Description: This is a historically significant and once in a lifetime opportunity for a RARE and Important Vintage Hawaiian Woman Portrait Oil Painting, and a large graphite sketch by Mary Frances Werbelow (b. 1945), the beautiful and captivating first love of Jim Morrison of The Doors, and a strong influence on the band's early sound and subject matter. ADDITIONALLY, included in this sale with these two artworks is Werbelow's personal signed and dedicated copy of Summer with Morrison by Dennis C. Jakob (2015,) which includes extensive hand-written liner notes, corrections, additional details and personal memories by Mary Werbelow of the events that take place in this book, the subject of which documents the very early years of Jim Morrison's time in Los Angeles, his relationship with Mary Werbelow, friendship with Jakob, the early years of The Doors, etc. Included inside the book is also an original B&W photograph of Werbelow from the 1960's. This painting (likely dating to the early 1970's), depicts the lovely and expressive portrait of a young and beautiful Native Hawaiian woman, standing in front of large tropical fan palm leaves. She wears a red flower in her hair, and a traditional red shawl across her bosom. Signed: "Werbelow" in the upper left corner. Approximately 31 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 30 x 40 inches. Good condition for age, with one small tear to the canvas at the lower edge (please see photos.) The maquette pencil sketch on paper is approximately 32 x 40 inches and is also signed "Werbelow" at the lower edge. It has some edge wear and tears to the paper. The book is in well used, dog-eared condition, as it was Mary Werbelow's personal copy that she meticulously read and added her own details, corrections on events, and memories to, which must have held considerable sentimental value to her. Mary Werbelow is notoriously reclusive and private and DOES NOT GIVE INTERVIEWS about her years with Jim Morrison, since their breakup in 1965, so this personal book of recollections and intimate details, never meant for the public, is a Holy Grail of wealth and insider knowledge for a serious Jim Morrison researcher or historian of The Doors. The Crystal Ship (1967) by The Doors is one of their most famous early songs, which was specifically about the end of Morrison's intimate relationship with Werbelow. PRICED TO SELL. No Lowballs PLEASE. Acquired from the contents of Mary Werbelow's 1970's art studio, which were found in an abandoned storage unit in Los Angeles, California. If you have any questions, Feel Free to Ask! If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! PROVENANCE:These items are from the effects of Ms. Mary Frances Werbelow. Mary is well known as the 1st and arguably most important girlfriend of the Rock & Roll icon, Jim Morrison of the 1960's music group 'The Doors'. It is the opinion of several personal friends of Jim & Mary and objective observers that the summer 1965 breakup of Jim & Mary began a chain of events that not only formed the foundation of the Doors music but also set up the two different life trajectories for Jim & Mary which left them both unfulfilled in their personal relationships which initiated Jim's drug abuse and ultimately his death in 1971. Ms. Werbelow's effects were lost in a storage unit auction. I acquired a selection of personal items and artwork produced by Mary from her career as a professional artist. About the Artist: Mary Werbelow (b. 1945) took photos and promoted her artwork back in the 1970's, and many existing slides & photographs of her work are dated to this period. We know from her biographical information that she contracted an illness in the 1980s and discontinued her artistic output by that time. Mary first went to India, then came back to America and then lived in Hawaii for a number of years. Mary continued her work as a professional artist a gift she seems to have had for her whole life. She was able to maintain herself as a working artist during and after her two marriages, until she was stricken with MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity) disorder. She apparently acquired this illness as a result of the misuse of an pesticide in the building where her art studio was located. She received a monetary settlement in the 1980's which enabled her to survive for a number of years, but at some point those funds became exhausted and she fell on hard times. Mary also was challenged with other health issues some of which resulted in surgeries and additional treatment. What we know of Mary's life is really only gleaned from two primary sources. A 2005 interview she granted Robert Farley of the Tampa Bay Times ('Mary & Jim To The End' - September 25, 2005) and her brief contact with an old friend Bill Cosgrave and detailed in his book 'Love Her Madly - Jim Morrison, Mary and Me' (Dundurn, 2020). It does not appear Mary ever sought to gain fame or income from her relationship with Jim. In fact, we learned Mary on TWO occasions refused significant money from filmmaker Oliver Stone for her story in preparation for his 1991 film 'The Doors' starring Val Kilmer. Dennis Jakob (author of the book included) was Jim Morrison's roommate in college and experienced some of The Door's early success. Dennis of course knew Mary from 1964 onwards and apparently kept in touch with Mary well into the 1970's. Both of these letters mention Jakob's most well-known professional work, editing work on Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now'. That film famously features a Door's song 'The End'. Most of Jim's friends and Jim himself suggested this song began as a poem written about Mary. Mary and Jim to the endMary Werbelow is polite but firm: She doesn't do interviews. Ever.Jim Morrison was her first love, before he got famous with the Doors. Friends from Clearwater say that for three years in the early 1960s, Jim and Mary were inseparable. He mourns their breakup in the Doors' ballad The End.For nearly 40 years, all manner of people have tracked Mary down and asked for her story, including Oliver Stone, when he was making his movie starring Val Kilmer as Jim. Others waved money. Always she said thank you, no."I have spoken to no one."She can't see what good could come of it; some things are just meant to be kept private. Besides, journalists always get it wrong. They focus on Jim Morrison as drunk, drug abuser, wild man. They don't know his sensitivity and intellect, his charm and humor."They take a part of him and sensationalize that. People don't really know Jim. They don't really have a clue."Mary is afraid to share. Because nobody could ever fully understand him, or her, or them. Not to mention how painful it is, even 40 years later, to relive something she would rather forget. She still aches for love lost; her regret never relents.She lives in California, alone, in an aging mobile home park. By phone she is told that back in Clearwater, they're tearing down the house on N Osceola Avenue, the place Jim lived in when they met, to make way for condos. His room was in back, books stacked everywhere save for the path to his bed."That was a lovely home," Mary says. "It's a shame to knock it down."Across a dozen conversations, she amplifies on stories the old Clearwater crowd tells, and adds some of her own. She says she's not sure why she's talking now. Maybe it's just time.Summer 1962, Clearwater:Nine years before Jim diedMary and best friend Mary Wilkin spread their beach blanket near Pier 60. Our Mary was 17, wearing a black one-piece, cut all the way down the back, square in front _ a little daring for the time, especially for a buttoned-down Catholic girl.Amid the flattops on the pier, the guy with the mop of hair stood out.Jim had been sent here by his father, then a Navy captain, after he blew off his high school graduation ceremony in Virginia. He had just finished the year at St. Petersburg Junior College and lived with his grandparents, who ran a coin laundry on Clearwater-Largo Road.On her beach towel, Mary turned to her friend and uttered the first sexual comment of her life:"Wow, look at those legs!"Jim tagged along when his friend came over to flirt with Mary Wilkin. He told our Mary he was a regular pro at the game of matchsticks, a mental puzzle in which the matches are laid out in rows, like a pyramid. Loser picks up the last one.Jim challenged Mary and suggested they spice things up with a wager. If she won?"You'll have to be my slave for the day."If he won? Mary had to watch beach basketball with him.As Mary's first command, she marched Jim to the barber. She was just finishing her junior year at Clearwater High, where all the boys had flattops; she was not going to be seen with such a hairy mess."Shorter," she told the barber."Shorter."Shorter."To a buzz cut.He must really like me, Mary thought. I'll see if I still dig him by the time his hair grows out, and if I do, it won't matter.Slave order No. 2: Iron and clean. And wash her black Plymouth, a.k.a. "The Bomb."Jim had begun the wax job when Mary's father rescued him with a picnic basket and suggested the couple adjourn to the Clearwater Causeway.To cap slave day, Mary had Jim chauffeur her to St. Pete, in the shiny Bomb, to see the movie West Side Story.Mary was on the high school homecoming court. Her friends did cotillion dances at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel, hit Brown Brothers dairy store for burgers and malts, and shopped Mertz's records for Ben E. King, Del Shannon and Elvis Presley.Hair shorn, Jim still attracted attention, shy behind granny glasses, army jacket and a conductor's hat. The local law stopped him multiple times to check his ID.He read his poetry at the avant-garde Beaux Arts coffeehouse in Pinellas Park and visited St. Pete's only live burlesque show, at the Sun Art Theater on Ninth Street.Friends who thought they knew Mary couldn't fathom why she would want to hang out with the likes of Jim Morrison.What they didn't know was how out of place Mary felt in her social circle. Jim talked like no one she had met."We're just going to talk in rhymes now," he would say.He recited long poems from memory. "Listen to this, listen to this," he'd say, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright . . ." _ excited, like it was breaking news, not William Blake.This was not puppy love, Mary says, like the earlier boyfriend who played guitar, wrote songs and serenaded her by phone. This was different. This was intense."We connected on a level where speaking was almost unnecessary. We'd look at each other and know what we were thinking."She liked her alone time, in her bedroom, dancing and drawing.Jim liked his alone time, in his bedroom, reading.They skipped dances and football games and hung out, at her house, his grandparents' house, wherever."I hated to let him go at night. I couldn't shut the door."When it came to sex, Mary's answer was no."It was not happening. And it didn't for a long time. I'm surprised he held out that long."Mary's grandparents were strict Catholics. She had visions of them at the last judgment, watching her. "It was too much for me to bear."The poetEverybody, everybody, remembers the notebooks. Any time, any place, Jim would fish one from his back pocket, scribble and chuckle.Chris Kallivokas, Bryan Gates and Tom Duncan. And Phil Anderson, George Greer, Ruth Duncan, Gail Swift and Mary. They all remember.Around Jim, you always felt watched. He'd bait and goad, get a rise, take notes. "There was no one who wasn't under observation," Gates says. "His only purpose in life was observation."When Jim drove, Mary kept a notebook at the ready."Write this!" he'd say, dictating an observation. Or he'd pull over and scribble himself.Everyone has a story about Jim's brainy side. Kallivokas remembers the night his Clearwater High buddies and a new kid came by Alexander's Sundries, his father's drugstore on Clearwater Beach. They wanted Kallivokas to come party, but he had a term paper due the next day, on Lord Essex. Naturally, he had written all of two sentences."I know all about him," the new kid volunteered. Jim wrote the paper off the top of his head, with footnotes and bibliography."To this day, I don't know if it was right," says Kallivokas, who says he got an A+.They would rag Jim that the books crowding his living space were for show. He'd look away and challenge nonbelievers to pick any book and read the beginning of any chapter. He'd name the book, the author and more context than they cared to hear."He was a genius," Mary says. "He was incredible."She says his heroes were William Burroughs, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Norman Mailer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Arthur Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac.Mary didn't have heroes like that. "Jim was my hero."The provocateurPre-Mary, Jim's buddy Phil Anderson brought him to a house party on Clearwater Beach.Jim was dazzling with the dictionary game. People would pick obscure words, and Jim would tell the definitions.Phil turned, and his pal was standing on the couch, peeing on the floor. "Needless to say, we were asked to leave."That was Jim. He'd charm, then provoke. It was worse when he drank.He got epically drunk on Chianti at the all-day car races in Sebring, crawled around in a white fake fur coat like a polar bear covered in dirt and tried to launch himself onto the track. Friends grabbed his ankles."He'd get a real pleasure out of shocking people and being a little eccentric and peculiar," Kallivokas says. "And that came to the forefront when he had a couple drinks."Mary says he rarely drank in her presence."It was out of respect for me. We were in love, and he didn't want to do things that I didn't like.""That's a real key to understanding Jim," Gates says. "She was the love of his life in those days. They were virtually soul mates for three or four years."- - -In the fall, Jim transferred to Florida State. Most weekends, rain or shine, he hitchhiked back to Clearwater, 230 miles down U.S. 19. Most days in between, letters postmarked Tallahassee arrived at the Werbelow mailbox on Nursery Road.Mary's father intercepted one, read the page about sex and never got to the part that made clear Jim was writing about a class. Furious at her father's snooping, she burned all Jim's letters, a move she came to regret, deeply.She wasn't much of a letter writer herself. At Jim's direction, she wrote once a week and included the number of a public telephone in Clearwater and a time he should call.On his end, Jim would put in a dime for the first two minutes. They would talk for hours. When the operator asked him to settle up, he'd take off. Free phone service.On her end, Mary would loiter by the phone at the appointed hour, glancing about, certain it was the week the cavalry was coming to arrest her."I was so scared," she says, laughing. "I just thought it was normal. I see now it wasn't."She always assumed he had her wait at different phones for her protection; now she's thinking it was his way of making sure she wrote him at least once a week.March 30, 1963:Eight years before Jim diedIt's hardly something Mary brags about; she says she would have declined. But when the Jaycees called to recruit her for the Miss Clearwater competition, Mary's mother answered the phone."Oh, yeah," mom said, "she'll be happy to do it."The third and final night of competition, more than 1,000 people packed Clearwater Municipal Auditorium. Five finalists matched "beauty, personality and poise."Mary was looking good, not that Jim was thrilled. If she won, it was on to Miss Florida. Less time for him.Mary performed matadorlike body twirls. She did the bossa nova. Time for her big question: "If your husband grew a beard, what would you do?"What a stupid question, she thought, and answered: "I'd let him grow it. Whether he would kiss me or not would be another matter."She told the judges she was headed for college, torpedoing her chances because it meant she would not be available to fulfill all obligations of Miss Clearwater.Sitting through other contestants' routines, Mary scanned the darkened hall until she spotted Jim, bored senseless. But there.She got first runner-up.1964-65, Los Angeles:The breakupMary's father banned Jim from the Werbelow house. Mary won't say why; she doesn't want to add to the Morrison myth.When she followed Jim to Tallahassee for a semester, her parents objected. When he started film school at UCLA and Mary announced she was following him to Los Angeles, they were devastated.To bribe Mary to stay, her mother bought her an antique bedroom set, no competition for a 19-year-old following her heart.Mary says Jim asked her to wear "something floaty" when she arrived in Los Angeles. "He wanted me to look like an angel coming off the plane."Instead, she drove out a week early and surprised him.Together again, in an exciting, intimidating city, they kept separate apartments. Mary got her first real job, in the office of a hospital X-ray department. Later, she donned a fringe skirt and boots as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip.Jim studied film. At the end of the year, a handful from among hundreds of student films were selected for public showing. Jim's was not among them.Shortly after, Mary says, he told her he was humiliated, considered his formal education over and needed to forget everything. He built a fire in his back yard and incinerated many of his precious Florida notebooks.Mary says he started doubting her commitment. "You're going to leave me," he would tell her."No, I'm not. How can you say that? I'm in love with you."After one fight, Jim went out with another woman. He wasn't home the next morning. Mary went to the woman's house, but she said Jim wasn't there.Mary called: "Come out wherever you are!"Jim slinked forward, a hand towel around him. Mary bolted and, in a blur, hit the woman's fence as she sped off."That was the beginning of the end."He was drinking hard and taking psychedelic drugs. The darkness she had always seen seemed to be overtaking him, and she didn't want to watch him explore his self-destructive bent. And she felt he had swallowed her identity. Whatever he liked, she liked."I had to go out and see what parts of that were me. I just knew I had to be away from him. I needed to be by myself, to find my own identity."She enrolled in art school. The day Jim helped her move to a new apartment, she told him she needed a break."He clammed up after that. I really hurt him. It hurts me to say that. I really hurt him."They split up in the summer of 1965.A few months later, Jim got together with a film school buddy, Ray Manzarek, who says he wanted to combine his keyboards with Jim's poetry. They started the band that became the Doors.Friends from Clearwater never saw it coming. Back then, Jim didn't have much interest in music. He didn't even appear to have rhythm."He didn't sit around and sing," Mary says, laughing. "Jim, no, he was a poet. He wrote poetry."By phone from his home in Northern California, Manzarek says all the guys in film school were in love with Mary. She was gorgeous, and sweet on top of that. "She was Jim's first love. She held a deep place in his soul."The Doors' 11-minute ballad The End, Manzarek says, originally was "a short goodbye love song to Mary." (The famous oedipal parts were added later.)This is the end, Beautiful friendThis is the end, My only friend, the endOf our elaborate plans, the endOf everything that stands, the endNo safety or surprise, the endI'll never look into your eyes . . . again. . .This is the end, Beautiful friendThis is the end, My only friend, the endIt hurts to set you freeBut you'll never follow meThe end of laughter and soft liesThe end of nights we tried to dieThis is the end- - -Within two years of their breakup, Light My Fire was No. 1 on the charts and Jim was the "King of Orgasmic Rock," the brooding heartthrob staring from the covers of Rolling Stone and Life.He took up with other women, notably with longtime companion Pamela Courson, but Mary says she and Jim kept up with each other. She says she was his anchor to the times before things got crazy."I'd see him when he really needed to talk to someone."Before a photo shoot for the Doors' fourth album, she says Jim told her: "The first three albums are about you. Didn't you know that?"She says she didn't have the heart to tell him she had never really listened to them. She had heard Doors songs on the radio, but she didn't go to his concerts, she didn't keep up with his career.Mary vehemently denies it, but Manzarek says she told Jim, "The band is no good and you'll never make it." He says Mary wanted Jim to go back to school, get a master's degree and make something of himself.When Mary moved, she says, Jim had a knack for finding her. He would eventually ask if she had changed her mind. "Why can't we be together now?"Not yet, she would answer, someday.More than once, she says, he asked her to marry."It was heartbreaking. I knew I wanted to be with him, but I couldn't."She thought they were too young. She worried they might grow apart. She needed more time to explore her own identity.In late 1968, Mary moved to India to study meditation. She never saw Jim again.March 1, 1969, Miami:Two years before his deathWith the Doors coming for their first Florida concert, Chris Kallivokas left a message with his old friend's record company. He says Jim called him back, loving life."The chicks we get, the money. . . . It's great.""So that crowd control works," Kallivokas teased, talking about theories that intrigued Jim in Collective Behavior class at FSU. He said Jim answered:"You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it."They planned a reunion in Clearwater.- - -Some 15,000 fans cram into the 10,000-capacity Dinner Key Auditorium, a sweaty, converted seaplane hangar in Miami. Jim Morrison announces his drunken presence with dissonant blasts from a harmonica.The cover boy, 26 now, has a paunch and beard, a cowboy hat with a skull and crossbones and noticeably slurred speech.One stanza into the second song, Five to One, he berates the crowd."You're all a bunch of f - - - - - - idiots!"Confused silence. Uncomfortable laughter."Letting people tell you what you're gonna do, letting people push you around. How long you do think it's gonna last? . . ."Maybe you like it. Maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it. Maybe you love getting your face stuck in the s - - -."Screams from the audience."You're all a bunch of slaves. . . ."Letting everybody push you around. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do!"He talks as much as he sings. He wails about loneliness and rants about love. Three songs after berating the crowd, the music softens and he lets loose a plaintive:"Away, away, away, away, in India"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a."- - -Morrison invited the crowd onstage, and the concert disintegrated. Amid the chaos, he supposedly unzipped his pants, exposed himself and simulated sex with guitarist Robby Krieger.With the country debating indecency run amok, Jim Morrison was Exhibit A. He was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, a felony, plus indecent exposure and two other misdemeanors.The courtroom in Miami was packed. State witnesses saw what they saw. Others said it was hype, Morrison only simulated what he was accused of. There wasn't a single damning photo.Bryan Gates hadn't seen Jim in ages. They caught up during a break, and talk inevitably turned to Mary. What ever happened to her? Gates asked. Jim said he had lost touch, California seemed to have swallowed her up psychically.He was acquitted of the felony but convicted of indecent exposure. On Oct. 30, 1970, he was sentenced to six months of "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail.Out on appeal, he moved to Paris, where he shared an apartment with Courson.The Doors released L.A. Woman in April 1971, with hit songs Love Her Madly and Riders on the Storm. Months later, Jim Morrison was dead.On July 3, 1971, Courson found him in the bathtub. The listed cause of death was heart attack; many suspect drugs. He was 27.September 200534 years after Jim diedMary is 61, unemployed and rarely leaves her mobile home. Married and divorced three times, she has no children."I can't find anybody to replace Jim. We definitely have a soul connection so deep. I've never had anything like that again, and I don't expect I ever will."She painted, mostly realistic oil portraits. She won a small legal settlement after she said she developed multiple chemical sensitivities from rat poison that seeped through the vents of her art studio over the years. It makes it difficult to be around scented products, and she gave up her art.She doesn't think the early Doors albums are all about her but says the lyrics include references to her and Jim's shared experiences, including the "blue bus" in The End. She considered writing about the references but decided against it. An artist herself, she didn't want to spoil people's various interpretations.For decades, she says, she brooded over how things might have turned out had they stayed together but finally concluded it was destiny. "He was supposed to go into that deep, dark place."His grave in Paris draws pilgrims from around the world, but not Mary. Quite the opposite, she says. She wants to forget, and still she feels his ghost checking on her.Lines in Break on Through especially pain her, lines she interprets as Jim saying she betrayed him by not getting back together:Arms that chain usEyes that lie"I promised it wouldn't be forever, that I'd get back together with him sometime. I never did. It's very painful to think of that. For a long time, any time I would think about him, or anyone would talk about him, I'd cry."It used to make me so sad. I never gave him that second chance. That destroyed me for so long. I let him go and never gave him that second chance. I felt so guilty about that."Mary says she is tired. She has trouble sleeping. She says she's not sure if she has done right by talking so much. She's worried that others will seek interviews that she does not want to give. She wants that made clear: She does not want to talk about Jim anymore.From Jim's notebooks into the song bookEveryone who remembers Jim Morrison from his Clearwater days remembers him scribbling notes everywhere he went. Snippets became lyrics."That's where the songs came from, out of those notebooks," said Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek.In the song Soul Kitchen, for example, Manzarek said the reference to "minarets" came from the University of Tampa.Your fingers weave quick minarets.Speak in secret alphabets.I light another cigaretteand learn to forget.Mary and the lyricsA 1990 letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the Doors song Crystal Ship was about crystal methamphetamine: The ship stood for a hypodermic needle, the kiss meant drug injection.Doors drummer John Densmore responded with a letter of his own: "Jim wrote The Crystal Ship for Mary Worbelo (sic), a girlfriend with whom he was breaking up. . . . The song was a goodbye love song."The first two stanzas:Before you slip into unconsciousnessI'd like to have another kissAnother flashing chance at blissAnother kiss, another kissThe days are bright and filled with painEnclose me in your gentle rainThe time you ran was too insaneWe'll meet again, we'll meet againJim's college days in FloridaBefore starting film school in Los Angeles, Jim Morrison spent 2{ years in college in Florida. He attended St. Petersburg Junior College for the 1961-62 academic year, then transferred to Florida State University.He was at FSU for the 1962-63 academic year and the fall trimester of 1963.The top section of his transcript shown here is from SPJC, where he got B's and C's in basic classes, including English, math and biology.The bottom four sections are from FSU, where he got A's in Collective Behavior and Essentials of Acting, and a B in Philosophy of Protest.Source: The Doors archiveThe Doors burned bright _ and were doneTwo UCLA film students put their talents together in 1965 _ Ray Manzarek and his keyboards, Jim Morrison and his poetry _ and started the band that became the Doors. The other members were jazz drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger.They derived the name of the group from the poetry of William Blake ("If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite.") and from Aldous Huxley's book about psychedelic drugs, The Doors of Perception.The group's music gets lumped with other psychedelic rock of the '60s, but it defies simple description, influenced by flamenco, Indian, blues and classical music.Their debut album, released in January 1967, included Light My Fire, Break on Through and The End.When they performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS censors demanded that the band change the lyrics in Light My Fire from "Girl we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl we couldn't get much better." Morrison sang the original line instead, much to Sullivan's chagrin.The third album, Waiting for the Sun (1968), was their first No. 1 record and included their second No. 1 single, Hello, I Love You.Morrison nicknamed himself Mr. Mojo Risin' _ an anagram of his name _ and is said to have referred often to the overdose deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and predicted he would be No. 3.On July 3, 1971, Pamela Courson reported that she found him dead in the bathtub of their apartment in Paris. The cause of death was listed as heart attack; drugs were suspected.There was no autopsy. The coffin was sealed before his family or the American Embassy were notified. It was not until six days later that the Doors' manager announced Morrison's death to the world.Conspiracy theorists had a field day. A popular theory was that to escape the demands of celebrity, Morrison faked his death and vanished.The band recorded six studio albums before Morrison's death. The remaining members released two more albums and split up in 1973.The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993._ ROBERT FARLEY Mary Werbelow, Jim Morrison and the DoorsMay 1944. Steve Morrison, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is called to duty aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He leaves his wife, Clara, and their 6-month-old, James Douglas Morrison, to live with his parents in Clearwater. They live there for three years.Summer 1961. Jim's parents, living in Virginia, send their increasingly incorrigible son back to Clearwater to live with his grandparents. He enrolls at St. Petersburg Junior College.Summer 1962. Jim Morrison and Mary Werbelow meet on Clearwater Beach. She is finishing her junior year at Clearwater High. He just finished a year at SPJC and will head to Florida State in the fall.January 1964. Jim starts film school at UCLA. Mary joins him in Los Angeles.Summer 1965. Mary and Jim break up. He and Ray Manzarek start the group that becomes the Doors.January 1967. The Doors release their first album. By July, Light My Fire hits No. 1 on the Billboard charts.Sept. 17, 1967. The Doors perform on The Ed Sullivan Show.Late 1968. Mary moves to India. She never sees Jim again.Jan. 24, 1969. A month after performing before a television audience of 27-million on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the Doors play to a sellout crowd of more than 20,000 at New York's Madison Square Garden.March 1, 1969. Doors concert at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium. Morrison is later arrested, accused of exposing himself. Promoters in city after city cancel scheduled Doors concerts.Sept. 20, 1970. Morrison convicted of indecent exposure.Sept. 23, 1970. Morrison and Darryl Arthur "Babe" Hill arrested for public drunkenness in Clearwater.Oct. 30, 1970. For indecent exposure, Morrison sentenced to six months "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail. The judge lets him stay free on appeal.Dec. 12, 1970. The Doors' final concert with Morrison, in New Orleans.July 3, 1971. In Paris, Morrison found dead in the bathtub of the apartment he shared with Pamela Courson. He was 27. Still Hooked on the Doors, and Mary Werbelow by Kyle K. MannGonzo Today Editor-in-Chief Without Mary Werbelow, there would be no Doors lyrics agonizing over her loss: therefore, no Doors.It was because of the rejection of Jim Morrison by the brilliantly smart, fabulously beautiful and uncommonly charismatic Mary Werbelow, that he sat writing lyrics on the beach in Venice and Santa Monica in the summer of 1965. It is a fact that Morrison, blithered and bewildered by the incandescent pain of losing his 3-year girlfriend and first love of his life, wrote the magical yet mournful lyrics that soon impressed keyboardist Ray Manzarek, on that same stretch of beach, creating what became The Doors.A new book released here in this odd time of fall 2020 by early Werbelow/Morrison friend Bill Cosgrave gives fresh insight into the formative period that preceded Jim Morrisonās rise to the pinnacle of Rock Godhood.I became aware of this book, Love Her Madly: Jim Morrison, Mary and Me just last night, which happened to be Halloween. Trick or Treat!I bought and downloaded it and read it avidly. Itās a credible, well-written inside look at the crucial months just prior to the formation of the Doors, and the enigmatic, proud and stubborn Mary Werbelow.Itās a shock. Over the decades, there have been a number of insider accounts of the pre-Doors era of Jim Morrison, but this one shoots to the top of my list. Itās an intimate, funny and ultimately heartbreaking book. As writer of a number of Doors articles for Gonzo Today, I immediately want to interview author Bill Cosgrave, who was friends of the couple and crashed on Werbelowās living room couch in the pivotal Summer of 1965. Talk about historic! Cosgrave remained good friends with them both after their breakup, but lost track of them after he left L.A. right about the time The Doors first rehearsed in the late summer/early fall of 1965.Cosgrave states in his book that neither he nor Mary Werbelow ever heard Jim Morrison sing a note.*****Incredibly, Iāve worn out another Doors CD.Itās much harder to wear out a CD than a phonograph album, which would start skipping and popping within a few months, if you kept playing them. Yes, I miss the old school technology of vinyl, but skipping records used to really bum me out. Especially if I was high.CDās last for years, if you treat them right. I admit my car audio is hard on them, since the player is in the trunk of the ā99 Honda Civic. Hit a pothole and bang! Itās wear and tear. But what the hell. Sooner or later Iāll just replace the car, the system or both.Point being, I play the Doors incessantly while driving. Up here in the Santa Monica Mountains, location of my Topanga home, the only couple L.A. radio stations I can stand donāt always get good reception. Classical, jazz and newsā¦ usually the first two are fuzzy, and the current events on the news station KNX usually send me into a frothing rage or a state of stupefied boredom. So, I switch back to the Doorsā CDs.I listen to other CDās, but the Doors dominate my listening even now in 2020, over a half century since I first heard and then saw them. Itās soothing music, even tranquilizing in spots.Often I begin with āWhen the Musicās Over.ā Yes, Iāve written about this before. The lengthy album track, especially the first half, still totally works for me and I admit it, it always makes me feel like that kid I was and still sorta am.The epic tune starts with that damned bopping Vox Continental Organ riff, which as Ray Manzarek noted in his autobiography, was a modification of the Herbie Hancock piano riff from Hancocks Watermelon Man though frankly, I think Manzarek was actually more influenced by the funkier keyboards of Rodgers Grant on the 1963 radio hit version of āWatermelonā by Mongo SantamarĆa. Regardless, that riff is the perfect way to start an automobile journey.Then Densmoreās drums kick in, the first two snare hits pounding with the bass line. This is just two musicians, but sounds like three. Itās a big sonic palette for two guys.Ok, hereās where it gets a bit weird. I actually restart āMusicās Overā at various points over and over. Again, this is just two Doors we are hearing at the start, Densmoreās hi-hat cymbals briefly stuttering along with Manzarekās keys, which include that evil Fender Rhodes bass keyboard atop the Vox. That bass line is hypnotic, compelling and maddening. Then, Densmoreās first two snare hits exactly in synch with the bass notesā¦ man, thatās punchy.I will play the opening of the track and go to, say, the point where Densmore pounds the snare drum rat-a-tat-a-tat-a riff, about 25 seconds after the opening notes and just before Morrison emits that epic scream. A click on my car stereo instantly starts the track over. I will do this repeatedly. Neurotic? Maniacal? Perhaps. I find it reassures me, somehow. I particularly enjoy blasting it that way in echoey parking structures, or at stoplights.Eventually I will let the track run longer, with the huge scream and the blasting Robby Krieger guitar intro, out to the point where Morrison starts singing at just over a minute in. Then repeat at that length. Mix it up a bit, so itās one or the other. Itās like a huge long instrumental intro.Finally Iāll keep listening as Morrison sings the first verses. Itās oddly comforting. Iāll play the song on to where the music momentarily stops, at about the 2:40 mark. āMusic is your only friendā¦ā The song there halts completely for about 4 seconds. Total silence. So, I often start the song over again from there.If Iām feeling gnarly Iāll go on and run through the insane Krieger double-tracked guitar solo, a multitrack psychedelic extravaganza, with volume cranked. Wild insanity: this, along with Jimi Hendrix, was peak psychedelia from the summer of 1967. Trust me, it can not get any more spaced out than this crazed music by the three Doors. Then I start the whole song over when Morrison starts singing again, about canceling his subscription to the resurrection. What I want is Morrison singing āā¦confusionā¦ā Thatās right, I prefer much of the original 1966-early ā67 lyrics, with the slower, scarier tempo. The version I heard in March ā67 at the Avalon Ballroom, that one time I saw the Doors. That earlier version that was much more about Morrisonās catastrophic breakup with Mary Werbelow. āAll my lifeās a torn curtain..ā As I have noted elsewhere, there are a couple early versions of the song performed at the Matrix in San Francisco. Not well recorded, but highly instructive. āSomething wrong, something not quite rightā¦āThe whole dramatic section about āWhat have we done to the Earthā and āWe want the world and we want it nowā was a later revision. The original lyrics make it wrenchingly clear how haunted Morrison was by the specter of his soulmate rejecting him while she becomes a featured dancer on the Sunset Strip at Gazzarriās, being ogled and hit on by innumerable guys. āI miss my baby.ā Itās Morrison being dealt epic humiliation. He didnāt like it. āI want you,ā he sings. He means it.Think about that for a minute. Mary Werbelow pushed Jim Morrison away from her apartment and became a high-class but ultimately cheesy go-go dancer, telling Morrison that they would marry someday after they ādiscovered themselves.ā Thatās a colossal, controlling mind-fuck. Yet, without the commission of her harsh act, the crucial early Morrison lyrics donāt get written, much less sung and sold for lots of money and lasting fame.What an illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Toss the dude out of your home and two years later he goes iconic, and four years after he becomes a superstar, he then dies and becomes legendary. You spend the next several decades watching cycles of Doorsā popularityā¦ discovered and rediscovered by multiple generations. The Ex That Would Not Die. Thatās some severe karma.When the Musicās Over was written and evolved, I believe, just before the Doors started playing at London Fog on the Sunset Strip in May, 1966. This was a crucial time for the band, as Morrison had suddenly developed his singing chops to a startling degree, literally a quantum leap in his vocal prowess. The first Doors demo tape, recorded before Krieger joined, and recorded while the band included Manzarekās two brothers, was still called Rick and the Ravens. The demo tape has a tentative Morrison singing with Ray Manzarek. You can hear the potential, but itās still weak and undeveloped.Oh, to travel back in time and be a fly on the wall as When the Musicās Over came to life.I guess they couldnāt figure out how to cut this 11 minute-long track down for radio play. Understandable, but too bad, because unlike many of the Doorsā great songs, this one is relatively unknown. Itās too bizarre, edgy, freaky. I love it for those reasons. *****The End remains another shoulda-been single hit, as the tune was originally a melodic break up tune for Mary Werbelow without the later-added and notorious Oedipal Section. The lyrics at the start and ending are heartbreaking. The End gained additional cultural clout by being used powerfully in Coppolaās Apocalypse Now.āIt hurts to set you free, but youāll never follow me,ā is Jim Morrisonās epitaph to his love bond with Mary Werbelow. Itās direct and final. As sung on the breakthrough first Doors album in the summer of 1966, it is his counter-rejection to what was a long, slow break up with Mary Werbelow, who shared, along with his father Admiral Morrison, a distaste for the Doors. Your own family and your true love say you suckā¦ ouch!āThe days are bright, and filled with painā¦ā Morrison sings in The Crystal Ship. The key fact: Mary Werbelow didnāt believe in Jim Morrison, despite their being each otherās first lovers. The magic of this striking couple, both incredibly attractive, intelligent and cultured young people, was over after three amazing years. Her scornful disbelief in his future prospects triggered not only the lyrics, but a fanatical desire in Morrison to succeed on his own terms. He went from zero to sixty as a singer in a single year.Yes, Jim Morrison had a lot of help, starting with Ray Manzarek and his patient wife Dorothy. Ray, and soon afterwards John Densmore and finally Robbie Krieger, did believe in their lead singer. They nurtured him, listened to him, celebrated him and backed him up. Hour after hour, day after day as those early Doors fought their way, after a hiccup with Columbia Records, to a deal with Jac Holtzman at Elektra and the crucial production of Paul Rothschild.For much of that period, Morrison wanted to get back with Mary Werbelow, only to be continuously rejected. Fate then handed him the drug-addled enabler Pamela Courson, who arguably killed him.Where was Mary Werbelow when she got the news from Paris? What could that moment have been like? This is Greek tragedy material, with the cruel Gods above laughing. That arc, from Werbelow meeting Morrison on the beach in Florida in 1962, to his death in 1971 at age 27, is a story of overwhelming intensity. That intensity is reflected in the music of the Doors, especially the early albums and performances. So, letās give thanks, and letās say a prayer for Mary, wherever she is. This new book by Bill Cosgrave about his times with her and Jim Morrison is hauntingā¦ my Halloween Trick or Treat. The ending is devastating. If you are a Doors/Morrison fan, itās a must-read. If you know much of her story, and listen to the early Doors a lot, or just occasionally itās hard not to think of her. Because she is very much in there, the glowing gem at the heart of the legend of Jim Morrison.Kyle K. Mann Mary Werbelow, a muse or the product of romanticized myth making? Ray Manzarek "Light My Fire" autobiography: Jim lived by himself, although he had a girlfriend, Mary Werbelow. She was his junior college sweetheart. She had followed him out from Florida. And was now going to school at L.A. City College - LACC - on the other end of town, but she was around with regularity. And, man, what a fox. ...she went on to become āGazzariās Go-Go Girl of 1965,ā a nightclub on the Sunset Strip; the Doors played there in 1966.Jim wanted her to stop the go-go-girl, shimmy-shake dancing and go back to school. Continue on with her education; she was taking painting courses and seemed to really enjoy them. But she was seduced by fame and thought being Miss Gazzariās 1965 was the beginning of her show-business career. Unfortunately, it was her career. That was all the fates had written on her slate: āQueen of the Sunset Strip--Summer 1965.ā Nothing more ever happened.In her hubris at the time, however, she had constructed grandiose fantasies. And when Jim told her to go back to school and continue with her painting, she told him to go back to school and get a masterās degree. She told him his career was hopeless - she didnāt like the Doors - and his band was going nowhere and he would never amount to anything. I donāt think he ever saw her again after that exchange. She had fallen into the tar pit of Hollywood - "show business," donāt you know - and it destroyed their relationship.She was just too naive, too beautiful, too foolish to make the right choice. Ten years later I heard she was a belly dancer at a Greek restaurant in Honolulu, "the Mad Greek," or the "Passionate Greek," or "the Flaming Greek," or something equally Dionysian. However, she had taken up painting again, as Jim told her, except the moment had passed. Jim was dead. It was all too late. Summer With Morrison The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison A Memoir By Dennis C. Jakob:"At this point I did something I do not ordinarily do. I directly interfered with other people's lives. I knew Mary, Jim's ex-girlfriend. She, too, lived in Venice.All she ever talked about was Jim. In her mind, it was clear that she would always think of herself as Jim's girl. Only she wasn't.So I arranged a meeting in my Venice West atelier between her and Jim and Pam and myself. I didn't think that Mary would ever get back with him, at least in this lifetime. But I hoped, for her sake, and maybe for his, too, that they could at least have some sort of a relationship as friends, at least speak to one another.Pam and I left the two of them alone for awhile and she said something I will never forget: āI feel sorry for Mary.ā I knew at once what that meant. It meant she was not threatened by the emergence of Mary. That something had long been settled between her and Jim. A relationship deeper than either one of them had ever had before. Iād begun to suspect that something had been settled between the two of them ā unbreakable except by death itself." Robbie Krieger Set the Night on Fire:We all assumed Jim wrote the song about his first serious girlfriend, Mary, a stunning brunette who followed him when he moved from Florida to L.A. to attend UCLA film school. She worked as a go-go dancer at Gazzarri's but wasn't the wild and crazy type. Jim's wildness and craziness was apparently too much for her after a while, so she broke up with him, but they stayed in touch. We could tell she had broken his heart, but he never admitted it out loud. When he first showed me the lyrics to "The End," he said only that it was about the end of a romance. Patricia Butler Angels Dance and Angels Die:Recalls Manzarek, "Jim told her to stop doing it. He said, 'Don't do this. Stay in school, study, get your degree, finish up in art.' And Mary said 'No, I want to do this.' And Jim said, 'Look, I'll take care of us, this band is going all the way,' and she said, 'No I don't like your band, I don't think this band is going all the way.' Jim said, 'Yes it is, we're going to be big.' And she said, `No, I don't think so, Jim. I'm going to be big, I don't think you are.' And that was the end of their relationship." Years later, running into Bryan Gates in Miami, Jim would tell a slightly different story of the demise of his relationship with Mary Werbelow. Recalls Gates: "Jim said Mary simply was not able to handle the swirl of California life around UCLA. When they met the exotic and bizarre people, she didn't have the capacity to just observe it for what it was and let it go, she had to be involved in it." Jim went on to tell Bryan that eventually Mary got involved with what Bryan recalls Jim describing as "a small sect that had their own holy man, and before he knew it she was off to India on a pilgrimage." Jim said that after that he only heard from Mary twice, each time to ask for money to get out of her current situation and get back to the United States. The first time, Jim told Bryan, he sent the money to her immediately. Then, says Gates, "he said several months later he heard from her again with another desperate plea for money, and realized in his own mind that she was so far gone that he was nothing to her anymore than a source of possible economic relief for the travail that she might be in, and he let her go." Gates noted the Morrison seemed genuinely remorseful over the end of the relationship. "He did say that he felt that he'd lost her to that oblivion and, try as he would, he couldn't recover her." Love Her Madly: Jim Morrison, Mary, and Me By Bill Cosgrave A riveting memoir that works its magic like a slow-acting drug, revealing the story of Jim Morrisonās first love, a long-lost friendship, and the man who existed before the Doors.In the spring of 1965, Bill Cosgrave was smuggled across the border into the United States after receiving an irresistible invitation from his captivating friend Mary Werbelow. When he made it to her apartment in Los Angeles, Mary introduced Bill to her boyfriend, Jim Morrison. The two young men quickly bonded.When Jim and Maryās relationship faltered, Jim headed for Venice beach with his notebook. Bill and Jim spent endless days together, enjoying the aimlessness of their youth and the freedom of the times, fuelled by Jim's unlimited supply of dope.Jimās writing would morph into iconic hit songs, rocketing him to international fame as the hypnotic lead singer of the Doors. Beautiful Mary would set off on her own journey. After years of futile searching, Bill finally tracks down the woman he had secretly loved. Heās dying to know where her life has taken her and stunned by what he discovers.
Price: 9500 USD
Location: Orange, California
End Time: 2024-09-13T23:02:26.000Z
Shipping Cost: 100 USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Artist: Mary Werbelow
Signed By: Mary Werbelow
Size: Large
Signed: Yes
Period: Post-War (1940-1970)
Material: Canvas, Oil
Region of Origin: California, USA
Framing: Framed
Subject: Botanical, Celebrities, Community Life, Figures, Flowers, Forest, Inspirational, Ladies, Musical Bands & Groups, Plants, States & Counties, Still Life, Women, Polynesia, Hawaii, The Doors, Jim Morrison
Type: Painting
Original/Licensed Reproduction: Original
Item Height: 41 1/2 in
Theme: Americana, Art, Continents & Countries, Cultures & Ethnicities, Events & Festivals, Exhibitions, Famous Places, Fashion, Floral, Inspirational, Nature, People, Portrait
Style: Figurative Art, Modernism, Portraiture, Realism
Features: One of a Kind (OOAK)
Production Technique: Oil Painting
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Handmade: Yes
Item Width: 31 1/2 in
Time Period Produced: 1960-1969
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