When The Music's Over

By Maude L. Campbell on Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 1:39 pm

[
      {

        
        "name": "Ad - NativeInline - Injected",
        "component": "38482495",
        "insertPoint": "3",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "5"
      },{


        "name": "Real 1 Player (r2) - Inline",
        "component": "38482494",
        "insertPoint": "2/3",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "9"
      }
    ]

Moonlight Drive's Bill Pettijohn, circa mid-1980s

Anastasia Pantsios
Moonlight Drive's Bill Pettijohn, circa mid-1980's

Cleveland lost one of its most high-profile veteran musicians on April 8 when Bill Pettijohn succumbed to cancer. Pettijohn immersed himself in a Jim Morrison alter ego when he founded the Doors tribute band Moonlight Drive and hoped to star as the famed singer in film someday. He never did, but Pettijohn lived more than twice as long as his hero and packed several lifetimes of debauchery into his 62 years.

Pettijohn was a notorious hedonist with a love of mind-altering substances. Not surprisingly, the stories his friends told at his wake Sunday had as much to do with his enthusiastic pursuit of the rock-star lifestyle as with his genuine sweetness and good-heartedness.

The latter was epitomized by a legendary ad that Pettijohn placed in Scene in October, 1995.