Pamela Courson - Early Life and Involvement With Morrison

Early Life and Involvement With Morrison

Courson was born in Weed, California. She was described as a reclusive young girl from a family that did not mix with the neighbors very much. She did well in school until junior high, when records show that her family was contacted about truancy. Courson hated high school, attending Orange High School, and her grades declined when she was sixteen. That spring, she left for Los Angeles, where she and a friend got an apartment. Rumor has it that Neil Young wrote the song "Cinnamon Girl" about her, as well as "The Needle and the Damage Done", but both have been denied.

One biography states that Courson and Morrison met at a nightclub called The London Fog on the Sunset Strip in 1965, while she was an art student at Los Angeles City College. In his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors, former keyboardist Ray Manzarek stated that Courson and a friend saw the band during their stint at the London Fog, a lesser-known nightclub, and that she was initially courted by Arthur Lee, of the California band Love, who brought The Doors to the attention of Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman.

Courson's relationship with Morrison was tumultuous with loud arguments and repeated infidelities by both partners. Courson briefly operated Themis, a fashion boutique that Morrison bought for her. Her death certificate lists her occupation as "women’s apparel".

Read more about this topic:  Pamela Courson

Famous quotes containing the words early, life, involvement and/or morrison:

    Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering his fellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.
    Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)

    Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] of primitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level.
    Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)

    What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
    —Toni Morrison (b. 1931)