The Count De Breteuil was a French aristocrat. His family owned all French-language newspapers in North Africa. When his father died, Jean inherited the title of count de Breteuil, whose parentage was seven hundred years old (Pamela Courson, his girlfriend, loved the idea of having a French boyfriend who often proudly described as "a real French royality").
At the time he met Pam, he was twenty and he was, formally at least, a UCLA student. In fact, he mostly was a playboy and a top-rank drug dealer (he loved saying that he was the "dealer to the stars" and between his clients he had superstars like Keith Richards). It is said that he used to buy hashish and opium from a Moroccan chauffeur of the French Ambassade in L.A.
Jean always stood beside Pam and he invited her many times in his houses all over the world, providing her with huge amounts of drugs.
By 1971, he bacame romantically linked to Marianne Faithfull, who was known for her singing and modelling career and for her relationship with Mick Jagger. According to Faithfull: "Jean was a horrible guy, someone who had crawled out from under a stone. Somehow I ended up with him...it was all about drugs and sex."
Marianne Faithfull, in her autobiography, Faithfull, written with David Dalton, recalls: "We were staying at L`Hotel [in Paris] when he got a call from Pamela Morrison and had to leave very suddenly.
«Jean I want to go with you,» I told him. «I want to meet Jim Morrison.»
«You can`t. I`ll be back in a couple of hours.»
«Please, Jean, please?»
«Not now. Je t`explique later, okay?»
He slammed out of the room. He came back in the early hours of the morning in an agitated state and woke me up. I was very fucked up on Tuinals. I wasn`t doing smack at the time but I was taking a lot of downs. Then, for no apparent reason, he beat me up. [...] After the beating I lit a cigarette and asked him:
«So, did you have a good time over there? Aren`t you going to tell me why you`re in such a good mood?»
«Get packed.»
«Why? Where are we going?»
«Morocco.»
«Very funny. We just got here.»
«I want you to meet my mother. Hurry up!»
«Uh-oh...What happened over there?»
«Shut up!»
«Oh, shit!»
«Yeah. It`s fucked.»
He was scared for his life; Jim Morrison had OD`d and Jean had provided the smack that killed him. Now he was a small-time heroin dealer in big trouble. Jean saw himself as the dealer to the stars. Had he lived, he might have turned into a human being, but he was so young, he didn`t know. Nobody knew what the price was going to be."

Post a Comment | View All Comments (1)