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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Apr 18, 2024 14:18:23 GMT
A CD was released with Danny Sugerman reading NOHGOA
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Apr 18, 2024 14:36:58 GMT
Various reprints to commemorate various milestones.
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Post by zaval80 on Apr 18, 2024 18:44:22 GMT
"Morrison was an asshole most of the time."
John Densmore, p. 302 of his book.
Now, in Alan Brackett's book (the bass player of Peanut Butter Conspiracy) Jim Morrison is described in nothing but positive light. Could be down to the fact that Alan had been a Marine, but who knows.
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Post by zaval80 on Apr 18, 2024 20:51:31 GMT
NOHGOA has been in print now for well over 40 years. I got a US softback edition via HMV and its import service. At first I thought it was amazing but during that 40 years or so grew to think of it possibly the worst book ever written about Jim. Actually that's Dark Star but it's a close 2nd. One of the worst things it did was to define Jim Morrison as a Manzarekesque drunken disruptive 'shaman'. The poet never had a chance after this. There have been a dizzying array of reprints in various paperback sizes and in 1997 a hardback edition like the one below.
Hell I'm not saying Jim was some kind of 'saint', he could be an absolute twat and treated women badly on many occasions which is something I cannot condone. He was an 'arcehole'. But he wasn't an 'arcehole' all the time. And he did a lot of stuff outside of the orbit of Ray Manzarek. Who basically wrote NOHGOA. He could be kind, considerate, nice to kids, helped struggling artists, made off the cuff phone calls to fans and was always 100% behind his band. But thanks to NOHGOA the Stone movie and the Doors so-called documentary may as well have just called them selves by yhe title of the book. Stone had an excuse as he was making a movie for a non Doors audience. What the bands excuse was for their When You're Strange shite is a different matter. I asked John what his excuse was and he threw me off his forum. Not the guy who ran it for him but John Densmore himself.
i don't think NOHGOA can be compared to Dark Star or anything else like that. Dark Star was a work of a writer who worked under a deadline, so there is an imposition of limits on the quality of work. The modern analogy would be Mick Wall's book. He publishes quite a number of books, so obviously has to write under deadline; it can be felt while reading his Doors book. What Jerry Hopkins did was actually a proper way to do a history of a major band, and if we add the stuff from "The Lizard King" sequel, that would be some approximation of his original manuscript. Yes edited down severely, and with lot of input by Danny and Ray. But it can be seen immediately the coverage of stuff "outside Ray's orbit" was in place, say, his original research on Jim working with MGM and McClure in the direction of movie-making - totally outside Ray's orbit. Taken off from NOHGOA, of course, because they had to cut the manuscript. So the original idea of Hopkins was a right one - there was nothing of the kind of a thick book dedicated to a rock artist. In that, he was a pioneer. Now we have two-volume sets of Mark Lewisohn on The Beatles (4 more volumes could be awaited) and of the late Johnny Rogan on The Byrds, but it could be said Hopkins worked that lode first on the scale of the '70s. We have Danny and Ray to blame for all negatives of NOHGOA, but not just them - it was down to people sharing these anecdoted with Hopkins as well. It is not his fault that the history of The Doors is basically a collection of anecdotes; every other Doors book carries this unfortunate tendency. Why Jim the poet is not felt strongly in NOHGOA? Because there was no appreciation for this side of his personality yet. He was considered the rock singer, the frontman, the lyricist, and as for his poetic side, that was taken care by his two books in print and the recent poetry album. Nobody had an idea how to market his stuff, or The Doors stuff. Probably Paul Rothchild tried something in this direction, hence the talk of the "Dirty Doors" album and the actual outtakes which got away, like Rotchild's edit of "Rock Is Dead" and the selection of the 1969 poetry tape on bootlegs. But neither Elektra nor Coursons/Morrisons thought seriously about working with what they had. Hell, even after 50 years the Morrison estate was not able to give us anything from his most important notebook, the 1965 "Green" one. Just because they have no texts in his handwriting. But these texts led to the formation of The Doors. IMO this book is by no means worse than any other of comparable kind of a full history book - as ALWAYS, reader has to think deep over each anecdote, in ANY Doors book, without exceptions, to gain an inkling of whether there is any truth behind.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Apr 18, 2024 21:49:01 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Aug 22, 2024 8:53:32 GMT
10-1-1981 Music Week 26-6-1980 Biloxi Sun MS 5-12-1980 Chambersburg Public Opinion PA
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