Tripping With Jim Morrison and Other Friends

A road journey through an artist's soul.

 

Artist Michael Lawrence studied at UCLA with The Doors' singer Jim Morrison. Here he shares his early 1960s teenage awakenings, times spent with Jim as they discovered girls, cars, LSD and art together in a coming of age tale like no other. 

 

Whilst Jim Morrison's road was cut short far too early, his friend Michael was to become an artist with a long path of success ahead of him – always with Jim at his shoulder.

 

Michael's father was the film star and 'baddie' anti-hero of many 1940s & 50s Hollywood films, Marc Lawrence. Michael's mother was Fanya Foss, a Hollywood screenwriter, poet, novelist and baker of the best pancakes in the USA, loved by Jim.

 

This coming-of-age memoir begins with a magical childhood in Fellini’s Rome, where Michael's family were exiled during the McCarthyism years. All of Hollywood passing through Rome would head for the Lawrence home, and there the young Michael spent time with Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Laurence Olivier amongst others before returning to the USA. 

 

As Jim moved on to music and The Doors, Michael travelled to Europe and Afghanistan by way of an enlightening encounter with Paul Bowles in Tangier. 

 

After Michael was awarded the Huntington Hartford Fellowship, his life’s pursuits were set as an artist and a writer. Roy Lichtenstein described his artwork as “vibrant, joyous and colourful”. His fine, poetic words and funny stories are destined to become equally so.

 

"These are some of our salad days, when we sat in the front seat of unfolding realities, our Venice LA and beyond. I too am Jim's fan and friend, who deeply cherishes these memories I am sharing with you. Jim's sweetness and mischievous promptings...his gracefulness, his poetic avant garde nature, his writings." Michael Lawrence, 2016

 

“The guys from your UCLA days sent me your way, claiming your memories and stories of Jim are among the most important” Jerry Hopkins (Co-author of the Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive)

 

“You have poems inside your head and you have learned to explode them with firecracker tubes of paint” Ray Bradbury

 

"Here is a wealth of impressions! People, places and events, famous and personal, sit side by side in curious metaphors that softly draw the reader into meditation." Timothy Leary

 

"This book is a genuine trip, a joyous, inspiring tour of the 60s." Daniel Klein, author of Travels With Epicurus

 

LONGLISTED, THE UK PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2017

 

 

www.worksbymichaellawrence.com