Having read Sugermen's "No one Here Gets out Alive" I wanted more, but really more depth. An insight into Jim's dismay over attaining stardom in so short an order and then not handling it well, even to the point of hating the audiences that adored him, allowed me to understand his conflicts much better than the previous book, which by comparison was suraface-ey. But I digress.
My favorite passages in the book first had to do with generational separateness felt by each generation:
"Morrison said that each generation wants new symbols to divorce themselves from the preceding generation and he seems to have been right."
Also a discussion of doubt: Riordan understands well the creative process, it's ups and downs and doubt, its ultimate killer. As one who writes and must necessarily question motivation and meaning of given passages, I know that remaining objective and non-judgmental is a continual challenge. This paragraph brought me to tears as I faced that truth head on:
"...that being an artist for the long haul means more than harnessing sudden and terrible inspirations. It means being willing to study and grow in one's character as well as one's art. It means overcoming toil and trouble and mastering that enemy of all creative forces— doubt."
As can be ascertained by these short quotes, this is more than a sensationalistic book aimed at the teen crowd, the ones that demanded "light my fire" and stopped getting that Jim took himself and thus his craft (he fancied himself more the poet than the rock star) much more seriously than the young fans who embraced him as a sex god, would allow.
A final enlightening understanding of how many whom have supposedly made it in the big time of rock and roll, and then creatively dried up may rest in this final paragraph worth noting, though there are many salient observations also worth noting, this one caught my eye:
"One way of looking at Jim Morrison's life and death is as a testimony to that offensive myth that claims artists are somehow a race apart and thereby entitled to the most outrageous actions imaginable in the name of art. The sad truth is that such insane tolerance contributes to their drying up as artists. Most of the rock 'n' roll heroes from the sixties who managed to survive the decade have proven this out by ending up having nothing to say. If everyone around an artist is catering to his whims or sheltering him from the consequences of his actions, he will lose touch, first with his art, then with his audience, and finally with himself."
I could not put it down and even at his low points, he appears to have "broken through!"
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