Love Him Madly: An Intimate Memoir of Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison lived the life of the archetypal rock star to the hilt: sex, drugs, and rock and roll writ large. He enjoyed the company of plenty of women before dying, in 1971, at the age of 27. Huddleston was one of them. She was 17 when she fell in love with Morrison. The singer-songwriter told the smitten Huddleston that, because of his career, he couldn’t be a “real” boyfriend; he could only spend a few nights together with her every few weeks. Actually, he treated her more like a sex slave than a partner. Indeed, the portrait that emerges of Morrison is that of an immature, selfish, possessive, and sex-obsessed singer, who is surprisingly needy and easily hurt by the slightest criticism. (“Promise you’ll never say any more bad things to me,” he says to Huddleston at one point.) Huddleston writes about her four-year relationship (although the word relationship is used here generously) with the singer, and the psychedelic drug experiences that landed her in the hospital. A sad portrait of an unbalanced, often humiliating on-and-off love affair between a confused teenager and a rock icon. With a foreword by supergroupie and author Pamela Des Barres (Let’s Spend the Night Together, 2007). --June Sawyers