Jerry Hopkins (1935–2018)

To look at this coffee table sized book with Elvis smiling on the cover, you'd think this would be a fluffy story of the making of Blue Hawaii and the comeback special and how Elvis is still a big tourist draw to the islands. Those subjects are covered, but as Hopkins was with Rolling Stone magazine for twenty years, he dug deeper and is sometimes critical about what he finds, especially with the two follow-up Hawaiian movies.
This book is filled with very rare photos that even a big fan may show more never have seen before, such as Elvis aboard the ship to his first visit to the islands in 1957. There's the story about the local rock radio station's publicity stunt for Elvis' first concert there, with the station's engineer dressing like Elvis and wearing a black wig while another employee dressed as Col. Tom Parker. They were chauffeured around the island in a convertible while the station kept reporting on Elvis sightings. "Elvis" came to the radio station, located at the top of a fourteen story hotel, wiggled for the screaming crowd below, then pulled his wig off and dropped it to them. Stunned silence.
Elvis' last visit to the islands, just months before his death and with an entourage of thirty-one people, is remembered by a long-time friend. There's also a few pages of Elvis-in-Hawaii collectibles. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I like to think about what Jim Morrison might have done with the rest of his life if it’s true he faked his death to escape. Painter? Poet? Philosophy teacher?

I’d like his disapproving Dad to know that I’m almost 60 and I can remember so many Doors songs because of the deep and weird lyrics delivered in that soulful voice. There was plenty of talent there, Admiral. Too bad you cared about hair length more than you did your son.

Very readable book examining not only the Greco-Persian Wars but their origins and the origins of the main cast of characters. Hollands writing style does not disappoint and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. I do feel that in some parts, for effect, he gave into sensationalism, but these occurrences are few and far between.