A trip to Pere Lachaise -- and Jim Morrison's grave

It was kind of strange.Spending about five days in Paris and seeing so many things — the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa, Napoleon's Tomb — there was this nagging feeling.It was almost a voice inside my head."Go see Jim Morrison's grave."I'm not even sure why I felt I needed to visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where the lead singer for The Doors is buried.Maybe it was morbid curiosity.Maybe it was my sense of music history.Or, maybe I was just searching for a column topic after two weeks abroad.Of course, The Doors were a great and influential rock band. I love the songs everyone else loves — "Break on Through," "Light My Fire," "People are Strange" — the catalog goes on.Even more than 50 years after the band put out its last record, there is an odd energy about the Doors.Some of it is the style of the music, which ventured from R&B to psychedelic sounds to jazz.But the word that keeps coming up when thinking about The Doors?Dangerous.And that really comes from one source.Morrison.There has been so much said and written about Morrison that it's difficult to get a sense of what he really was.But in reading about him, watching documentaries and — of course, listening to his songs — I can only be sure of two things:1. He had a fabulous, distinctive voice.2. He didn't behave.Let's start with his singing.Had Morrison been about 10-15 years older, he might have been a jazz or standards singer. In the years since his death, I'm not sure there's been a rock vocalist comparable to him.My favorite Doors song "Touch Me" features a crooning vocal that is closer to Vic Damone than Elvis.The band was strong. But Morrison's distinctive baritone was the key.Unfortunately, Morrison's talent has been overshadowed by his debauchery.His behavior appeared to range between absurd and obscene, and at times worse than that.Morrison was an unpredictable individual, who had a dependence on drugs and alcohol. That alone probably doesn't distinguish him too much in the rock and roll genre.According to UltimateClassicRock.com — which helpfully has a section called "Jim Morrison Arrest History" on its site — the front man was arrested no less than six times.The reasons for these arrests? Public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, sexual assault, indecent exposure ... to name a few.Morrison was clearly a disturbed person. And yet, because of his music, he remains a fascinating figure in American pop culture.I guess that fascination led me to seek out his grave,I wasn't the only one. There was a steady group of people at Morrison's monument on the day I went to Pere Lachaise. While the marker itself is roped off, there are a number of photos, flowers and mementos that surround it. A group of people would walk up, look, take a photo, then quietly leave.When I went up to the rope, a French gentleman asked if I wanted my picture taken.It seemed a little odd to have a photo snapped at a grave site, but I said OK.It's a memory.For whatever Morrison was — or wasn't — he was a prominent artist. He's buried in a place with plenty of other well-known figures, including Oscar Wilde. It did seem strange to me that a man like Morrison who created such chaos in his life would want to be buried in Pere Lachaise.The cemetery, founded in 1804, is quiet, peaceful, beautiful.Morrison was anything but those things.It's kind of strange. But then, maybe that was the point. Baker is sports editor of The Courier and Review Times.