Doors

by Greil Marcus

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.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Audiobook, Essays, Criticism

210 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 2011

About the author

Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in Oakland, California.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two longer pieces in this collection. In the first, "The Doors in the So-Called Sixties", Marcus uses the persistence of The Doors on the radio ("...and not just the one or two songs into which the radio has compressed Bob Dylan") to talk about the persistence of the Sixties as an idea, an idea that he imagines cursing his kids' generation with nostalgia. That struck a chord with me because I feel it myself; and sometimes even just nostalgia for the 90s. I felt it when "Alive" by Pearl Jam came on the car radio sometime in the last couple of weeks- a song I had always found really boring (I still don't like the chorus), except I somehow never noticed the wild instrumental ride that closes it out- and wondered if there will ever again be a time when rock music is as ubiquitous as it was when I was a kid, when it will mean anything culturally. In any case, this piece also touches on the Oliver Stone movie, Val Kilmer, Francis Fukayama, and that nagging feeling that the future never arrived. It's the highlight of the book, and worth reading if you ever find yourself with some time in a bookstore.

The second longer piece, "Twentieth Century Fox", is a long digression about Marcus's notion of pop art, bracketed by a few paragraphs about the song itself. "Twentieth Century Fox", for Marcus, is the kind of art that interprets and transmutes pop culture- "the cheap, fast sounds and images that in the years after the second World War seemed to be coming together everywhere...the emerging folk culture of the modern market"- into something valuable, although he circles back to the song only in the last paragraph. Typically, I don't mind digressions in writing (I've been known to digress, myself), but this book is 195 pages, including a few big chapter breaks, and here I am reading a long critical essay about pop art that is only tangentially related to the song in question. I kept wanting him to get back to The Doors.

If I understand correctly, Marcus considers songs like "Hello, I Love You" and "Touch Me" to be instances in which The Doors failed to interpret and transform pop culture, regurgitating it instead; he writes with seeming relish about a time Jim Morrison stopped a live performance of "Touch Me" to tell the crowd that the song sucked, and that Robby Krieger had written it. I don't really like those songs either (although "Touch Me" is still easily one of the best tracks on The Soft Parade), but I also don't think a couple of poppy singles are worth getting bent out of shape about. Not every song on an album can be "The End", nor should it be. Of course, disagreeing with some of Marcus's opinions is part of the fun of reading a book like this.

Most of the rest of the book consists of (condensed, mostly 2-3 page) deep dives into Doors songs- some that you would expect ("Light My Fire", "Roadhouse Blues", "LA Woman"), and a few that you might not ("Take It as It Comes", "Queen of the Highway"). I've always admired music writers who can open up new dimensions in a song, allow you to hear it in a different way. In some cases, Marcus did that for me, for example when he discusses a brief section of a lesser-known track from the debut album (to the extent that any song from the debut album can be considered obscure), "Take It as It Comes" (otherwise known as "the one before 'The End'"), when the band abruptly pulls back its frenetic pace:

Instead of a roadhouse with a screaming crowd suddenly holding its breath, it's midnight on a beach, the waves are almost silent, the sky blue-black, the moon bright enough for faces and close enough to touch. Just like that, you want the song to stay here. You don't want to go back to the highway. You don't want to move at all...

I'd never heard that midnight beach in the song before. But I went back and listened, and there it is.

On the other hand, many of the deep dives felt excessive- not in terms of detail or length, but in terms of Marcus reaching for poetic, mystical language to describe something that can't really be expressed in words. There's a thin line between hitting the nail on the head (midnight on a beach), and groping for meaning, and superfluous words often just detract from music. Ultimately, the best way to get someone to like The Doors is probably to get them to listen to The Doors. Just not The Soft Parade.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Greil Marcus is always a pleasure. And its the reason why I am reading this particular book, because I really don't have a passion for the Doors or their imagery. But on the other hand they are a band that's important to my personal culture. Being raised in Los Angeles, I saw the Doors at the Whiskey, opening for Them with Van (the other) Morrison. It may have been the first show in a club, not sure. My mind I was around 12, but I think i was actually 14. Nevertheless I went there with my Dad to see Them, and the Doors was a superb surprise. I think it may have been before their first album was released, but I remember being really impressed with Jim Morrison's voice. It sooth as well as rocked. And there was something quite personal in the way they communicated with their audience in the club. On the other hand, Them was very cold and cool. Not a bad thing mind you, but totally the opposite of the Doors.

The next I saw the Doors it was at an outside concert - and I thought they were boring. They didn't have that concentration or the force of their show at the Whiskey. And at this time it was around the height of "Light My Fire." But the magic was gone, at least to my young ears at the time.

The other times were non-musical - but I remember being invited (with my Dad) to the back stage of the first Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young show at the Greek theater, and as we were walking to the entrance of the backstage, Morrison was being escorted out by a security guard. Then all of sudden Stills shows up and tells the security guard to let Morrison stay. And that was my memory of the evening! The next time after that I saw him in Topanga Canyon, drinking beer in a brown bag behind a wheel of a parked Volkswagon bug. Of course all of above could have just been a dream, but....

But back to the book, Marcus uses the Doors' culture and music as a springboard on his thoughts on 1960's American culture. its basicially a long riff how culture and band connects and makes commentary on to each other. Marcus is writing this book as not only a fan (and he's a very critical fan) but also the state of the world via the eyes of Jim Morrison and Co.

[David Rullo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps the worst Doors book I have read (and I've read many!)I became suspicious when the author stated that he liked the Doors movie that was done several years ago. When even the members of the band have disowned the movie, citing inaccuries, etc. what can be the motivation for the author to write about it positively? Almost every essay, and I would say each of these chapters are more essay than chapter, talks negatively of the songs in some way--either they don't go anywhere, the band is barely present, no melody, etc. In reality, his essays seem to go nowhere. Each one seems to start in space with no general idea or thought of where it will end up or why it's being written and ends the same way. In several of the chapters most of what's being written completely ignores the song which Marcus claims is the subject. If Marcus' intent is to have the reader admire his generation's cultural touchstones more than those from the 60's and 70's then this is a great way to do it because by the end of the book the reader is so bored and disinterested he would never want to hear a Doors song or have any involvement in the decades the band recorded! Avoid this book at all cost!

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wide ranging analysis/appreciation/explication of the five year era when the Doors were acting out their psychodrama on the national stage. The actual music of the band serves mostly as a springboard for Professor Marcus's wide ranging, almost dizzying exploration of the zeitgeist of the era when the word "zeitgeist" gained currency. I listened to the audiobook version on a car trip of just the right length, and the experience kind of reminded me of "My Dinner with Andre" - listening to the captivating adventures of a learned, albeit slightly manic, friend reporting back from the edges of cultural possibility. I enjoyed this kaleidoscopic whirlwind immensely, and learned a lot about southern California, pop art, and myriad other subjects.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star is being very generous. Unorganized jargon about The Doors and Oliver Stone. Made it through 40 pages before I gave in. Save yourself some time and stay clear.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The immediate message to convey in my review is that if you possess anything less than dedicated interest in the music of the Doors, avoid this book and move on. If you are passionate about the Doors history and catalog, good or bad, then consider Marcus' literary analysis. But be prepared for dizzying diversions, ego masturbation in typeset, and diatribes of the music and words of the band the author purports to have spent a 'lifetime' listening to.
Having said that, if you are up for a wallow through the mire, and have the intense interest in the Doors to hang in and push through it, you will be rewarded often enough by Marcus' scattered insights to complete this short, choppy tome with something resembling satisfaction worth your time.

This book is all over the literary map, and in accordance with that fact, please allow me to share some additional random thoughts of hopeful interest jotted down along the way.

I found myself constantly wondering who the expected audience of the book was. Was it sold to the publisher to be marketed to all those diehard Doors fans who want to read from one paragraph to the next about the genius of the music and its embarrasing failures, while often going off into mind numbing rabbit holes of marginal interest to most of the readers? If so, what were the expected sales of the book? Perhaps ten thousand copies worldwide? Were most of the readers expected to enjoy every page? Were the reviews expected to be glowing? To quote Marcus regarding his own work rather than that of the Doors (on page 117) 'almost everything seemed beside the point. I wasn't sure what point- it was just...pointlessness'.

The Doors were often described as 'the band you love to hate' and this was clearly evident in the writing of famed rock critic Lester Bangs, who, in his defense, loved/hated every band he wrote about in his irreverent, gonzo style. Marcus himself edited a collection of essays by Bangs. In Marcus' Doors book he comes off to this reader as a Bangs wannabe/hack. Similar style (or lack thereof) and similar love/hate musings. Its brilliant one second, trash the next.

For my listening pleasure, the most incredible piece of music in rock history is the long studio version of Light My Fire. If you feel the same or similar, Marcus' penultimate chapter in this book, 'Light My Fire 1966/1970' is incredible, great writing which gives voice to my thoughts when listening to the song for the last 45 years. If you can read this short chapter alone, it's worth picking up the book for that. It hits the mark perfectly and thank you Mr. Marcus for that.

Finally, I must mention 2 glaring errors by Marcus in the book and correct them here.

First, while writing about a 'Roadhouse Blues' outtake, Marcus references Jim Morrison going off mid-song to drawl 'say, hi neighbor, how ya doin? Hey Dylan, how ya doin?' Marcus surmises that Morrison imagines himself walking down an L.A. street and running into Zimmy himself, similar to the cover of 'The Freewhelin' Bob Dylan', 'one of Morrison's favorite albums'. The big problem here is that this is completely, ridiculously wrong. Morrison's aside to his 'neighbor' is to his toddler of a nephew (one Dylan Graham) who has just entered the studio with his Mom Anne. Nowhere on record (interviews included) will you hear Jim Morrison so spontaneously human and joyous. Marcus got this one very wrong.

Lastly, it's clear from the book that Marcus is pretty obsessed with the Doors first album. He cops to listening to that LP hundreds of times and the rest of the records hundreds of times less. It's a good choice to focus on as for my money it's the greatest album in rock history. However Marcus needs to be corrected on the studio details of an album he decided to dedicate most of a book to. On at least 3 occasions in the book he refers to Ray Manzarek playing a pedal or keyboard bass during the recording. Never happened. Serious Doors fans know that Manzarek played a keyboard bass when the band performed live. But never ever in the studio. In the studio a session bass guitarist was always employed. Liner notes confirm this. However on the first Doors LP the session player goes uncredited. That does not mean a session player was not employed, and it surely doesn't indicate Manzarek on bass. The bass player in fact was Larry Knechtel, of Wrecking Crew and Bread fame. And Griel, you can look it up.

[Jim Cherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a cover of Joel Brodsky’s Elektra publicity photo of The Doors dressed in unexpectedly warm colors of the sun, Greil Marcus’ “The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years” is an unexpected look at selected songs of The Doors and pop culture.

Marcus’ book is a fans’ book, he says that it started at the Avalon Ballroom with his wife and seeing The Doors and on their way out, took a handbill of the show and after a lifetime they still have them. Marcus, best known for music criticism and pop culture, is a Doors fan, but an objective one, he is well versed in all aspects of music and the artists but also the language of music and focuses his lens on The Doors.

Marcus’ “The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years” is about twenty critical essays on Doors songs, his prose weaves in and out of the songs to where his thoughts take him, either in relation to the lyrics themselves or some aspect of pop culture. The chapter on “Twentieth Century Fox” is a take off point for an extended essay on 50’s-60’s pop culture and how The Doors fit in. In the essay on “L.A. Woman” he makes the case that it could be used as a soundtrack for Thomas Pynchon’s recent novel, “Inherent Vice,” and the song is a pop art map of the city. Marcus isn’t an easy ride through The Doors, you’ll find yourself agreeing with some of his conclusions, such as on “Take it as it Comes” “seemed to start in the middle of some greater song.” Or even disagreeing with his conclusions, such as Morrison’s tribute to Otis Redding, “poor Otis dead and gone/left me here to sing his song”, “…was beyond arrogant, it was beyond obnoxious, it was even beyond racism…” which always seemed a heartfelt tribute to Redding to me.

As you read you’ll find yourself wanting to listen to the songs to see for yourself whether Marcus’ critiques are apt or not.

[Eduardo Moraes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unhappy Endings Of The Sixties – Or The Doors according to Greil Marcus (By Awestruck Wanderer)

“In 1968 dread was the currency. It was what kept you up all night, and not just the night Bobby Kennedy was shot… Dread was why every day could feel like a trap. (…) The feeling that the country was coming apart – that, for what looked and felt like a casually genocidal war in Vietnam, the country had commited crimes so great they could not be paid, that the country deserved to live out its time in its own ruins – was so visceral that the presidential election felt like a sideshow. In this setting, the Doors were a presence. They were a band people felt they had to see – not to learn, to find out, to hear the message, to get the truth, but to be in the presence of a group of people who appeared to accept the present moment at face value. In their whole demeanor – unsmiling, no rock’n'roll sneer but a performance of mistrust and doubt – they didn’t promise happy endings. Their best songs said happy endings weren’t interesting, and they weren’t deserved.” (GREIL MARCUS, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to 5 Mean Years, pgs. 95-96)

The least I can say in praise of the writings of Mr Greil Marcus is this: they expanded my horizons on music, they made me understand music’s presence inside culture, its historical significance, or, to sum things up, the context in which music arises and acts. I wouldn’t call Greil Marcus only a music critic, the one who judges aesthetically upon the merits or vices of certain musical productions. Greil Marcus is also some sort of bold trans-disciplinary intellectual maverick, who knows no fixed boundaries or forbidden signs keeping him from moving all around between different “fields” – like History, Sociology, Psychology, Literature. I’d call him an historian of culture, someone who writes about our present as a culture from an historical perspective, and also a gifted “painter of cultural landscapes”. He’s certainly among the most well-informed and intelligent music critics I’ve read, and he’s certainly – together with guys such as Lester Bangs, Simon Reynolds and Nick Kent – one of the greatest thinkers of pop music and its underground currents. With his prose, Greil Marcus seems to paint portraits of our Western civilization much more than merely commenting on artists – such as Bob Dylan or Van Morrisson – we has written so much about. To paint the big picture, he doesn’t shy away from discussing movies – like Wild in The Streets or Pump Up The Volume - or to quote Thomas Pynchon’s novels in order to set the mood for his musings on Jim Morrison.

My appreciation of The Doors has been greatly improved, and my horizons about them have been radically expanded, after I’ve read Greil Marcus impressive book about them. It’s incredibly tought-provoking. Suddenly The Doors were not only a rock and roll band (and a damn good one!), but also a symptom of an historical epoch. A symbol of the dark side of the Sixties. A “dystopic” band, outstranged in an era of Utopia was also an important part of the cultural landscape. The Doors were like a psycho who stabs in the heart the flowery dreams of the peace-and-lovin’, tree-hugging, pot-smoking acid-heads known as “Hippies”. The Doors were more like dark flowers bursting out of a swampy, bleak age: that of the napalm bombing and other techniques of genocide used against Vietnam (and later Cambodia); of Charles Manson’s cult killing frenzy that sent the whole Los Angeles drowning in dread; and, as “The Other Side Of Woodstock”, the deaths of Altamont…

After reading this book by Marcus, I began wondering: perhaps the task of the music critic isn’t merely passing judgement – either cherishing or condemning the artists he’s writing about – but instead attempting to share with his readers the big picture, the cultural context in which some musical phenomenon emerges. That’s what Marcus accomplishes when he paints the whole Zeitgeist that surrounded The Doors: we are reminded of some of the tragedies of those times in Los Angeles (like the bloodshed caused by Charles Mansonites), which appear as the dark side of the Flower Power utopia. The Door are “riders on the storm”, like “dogs without a bone”, and there are killers on the roads (and also inside the White House and the Pentagon…).

In Marcus’ pages, we journey through some of Jim Morrison’s most extreme behavioural excesses. Like that fateful night in Miami when he was arrested for his use of obscene language and offensive nudity (some say he only pretended to jerk off… not a big deal, and certainly not a thing that should get anyone in jail!). He’s certainly not the first rock’n'roller, nor will the last, to be caged like a wild beast by authorities who felt their sacred institutions had been mocked and debunked by these subversive artists that needed to be spanked into silence.

Marcus also makes the reader imagine Jim Morrison in the process of drinking himself to death, while he struggles to write the soundtrack for the agony of a drunken swan who has consumed too much booze and too much Rimbaud. We are taken in a roller-coaster ride on the wings of The Doors’ poetry and music, where one can sense a celebration of Dyonisian eroticism mixed with an obssession with Death and Psychosis. We are invited to understand the band as an occurrence in the history of culture that continues on a path treaded not only in rock’n'roll, but within a broader cultural landscape that includes poets, playwriters and mystics:

“The Doors saw themselves as much in the tradition of fine art – a tradition within the tradition, the stream of art maudit that carried Blake, Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Jarry, Buñuel, Artaud, and Céline to their doorsteps – as in the tradition of rock’n'roll. For them rock’n'roll itself was already a tradition, full of heroes and martyrs…” – GREIL MARCUS, A lifetime of listening to five mean years – The Doors (New York: Public Affairs, 2011, Pg. 132)

The Doors were surely innovators in the sixties, both musically and lyrically, and Greil Marcus points out some of the elements that made Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzakek and John Densmore an outstanding cultural phenomenon. When “Light My Fire” exploded, skyrocketing to the top of the charts, and the band’s debut album was released to wide-spread impact on the U.S. rock scene, most people knew that this guys weren’t deemed to become a one hit wonder to be forgotten in the next summer. They sounded more subversive (“Break on Through” antecipates The Sex Pistols) and less optimistic than most “hippie bands” that celebrated Peace & Love. Even tough The Doors also celebrated consciouness expansion psychedelics (starting with the name of the band, a tribute to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception), there was also a quite bleak and scary mood in some of the groups’ songs, like the nightmarish explorations of the darkest corners of the human mind in “The End” (a song about, among other things, a psycho who acts out Freud’s Oedipus Complex, kills his father, and… you know what!). In the following words, Marcus describes a moment in the The Doors’ path where darkness was closing in and the band was falling apart:

“When The Doors recorded ‘Roadhouse Blues’ in November 1969, Morrison’s arrest in Miami the previous March, the three months of concerts cancelled everywhere in the country that followed, the felony trial looming in the next year, the likelihood of prison, and after that the end of the band, were only the most obvious demons. The specter of the Manson slaughter hung over every Hollywood icon, hanger-on, or rock’n'roll musician as if it were L.A.’s Vietnam. Everyone – people who had been in Manson’s orbit, like Neil Young, or anyone who knew someone who knew someone who had, which was everyone – believed there was a hit list, held by those Mansonites waiting patiently, on the outside, for the word of the messiah. There were reasons to believe that the Manson bands were just a first brigade – a lumpen avant-garde, you could say – for a web of cults biding their time for years, since the late 1940s, some said, when the British sex-magick maven Aleister Crowley, John Parsons, the founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and L. Ron Hubbard practiced Satanist rituals in Pasadena, determined to summon the whore of Babylon and conceive a living Antichrist.” (MARCUS, 2011, pg. 156-57)

We all know that The Doors’ career has no happy ending: the music is over when Jim Morrison, 27 years old, is found dead in a bathtub in Paris. To understand what went wrong, Greil Marcus explores the lyrics and poems of The Doors’ lead-singer, revealing there what may be called an epic battle, within a human heart, between Eros and Thanatos. It’s always hard, when dealing with Jim Morrison’s poetry, to separate the life-affirming from the self-destructive tendencies. When he invites the listener to a shared experience of “setting the night on fire”, he might be simply talking about of heated and sweaty sex encounter, some rock and rolling in the carnal sense of the expression, but the same song, as you may remember, evokes the images of a “funeral pyre” and of “wallowing in the mire”. The desire for the flame of life to burn with more intensity, with a brighter fire, seems to always have an anguish, arising from consciousness of mortality, underlying it, setting a “mood” for it. As tough the Doors music wanted to hint at the fact that, similarly to the stars that we witness burning in the dark of space, life’s light shines in a backdrop of mortality and finiteness.

“Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have a another kiss. Another flashing chance at bliss, another kiss, another kiss…”

As Greil Marcus points out, these verses from “The Crystal Ship” can be interpreted simply as a celebration of love’s blisses and thrills, but it also can mean something way darker – like a suicide pact. “To slip into unconsciousness” can mean simply falling asleep, but it also can be read as death approaching, the desire for a farewell-kiss. Even tough the lyrical content can be felt by the listener as a beautiful statement about the delights of lovers, it also can be read as a sympton of painful and insatiable desire, of Eros’ unquenchable thirst. Greil Marcus’ interpretations got me thinking about this paradox that can be perceived in many of The Doors’ songs: the celebration of Eros as a life-force side-by-side with the painful striving that seems never to lead to full satisfaction (a theme also explicitly adressed by well-known songs by The Rolling Stones and The Replacements, among many others). The “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” motto, the feeling of being always singing the “Unsatisfied Man Blues”, may well be one of most powerful and reocurring themes of popular music, an enduring element that unites the musical productions of several different epochs.

Greil Marcus book provides an interesting journey for everyone willing to explore the mysteries of Jim Morrison and The Doors, but its merits transcends this: he wrote almost a treatise about the Sixties whole cultural landscape. In his attempt to understand Youth Culture in the 60s, he refrains from a simple-minded and naive praise-singing for the so-called “Woodstock Era”. He invites us to recognize gratefully its merits, but also to question those years with critical eyes. In Greil Marcus’ understanding, rock’n'roll is obviously a powerful cultural force because its greatest artists are considered by the masses as heroes and role-models, whose behaviour thousands (or even millions) of people cherish, admire and attempt to reproduce. Figures like Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon or Janis Joplin act as well-known cultural icons whose lifestyle and creativity inspire large portions of mortals to transcend their own limitations. They act like magnets summoning us to be more like them: creative, autonomous, rebellious, innovative, awe-inspiring, beautifully expressive and emotionally engaging. But – as Greil Marcus argues – one of the dangers we face in this process is this: the apathy and inaction of the masses, who are satisfied with a role of passive spectators and consumers. Marcus points out, for example:

“The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part – when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn’t know what would happen next, but were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted. You can find that spirit in the early years of the Civil Rights movement, where some people paid for their wish to act with their lives, and you can find it in certain songs. But the Sixties were also a time when people who could have acted, and even those who did, or believed they did, formed themselves into an audience that most of all wanted to watch. ‘The Whole World Is Watching’ was a stupid irony: people went into the streets, they shouted, gave speeches, surrounded buildings, blocked the police, and then rushed home to watch themselves on the evening news, to be an audience for their own actions…” (p. 56)

For some decades we have been conditioned by the Entertainment Industry, the whole Show Business pervasive environment, that we, “the masses”, shouldn’t think of ourselves as nothing but passive consumers, buying products that enrich stars that are already millionaires. Unfortunately, that’s the way things usually happen: when an artist of outstanding talent and powerful skills of expression arises – like Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison – they tend to get destroyed by the “economical-commercial” environment where they see themselves thrown into. They tend to die at 27 (or at little bit earlier or later), tragically quiting from their pop-star positions. It happened to Janis, Jimi, Jim – and then to Cobain, an then to Amy, and so on and so on… I’m tempted to say, especulating mentally about it, that to die at 27 is not only a re-ocurring event for pop stars, but it says something important about pop-stardom itself. The cultural sickness that, it seems to me, Greil Marcus’s book is aiming to denounce, is the process of idolatry that goes on between we, “the masses”, and those we very sintomatically call “our idols”.

Once again, The Doors is an excellent example: Jim Morrison died young, but then became a myth, an idol, a sex symbol. His physical body began decomposing in a Paris bathtub when the young musician and poet was 27, but even today – much more than 27 years have gone by after his death… – he’s still an object of some collective adoration (it might be shrinking, but it survives). He left life to enter History, one might say, but I’d rather say he’s voice still echoes among us – and his demise scares us, still, because we can’t fully understand it. Nor can we fully understand the process that lead another 27-year-old international popstar to blow his brains out with a shotgun in 1994. Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, it appears to me, got crushed by the machinery of popstardom. When you become a popstar (I suppose, never having been one!), you might get the spotlights, the paparazzis, the magazine covers, the fancy cars to drive to the sold-out concerts, but what comes along, as its downside, is often underestimated. You get sick and tired of hearing stupid and futile gossip about you in the newspapers “social columns”. You get sick and tired of being asked to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Light My Fire” for the thousandth time… And most people of the aptly titled “Audience” don’t care to be nothing but audience – nothing but passive receivers of a message, a flock of sheep beneath the idolized figure of the musical messiah, who rains down his dictates from the pulpit of the stage.

Instead of autonomy, idolatry breeds passivity. Instead of the independence and willingfulness stated in the Punk ethics of “do it yourself!”, idolatry and popstardom tend to condition us to passively consume messages provided by people we pay so they can express themselves, while we remain without expression – and thus without real significance. Or, to sum things up, as Greil Marcus puts its: many people payed for tickets and went to see The Doors live because they wanted to watch someone being freer and more expressive than themselves. But after the concert ended, and they returned to their day-to-day life, they continued in a passive position, that of consumers of art made by others, they didn’t become artists themselves, lighting up their own fires inspired by that fire the artist had tried to spread around him like an incendiary!…

This whole business of idolatry and popstardom is obviously breeding disasters – and of the re-ocurring kind. When we transform a flesh-and-blood human being into an idol, and expect him or her to act for us, to express ourselves in our place, and most of all to tell us what to do and how to live, we’re rennouncing autonomy and responsability, making ourselves puppets that place their fates in the hands of the idol. He become an audience that can only receive, or mimic, but that doesn’t get truly transformed in agents.

Thrown into this bizarre hall of deforming mirrors called the Commercial Media, artists hailed to popstardom have this strange reocurring tendency to freak out and die young. I wouldn’t claim to understand all the complex reasons why this happens, but an episode of Jim Morrison’s life appears to me to contain one of the answers to our riddle: in one of those moments on stage when he gets possessed by rage, Jim Morrison begins to attack his audience verbally, with a viperish and misanthropic discourse, showing how he despises those beneath him. He drunkely shouts to his audience (to us all, really): “Why do you let people push you around? How long do you think it’s gonna last? How long will you let it go on? How long will you let ‘em push you around? Well, maybe you like it, maybe you like it been pushed around! And love getting your face getting stuck in the shit! You love it, don’t ya? YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF SLAVES!”

Maybe he meant that people were doing less than they could, that they weren’t acting out as much as they should, for example to stop the Vietnam War or the Latin American military dictartorships (like the one who started out in Brazil, 1964, sponsored by the U.S.). Maybe he meant that people were too shy and well-behaved to really revolt against authoritarian elements in society – like the whole Police and Prison complex, or the Army, or presidents and politicians who were also war criminals and mass murderes. Maybe he meant that we, a “bunch of slaves”, hadn’t yet proclaimed our own independence: there we were, the masses of idolatry, powerless and disconnected, watching someone acting out and struggling to create freedom and beauty – and yet we ourselves weren’t acting collectively so powerfully and widely as we could towards the collective building of freedom and beauty. Most of the people who constituted the masses were watchers and not agents, consumers and not creators, followers and not leaders. And lots of people were certainly apolitical, individualistic, disengaged, and mostly indifferent to the destinies of the dispossed, the murdered, the peryphery of the so-called First World. Many of us have bought the obscene slogans and ideologies summed up by “better dead than red” or “kill a gook for god”.

At the unhappy ending of the Sixties – when nobody knew yet how many thousands of dead bodies had resulted from Vietnam, nor anyone knew how many Charlies Mansons the future held in store, nor how many Black Panther Party activists would be murdered… – a band opened a door...

KEEP ON READING: http://awestruckwanderer.wordpress

[Bojan Ostojić · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uza sve Markusove originalne opaske povodom najboljih pesama Dorsa - i svu čitaočevu radost što se izbor poklapa sa njegovim dubokim favoritima - autorova blagoglagoljivost dvostruki je minus. Zvuči (da malo parodiram Markusova poređenja) kao besciljna i neinventivna solaža štrebera sa Muzičke akademije koji ni u jednom trenutku neće da prizna da VALJA BITI I PLITAK. U knjizi vrede samo visceralni, odsečno izneti sudovi, bačeni čitaocu u lice kao polemika u kafani, na koju ovaj odgovara, na primer: "Ne, pesma Strange days nije psidodelično smeće, seronjo!" ili "Pederčino, šta ti fali u pesmi Touch me?" Odstranio bih čitavo poglavlje o pop artu (20th century fox) i spominjanja književnosti (Pinčona) kao nadobudno razmetanje. Zašto svi Ameri teže da zvuče intelektualno, zašto im smeta da budu ono što jesu, intuitivni uličari? A prevodiocu Zoranu Paunoviću bih zavrnuo uši (kao stranicama knjige) što prevodi naslove pesama iskorišćene za naslove poglavlja. Preglumio se! A tek zato što u jednom trenutku smatra da je Kim Gordon iz Sonic Youth muško. To je ta generacija koja je stasavala 60ih. Zalaufala se, pa je morala osamdesete da prespava.

(Grejl Markus: Pet opakih godina muzike za ceo život, Clio, 2022)

[Samuel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Aburrido

[Bob Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Greil Marcus,
More the Holy Grail Marcus of music writing if you ask me !
I must confess, at start I wasn’t too sure with the avalanche of names dropped like a hipster in heat.
Once I let him lead, I enjoyed every bit of it.
He just speaks the post pop culture language best.
So much so that, a couple of times, he elevated my emotional understanding of things.

Beware ! The Doors are only the MacGuffin to Greil’s philosophical ramblin’ essays about the 60s and beyond.
Next one please !

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great biography of the Doors!
Greil Marcus is an excellent voice to tell the story of this band because he is a fan that followed the band from gig to gig and lived a life similar to the lifestyle Jim Morrison and the Doors promoted. It is my opinion that Morrison is a fine poet that drew the picture of what his imagined, drug-fueled utopia would be. Marcus obviously lived in that world and his voice is the voice of a fellow poet that lived in the same hippy heaven.
Read this book!

[Prima Seadiva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook, reader okay
Very short 4 discs. I wasn't sure whether in an audio version there would be some actual music clips, no there was not.
No matter, The Doors are a favorite band of mine and I'm pretty familiar with most of their work. I had the opportunity to see them before all the notoriety and it was one of the best concerts I have been too. Being into Huxley and William Blake was a plus. Their sound was unique at the time.
One does wonder where they might have gone if Morrison had not died

I thought the author was more into himself than the band. Even the positive things he had to say about the music lead back to him. He spent a fair amount of the short book on topics other than The Doors but it all led back to him too. I became even more skeptical about his comments when he praised the bloated Oliver Stone movie which I did not care for.

Honestly if you don't know The Doors just go and listen. And though the long version is good listen to something in addition Light My Fire. All their work in every version is available on youtube spotify and every other listening venue.
I see he's a well known critic/writer but this was my first book by him and not sure I'll delve further but if I do it will be with a bit of skepticism.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's an unresolved ambivalence at the hear to this book, which is as much about Marcus's feeling--conflicted--about the decade as about the Doors. At his best, and he can be one of the very best music writers, Marcus offers insights into the impact of Light My Fire and various live performances of the standards-you pretty much have to accept that you're going to be reading about bootlegs you probably will never hear or see on youtube. But there's an awful lot of ex cathedra judgement about the "corniness" of various songs and many passages where he uses the second person "you" to tell you how you're supposed to hear or feel about a cut. As someone a bit younger but old enough to have seen the Doors multiple times, I simply don't accept his statements about what the audience was feeling at the time. Suffice to say Marcus's Sixties--grounded in the West Coast and Rolling Stone--wasn't mine. Still, not sorry I read it.

[Ralph · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is much wrong with this. First of all it's not so much a book as a collection of meanderings prompted by the issue of a 4 CD set of Doors performances called Boot Yer Butt. This was a limited release that was available in much lower distribution than this book. Had the author shown a little restraint he could have limited himself to a well informed review.
Instead he meanders through various scenarios prompted by the songs and often ends up on some tangents likely to be only relevant to himself.
What's sad is that Greil Marcus who purports to be a fan of the band, fails miserably to convey his love for their music or encourage anyone else to explore it.
I would suggest ignoring this tome and instead playing the title track from L.A. Woman rather loud. If you like that, explore further

[kesseljunkie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alternatively the book is cloyingly interesting, ponderously pretentious, and downright annoying. While I’ll certainly respect the author’s take on the 60s and music, there are leaps of interpretation that aren’t based on artist’s intent but on bending the music to some unknown end for a point that’s never really made.

Two essays are worth reading.

He also gets some facts dead wrong, which at this point in history is baffling. This includes mixing up a release date or two. The resources are there, so at this point it’s just maddening that errors like that happen.

I wanted to like this book. But I can’t recommend it in the least.

[Tara Engel · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you plan on reading thus based on the title and expect it to be solely about that I would suggest that you don't. It felt like half if this book focused on other things and highlighted them.

[Scott Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read 70%, liked it. Marcus's writing exhaustively self-referential as might be expected, but I'd had enough.

[Srđan Strajnić · Rating 5 out of 5]

Izgleda da ću sve više da pišem o knjigama a sve manje o pločama, jer rokenrol se, od kada je postao umetnost, preselio sa ploča u knjige. Grejl Markus je sigurno najveći od svih pisaca o rokenrolu iako se to po prosečnoj oceni od 3.22 koju je ova knjiga dobila od čitalaca Goodreads sajta ne bi reklo. Ta ocena, međutim, više govori o površnosti savremenog čitaoca nego o autoru. Markus, kao retko ko, vidi široko i zaseca duboko. Nije nepogrešiv u svojim ocenama i procenama, ali je uvek autentičan i razložan. Mada je u njegovoj prozi uvek zastupljen i onaj njen literarni deo gde pušta mašti na volju koji je podjednako zanimljiv. Ovo je prva njegova knjiga koju sam čitao na srpskom (preveo Zoran Paunović) pa je uživanje bilo veće. Na engleskom se ipak prilično mučim. Nije za "die-hard" Dors fanove jer je malo faktografije i idolatrije ali će zato uživati interesenti za (kontra)kulturu šezdesetih godina prošlog veka. Ups, evo napisah još jednu kritiku ove knjige, skroz različitu od ove koju delim ispod. Bezrezervna preporuka!
*****
Odmah da kažem, ova knjiga nije dobar izbor za prosečnog obožavaoca grupe „Doors“ – bolje je da ode na Vikipediju, na njihovu stranu, gde će moći da pročita kada i koliko je pio Džim Morison, na kom koncertu je hapšen, na kom je pokazivao svoj polni organ, kako su se slagali članovi, ko je koga izbacio iz benda itd, itd, ili da odabere neku prosečnu knjigu o Dorsima koja će bolje odgovarati prosečnom obožavaocu. Knjigu u kojoj će, koristeći opšta mesta, prosečni biograf pisati hvalospeve o svakom albumu Dorsa hronološkim redom, u kojoj će taj isti biograf sistematsku uzdizati Morisona na pijadestal božanstva, dizati u nebesa njegovu poeziju i fizičku lepotu, koji će, jednom rečju, poštovati mitologiju koja je oko Dorsa odavno stvorena. Ova knjiga nije namenjena tom delu čitateljstva. Ona je namenjena onom manjem delu koji bi da shvati šezdesete ne samo kroz muziku Dorsa, koji su svakako obeležili tu dekadu ali nisu bili jedini, već da imaju uvid u širu sliku. Profesor Markus je u svojim knjigama uvek koristio taj širi prilaz temi koju je obrađivao. Uvek su kod njega prisutne reference na film, književnost, politiku, literaturu i svaki drugi aspekt koji bi proširio kontekst pojave o kojoj govori. Tako je i ovde. Već u prvom poglavlju je majstorski uklopio u priču o Dorsima film „Inherent Vice“ Pola Tomasa Andersona koji je rađen po romanu Tomasa Pinčona. Morao sam za potrebe ovog prikaza da ga pogledam i mogu reći da bolji prikaz šezdesetih na filmu teško da postoji. Hoakim Finiks briljira u ulozi hipi privatnog detektiva koji rešava slučajeve tako što se ovi sami rešavaju dok on konstantno naduvan tumara od ženske do ženske, od lokacije do lokacije, u uzaludnoj težnji da, kako je to bivši ministar policije Republike Srbije govorio, poveže neka lica sa nekim mestima i nekim stvarima. Film jeste po sistemu „jebe lud zbunjenog“, kako bi to strogi kritičari rekli da mogu da koriste ružne reči, ali baš takav kakav je najbolje opisuje hipi filozofiju. Nema u njemu ni traga od muzike Dorsa (ali ima Nil Janga i grupe „Can“) a opet priča u njemu kod Markusa zauzima skoro celo prvo poglavlje. Po mom mišljenju odličan uvod koji smešta grupu „Doors“ u kontekst hipi pokreta šezdesetih. Razrada je samo stvar tehnike, koju Grejl Markus bez sumnje poseduje. Svako poglavlje knjige nosi naslov jedne od pesama grupe, koje su izabrane tako da bi se od njih komotno mogla napraviti kompilacija „The Best of Doors“. To je obećavajuće za prosečnog potencijalnog fana koji bi hteo da sazna neka fakta o grupi ali ne lezi vraže – i ono što će saznati o njima biće bez reda nabacano, često u aluzijama. Zato Grejl Markus u svojoj knjizi o Dorsima preporučuje bar dve biografije Dorsa pisane od drugih ljudi – Densmorovu „Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors (1991) i onaj tekst iz magazina „Esquire“ od hroničarke holivudskog stardoma Eve Babicz pod naslovom „Jim Morrison is Dead and Live in Hollywood“. Ono na čemu Markus insistira je opisivanje tih njihovih pesama rečima. To je težak zadatak, posebno kad se opisivanje svodi na lične utiske koji nisu muzičke, već literarne prirode. Kao primer, daću vam opis koncertnog izvođenja pesme „The End“: Kriger, Manzarek i Densmor pumpaju centrifugalnu silu koja će stvoriti svoj vlastiti Veliki prasak, u kome će se delovi razleteti na sve strane. Morison, sa svojim plesom na jednoj nozi, raširenih ruku, dok se poigrava rečima, predstavlja silu koja upravlja ritmom… (prevod Zoran Paunović). Imajte u vidu da je ovaj opis u odnosu na neke druge u knjizi prilično benigan. Dakle o Dorsima ćemo u najboljem slučaju saznati privatne impresije prof. Markusa (koji jeste bio njihov fan mada u nekim delovima knjige ne izgleda tako), ali ćemo zato o „šezdesetim“ saznati sve. Dovoljno je da se tokom čitanja upoznate sa svim pomenutim muzičkim, filmskim, umetničkim i književnim delima čiji je spisak naveden na kraju svakog poglavlja i dobićete vrlo preciznu sliku „šezdesetih“, kao i saznanja o onome što je do njih dovelo kao i o posledicama. Dobićete od profesora Markusa lično definiciju pop kulture kao „narodne kulture savremenog tržišta“ što je najtačnija definicija pop kulture na koju sam naišao. U okviru te i takve pop kulture koja je dobijala svoju konačnu formu baš u šezdesetim godinama, delovala je i grupa The Doors. Ipak, The Doors se nisu baš najbolje uklapali u Markusovu definiciju pop kulture, jer se nisu mogli pronaći ni u terminu „narod“ ni u terminu „tržište“ iako ih narod jeste voleo i tržište ih jeste prihvatilo. Oni su, bez obzira na to, ipak „furali svoj fazon“ – bili su individualci pre svega. Za Dorse se može reći da su pripadali hipi pokretu ali su na neki način i odudarali od njega – u njihovoj muzici je bilo previše mračnih tonova i previše književnosti a premalo komunarskog duha i optimizma hipika iz San Franciska. To mračnjaštvo je uzrok njihove, važno je napomenuti, jednostrane veze sa Čarls Mensonom i njegovim sledbenicima o kojima Markus u knjizi o Dorsima detaljno piše (Dorsi su uticali na Mensona, a ne obrnuto). Nema podataka da su Dorsi uopšte znali za njega pre ubistva Šeron Tejt, ali se među Mensonovim inspiracijama, pored one notorne, pesme „Helter Skelter“ od Bitlsa, pominje i pesma Dorsa „Horse Latitudes“. Treba reći i da je muzička scena druge polovine šezdesetih u SAD bila prilično shizofrena. Njujorška umetnička scena sa Velvet Underground i Detroitska visoko politizovana scena sa MC5 i The Stooges je bila na dijametralno suprotnoj strani od hipi scene San Franciska, kao što su noć i dan dve suprotnosti. The Doors koji su bili iz El Eja iz današnje perspektive izgledaju kao neko ko sadrži elemente obe suprotstavljene strane. Tu je i umetnost i pobuna, ali je tu i sloboda i sklonost psihodeličnim eskapadama. Ta dvojnost je bila njihov usud – nisu bili prihvaćeni ni od jedne strane, ali opet i njihova sreća – otelotvorili su sve aspekte duha svog vremena. Dokaz za ovu tvrdnju je to što je njihova muzika aktuelna i danas, čak i na ovim formatizovanim radijskim plejlistama i da su ostali glavni američki simbol šezdesetih godina prošlog veka iako su trajali svega pet godina. Ova interpretacija uticaja Dorsa se može izvući iz Markusove knjige, mada je on ne pominje na taj način. Ali, pošto smo počeli ovaj tekst sa filmom, red je da ga i završimo sa filmom, baš kao što je to uradio i Markus u svojoj knjizi. Film je, naravno, kontroverzni film Olivera Stouna „The Doors“ koji Markus očigledno smatra dobrim, dok ga svi svedoci događaja optužuju za preuveličavanje, i Morisonovog alkoholizma, i njegovih ekscesa, i netačno prikazanog odnosa sa partnerkom. No, za Stouna je karakteristično to preuveličavanje kojim pokušava da istakne te aktivnosti po cenu istorijske netačnosti. Mislim da je i Markusovo pozitivno mišljenje o filmu na tom fonu – Morison nije bio onaj obični bendlider, spoj poslovnosti i talenta već čovek koji je imao misiju i u skladu s tom se ponašao. I kod Markusa i kod Stouna, Morison je u neku ruku bio distanciran od ostalih članova benda vrlo bitnih za muzičku stranu priče. Toliko bitnih da bez njih magija Dorsa verovatno ne bi ni postojala. I kod Markusa (donekle) i kod Stouna, Morison je u svom psihodeličnom delirijumu bauljao od jednog do drugog, figurativno rečeno, viski bara, povređujući svakog koga je stigao, a najviše povređujući sebe. Manzarek, Kriger i Densmor su sve njegove ekscese manje-više stoički trpeli, pre zato što su ga voleli, nego iz lukrativnih razloga. To se vidi po njihovom odnosu punom uvažavanja prema legatu koji je iza sebe ostavio Morison. Zato im se, čini mi se, nije svideo film Olivera Stouna. Ono što moram da primetim je da Markus nije slučajno pisao o ova dva filma – ako upotrebimo malo mašte i prebacimo Morisona iz filma „The Doors“ u ulogu Larija „Dok“ Sportela iz „Inherent Vice“, ne da ne bi bilo neke velike razlike, nego bi to bio „perfect fit“. Očigledno, to vreme je tražilo (i nalazilo) baš takve heroje.
Ovo delo Greil Markusa, mada nevelikog obima (225 strana) daje nam dosta toga – uvodi nas u atmosferu tog iz današnje perspektive nevinog i naivnog vremena, u kome je, kako se ispostavilo, medikamentozna terapija (upotreba opojnih droga) za „svetsku bolest“ (drugo ime za neoliberalni kapitalizam) ubijala više i uspešnije nego što je ubijala sama bolest, koja je kako vidimo i danas živa i zdrava. A koga bi ubijala nego najsenzibilnije među nama, umetnike. Knjiga nam daje i obimnu literaturu navođenjem relevantnih dela iz svih grana umetnosti, što nije za potcenjivanje. Ono što nam ne daje je faktografija o grupi „Doors“ ali to danas nije problem – možete je naći bilo gde. Posle završetka čitanja ostaje da lebdi večno pitanje: Koje su granice slobode i koja je to tačka kad nečija sloboda počne da ide na štetu drugih, pa na kraju i onoga koji je te granice prešao?

[robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is shocking. Why? Greil Marcus likes The Doors!

Not everything of course. He dismisses Waiting for the Sun (except for My Wild Love, the early demo version of Hello I Love You, and the live Denmark performance of The Unknown Soldier), The Soft Parade, and Morrison Hotel (except for Roadhouse Blues, the jazz version of Queen of the Highway, and the live versions of non-album tracks Gloria and Mystery Train).

However he believes in The Doors, believes in their struggle to break on through to the other side, believes in its valor. Because everything is at stake, the struggle is always fraught with peril, always in danger of being lost; visions of the future can be blotted out, the horizon you are trying to reach gone as failure slams doors shut.

This book is rock n roll in the same way because Marcus risks the foolish grasping for transcendence. Like The Doors, he falls on his face a lot, but the bravery is inspiring and when it all comes together for a chapter, or a few pages, or a paragraph, or (as Marcus writes of the song Strange Days) for only seven seconds, it's all worth it.

"People pay to see others believe in themselves."

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's Marcus. You're not going to get a technical analysis of any weight. Equally, you're not going to get a theoretical analysis of any weight: okay, so Walter Benjamin gets a mention - he doesn't get taken out the box, but you get to see the name. You're not going to see the afterlife, the inheritance of the Doors - you're not going to see how they appear - still - remarkably modern.

So what you mostly get, to return to, almost to, the Doors, is a sort of Dennis Hopper performance from Apocalypse Now. A kind of gee-whizzery of a high, relatively sophisticated order. Marcus was there, he saw the ineffability of it all. It's pretty slick, pretty enjoyable for a while. You start off wanting to dig those old albums out. And then you want to search the net for some of those live recordings. And then, gee, I don't know, it just scuttles on, this way and that, enjoyable enough, making less majestic metaphors out of the whole trip as it goes on. The wow flutters.

But there's a lot worse.

[John Matthews · Rating 1 out of 5]

My (once) favorite band has many of its songs laid out on the dissection table. The result is meant to honor the band but does so in a very obtuse way. Obviously everyone understands music in their own way. I certainly do not understand The Doors in Mr. Marcus's way. There is hardly a clear line of prose in this book. I would almost get a glimmer of meaning and then, whoosh! off on another indecipherable tangent.

[Joe Lunday · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mystery Train and Ranters and Crowd Pleasers remain classics, but this more recent work is too often Marcus in self-parodic mode. Listening to rehearsals and outtakes from official bootlegs, he hears Morrison "finding a voice" and the sixties renderied in metaphor moment-to-moment. Marcus plus the Doors (a group often underrated by critics of Marcus's rank) is a promising combo - perhaps a fresh take on material that is usually taken as sophomoric - but the results are mixed at best.

[Malcolm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kept reading assuming this book would go somewhere. It is the most overblown description of music I’ve seen. When it is referencing the original songs to movies such as Oliver Stone’s The Doors and to Eddie and The Cruisers, there’s very little to be gained here other than filling some time for nearly 200 pages. Surely the Salman Rushdie cover quote that ‘Nobody reads a song like Greil Marcus’ wasn’t intended as a good thing?

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I was buying a book about the Doors. I got a book about nothing. Greil Marcus may be erudite but this book is a boor, dense, unreadable, nonsense. Pop art, modern architecture, ZZ Top, Charles Manson, indecipherable nothingness. I want my life back. Help! I'm finished with this book not finished.

[David Macpherson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It feels like he didn't want to write about the Doors, but about Thomas Pynchon, British collage artists, Charles Manson, ZZ Top and a bunch of other things. Not much about the doors. It was a rambling discourse that you would get stuck next to a guy who had too much and he has a lot to say. SOme of what he has to say is fascinating, but most felt like the hypothetical drink talking.

[Greg Latanick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Break on Through.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this book through Marcus’ incredible radio interview (https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2011/11/...), in which he makes a great case for the persistent dread in the Doors’ music that resonated with their audience. This was confirmed by callers into the radio show who shared their own dread and other emotional resonances The Doors had for them when they first heard them.

To today’s ears, the Doors’dread and foreboding more than likely sound insignificant. But for those of us who weren’t around in 1967, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what kind of pop was charting: the likes of The Turtles, the Monkees, the Association, even the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love.” Contrast this light pop fare with The Doors’ debut album, and you can begin to appreciate what Marcus is saying here:

“Rock ‘n’ roll, anyone would tell you, wasn’t supposed to be serious, wasn’t supposed to have weight, unless it was heavy, but if the music with which the Doors announced themselves said anything, it said it wasn’t kidding. There was a seriousness of intent that was thrilling on its own terms. There was a sense of consequences: to walk through the dramas being enacted on The Doors was to take a chance, just a chance, that you might not come out quite the same. That was what people wanted; that was what they hoped for; that was why they listened. That seductive promise was what they heard” (62).

While the book is nominally about the Doors, Marcus uses it largely to elaborate his ideas of pop and art. He has some terrific passages that explain pop art in unique ways:

“Pop—the sound describes what, in the hermetic critique locked up in the art, the art might have wanted to be. Pop—it’s a balloon, any color you like. It makes an image, then it makes a noise, then it’s gone. All that’s left are shreds of rubber, modern pottery shards, junk you could, if you wanted to, paste into another picture instead of throwing it away. The joke culture has played on certified pop artists is that what they thought was transient, ephemeral, certain to disappear—comic books, 45s, LPs, advertisements—have all lasted. They are stored in expensive art books and CD boxed sets; they are immediately accessible online anywhere in the world. They cast spells now just as they did thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years ago—and perhaps the purest, the simplest, and the most complete of all pop art works are about this casting of spells” (133).

“With this cheap, easy to make, infinitely copyable art, Berman did everything pop ever implied. And he caught its theory, which is really just a dare. What is certain to disappear is certain to last, the pop dare says to whoever is afraid of pop—but what is certain is that the standard of value, on which the presupposition that certain things were made to endure and others were made to be forgotten, will change. Don’t worry about what will last, and what won’t; don’t flatter yourself that your intent, your commitment to the enduring, is anything but vanity. What lasts for a decade is no more than a conspiracy of taste. What lasts for a century is an accident” (135).

One of Marcus’ great talents is relating a number of artists and their ideas to each other. His quoting of Dennis Potter drives home his pop-and-art thesis:

“‘I don’t make the mistake that high culture mongers do of assuming that because people like cheap art, their feelings are cheap, too,’ the late filmmaker Dennis Potter once said… ‘When people say, “Oh, listen, they’re playing our song,” Potter said, ‘they don’t mean, “Our song, this little cheap, tinkling, syncopated piece of rubbish is what we felt when we met.” What they’re saying is, “That song reminds me of the tremendous feeling we had when we met.” Some of the songs I use are great anyway, but the cheaper songs are still in the direct line of descent from David’s Psalms. They’re saying, “Listen, the world isn’t quite like this, the world is better than this, there is love in it,” “There’s you and me in it,” or “The sun is singing in it.” So-called dumb people, simple people, uneducated people, have as authentic and profound depth of feeling as the most educated on earth. And anyone who says different is a fascist.’” (121).

[Ted Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marcus is one of the remaining first-generation Rolling Stone rock critics who, in his old age, has evolved into something of a Methuselahian sage for the artist and band's populating the Rock and Roll Canon. He is a fine writer, beautifully evocative at times, a widely read gent who brings his far-flung references of history, aesthetics, politics, and mythology into his generalized ruminations on the movement of human history and how it was reflected and/or caused by the emergence of pop, rock and soul music. His idea, if he has any thesis at all, is that these were not merely forms of entertainment and distraction, they were cultural forces that changed the way we live. Marcus, as fine a prose stylist as he can be, and as momentarily persuasive as he can seem in his richer passages, actually puts forth little in the way of criticism; he rarely in his late writings spends the time to convincingly let you how songs, lyrics work internally. Craft is not on his agenda. With the Doors, though, he does a good job of explaining what I've always felt for some time, that Jim Morrison was pompous, , vacuous to major extent, a mediocre poet, a pretentious intellect who happened to have some things going for him: good looks and sex appeal, an appealing baritone voice could bellow or fashion a slumbering croon, and that he was in a band of good musicians that compelled him, in the songwriting process, to peel away the mostly dreadful riffing in his poems and boil it all down to the genuinely strange, exotic and provocative. The result of that combination of Morrison's affectations and the talents of the other band members made for a number of first-rate original songs. Save for the near perfection of their first two albums, it also made for some mostly uneven records where Morrison's drunk insistence on being a drunk put his worst tendencies on full display. Marcus is smart and remarkably succinct here, rendering shrewd judgments, the key one being that while saying up front than in any other life
Morrison would have yet another counter-cultural tragedy left for dead and forgotten, rock and roll made him at least briefly pull his resources together and give the world something memorable beyond his pretentiousness.

[Stephen McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an unusual joy. I picked it up somewhere a few years ago, possibly a present from someone who knows I am a big fan of The Doors.

I did not know what to expect but once I started I found I could hardly put it down. Marcus has a curious take on the Doors experience, making this a breath of fresh air to someone who has read a lot of Doors related material over the years.

A lot of the time he talks about context of the songs, events of the time that may echo or have influenced the band. He gives multiple obscure references to other bands, low budget films and art that open up many avenues to understand what was really going on back in that day.
His examination of Oliver Stone's movie is interesting as I have mixed feelings about it. These probably stem from Iceman and Sally playing the main characters and, for me, not being the best fit.

But it is Marcus' treatment of the songs that most intrigues. He describes the song as being the 5th member of the band; a mischievous, playful member. He conjures live shows like a wrestling match between the band and the songs.
At times the song is the friend who is lost within the closing nightclub while the others have a taxi waiting outside, when Jim finds it he gets the hump because the song has hooked up with the hottest girl in the club.
At other times the song is the best player on the soccer pitch who beats 4 defenders but then selflessly passes to Morrison to score the goal and be swamped with the adulation of the others.

There are times when he appears to be trying to say too much at once and the train of thought can be hard to follow, but these are rare. I did suffer a bit from lack of knowledge of his references but wikipedia helps.

Overall I was pleased that he dodged the usual Doors stories and anecdotes about indians and beach conversations, avoided much reference to Vietnam and didn't dwell too much on bathtubs. It is about the music.

I enjoyed the read and would recommend it for fans of the band or just people interested in the time they were about.