No One Here Gets Out Alive

Twenty-three, mired in self-destruction and having a complete lack of self-awareness, I was told by a barroom guru to read this book. My attention span then was so bad I couldn't read a chapter of a book without having to put it down. But I cracked open this book and read it in one sitting. One of my all-time favorite books.
A well-researched and well-written account of the Lizard King by Doors insider Danny Sugarman, who knows a thing or two about excess in Hollywood. From everything I've read about Morrison -- which is about all there is to read -- Sugarman nailed him spot-on. A complete span of Morrison's life -- from his childhood, to his venture into film school and to his fateful meeting on a beach with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, all the way through the band's unlikely ascent to top of the music world.
And, of course, a look at the Mr. Mojo Risin', who fell from grace -- no, burned out brilliantly like the world's biggest flare. An absolute must-read for any fan of The Doors. Morrison may not have be an idol, but he definitely had a life a movie could be based on, one ended all too soon after 27 years, only four years after the group's first album was released. This book leaves only one question unanswered -- about the true nature of Morrison's ultimate demise. You can read about that in "Break on Through," by James Riordan and Jerry Protchnicky. I highly recommend these books to anyone looking for an interesting read in the rock genre. Sex, drugs, booze, rock 'n' roll and philosophy to the nth degree. Too bad Morrison didn't give himself a chance to do what I did: straighten out. He could have written some great books on recovery, philosophy and a compelling autobiography. But the great ones always leave you wanting more. Morrison was no exception.

No One Here Gets Out Alive probably deserves a couple more stars on this review for its place in Rock `n' Roll history. After all it provided a resurrection for The Doors and Jim Morrison, as well as laying out the Morrison mythology and opening The Doors for the next generation of fans.

No One Here was written by Jerry Hopkins, who had interviewed Morrison for Rolling Stone Magazine and after Morrison's death found himself more affected than he thought he should be, so he wrote book. During the 70's there wasn't much interest in Jim Morrison and/or The Doors and he couldn't find a publisher, so Hopkins put the book away and went on to other things. That's where Danny Sugerman enters the story or rather re-enters the picture. Sugerman was a teenager that was hanging around The Doors office so Jim Morrison hired him to answer fan mail. When he ran across Hopkins and the No One Here manuscript he asked if he could try to sell the manuscript Hopkins said "sure." Sugerman then rewrote parts of it, some say in conjunction with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek as ghost writer. Then Sugerman shopped the manuscript around again until he found a sympathetic editor at Warner Books, and then in unconscious synchronicity, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now sparked The Doors renascence in 1979/1980.

No One Here lays out and outlines the basic mythology and legend of Jim Morrison that is still in operation today. Morrison was the first born of career Navy man and a somewhat eccentric wife, they moved all around the country as Jim's father's assignments changed, from San Diego to Virginia to New Mexico where at about age 5 or 6 Morrison experienced a mystical experience which deeply affected his life. On the way to New Mexico Jim's father came upon an accident where a truckload of Indians had overturned and there were bodies and blood on the highway. Morrison felt as if at that moment the soul of a dead Indian leapt into his. Morrison also latter said that it was the first time he tasted fear because his father and mother couldn't do anything, and his mother may have solidified the incident in Jim's mind by trying to reassure him that it was all a dream. With all the moving around Jim became a rather shy and bookish kid, reading everything he could get his hands on. He also became a double threat at school, a smart kid and a joker who's antics some times disturbed the class. He also started keeping journals and writing poetry. He decided to go to film school and enrolled at UCLA, not without some resistance from his father. At UCLA Morrison wrote essays on the history and theory of the cinema, and made a movie that seemed to have impressed no one except Ray Manzarek. Manzarek and Morrison seemed to have been friends at UCLA or maybe acquaintances, but Morrison was in one of Ray's films and filled in as a guitar player (it was unplugged) when Manzarek's band needed a guitar player to fulfill a contract. Morrison left UCLA, a lot of biographies claim Morrison dropped out of school but it was only two weeks before he was due to graduate. Morrison headed to Venice Beach and lived on a friends rooftop where he took, from all reports, a lot of LSD and wrote most of The Doors first two albums worth of songs. Jim then "ran into" Manzarek on the beach and read him Moonlight Drive and the two decided to form a band and "make a million dollars."

The Doors started playing together and working clubs on Sunset Boulevard until they worked their way up to The Whisky a go-go where they became the house band.. One night under a particularly large dose of LSD Morrison added the Oedipal section to The End, they were fired from The Whisky. But they also gained a recording contract from Elektra Records. Morrison went on to become one of the most provocative performers in Rock "n' Roll creating some of the "firsts" in Rock `n' Roll, such as being the first rock star arrested on-stage. In 5 years The Doors created some of the classic songs of Rock `n' Roll, notably, Light My Fire, Hello, I Love You, Roadhouse Blues, L.A. Woman, Love Her Madly and Riders On The Storm. Morrison's destructive urges took him to Paris where he died under mysterious circumstances, which No One Here tries to exploit, exaggerating the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his death. But it worked and the outlines of this myth still haunt Doors fans old and new to this day. Jim Morrison has become the iconic image of a rock star to us, even rock stars look to Morrison for their idea of a rock star.

No One Here Gets Out Alive is a good starter kit for fandom but not the definitive biography, it hedges too much on the side of idolatry. Morrison is the almost superhuman superman that can take the most amount of drugs, gets all the most beautiful women, walks on the edges of buildings without falling, we can see Morrison but the focus isn't pulled clear enough of the outlines of legend.

This book helped fuel a serious revival of interest in the music of the Doors and the late Jim Morrison, the band's lead singer. One of the coauthors, the late Danny Sugerman, was a long time employee of the band.

Almost simultaneous with the release of this biography in paperback, director Francis Ford Coppola made extensive use of the Doors' song "The End" for the soundtrack of the Viet Nam war film "Apocalypse Now." Rolling Stone magazine took notice of the trend and putting Morrison on the cover of an issue with a reminder to its readers that he was dead. In a few years time, director Oliver Stone adapted the same story for his feature film "The Doors." It should be noted that Stone's screenplay credited drummer John Densmore's book, "Riders on the Storm," as his source material rather than this title.

Morrison and his band mates, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, made some interesting music that combined lyrics adapted from the poetry of William Blake, the classic Greek tragedy of Oedipus Rex and, seemingly, from the labels of countless empty bottles of whisky.

For myself, it was a heady time, playing Doors records on a college radio station, watching "Apocalypse Now" in its original theatrical release, and hearing Manzarek's keyboard synthezier and Krieger's guitar in the dormitories. The title of the book is, of course, taken from the song "Five to One." This is an extraordinary account of a significant band and the decline and fall of their lead singer.

I thought I knew something about Jim Morrison, as I own Doors CD's, I have seen many of the films regarding the band, and I have watched Oliver Stone's theatrical movie several times. At best I had merely scratched the surface. This book provides so many excellent details. For example: Morrison's liking of Friedrich Nietzsche, his ability to fail the U.S. military draftee health test with a cocktail of drugs, the bands tour of Europe, his instruction to Patricia Kennealy to abort their child, his cruelty and savagery as a person to some people - and conversely his brilliance as a poet and musician - combined with his gentle kindness to numerous others made this book a learning experience for me. This biography provides wonderful insights and explanations into the examples listed above and many other facets of Morrison and the life he lived. He cannot be dissected as a subject nor fully understood with any precise science - yet this book does provide so many well researched accounts that it is possible to explore beyond the surface of Morrison's mixed ocean of life. A must read for any Doors fan!

Nicholas R.W. Henning - Australian Author

Who were the Doors? Well, picture 4 beach bums who got together with a defiant poet who knew nothing about singing or writing music. He ended up writing and singing some of the finest--and weirdest--songs of the decade. The lead singer/poet Jim Morrison grew up drawing rude pictures in school and just generally being a class clown. After high school he went to every major college from coast to coast and then enrolled in film school in Venice Beach, only to decide he wanted to quit. Then he went and lived in the desert for awhile, probably on snakes and cactus milk. After that, he and his band seemingly had an overnight success with their undying classic "Light My Fire" and bar-rooms turned to stadiums. Morrison led a very fast and adventurous even dangerous and careless life, always tempting fate (and death), and hungry for new experiuences; he even went through a witchcraft ( or Wiccan, for all you purists out there) wedding with a woman he'd met and grew fond of; it included pagan chants, oaths, and of course, the proverbial slicing 'n' dicing of wrists and drinking of... yup, you guessed it. But the whole thing was a sham. For one thing, Morrison was dead drunk throughout the whole ritual and when he finally came to one of his unusual clear states of mind, the same woman told him she was pregnant with his child. So, he did what any loving father-to-be would do--he told her to get an abortion. Morrison rarely bathed, and although he had money coming out of his eyeballs, he lived on sidewalk benches a little too often, especially in his final months in Paris. One night, in his Paris hotel suite he shot himself up with heroin or some other junk, and while taking a rare and well-needed bath, he slipped away from this life with a glowing smile on his face. His girlfriend Pam died the same way two years later, minus the bathtub and smile.
David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"

This book will one day transcend the cash cow limitations typical of celebrity biographies to become a quintessential guide to 1960's counterculture. No other period in history has had such a profound impact on creative thought since the Italian Renaissance. Maybe one day the 60's will be studied as the apex of what American society had to offer--long after the United States loses its spot as the world's #1 superpower.

I did not grow up in the 60's. My parents missed it by a decade. I still find Jim Morrison more relevant than ever. This man's life is at once a testament to his ethereal talent as an artist and poet, and terrifying look into the downward spiral that these types often succumb to. A hundred of years from now, Jim Morrison and his contributions to music will be viewed in the same light as Vincent Van Gogh. The two share striking similarities. Both were horrible addicts. Both had a younger brother who lived in their shadow. Both railroaded themselves to a nasty demise. And yet both established the status quo as to what their contemporaries would struggle to achieve.

The book teeters off at the very end. As opposed to building up to the climactic finale and coming to an abrupt halt, the story falls flat with the inclusion of conspiracy theories that try to turn Jim into some type of neo-martyr. The real Jim Morrison would laugh hysterically at this type of thinking. So would Pam. He is not "alive" as some say, but a pile of dust that caters to a lucrative estate owned by people he never had a relationship with.

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Hopkins and Sugerman's book, "No One Here Gets Out Alive" is a interesting, detailed and fascinating read. I've yet to compare it to Manzarek's and Denzmore's versions of Morrison's life, but I can say this book had me very absorbed with much thinking. I have seen the Val Kilmer movie prior and mentally attempted to piece the parts from the movie and to fill in the many other parts into the gaps. What I found of much more significance and pleasure in this book, was the ideas that Morrision thought, the books he read and the thinkers who influenced him. I found myself reading the quotes that were taken from him over and over again which very much help get the feel of where his mind was at. This book was highly interesting.

As I read this book I couldn't help to compare Morrison with the type of men Socrates was described to have taught in "The Republic of Plato." He just fit this very type of student so well that I found myself comparing him to what Socrates spoke and to that of an interpretive essay on this subject by Alan Bloom, a translator of Plato. And so I will just make a few comments on this book's description of Jim Morrison with the type of man Socrates sought after. This is not such a far fetched analysis, as Morrison himself was a reader of Nietzsche, and in agreement of such, an advent admirer of the chaotic, destructive, artistic and creative personality of the Greek god Dionysus.

Jim Morrison was a man of desires, someone who lived to fulfill them, to walk in them, breath them who would cross many boundaries others would not dare to. This is an intense kind of person. And you can see that in Jim's influence from the Jack Kerouac character of Dean Moriarty (Neil Cassidy), a total Dionysan, chaotic character of eros, a Dr. Faust in wild indulgent living.

The fight of the Apollonian nature, that of rationalism and duty, to that of the Dionysan nature of chaotic and erotic desires is from Greek tragedy and comes from eros, as the erotic man, and eros is a mad master. Eros will break the laws, cross all boundaries and make a man an enemy of other men. While politics always seem hostile to such, Morrison's early statement of describing himself and The Doors as "erotic politicians" makes sense in that it is the eros that leads a man to being either a tyrant or a philosopher, that is either a man of exploitation or a man of thinking. While these may seem entirely different, it is two sides of the same coin. One looks externally unsatisfied, while the other internally, who becomes satisfied.

The tyrant is willing to both think and do things that cross all boundaries, while the thinker will only be willing to think such things without horror, yet each one of these men are willing to see beyond the laws and conventions in their quest for nature.

"Eros is a demonic voice. The tyrant and the philosopher are united in their sense of their radical incompleteness and their longing for wholeness, in their passion and in their singlemindedness. They are the truly dedicated men." Allan Bloom, Interpretative Essay on The Republic of Plato, p. 424

This is the type of man that the Greek philosopher Socrates sought for, a man who lived by his desires. Both men fell into the Dionysan chaotic nature of passionate walk in indulgence and gratification, however the tyrant could never be fulfilled, while the philosopher can. The result was Socrates had successful students who sought philosophy and knowledge, as in Plato and Xenophon, to those who left to the path of the tyrants, such as Alcibiades and Critias.

You can see this pattern in Morrison's life, his knowledge and desire to excel in philosophical thinking, in poetry and social revolutionary thought as in Nietzsche,Rimaud and Norman O. Brown. You can see this in Morrison's interest in tragedy and existential relationships and his subsequent lifestyle (Weber) of heavy indulgence in drinking and wreckless living, his boredom in what others would consider such a great achievement and his search towards poetry and theater, unsatisfied with his accomplishments. Ultimately, it is the path of the tyrant that is self-destructive, the life of the fast lane of the speeding bullet of Dean Moriarty, of Faust, of 6 years from the beginning of The Doors to the death of Jim Morrison.

As a young teenager,i enjoyed the Doors' philosophical pop-tunes on birth,life and death.In 1998,i was departing a flight ,from Munich to O'Hare,and noticed a passanger's rucksack ,on the strap-handle.It was signed by Robby Krieger.Their influence is global and contemporary.All their albums are still great.Back in 1985,i had discovered this paperback on Jim and the Doors.I think the authors were trying to tap into the spirit of JM and relay it to the reading public.The writing is rather weak and puerile.Well,i felt that a media-shaped picture was presented,and not the overall real portrait of Jim and Pamela.It gives no solid historical background,no psychological insight or current info ,on the whole rock group either.It's a flippy,dippy,hippie look at the whole experience. What did amaze me,was that Jim was able to take a novelist's or philosopher's thoughts ,and channel their energies and writings into some rather catchy top-ten rock songs.Eventhough Jim,like so many other young 60's people,was just vocally responding to the swift social changes occuring before their very eyes.There is no discussion about Jim being a modern shaman,trapped in the Western Christian world.This is sadly considered thee definitive book on the Morrison & the Doors.I love Oliver Stone's movies,except one. Oliver Stone's 'Doors' flick ,shows a flippy-dippy drunken-sailor Morrison ,meandering the stygian flow of the music and a ridiculous view of the wiccan hand-fasting.Everyone who knew Jim personally ,panned the film. A better book and an even better movie can still be produced.
Update:Check out the book,"The Doors by the Doors",by Ben Fong Torres.

although this is the only autobiography of jim morrison that ive read,i think it does a good job of detailing his life from a young boy to a musician and finally to a burnt out musician.it tells his life how he lived it.not glamarous but tragic.it should of been called "the rise and fall of jim morrison".even though he would be drunk or high most of the time,he convinced you that he was a genius and that he was right about everything no matter what people said.it also tells you of all his girlfriends he had and how he treated them.on one occasion,it tells you how in the studio his girlfriend performed fellatio on him while he was recording a track.jim morrison lived a fast life and many people criticized him all the time for what he did on his shows and how he acted.no matter what people say about him he still rocks!

Lately, I've been buying this book for people who haven't read it. It's not that I get royalties for sales. It's just that I've read the book four or five times, and now I like to convert new people to the Doors. Or to open the eyes of those who dig the music and tend to romanticize Morrison. It depends on your perspective in this boozy, drug hazed account on the life of this hedonistic, unlikely singer.

Morrison was a party boy with flashes of brilliance. "No One Here Gets Out Alive" is a sometimes voyueristic look inside the life of the decadence of rock 'n roll. And few rockers have done it up like Morrison. From girls to drugs to outlandish behavior, Morrison set the stage for a new generation of rock and roll bad boys.

The problem with this book -- and with the Oliver Stone movie about Morrison's life -- is that the reader tends to absorb the artistic temperment of the subject. I had a brother who got very drunk in the middle of the book and threw all the patio furniture into a pool. I used to get up on stage and sing "Roadhouse Blues" with bar bands, complete with all the stumbling and snarling and bad behavior. It's a mark of how thorough and unflinching the biopic is. In many ways, "No One Here" should be required reading.

-- Mark LaFlamme, author of "The Pink Room."

Oliver Stone depicted Morrison as a buffoon and oversimplified many facets of his life. Film has its limits of course and one must choose which elements to present to an audience. At Jim Morrison's grave today, why do more visit his tombstone more than Victor Hugo? Because he's had a tremendous impact on certain aspects of rock/cult culture. He had experience having lived in many areas of the U.S. We see the side of Jim often ommited. He was a conservative in may ways, ambitious, an erudite, who was extremely well read. an I.Q. 0f 140. Jim, if not for stardom and its subsequent addictions that lead to his death could have had success in many realms. What is perplexing, is that he read Nietzche and understood him.

I was impressed by this book for many reasons, it not only gives interesting details on how Jim Morrison became the..strange man that he was, but it also details in perfect chronology the hits and failures of the Doors in the mediums of film, books and records. It also offers many theories on Morrison's death, (although, for a better look, I'd recommend Rolling Stone's new article, revolations on the last days of jim morrison).
This book is easy to read for the most part, but sometimes it isn't extremely clear. For example, I wish it would have gone over his death for more than a few pages, and in some parts of the book it just feels like you're reading a bunch of old magazine articles about the doors.
It is overall a good read even if you aren't a doors fan, even if you think Morrison was a drunkard posing as a poet. Very good.

This book has been reviewed many times, so I will just add my little bit. As others have stated, this is not an objective view of Jim Morrison's life. It wasn't supposed to be. It's a memorial to his life.

The book does a very good job of that. It covers his young life, the formation of the band, and the life of the band well. The look at the last few months in Paris was very interesting. That era has always been shrouded in mystery.

All in all, this isn't the greatest book ever on the Doors. It does a good job at chronicling the life of Jim Morrison, though.

Rock biographies can be wonderful things - Guralnick's two volume life of the king Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley; the Gillmans' Alias David Bowie; and anything by Lester Bangs rank amongst the best biographies written about anyone - but despite having an undoubtedly fascinating subject in Jim Morrison and good pedigree in the Rolling Stone credentials of its authors, No One Gets Out Of Here Alive fails to impress on any level.

For me a decent biography has to have a thesis: A (perhaps controversial) view of its subject that the authors, having immersed themselves in research, can present, backed by evidence, to put a new perspective or shed some new light on a familiar subject: to tell a new story for a casual reader. Hopkins and Sugarman make no such effort: Morrison is portrayed as a clever, well-read alcoholic with an authority problem and a pretty apparent (but entirely unexplored) general social unease. The events of his life are thus trotted out is a somewhat patchy fashion, without the attempt to stitch together some overlying narrative or explanation where it feels one is called for: after all this phenomenon still occupies some (diminishing) part of the collective consciousness nearly forty years later. Yet James Morrison comes across as no more worthwhile or interesting a figure than Robbie Williams or Amy Winehouse, and while that may be true, I doubt it, and it doesn't explain the eerie and evocative content of nearly all the Doors' records. I can't imagine a Robbie Williams over the opening credits of Apocalypse Now, nor coming up with an album closer like Maggie McGill or Riders on the Storm.

This book doesn't even pretend to be a story about the rest of the band, and therefore leaves this fascinating artifact we still know as The Doors pretty much uninvestigated, let alone unexplained. Ray Manzarek is, at least, a peripheral figure: poor Robby Krieger and particularly John Densmore are barely mentioned, and the relationships, dynamics and creative processes of the band - which led to some undeniably memorable and haunting music, after all - are wholly unexplored. In any case Jim Morrison, even in his own right, can't be understood properly except through that prism, so this feels to me to be a dramatic failing.

Lastly, Hopkins and Sugarman indulge in absurd speculation about Morrison's demise - or more accurately the lack of evidence for it. Yet all of Morrison's behaviour before his, er "disappearance" - as patiently documented in this volume - points to exactly the sort of early death he apparently suffered, and the idea that such a publicity seeking (and utterly recognisable) drunkard could suddenly, miraculously, vanish without trace from the entire planet's conscience simply beggars belief.

There must be more rewarding accounts of The Doors than this.

Olly Buxton

Co-written by someone who knew Jim, the Sugarman-Hopkins bio does not escape idol worship of Morrison. Despite its flaws, it makes for a great primer on Jim Morrison and the Doors, capturing his trajectory from his awkward childhood, to poet, intellectual, drug user/experimentor, to rock star, to angry drunk and abuser. Morrison is a complex character, perhaps more interesting, introspective, well read and intelligent than any popular muscian has been since.
Recognizing Morrison's Nietzschian influence, Sugarman-Hopkins capture Morrison as the personification of Nietzshe's Dionysus. Their thesis is compelling and obviously an influence of Oliver Stone's filmography.
For those interested in the Doors or American Pop Music Culture, I throughly recommend this book.

This is an awesome book, a look into Jim Morrison's life. And the story of the Doors, from the beginning. It tells of his ideas, opinions, likes and fears. Now I know why he was arrested for inciting a riot in Miami.People lied under oath, the courts trying to use him as an example. I cannot believe the attitude of the police,the laws which took away our basic rights, freedom of speech, of expression, and how little freedom we all really had back then. He was a rebel, a radical, a drunk and a brilliant creative soul. If you love Jim Morrison, or are just curious, then read this book. It is a fascinating look into a legends life. RIP JiM

Still have the tattered paperback copy I purchased many years ago, before there was such a thing as the store :)
It still is, to my mind, an almost unbearably honest examination of the short life of a rock icon. And I would bet my house that Oliver Stone read this book and based his Doors movie to a large degree on this material, although he didn't give credit.
Book is so much better.

The insight into Jim Morrison in "No One Here Gets Out Alive" is as shallow as Grandma's pool. It consists of a couple of rock star cliches: Morrison gets drunk a lot, has fun with his groupies, and uses more drugs than Marion Barry.
Even if we give the authors plaudits for stating these obvious Mojo facts, there is no cogent analysis into why an arguably brilliant mind has such a pattern of self-destruction. Maybe there isn't a brilliant answer to why Mojo read Rimbaud, Balzac, and wrote poetry, but the authors should tell that to us. Don't just trot out literary legends to satisfy your "personal belief that Jim Morrison was a god."
Two stars. Not a total waste of money if you're interested in some hangers-on writing down their prayers at Morrison's altar, but if you've got somethin' for history, you won't get out of this one alive.

This book does not just include the details of his musical life, it also includes how he really was as a person. It touches on Jim's past and how he became to be what he was. The authors also focus on him not just as a singer but a song writer and poet and why he wrote what he wrote. It was detailed in a way that I absolutely loved and made me feel like I really knew him more than just "The Doors".

No one Here Gets Out Alive is the compelling biography of Jim Morrison, told through the perspective of Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. Through their unique experiences with Jim Morrison, Hopkins and Sugerman relive his life and philosophical legacy. The story is told through the poetic eye's of Jim Morrison, yet contains many outside analytical references to his behavior and persona. Morrison's essence is brought to life as his magnetic personality is captured through abstract dialog and inspiring stories. Morrison's tragic life is traced back from his childhood to the deeply spiritual awakenings that shaped his monumental life. One of Morrison's early memories was of a graphically depicted car accident in the dessert of New Mexico. Morrison portrays a prophetic Native American entering his soul, thus changing him forever. As Jim Morrison continued discovering himself through college, he became influenced by the new revolution in modern authors like Jack Kerouac and poetry from the Beat generation. However, Jim's ultimate inspiration came from within. The freestyle tone of the book is to the far extreme of non-conventional literature. The imagery provided within Morrison's tales paints an eclectic picture containing the memories Jim created. One who reads this book must step outside mediocrity and become open to a bold perception of the world. No One Here Gets Out Alive is a pivotal view at one of America's great modern poets and is recommended to those who appreciate great minds.

Rock star biographies are usually full of hero worship, often romanticizing their subjects flaws and eccentricites as evidence of a profound, uncontrollable genius. This is exactly that kind of book, and sadly, it has become a major part of the Morrison mythos that people have bought into for decades.

That is a real shame because the book is full of interesting tidbits about the artists and influences that Morrison drew upon in crafting his own unique mix of poetry, post-modern theatre, rebellion, and rock and roll. All of this hints that it could have been something so much more than it was. But in the end it glosses over many of his flaws: his drug addiction, pathetic alcoholism (Morrison would often go to bars and get so drunk that, rather than go the restroom, he would urinate in his pants at the bar as he kept drinking), obnoxious (and pointless) showboating, and senseless acts of cruelty towards many of his closest friends. When it does mention them, it's always in some sort of romanticized way, painting him as so true to his values of rebellion that he would compromise for no one, not even himself.

After you've read enough about Morrison, and heard stories from people who knew him and saw him self-destructing, you see this behavior for what it was: the desperate acts of a deeply disturbed, often sadistic, man hellbent on his own destruction. A man who had well-earned the label "Bozo Dionysus" because of his beligerent, and very public, self-destruction. Strangely enough for such a mythologizing book, the Doors musical merits and influence often get lost in the shuffle as this book spends page after page characterizing this meltdown.

There is little doubt that Morrison was one of rock's true visionaries, and he has proven to be one of the most influential (if not necessarily the most critically acclaimed) poets of the last half-century. He was a fascinating figure who deserves a great biography. Unfortunately, this isn't it. Read with care.

The book in question is the definitive work on Jim Morrison,according to most Door's fans I polled. I agree,because it doesn't idolize Jim,but teaches us an invaluable lesson that self-destructive behavior,such as drugs and alcohol,must not be glamorized as a stimuli for artistic creativity,but is the precursor of creative decline and physical immolation. Jim,by his excesses,not only deprived himself of future fame,but,more important,deprived his admirerers of his genius and future creativity.The book amply illustrates an artist who selfishly went mad,not unprecedented among artists. Still,despite Morrison's shortcomings,he is a literary genius of near mythical proportions who still hasn't reached his zenith of fame.His music and poetry is timeless and the quality,uniqueness,and imagery of his literary creations are unparalleled in the Rock pantheon.His renown has yet to be realized and his music currently is not dated,but will be with us eternally.Morrison is a force of nature and perhaps it was "Destiny" that took him so prematurely.

i have the unique perspective of not only being present at danny's house on mulhollland ( which ray paid for ) but also was employed at elektra/asylum at the time of danny ( and jerry'd ) authorship. there are huge numbers of inaccuracies in this book and far more accurate and comprehensive books about the group as well as corrosion himself have been written. the names of which escape me.

another reason i have some deep inside info vis a vis the groups early and even later ( later??! ) history is that my father, Billy James was the person that actually first signed them to a recording contract at Columbia Records in 65.

very short shrift if given the truth in this book and danny was kind enough to include me in what were either the first editions but i was later edited out of the book as i was only the "marching feet" of the track "unknown solider" and "Handclapped" on "wild child" but my mentor and great friend and their "producer"; Paul Rothchild ( with bruce botnick presumably engineering the recordings along with possibly "john haeny another elektra "house engineer".."?? ) chose to edit the handclaps out of wild child while i can still be heard marching in cadence very clearly on "the unknown soldier".

the irony that i was on the "unknown solider and "wild child" given i am but a footnote in the world of 60's music largely though my associations with the "greats" as a direct result of merely being "my father's son" and working as an a&r guy for holzmans elektra/asylum briefly. but i was given some rather harsh references by superman in his "autobiography "wonderland avenue" which is such an amalgam of half truths/ embellishments and half lies, that he at least "re-named" me "Jesse" rather than calling me "Mark James" as I'd have sued to SH8T out of him for defamation. anyone familiar with that "wonderland ave" book and "my" character in it "Jesse" will immediately understand why.

in any event. i should've written my OWN book as i was there from the beginning also. pre-dating the fawning and obsequious Danny Sherman may he squirm in peace LOL.

best,

Mark James

Many who reviewed this book seemed to think that the book was lacking something- I didn't think so at all. While some insist that Sugerman is simply using Morrison's legend to get rich, I think he had been fascinated with Morrison since his youth, and wanted the world to know his story. Besides, they may be unaware that Sugerman IS the Doors' official spokesperson! I actually found this book FULL of insight, I also found it very inspiring. The forward explains the whole philosophy that Jim and the Doors stood behind- how could they not see it? The book is amazing, and Sugerman deserves more credit. He was close to Jim, and deserves to be acknowledged as a skilled writer, not a guy using someone's story to get millions! He simply wished to share Jim's story with others- which he did exceedingly well, with much precision and insight. The book is excellent, and very detailed. Much effort went into the writing of this book, as well as seven years. It was amazing, and left me wanting to learn more about Morrison- very well written.

Paul Rothchild, respected producer who worked with The Doors on "No One Here Get's Out Alive':

"BAM: Excuse me for interrupting, but you are quoted in No One Here Gets Out Alive as saying you thought Riders On The Storm was cocktail music.

PR: I'm glad you mentioned that. I'd like to digress for awhile and tell you about that. I did NOT say that about Riders On The Storm.

Danny Sugerman, (co-author of the book) is a FAN of the Doors who took Jerry Hopkins' original manuscript and destroyed it. Danny didn't interview me, Jerry did. Danny then changed a lot of my interview to HEARSAY that other people did. I am FURIOUS about the book, and so is everyone else I've talked to who is quoted in it. It's a great piece of sensationalism, very little of which holds to historical fact. The general shape of it is correct, but Jim is sensationalized rather spectacularly, and the best parts of Morrison are not there."

Link to full interview: http://archives.waiting-forthe-sun.net/Pages/Interviews/OtherInterviews/rothchild_bam.html

With friends and admirers like Sugerman and Hopkins, who needs enemies?

Sorry, but after Sugerman and Manzarek, only after being pressured by John Densmore, finally stated for the record that Jim Morrison is not "still alive" I have trouble believing anything Danny and Co. have to say. I guess Densmore had an attack of conscience because Morrison's surviving family members were being harassed by people demanding to know what they knew and demanding to know where Jim was.

Jim Morrison had emotional and mental health issues for which there was no real help for back in his day and as a result he didn't have a lot of confidantes or close friends and as a result of that he is the type of celebrity that people can attach any kind of story or any kind of image to and people will tend to believe it. Sad. On top of having a very short and unhappy life, horrible substance abuse issues, being a broken and humiliated young man and dying what was, by any account, a terrible lonely death at the age of 27 he is also stuck with this morbid "biography" cottage industry that has sprung up around him.

One small example from this "best seller"; Hopkins and Sugerman recalled an incident when Morrison was in college where Morrison had a bad cut on his arm. A cut so bad that Morrison went to the hospital but was, according to Hopkins and Sugerman, "so drunk and abusive the doctor refused to treat him." You would think a cut like that would have left a scar of some kind and yet picture after picture of Jim Morrison disproves that. Sorry, I really doubt the veracity of a lot of the statements made by Sugerman and Hopkins (and Ray Manzarek had an un-credited, dirty little hand in writing this too).

The truth is that after Jim Morrison died Sugerman and Manzarek squeezed everything they could out of Morrison's problems and his death because without him people were no longer interested in either one of them and they needed to find a way to keep making money and to keep profiting off of The Doors. Apparently exploiting Jim Morrison was all they could come up with (not sure what Hopkins' problem with Morrison is except that maybe at some point Jim stole Hopkins' girlfriend or something along those lines).

Obviously Jim Morrison was not a saint but you would think that there would some sense of compassion from his "friends" because it also obvious that Morrison was not a mentally or emotionally healthy individual and that was the root of his behavior and his alcohol and drug abuse.

I will always think of this "memoir" as "Jimmy Dearest" as it reads like tabloid trash and was co-authored by an addict with help from a jealous and manipulative former band mate. There are better books out there about Jim Morrison, don't bother with this one.

I have always loved The Doors and Jim Morrison so I am really biased but I really liked this book and I finished it in like 4 days or so. It has so many neat facts and stories about those era and a nice background on what type of a person Morrison was but I am not a professional, but I really like it and I definitely suggest my friends to read this book.

It appears that many people like this book, and many don't. People who knew very little about Morrison before they read this book will likely enjoy it and learn many suprising things about him, like the fact that he read enough books in his short life to fill a small library. The book also contains many wild, often humorous stories about him that a new reader should like. However, people who are already familiar with Jim's life may find the book to show mostly his bad side, thereby telling only half the story. It seems the book only tells facts and stories without revealing his true character. Although, I read this book before I knew about him and enjoyed it, inspiring me to read many more things about him, so I recommend it to anyone. Just keep in mind it has been revealed that parts of it were glamourized, but you can usually tell which parts are.

I recommed this book to anybody who would like to know what went thru the mind of Jim Morrison.I had read this book three times and every time i read this i understand it more and more.Jim died to young,but he wasn't afraid to die.He believed that when he was a little boy when he saw a indian dying that the indians soul has gone inside of him.He strongly believed this, he also had dreams or visions of the Indian while he was drunk of whiskey or if he was on Acid(LSD).This man was a really smart person.He was an straight A student and was really energetic.He read books from the 19th century sometimes the teachers would go to librarys to find out the titles of the books just to see if he was telling the truth.He was also a poet.His music lyrics weren't really ment to be his lyrics to his music they were actually his thoughts and made them into poems.Those thoughts of his is what made him really famous. It was that he had long hair and knew how to sing.It was all about how he gave people the chance to feel what he feels thru his lyrics.I could go on forever about Jim, but i'd rather you read this book I geranty you would love it.

This is well written, albeit lacking in a more in-depth look at Jim Morrison. Instead, the book focuses on the less flattering aspects of Jim, including his supposed lack of respect for life - his or anyone else's. It describes a talented man who squanders his gifts and gets more recognition as a rock star than as a poet. Was he Jim the philosopher? The poet? The Lizard King? The Back-Door Man? The foul-mouthed alcoholic clown? In this book the people he met were fools, his friends were addicted hangers-on, the women believed whatever they wanted to hear from Jim (and sometimes they DIDN'T want to hear it). He is made out to be a misunderstood rock poet who's drug and alcohol induced life was cut short in Paris. Some say it never happened. Whatever. I personally enjoyed this book and I have read it a few times for my enjoyment. Everybody can come forth and say that Jim was like that or no he wasn't. Many women will claim that SHE was his true love (like it really matters), and every friend or fan will argue what truths there are told about Jim Morrison. Only Jim knows, and he isn't talking.

Despite authors Sugerman and Hopkins' attempt to mythologize their subject, NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE unavoidably presents Jim Morrison as a vain, obnoxious, intellectually pretentious fool, who lived a life of self-indulgent excess and stupidly died from it.

Saying that Morrison died of a heart attack is like saying the Captain of the TITANIC had damp socks. What passes for Morrison as artistic excess would pass for anybody else as sociopathy. NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE never delves into what was obviously the tortured inner world of Jim Morrison, focusing instead on an uncritiqued plethora of tales about Morrison's narcissistic, outwardly antisocial behavior, his drinking, his emotional abuse of others, and his drug use---all breezily explained away by the authors as a part of the Sixties Counterculture and Morrison's "Dionysian" image. Yeah, right.

A couple of star-struck overgrown teenage rock wannabes, the authors both seem just so overimpressed with "Mr. Mojo Risin'"'s endless philosophical ramblings a la Nietzche and Oedipus Rex. In the end however, Morrison was just a 27 year old kid who'd never mentally moved out of his college dorm room. What did he really know about anything? Never bothering to ask that question, particularly in their ingratiating Foreword the authors dedicate themselves to turning Morrison's oft-pointless driveling and inanely rude stage antics into some kind of shamanistic rite, never recognizing that from the beginning, Jim Morrison was an unbalanced, self- and other-destructive dead man walking whose talent was more evident in picking his musically adept bandmates than in anything he did himself. Yes, the lyrics are image-ridden and esoteric (and frequently written by the other Doors), but the lifestyle they portend is that of the needle eternally entering the vein; a deathstyle. Morrison ultimately practiced what he preached.

The Doors certainly contributed important musical and cultural elements to their time, but forty years on it's easy to see that they were strictly of an era.

I didn't know much about the Doors besides growing up hearing my parents playing their Doors records and seeing the film with Val Kilmer starring as Jim. I enjoyed their greatest hits and purchased all of their studio albums to dig a little deeper. I decided to purchase "No One Here Gets Out Alive" and I wish I would have just stuck to listening to their music.

Some other reviewers will probably tell me I'm rating Morrison as 2 stars and not the book. Maybe I'm not giving the book what it deserves but it's hard to say I enjoyed reading it when I see that Morrison's contributions to the Doors were overshadowed by his behavior and addiction to alcohol and drug use. His antics, treatment towards woman, and non-conformist attitude toward life may have been rare or intriguing back in the late 60's early 70's, but it's become all too common today. It's over celebrated and many of us in the mainstream are looked at like "you just don't get it," when we disapprove of this behavior.

The authors want us to know that Jim was tired of being the face of music or even the face of an era; rather he wanted his poetry and film to be taken seriously not just because of the name attached to it. I have no urge to know the man's poetry or his film contributions especially after reading this book. To me it's the same today when someone in the music industry is now starring in films or has their own clothes or perfume line. (You either think you are just too good at everything you have touched or you realize this is the next way to capitalize on your name or image.) So my advice is for someone that enjoys the Doors music, but does not know much about them - it's better to keep it that way. Not every person needs to be a "tortured soul" that has inner demons in order to be deemed as a successful artist. I love Jim's voice, his lyrics, and his energy. I guess I just don't like his story. If anything it makes me appreciate Ray, Robby, and John for being able to keep things in balance to help create as much music as they did.

One of my all time favorite books
how many times in history do the forces of the universe converge and bring together the talent such as this? I read with fascination about Morrison's early life. His study of the great poets and philosophers and his understanding of them. He graduated from Cinematography school at UCLA in the early 60's before meeting up with equally intellectual and talented minds to form one of the most successful groups of the 60's. His professors called his papers "worthy of a dissertation" and assumed that he had researched at the library of congress.
Sure, he is portrayed as a alcoholic and a drug abuser, but this book focused on the positive as well.
imagine the day he reunited with Ray Manzarek on the beach after a year of partying on rooftops and writing poetry. He dropped to his knees in the sand and recited the lyrics to moonlight drive:
Lets swim to the moon
Lets climb through the tide
Penetrate the evening
That the city sleeps to hide
I was hooked and life was never the same................

Absolutely astonishing. Morrison and the Doors are the most interesting in rock history. I’ve been enamored with Jim Morrison ever since I was a teenager and this book moved me more than anything. Long live the Lizard King.