The Doors : A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years

A fan from the moment the Doors’ first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock & roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over. Forty years after the singer Jim Morrison was found dead in Paris and the group disbanded, one could drive from here to there, changing from one FM pop station to another, and be all but guaranteed to hear two, three, four Doors songs in an hour—every hour. Whatever the demands in the music, they remained unsatisfied, in the largest sense unfinished, and absolutely alive. There have been many books on the Doors. This is the first to bypass their myth, their mystique, and the death cult of both Jim Morrison and the era he was made to personify, and focus solely on the music. It is a story untold; all these years later, it is a new story. Insightful Evaluation Of The Group's Music.,the Doors: A Lasting Voice, Or Psychedelic Trash? To Greil Marcus They Can Be Both--in The Same Song. More Doors Songs Can Be Heard On The Radio Today, Forty Years After Jim Morrison's Death, Than Those Of Almost Any Group Of Their Era. Sparked By That Fact, And With The Deep Focus Of A Critic Engaged With His Subject, Marcus Both Revisits A Parade Of Great Performances And Explores Why And How The Doors Have Endured With Their Spirit And Menace Intact. He Makes Plain That The Doors Are At The Heart Of What Leslie Fiedler Called The Mythic Life Of Their Generation, And Dramatizes How Their Music Still Shimmers With The Dread That In Their Time Hovered Over A Country Convulsed By Assassination And War, And Over A City Terrorized By The Specter Of The Manson Murders--a Dread That, In Different Forms, With Different Faces, Is With Us Still.--from Publisher Description.

A fan from the moment the Doors’ first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock & roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over. Forty years after the singer Jim Morrison was found dead in Paris and the group disbanded, one could drive from here to there, changing from one FM pop station to another, and be all but guaranteed to hear two, three, four Doors songs in an hour—every hour. Whatever the demands in the music, they remained unsatisfied, in the largest sense unfinished, and absolutely alive. There have been many books on the Doors. This is the first to bypass their myth, their mystique, and the death cult of both Jim Morrison and the era he was made to personify, and focus solely on the music. It is a story untold; all these years later, it is a new story.

A fan from the moment the Doors' first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock & roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over. Forty years after the singer Jim Morrison was found dead in Paris and the group disbanded, one could drive from here to there, changing from one FM pop station to another, and be all but guaranteed to hear two, three, four Doors songs in an hour -- every hour. Whatever the demands in the music, they remained unsatisfied, in the largest sense unfinished, and absolutely alive. There have been many books on the Doors. This is the first to bypass their myth, their mystique, and the death cult of both Jim Morrison and the era he was made to personify, and focus solely on the music. It is a story untold; all these years later, it is a new story. "Frequently brilliant... Marcus has the ability to play tour guide in the places we think we already know. It's exactly what makes him one of the greatest music scribes to ever do the job, and it's what makes this book worth reading, love or hate the Doors." -Chris Richards, Washington Post