28 DoBR: No One Here Gets Out Alive: The Biography of Jim Morrison by Jerry Hopkins

I grew up on classic rock and other bands from the era like The Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Foghat, Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, The Mamas and the Papas, Jim Croce, Creme, Uriah Heep, Janis Joplin, and so many others. Basically, my childhood was full of the stereotypical soundtrack of the Vietnam War, hippies, and the generation of my father. Of course, my mother’s gospel influences were sprinkled in there with the Statler Brothers and classic country artists like Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, but my father’s music always influenced me more…then again when I think of my mother the smell of the open meadows of the country and peace and quiet to come to mind.

The Doors were always my favorite. In my youth, I didn’t know why just that I really liked them. With age and me being me I looked and learned more into them. It wasn’t until recently I grabbed up this book. It’s a more personal account of the life of Jim Morrison, the singer of The Doors. I had learned Jim was complex, he had to have been to be the way he was, but had no idea how much until this book. It took the legend and made him more human to me. I could understand him better thanks to this read.

I do enjoy a good biography, this is just that.

Synopsis:

No One Here Gets Out Alive is a biography of American singer-songwriter Jim Morrison, lead singer and lyricist of the rock band the Doors. Morrison died in Paris in July 1971 and this was the first biography written about the singer. The first draft was written solely by Jerry Hopkins shortly after Morrison’s death.

Here is Jim Morrison in all his complexity-singer, philosopher, poet, delinquent-the brilliant, charismatic, and obsessed seeker who rejected authority in any form, the explorer who probed “the bounds of reality to see what would happen…” Seven years in the writing, this definitive biography is the work of two men whose empathy and experience with Jim Morrison uniquely prepared them to recount this modern tragedy: Jerry Hopkins, whose famous Presley biography, Elvis, was inspired by Morrison’s suggestion, and Danny Sugerman, confidant of and aide to the Doors. With an afterword by Michael McClure.