other more unguarded interviews ,pertaining to the dates of when this all transpired,and all photographicaly we have is a rather unfortunate picture of her taken at the same time he was interviewed for jazz and pop magazine.Morrison stares balefully at the camera as Kennealy lurks at his shoulder looking like Yoko Ono with her hand trapped in a car door.
He left in his will all his worldly goods to the woman he regarded as his soul mate,Pamela Courson.There was no mention of Patricia Kennealy.You could sympathise with her in some areas of this story,but for her unpleasant vanity and spiteful personality.To play the wronged woman card you really have to be more of a sympathetic figure than Patricia.
Jim morrison was a flawed individual in a time where there was no knowlege of the effects on the mind of drugs,no help for alcohol abuse and no councelling for women like patricia who thirty years on carries with her such vitriol towards all those she percieves to be enemies of her place in history.In Oliver Stone's screenplay for the doors movie,he wrote a piece of dialogue that may reveal his opinion of Patrica,but sums up perhaps the readers thoughts at the end of this ego driven travesty of a book.In the film Pamela stares at Patricia,then turns to Jim and says "You actually put your....in this woman?" Such lese-majeste!For strange days Re-title: "Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned"

I bought Strange Days on Amazon last month. I kept an open mind, I wanted to give the book a chance, despite all the the bad reviews and her negitive website I had read a long time ago. Well I found this book to be a difficult read. I was uncomfortable with the degree of disfunction in the relationship between Kennealy and Morrison. What was more disturbing is she portrays this as a passionate beautiful love story between two people in total awe and full of respect for one another. I keep in mind, she was young as was he, early 20's, they both used drugs heavily (she can minimalize all she wants but this woman has a drug problem). Still at her age at the time the book was written it still bears the same immaturity and delusional feel. Maybe a teen or an early 20's would find arguing, slapping, fighting, crying, encounters with other women, then having marathon sex sprinkled with words of undying devotion exciting and passionate, but not a mature adult. Also, her book just feels like a novel more than a biographical account. I've heard many say, "How can she recall every word they spoke to each other" Well if these words were actually uttered, Kennealy strikes me as the type of silly lovestruck person to write them down as soon as she had a private moment to read later over and over and over again. I do doubt these converstations ever existed. I really want to ask her, how do you know what he was thinking or feeling with every look or gesture. At one point she recalls a night they spent together, in his sleep he reaches for her hair for "comfort or possession", now how in the world could she know that??? She makes statements FOR Jim Morrison rather than just state what actually happened (if it did, in fact happen the way she claims) I had to put it down several times and just cringe at how sick her way of thinking is. Kennealy was the homely smart girl in high school who as a homely smart adult had the chance of a lifetime, spending intimate moments with rock god Jim Morrison. Unfortunately, it seems she is destined to be the angry high school nerd hating the pretty sweet girl forever. Her life mantra? I am guessing "It shoulda been me!"

A really sad account of a woman who had a 13 month fling with Jim Morrison, a handfast and created a 30 year Arthurian myth over a few sexual encounters.

Hard to read as it's a supposed biography written as a SciFi/Fantasy romance novel. Kennealy goes off on tangents far too much: Celtic mythology; Wicca; fashions people were wearing; rants over Morrison's girlfriend Pam. Kennealy appears to be a narcissist who lives in her own fantasy world where she is some Celtic warrior princess rather than a New Yorker and writer for a pop music rag. She still carries the torch for her prince Jim Morrison, dead all these years, and regards herself as the true heir to the title of his "wife." In reality she was just another fling who was dropped after she became preggers.

I give it two stars because the fantasy life she weaves around herself is more interesting than her few sexual encounters with Jim Morrison. (She caused earthquakes!!!) This book is a wonderful study in narcissim. I found myself skimming portions of the books as I'm not into sword and sorcery fantasy.

I'm another one who read ROCK WIVES (by Victoria Balfour), which was published in 1986, several years before Kennealy's own book. I noticed several discrepencies between Kennealy's story in ROCK WIVES and STRANGE DAYS. In ROCK WIVES, when Kennealy describes being invited to dinner with Jim and Pamela, it's very clear she and Jim aren't having an affair yet. Compare that to her story in STRANGE DAYS. Kennealy tells Victoria Balfour her affair with Jim didn't start until May 1970, two days after the Philly concert (where Jim confronted her about criticizing his poems)! Kennealy is quoted in ROCK WIVES as saying "That's when everything really started." Kennealy is further quoted, "He told me it was totally finished with her {Pamela}, which was the only way I would have started up with him, because I have scruples. He swore they had broken up, that it was a poisoned relationship. It was probably true when he said it, but he was just one of those people who changed his mind a lot. You never knew where you were. There was no consistency but inconsistency." Indeed! In STRANGE DAYS, Kennealy describes, in mushy detail, herself and Jim becoming lovers in September 1969! Romantic details in ROCK WIVES that occurred in May 1970, in STRANGE DAYS Kennealy has those exact details occurring a full 8 months earlier. Kennealy appears to be mixing fact with fiction in STRANGE DAYS. She appears to be exaggerating the length of her affair with Morrison by almost a year in STRANGE DAYS.

As for Kennealy portraying herself as the heroine in STRANGE DAYS.....What strong woman would allow a man to pull out her diaphragm, then go on as if she couldn't say to him "stop everything!" In ROCK WIVES, when asked if she would put up with his behavior today, she replied, "Never in a million years! No way. This wasn't any kind of liberating relationship. He called all the shots. And the worst part of being with him was that I never knew whether I was going to see him again." Patricia goes on to say she would flatten Jim if he were alive today!

In ROCK WIVES Kennealy says of Pamela Courson, "I really did like her. She was nice. She wasn't an incredibly towering intellect, but she seemed very sweet and very pretty, very California." Pamela is trashed in STRANGE DAYS. Kennealy portrays Pamela as sweet and friendly. Which makes it all the more mean-spirited that Kennealy is constantly thinking nasty thoughts about her. Kennealy seems obsessed with Pamela. She even admits to stealing a lock of Pam's hair, then jokes about it! Very disturbing. Kennealy often takes out her anger on other women (who she refers to as "trollops", "groupie trash", "whores", and "sluts", while referring to herself as "special"). Kennealy decries the sexism of rockstars in her book, but to me she's the one with a double standard. There's nothing admirable about taking your anger at a man out on another woman. Try holding the man responsible for his own actions, including his drug abuse and flirtations with other women!

I found it so hypocritical near the end of the book, when Kennealy is lecturing the reader that "To use Jim as a vehicle for your own petty vampirical obsessions, without regard for the feelings of anyone concerned (least of all his), is a sin and a crime against him." I think if Kennealy had ever dared speak about Pamela the way she does in this book while Jim were alive...well, I don't think she ever would dare it if he were alive! Reason being he would have dropped her right on her obsessed, petty bottom. Pam wasn't a "Tiffany" Patricia could get away with throttling. Pam wasn't some groupie or some out-of-state-fling. Pam was a constant in Jim's life, much to the chagrin of those who wished to take her place. When you read between the lines, that is the undercurrent that runs throughout this book.

If you read this, also read ROCK WIVES by Victoria Balfour, read ANGELS DANCE, ANGELS DIE by Patricia Butler, read LIGHT MY FIRE by Ray Manzarek (all he has to say about Kennealy is "She simply fell in love with Jim. Madly."), read RIDERS ON THE STORM by John Densmore! But whatever you do, please don't allow your opinion to be formed by STRANGE DAYS alone. That would be very naive.