The
late rock critic Lester Bangs once referred to Doors lead singer Jim Morrison
as a “buffoon” and argued that in the history of rock music The Doors were no
more important than the Guess Who. This feeling that The Doors were an average
band led by a bad poet prone to drunkenness has been echoed by many over the
years. Going against this view in his book TheDoors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years, music and pop culture
critic Greil Marcus makes a case for The Doors as a talented, serious and
sometimes revolutionary rock group.
Marcus’
book is not a biography of the band. Instead, most of the chapters are devoted
to an exhaustive critique of an individual song or performance. Quite a few
live recordings are analyzed that only the most fervent Doors fans are likely
to own, but Marcus describes every beat, note and vocal inflection so well that
it isn’t necessary to own these live versions to enjoy the book. The author is
also quick to point out weaknesses in some songs or that some songs are just plain
weak. In an amusing piece on the song “Strange Days,” Marcus writes that the
song turns into trash after its brilliant first seven seconds.
Despite
chapters being devoted to separate songs, The
Doors still works as a whole, in large part because Marcus works in bits of
the band’s history as well as what was happening in the U.S. at the time. While
writing about a moment in the song, “The Unknown Soldier,” Marcus best sums up
his view of The Doors. “It’s not a sound you’ve heard before, or want to hear
again,” he writes. “It was the sound of the times that no one else made.”
