Rock ‘n’ roll icon Jim Morrison, a towering figure of the 1960s psychedelic music scene, will have a central Paris footbridge named after him, the city has decided. The grave of The Doors frontman in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris is already a magnet for nostalgic rock fans, who pay their respects in such numbers that the cemetery has put up barriers around the American singer’s final resting place.

Morrison, who moved to the French capital a few months before he died in July 1971, “made Paris the location for his last inspirations”, said Laurence Patrice, a senior city official and sponsor of the footbridge idea that was adopted by the council this week. The bridge crosses the Arsenal, a basin near the Bastille in the center of the capital, only a short walk from the bohemian Marais neighborhood where Morrison last lived.

The Doors, founded in Los Angeles, were among the most influential rock groups of the late 1960s and early 70s and a mainstay of the counterculture of the times. Their hits include “Riders on the Storm”, “Light My Fire”, and “The End”, a haunting song that features prominently in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam war movie “Apocalypse Now”. Morrison’s charisma and magnetic stage performances made him a sex symbol with a cult-like following, but he was also infamous for provocative behavior, indiscipline and substance abuse.

The exact circumstances of Morrison’s death at the age of 27 are still shrouded in mystery, with most early accounts saying he died of cardiac arrest in his bathtub. But a French journalist, Sam Bernett, claimed in a 2007 book that close friends and family spun the official version of Morrison’s death to sanitize his reputation. Bernett said Morrison actually died from a heroin overdose on the toilet of a nightclub that the journalist owned at the time, the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus” on Paris’s Left Bank. Paris last year named a street after rock music icon David Bowie, eight years after his death. — AFP