No One Here Gets Out Alive

Jerry Hopkins and the late Danny Sugerman's coauthored biography of Jim Morrison, one of the 1960s' most remarkable figures, is an anecdote-filled trip through recollections characteristically made hazy by the passage of time and the ingestion of recreational chemicals. Morrison appears to have been the older brother from hell, from his siblings' accounts, and according to the authors was no less aggressive in his romantic relationships. His gradual maturation from rebellious youth to charismatic poet and musician is expertly charted by Hopkins's research and Sugerman's eyewitness accounts (Sugerman, who was 14 when he was first employed by the singer to compile a Doors scrapbook, later became the band's publicist), which conjure both the chaos and the creativity of the times. A shamanic figure to many, Morrison also emerges from these pages as intelligent, spoilt, and cruel--an artist who was to provide the template of the archetypal rock singer for generations to come. Impeccably researched and vividly drawn, NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE is a revealing glimpse into the life of a Sixties legend.