R.I.P. Danny Sugarman 10th January 2005 aged 50. He was the 12 year old boy who befriended Jim Morrison in February 1967 when his 'Little League' Baseball umpire 'Ewan' was the road manager for 'The Doors' .... Kicked out of his Beverley Hills home by his step-father,Danny Sugarman took to living in a hotel like his protege & answering the telephones at the Doors Office on Sunset Strip. He drank beer with Jim Morrison & skipped high school to watch the band reherse throughout 1967-68-69. He co-wrote 'No One Gets Out Here Alive' & wrote his own tortuous autobiography: 'Wonderland Avenue' in 1989 which chronicalled his own harrowing childhood to his friendship with Jim Morrison to his management of 'Iggy Pop' to links with Rodney Bingenheimer's 'English Disco' & his addiction to 'Heroin' & the deaths of his friends & girfriends to heroin. One of the saddest autobiographies ever written by a rock writer.It heaps tradegy upon tradegy. He revealed that Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Coulson at first disliking him intensely during the 1960s-befriended Sugarman in the 1970s & had an affair with him.He watched her slow slide into hard drugs & ultimate death. Ray Manzarek warned him that the heroin was killing him & in 1976 Sugarman was admitted to hospital with kidney failure & was attached to a dialysis machine & had a total blood transfusion. Sugarman describes trying to throw off "The Monkey on his back" but it kept climbing back on & he finally 'Cold Turkeyed' in hospital after his pregnant girfriend was found dead after a heroin overdose. Reading this book I felt that the author was largely responsible for the fate that befell him & his associates.He seemed to burn everyone around him.It comes as no surprise to be that he is dead at 50 - succumbed to cancer.I'm not trying to be cruel but he was someone who could have died so easily back in the 1970s from his wild,excessive 'Rock 'n'Roll' lifestyle. He was a spoilt,priviliged 'Beverley Hills' outcast when he became friends with Jim Morrison.Perhaps Jim saw something of himself in his teen-age companion. The author had to be prescribed a tranquilizer for causing disruptions at his school. Many of his anecdotes are very amusing including holding Mackenzie Phillips (The Mamas & Papas daughter) under the shower when she had o.d. just before a screen test in the 1970s. His descriptions of the 'adolescent girls' abused at the Los Angeles 'English Disco' in the mid-1970s gives the 1970s a bad name. When I read 'Wonderland Avenue' a few days ago I pondered as to whether the author was still surviving to this day & lo & behold, he was dead. You can't really feel any sympathy for him at all for all his suffering. He began by 'hanging out with a rock legend' but drifted into drug dealing. Nonetheless 'Wonderland Avenue' is a book you'd find hard to put down. Has anyone else read this autobiography?.
Funny thing, just the other day I wondered what became of him. I remembered that Morrison's biographer had married Fawn Hall (infamous for her work in helping to cover up Ollie North's crimes), but I had forgotten his name, and looked him up by googling her name. I wondered what had happened, etc.... thanks for the additional info.
Every one has personal life style that they want to share with everybody. To share something about themselves they use to pen down their autobiography. Its a good idea to share ones feeling with others. ---------- Rose Blazeinfotech
