Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
No Hero but a Little Worship, July 1, 2003
I first read this book in 1984 and I have re-read it several times in the intervening years. The story of how it came to be published is quite well-known. Jerry Hopkins is a journalist who interviewed Jim Morrison on several occasions during his lifetime. After Morrison dies, Hopkins began work on a biography. Following several unsuccessful years of attempting to get the completed biography published, Jerry Hopkins meets Danny Sugerman. Sugerman was a teenage admirer of The Doors and eventually wrangled an office job out of a sympathetic Morrison (a more complete story of Sugerman is told in his autobiography "Wonderland Avenue"). In any event, Sugerman adds his perspective and personal anecdotes to the story and, helped by the resurgence of interest in the music of The Doors, the book is eventually published in 1981. I think the argument that the book is hero-worship is only partially true. Certainly Danny Sugerman had feelings for Morrison that were akin to idolatry and that comes across in the book. On the other hand, Jerry Hopkins was a working journalist and his professionalism and research is also evident. While reading the book it is in most instances possible to determine what was written by Hopkins and what was penned by Sugerman. I suppose this incongruity might be irksome to some but the narrative does flow and does not detract from the overall story of the life of Jim Morrison. In the almost 20 years that have elapsed since I first read No One Here Gets Out Alive I have read everything I could get my hands on that in any way concerned Jim Morrison and The Doors. I have yet to read a more definitive account or one which largely contradicted anything contained in this book. That's not to say that there aren't other good books or interesting perspectives, only that this is the wellspring of Jim Morrison-related literature. This book is of obvious interest to any one who likes the music of The Doors and/or finds Jim Morrison fascinating. I fall into both categories. However, Jim Morrison was not a particularly admirable fellow. He did experiment with drugs, he often treated his friends badly, he was fairly promiscuous (even carelessly impregnating a girlfriend and then shirking responsibility), etc. Of course Morrison did have many good characteristics as well. His love of reading, sense of humor and displays of genuine affection are intermingled with his faults. I believe this book does a generally good job of portraying a reasonable facsimile of Jim Morrison. For me this book sparked an even greater interest in Morrison and The Doors which continues to this day. At the same time, this book also provides a good antidote to hero-worship. As a cautionary note to those who choose to view Jim Morrison through rose-colored glasses, I suggest that you don't read the Hopkins/Sugerman biography. Those that do choose to read the biography carefully will have, as James Joyce wrote, "discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal."
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Teenage Hero-Worship Oozes From This Book, August 21, 2005
This book isn't an objective look at the life of James Douglas Morrison, but who says it has to be? Danny Sugerman knew Morrison and the other Doors, when he worked at Los Angeles' Electra Records in the late 1960's. Sugerman obviously idolized the Lizard King and wrote this book as much as a tribute to his late friend and mentor as a straightforward biography and story of an influential band.
The three separate sections of this book "The Bow Is Drawn" "The Arrow Flies" and "The Arrow Falls" tell, respectively, of the youth and rise of Jim Morrison, the height of his fame as frontman for The Doors from 1967-1971, and finally Morrison's implosion after a half-decade of alcohol and drug abuse, personal neglect and probable psychological illness. The Morrison of No One Here Gets Out Alive is not a flesh and blood human being, but rather the shamanistic figure he clearly was to adolescent Sugerman. As evidence of this, consider once you've read it, how little space is devoted to details of Morrison's death.
This was the first and in some ways both the best and worst book about Jim Morrison. If it does not cover every aspect of his twenty-seven year life with total insight and candor, then it does at least expiate this by giving us a first-hand look at the rise and fall of one of the legends of twentieth-century music. After reading No One Here Gets Out Alive, you'll come away knowing most of what you probably wanted to know about Morrison, and your time will not be wasted. True, some of the darker aspects of the man's character are left out in this exercise in admiration, but I think Sugerman does a good job of getting the "flavor" of the late '60's right, and placing Morrison into it as a person who helped shape the mood and turmoil of that decade in time.
No One Here Gets Out Alive isn't quite the classic today it seemed poised to become when it was first released a generation back, but I think its cult status is assured.
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not so great, March 21, 2001
I bought my first (and only) copy of this book at a used bookstore. It was the only JDM bio there. Now I see why. I did not like this book.This book chronicles Jim Douglas Morrison's life from childhood to his early death, of his meteoric rise to fame and nationwide adoration. The problem is that it gives us little of Jim Morrison below stereotypes and surface. Jim is portrayed primarily as a drunk and a jerk who did drugs and used people and so forth. A more disturbing detail is that the more positive aspects of his life are covered in as little time as possible. We are given plenty of detail as to the nasty breakups with his high-school girlfriend, his argument with Patricia Kennealy-Morrison prior to her abortion, any semi-obscene gesture or word, and his brutal treatment of a one-night stand. Yet we are given virtually no information on his poetry and feelings about that, any brighter shades to his romantic relationships with aforementioned Kennealy-Morrison or Pamela Courson, or indeed of any friends he truly had. Yet, despite the constant coverage of rockstar-badboy antics, Hopkins and Sugarman give him an embarrassing level of adulation. (I could easily psychoanalyze here, but I think I shall not) Had Morrison truly been as they wrote him here, I couldn't imagine anyone being devoted to him. Adding bad to "verse," the writing style is so choppy and bloated at times that I found this book painful to read. It is also uneven: There is a pretty high level of detail throughout much of the book, and then three quarters through it speeds up and dumps the detail. (Did the editor die?) Like "Wild Child," I cannot recommend this book. I advise you to read "Break On Through," which is a far more fluid and balanced account of Jim Morrison's life and death.
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