Post by darkstar on Jul 23, 2006 16:20:29 GMT
HARP Magazine
First printed in Jul/Aug 2006
Reviews
Book Reviews
No One Here Gets Out Alive
by Jerry Hopkins & Danny Sugerman
Warner Books
Oliver Stone’s The Doors hit multiplexes in the spring of 1991, and in anticipation of its release I interviewed surviving bandmembers and various Doors associates. Among them was photographer Frank Lisciandro, a close friend of Jim Morrison, who helped me paint a balanced portrait of the late singer by cutting through much of the rock-god mystique. Lisciandro was particularly unsparing in his opinion of No One Here Gets Out Alive, the 1980 Morrison bio co-authored by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. “I call [the] book Nothing Here But Lots of Lies,” Lisciandro said. “That’s who has been talking about [Morrison] all these years, people who didn’t know him.”
Danny Sugerman, of course, had a uniquely personal stake in preserving that Morrison mystique. Starting as a teenage go-fer for the Doors in the late ’60s, he eventually came to oversee much of the group’s business affairs, and all the way up until own death in 2005 he never missed a chance to put a hagiographic spin on things. For example, in NOHGOA’s foreword (revised in 1995, and included in this new ’06 Warner Books Trade Edition), Sugerman wrote, “Driven by his insatiable thirst to see all, feel all, and do everything, Jim ran up to the edge of that abyss and found a freedom so complete and vast it was terrifying. And then he dove in.”
Uh-huh. The narrative itself is no less mythic in tone, from the Indians-on-the-highway scene (we’re to believe a dying Indian’s soul entered a young Morrison’s body) through reports of Morrison as the ultimate rock satyr (actually, he was plagued by impotency) to the Morrison death “mystery” (c’mon folks—he died in Paris, roll credits). Morrison the Shaman, the Lizard King, the Mr. Mojo Risin’: NOHGOA oozes with hype—and horseshit.
Rock fans are entitled to their myths. But today, in this post-James Frey milieu, the so-called essential truths offered in NOHGOA qualify it more as a based-on-a-true-story memoir than a reliable biographical document. The front cover of the book blares, “#1 bestseller—over 2 million copies in print.” To all you two million consumers: caveat emptor.
By Fred Mills
www.harpmagazine.com/reviews/book_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=4549
First printed in Jul/Aug 2006
Reviews
Book Reviews
No One Here Gets Out Alive
by Jerry Hopkins & Danny Sugerman
Warner Books
Oliver Stone’s The Doors hit multiplexes in the spring of 1991, and in anticipation of its release I interviewed surviving bandmembers and various Doors associates. Among them was photographer Frank Lisciandro, a close friend of Jim Morrison, who helped me paint a balanced portrait of the late singer by cutting through much of the rock-god mystique. Lisciandro was particularly unsparing in his opinion of No One Here Gets Out Alive, the 1980 Morrison bio co-authored by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. “I call [the] book Nothing Here But Lots of Lies,” Lisciandro said. “That’s who has been talking about [Morrison] all these years, people who didn’t know him.”
Danny Sugerman, of course, had a uniquely personal stake in preserving that Morrison mystique. Starting as a teenage go-fer for the Doors in the late ’60s, he eventually came to oversee much of the group’s business affairs, and all the way up until own death in 2005 he never missed a chance to put a hagiographic spin on things. For example, in NOHGOA’s foreword (revised in 1995, and included in this new ’06 Warner Books Trade Edition), Sugerman wrote, “Driven by his insatiable thirst to see all, feel all, and do everything, Jim ran up to the edge of that abyss and found a freedom so complete and vast it was terrifying. And then he dove in.”
Uh-huh. The narrative itself is no less mythic in tone, from the Indians-on-the-highway scene (we’re to believe a dying Indian’s soul entered a young Morrison’s body) through reports of Morrison as the ultimate rock satyr (actually, he was plagued by impotency) to the Morrison death “mystery” (c’mon folks—he died in Paris, roll credits). Morrison the Shaman, the Lizard King, the Mr. Mojo Risin’: NOHGOA oozes with hype—and horseshit.
Rock fans are entitled to their myths. But today, in this post-James Frey milieu, the so-called essential truths offered in NOHGOA qualify it more as a based-on-a-true-story memoir than a reliable biographical document. The front cover of the book blares, “#1 bestseller—over 2 million copies in print.” To all you two million consumers: caveat emptor.
By Fred Mills
www.harpmagazine.com/reviews/book_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=4549