Product Description
In an intimate biographical memoir, Kennealy describes the music scene of the '60s and '70s, never varnishing over her experiences with sex and drugs that were such a driving force in Morrison's life, and explores the translation of the Morrison myth into Oliver Stone's film. Photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (133)

Great Read
This is a great read.It's hard to put down the book.Also, the shipping service was excellent.

who knows? but, doubtful
This book reads like her Druids in space novels...a fantasy/historical fiction/romance novel. She seems to insert all the right things every woman wants to hear and claims that he said them...and she just knows. Perhaps he said a variant, but I'm leaning towards she misinterpreted many words, gestures, glances, etc., as what those in one sided relationships do.

I don't know where to begin with this woman. I feel for her, but as many here have said, she seems delusional. Additionally, she comes across as jealous, spiteful, angry, and narcissistic. She obviously did love Jim. I'm just not convinced that he felt the same because there simply is no other record from the many people who knew Jim, only her. Diane Gardiner was a force in this debacle. Did she ever remark on this book? I believe she is now passed. From what I gather about Jim, he was an 'in the moment' type of guy. I can see how her intellect and well-read demeanor challenged and attracted her to him. She tries to portray herself as completely independent, but the relationship was very unhealthy. She continually pursued a guy who was with someone else, and no strong, independent woman would do that. She is as weak as she likes to bash Pam for.

There's just so much ridiculouslness throughout to list here. Her jealously towards Pam is very sad and pathetic. No true pagan would be so negative and disrespectful of other beings, especially those passed. Jim nor Pam are here to give their say. I truly doubt that Jim would be 'proud' of this book. I can see how Jim and Pam were maybe growing apart based on other readings, including "Angels Dance and Angels Die", but I do feel that Pam is the one he loved deeply. The intimacy between them could have surpassed what Patricia writes, we just won't know, because they're not here.

Who really knows anything? Jim wasn't one to talk about his 'women', but my intuition tells me that Patricia made more out of what the relationship really was.

Very Well Written
So many people thought the author was cashing in on the Jim Morrison franchise with this book, but that is NOT the case. Patricia Morrison gives us a wonderful glimpse of her experiences with Jim, both good and bad. I came away from reading this book with a richer fondness for Jim, and decided respect for the author. With the wealth of books on the market about the Doors, this is the one I like to recommend to people. It has a soul to it.

Controversial, but I still like it.
I know there has been a lot of controversy over this book because some of its details do not square with the accounts of Jim's other close friends, nor with an interview the author previously gave for a book called "Rock Wives" (which she later disparaged as being incorrect).I chose to take the book with a grain of salt and just enjoy it for what it is, the perspective of one close ladyfriend of Jim's, said ladyfriend being for the most part excluded from Jim's normal group of running buddies.It's just another side of a story that seems to have about 500 sides.

One problem in evaluating the truth of what goes on in the book is that Jim was not only a consummate actor who enjoyed putting people on and testing them, and thus would have been perfectly at home pretending he loved - or pretending he DIDN'T love - a particular woman, but also he was impaired on substances much of the time, as were most of his friends of that era.So not only do you have a complicated man involved in a lot of complicated relationships, but everyone's judgment was a bit off.

I don't really think Patricia Kenneally was the great love of Jim's life (I tend to think that was Mary Werbelow, the ex-girlfriend who very rarely talks) but I also don't think Patricia was just a deluded stalker who made too much out of a one-night stand.No doubt she knew that by writing this book she would get a lot of attention and not all of it positive, but she wrote it anyway.What I do think is that she may have had to re-think or re-imagine aspects of the relationship in hindsight just to deal with the pain she suffered at the time when Jim went away and left her with a pregnancy that she was forced to abort.Although her constant recitations of how strong a woman she is can get on one's nerves, she's clearly a survivor and went on with her writing career, as opposed to Pam Courson, who appears to have lived a bit of an aimless life after Jim died before passing away herself.When I was in high school and a group of us were into Jim Morrison following the release of "No One Here Gets Out Alive," we were interested in both Pam and Patricia but definitely felt like Patricia was the better role model for the simple reason that she had more of an education and viable career and most of all, she didn't die.

Having said that, Patricia's book can be grating.I notice that the current edition features a big picture of Jim on the front, as opposed to the edition I have that had pictures of Patricia on the front.Having a pic of Jim on the front is to me misleading because this is not really a book about Jim.He's frankly not around that much in the author's life, as she's in New York and most of the time he's either on the road or in California with Pam Courson, and a lot of the time Patricia doesn't really know what he's up to.The book is more about Patricia and how she was affected by her encounters with Jim (including a handfasting marriage ceremony that they don't bother to legalize) and what happened to her as a result. Patricia is clearly very intelligent but also a very strong personality (she is definitely a New Yorker) and doesn't hesitate to tell Jim off, which makes sense as he seems to have been attracted to assertive women with long red hair.She does seem to go a little overboard with the Pam-bashing at times, which can be attributed to both jealousy and the obvious gap between an NYC career woman and a California flower child's personality.

You get the feeling Patricia really didn't want to abort Jim's child but felt she had no choice.I wondered if she felt that getting rid of the child might create more likelihood that Jim would come back to her.I could also see where she was annoyed by her portrayal in the Oliver Stone doors movie, which seemed to bear little relation to the real Patricia (his characterization of Pam was reportedly also off).Where the book gets super-annoying is in the author's complaints about Doors fans after Jim's death - she acts like she somehow owns the rights to Jim's memory and it's an act of criminal infringement for some young fan who didn't know Jim personally to walk down the street in a Morrison T-shirt 20 years after his death.Come on, lady.If you really loved Jim as much as you say, I'd think you'd be glad that other people still appreciate his life and art.I understand it can be painful to keep seeing reminders of a love that you've lost, but that's part of loving and losing a public figure such as a rock star.

Overall...too long and hard to believe.
This is the 3rd book I bought over the last 30 yrs on Jim Morrison's life...the others being "No One Gets Out Alive" and "Riders on the Storm". The latter two were far better. First of all, the book is wayyyyyy too long. She writes the book mostly based on quotes...on actual conversations between herself and Morrison. I can't remember a conversation I had a year ago much less 20 yrs ago. And on top of that...the author was stoned most of the time. How could she actually come up with the quotes? It's a bit hard to believe she could remember such details. She is also not a very likeable person in the book. Her petty comments on Pam Courson especially her appearance seem so childish to me. I cannot dispute her love for Morrison or his love for her...but it seems she is probably only one of many many lovers he had. Maybe she was more special than the others but her credibility is in question. Her love for drugs is also very questionable. She makes no apologies and maybe she shouldn't considering the times but she should have said something against them since it was drugs themselves that claimed her lover's life! Overall...I would recommend skipping this book. John Densmore's "Riders on the Storm" is far better written and far more believable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Strange days
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 -- and yes, that's 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, or the sweetness of Bebe Buell. 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 guff 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.

Delussional days would be a better title.
While i found this book worth reading (thus 3 stars) i also felt that Ms. Kennealy was more than a little in denial and maybe even a little delussional. Of course the book is "her" version of her relationship with Morrison and we will never know the whole truth. However, i found it quite annoying that while she tries so hard to convince the reader what a strong independant woman she is, she simultaneously told story after story of being walked all over by Morrison. She tells of what she and Morrison had as a sacred and everlasting bond, yet the story she tells of their "relationship"(or times together) says something very different.I think the story she tells in this book is likely very true, and therefore worth reading. There are some great stories, glimpses at the real Jim Morrison, and alot of history there. It's simply her "interpretations" of the things that happened that i found (likely to be) far from the truth. ... Read more