The deal here is that, among the countless books on The Doors, this is the first to bypass their myth, mystique and the Morrison death cult. It’s entirely about the music – except that it’s also about Greil Marcus and the literate, cross-genre paths he follows. His prose weaves in and out of the songs, sometimes in relation to lyrics or performance, at other times to tangential aspects of pop culture.
Marcus’ erudite flights touch down on Thomas Pynchon, Ross MacDonald, Richard Hamilton, Dennis Potter, Charles Manson and anywhere he fancies landing. He jettisons both chronology and any official discography to a point where The Doors’ own perverse, warts’n’all bootleg collection, Boot Yer Butt!, is given more attention than all but their first and last albums, The Doors and LA Woman. Elsewhere, Waiting For The Sun is dismissed as “floppy”, while its No 1 hit, Hello I Love You, along with The Soft Parade’s Touch Me, are vilified as “songs The Monkees might have blanched at.”
There are no sacred cows for Marcus, but he sure makes you want listen to your Doors’ albums again – even if his revisionist praise for Oliver Stone’s movie holds less water than a colander.
