Jim Morrison -- Family, Florida and Forgiveness

December, 07, 2010 5:41 pm | Comments On #family, Florida, Jim Morrison, Media, music, The Doors

Had he not overdosed in Paris in 1971, The Doors’ Jim Morrison would have been 67 years old this December 8.

The legendary frontman called his childhood “an open sore,” and told his band that he was an “orphan.” Later they discovered he had a mother after all. In 1967, she was sitting in a front row seat her son, The Lizard King, as Morrison sometimes took to calling himself, had reserved for her in the Washington auditorium. During the show’s climactic number, "The End," he sang Mother, I want to…” then barred his teeth and snarled “F---- You!” He refused to see her again. Nor did he ever again see his father, a Navy admiral. “Father?” he sang in “The End,” “I want to kill you!”

George Morrison, the only son of a Methodist laundry owner...

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Michael Jackson and Elvis: When the Two Kings Became One

October, 26, 2010 7:23 am | Comments On #Elvis Presley, lisa marie presley, Media, Michael Jackson, people

 “The way Elvis destroyed himself interests me, because

I don’t ever want to walk those grounds myself.” 

Michael Jackson, "Moon Walk" (1988)

But apparently the King of Pop changed his mind about The King of Rock, the father-in-law he never met.

On MySpace, Lisa Marie Presley recalled how one day in 1993, her husband told her “with an almost calm certainty, ‘I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did.” The King’s daughter concluded: “The exact scenario I saw happen on August 16th, 1977, happened again with Michael just as he predicted.”        

...

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John Lennon and the Immortal, Revolutionary #9

October, 09, 2010 9:15 am | Comments On #John Lennon, Media, music, Paul McCartney, the Beatles, Yoko Ono

On Oct. 9, Yoko Ono, in honor of what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday, will light his Peace Tower in Iceland and perform a memorial concert.

The number 9 always had profound significance for John, especially after first meeting Yoko at a London art gallery on Nov. 9, 1966. His second wife was a serious student of the occult and of Cheiro, the father of modern numerolog.

Like John, she identified herself as a Number 9 person, the sum of the numbers of her own birthday on the 18th (of February 1933).

Cheiro stated that 9 represented creative, universal consciousness. He characterized Number 9 personalities as fiercely independent, energetic, strong-willed and domineering, often subject to great struggles...

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The Man Who Murdered Jimi Hendrix?

September, 17, 2010 4:16 pm | Comments On #David Comfort, Jimi Hendrix, Media, Woodstock

jimi hendrixA memorial on the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death -- Sept. 18, 1970:

I pick up my axe and fight like a bomber now, but you still blast me down to the ground.
 
Before becoming Jimi Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffery had been a covert op for British Intelligence. According to one of his original clients, Eric Burdon of the Animals, Jeffery often boasted of his 007 escapades during the Cold War -- staging assassinations in Greece, torturing KGB agents, blowing up Russian/Egyptian bases in the Suez.
 
The Animals’ singer, Jimi’s future close friend, took these stories as drunken tall tales  until, early one morning, the former MI6 agent invited him out to...

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The Media's 'Ground Zero Mosque' Follies

August, 30, 2010 4:23 pm | Comments On #ADL, Anti-Defamation League, David Comfort, Eric Cantor, Fox News, Ground Zero, Ground Zero Mosque, Islam, Keith Olbermann, Media, MSNBC, Muslim, New York, news, Rachel Maddow, World Trade Center

ground zero mosqueFor some time, “fair and balanced” news coverage and commentary has been on the media endangered species list. Now, with the current “Ground Zero Mosque” flap, it seems to have become extinct.

Most concede that Fox News falls far short of their nonpartisan boast. Liberals relish mocking it as a propaganda machine and purveyor of infotainment at best. But, have their own standard-bearers  – Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow – become any less guilty of the same thing? Indeed, it seems that they have upped Fox’s ante, turning infotainment into spinfotainment.  

Consider Rachel Maddow’s recent drive-by on Rep. Eric Cantor. In the course of a...

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Elvis, Gladys & Their Double Doomdate, Aug. 16

August, 15, 2010 6:05 pm | Comments On #Elvis Presley, Movies, music, news

In 1934, Vernon Presley, age 18, recalled blacking out at the instant of his son’s conception; then, regaining consciousness, he had seen the night sky thronged with brilliant blue stars. Elvis Aron’s twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn.

The future King’s God-fearing mother, Gladys -- who herself almost died in the delivery -- believed he had inherited Jesse’s soul, and was “the One.”  

Years later, Gladys would suffer a miscarriage, making her all the more protective of her only surviving child. 

“My mama never let me out of her sight,” said Elvis. 

Vernon told biographer, Peter Guralnick ("Last Train to Memphis"): “...

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The Resurrection & Final Fall of Jerry Garcia

August, 08, 2010 5:33 pm | Comments On #anniversary, Bob Weir, death, Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Media, music

The head of California’s 39th largest corporation was in full diabetic shock. His blood sugar was the second highest the doctors at Marin General had ever seen. His kidneys had shut down. He was running a 105-degree fever from a systemic infection. He was in a coma.

Outside the ICU, the corridor was packed with family, friends, managers, reporters. And the Hell’s Angels.

Only the patient’s wife was permitted inside. “His heart stopped,” she would later say. ”He died. The hospital didn’t want anyone to know this, but he died. They had to resuscitate him.”

Even if her husband survived, she’d been told he might be brain-damaged and unable to walk again.

...

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Making the Case Stick Against Dr. Murray

April, 13, 2010 4:03 pm | Comments On #Conrad Murray, David Comfort, Michael Jackson

“I was looking for justice, and justice, to me,would be the murder charge… Even his kidssay that he had told them that he would be murdered.” -- Joe Jackson, on "Larry King Live"

For several months after that fateful day of June 25, 2009, the LAPD investigative unit chiefs and the L.A. District Attorney hotly debated what charges could be brought against Dr. Conrad Murray in the death of his patient, Michael Jackson.

Conrad MurrayMost wanted to go for murder, but they feared a déjà vu of the disastrous O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake homicide trials, so embarrassing and demoralizing to L.A. law enforcement.

Indeed, they had less substantive evidence against Murray than against the two acquitted celebrities.

So,...

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In Memoriam: Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love

April, 04, 2010 8:31 pm | Comments On #Courtney Love, kurt cobain, Media, music, Nirvana

At Eastertime, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found in a storage room, a gunshot hole in his head, a heroin hypodermic hole in each arm.

Suicide or murder?

After 16 years of heated argument, authorities and amateur sleuths are no less divided on the question.

Supporters of the Seattle Police Department’s suicide ruling include Cobain biographers, Charles R. Cross and Christopher Sandford, as well as journalists Charles Rawlins, Bradley Spears, and many others. Supporters of a murder conspiracy include biographers Max Wallace and Ian Halperin, as well as Courtney Love’s private detective, Tom Grant, her father, Hank Harrison, journalists Richard Lee, Roger Lewis, and many others.

Let’s look at the major issues between these two camps.

With 1.52 ml of heroin in his system – said to be three times the amount for a fatal...

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Jackson Autopsy: The Cover-Up?

April, 02, 2010 11:11 am | Comments On #Dr. Conrad Murray, Elvis Presley, Media, Michael Jackson

John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley.

The autopsies of such legends should have been the most painstaking and impartial. But there appears to be substantial evidence to the contrary in these historic cases and others. 

Could the autopsy of Michael Jackson be the same? 

The full report has not yet been publicized by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who covered the murder cases of both Phil Spector and O.J. Simpson. But released details and conclusions from his report give cause for wonder even on basic issues. 

First, take Jackson’s weight.

The ME recorded the star at 136. But when booked on child molestation charges in Santa Barbara in 2003, he was 120. In the final six years of his life, Jackson handlers expressed alarm at his weight loss, calling him “emaciated...

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Description

David Comfort is the author of three popular Simon & Schuster titles, and the recipient of numerous literary awards. His latest title from Citadel/Kensington, "The Rock and Roll Book of the Dead: The Fatal Journeys of Rock’s Seven Immortals," is an in-depth study of the traumatic childhoods, tormented relationships, addictions, and tragic ends of Elvis, Lennon, Janis, Morrison, Hendrix, Cobain, and Garcia.
For details see: http://www.rockandrollbookofthedead.com.
 

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