Greil Marcus on 5 Mean Years of Doors Songs
Prolific rock journalist, music critic and historian Greil Marcus is well known for his scholarly take on rock music. His career writing for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Creem and other respected publications, as well as his long list of acclaimed books (Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, and several books on Bob Dylan) have earned him a following all his own. His column “Real Life Rock Top 10” appears regularly in The Believer, and now he has just published a new book about the music of the Doors. No, it’s not a biography, or a historical account. It’s a series of essays about twenty to thirty specific songs. He recently appeared on Ron Bennington Interviews to talk about the book, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to 5 Mean Years.
Marcus said he was inspired to write the book when he noticed that the Doors music was getting frequent air play on FM radio. In fact, what really surprised him, was just how good it all sounded. “Especially Roadhouse Blues, LA Woman, these are songs that weren’t hits when they were released but over 40 years they’ve become hits. They’re on the radio all the time and they sounded bigger and kind of, more ambitious and demanding than they had ever sounded to me before.”
He said that he picked his song list for the book based simply on which songs he had something to say about. “I’m writing about 25 to 30 songs, not a whole lot more than that. Sometimes for seven, eight, nine pages; sometimes for one or two. And it’s putting together a picture of the music– what it was about– what it was for. It’s not a question about where it went because it’s all still here.”
His interest in the Doors started back in 1967 when they were touring the ballrooms every weekend. “My wife and I went every chance we got. By June, by July, by the fall, they were big then. They were stars. They were a band everyone was talking about.” That was the year they exploded, he explained. “Light My Fire was this enormous inescapable hit. It wasn’t just number one, it kind of owned the country for most of the year.” But of course, it didn’t take long before the problems began. They didn’t appear at the Monterrey Pop Festival, even though they had appeared at a much smaller festival the weekend before:
I don’t know why they weren’t there. Was it because they were too dark? Or too scary. Or they wanted more money than the festival was willing to give them? But they weren’t there and it was kind of silly that they weren’t. I went to a festival in the Bay Area the week before, and they were there. They were at that one. It was a little mini festival of mostly dodgy embarrassing acts cobbled together by a local radio station.
And they weren’t at Woodstock either. Marcus explained:
They weren’t at Woodstock because of the incident in Miami, when at this riotous concert, Jim Morrison who was consumed with hate for himself and the band and the audience ended up exposing himself, later getting arrested. Their concerts were banned all over the country for months, and Woodstock didn’t want them. They didn’t know what Jim Morrison might do; they didn’t know what the band might do. They were too scary for Woodstock.
And the reviews after their first two albums fell off as well. “But if the reviews of their 3rd and 4th albums– Waiting for the Sun and The Soft Parade were bad”, Marcus added, “you know…they were bad albums. They were mushy, misbegotten, trip, stumble and fall records.”
He describes Morrison as “an extraordinarily handsome, magnetic, confusing, alluring figure,” but discounts the idea of a mistique or mythology as contributing to the Doors vitality today. “I think it comes down to the music. If the music didn’t sound good, if it didn’t give people something they’re not getting elsewhere, if it didn’t tell a story they’re not hearing somewhere else, then nobody would care, nobody would be listening; the songs wouldn’t be on the radio.”
Why a Doors book now? “I don’t know the answer to that. Part of it is, I’m a writer and I’m always looking for another project. It’s more that than sinking into a mood and then needing to satisfy that mood by writing a book. This book on the Doors…I never intended to write this. It just struck me hearing them on the radio, wondering I wonder if I could pull this off.”
Surprisingly it’s not the lyrics that attract him to certain songs:
It’s never lyrics. If a song doesn’t get me musically– and more than that– if the singers voice isn’t interesting, isn’t making something happen for me then I’ll never even bother to hear what the lyrics are. You know, I fell in love with Roxy Music’s More Than This when I first heard it. I just fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep and woke up. That song is so dreamy and just the flow of it is so delicate and satisfying. I didn’t even know that song had lyrics until I saw Jim Murray do it as karaoke in Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation. I mean, I knew Bryan Ferry was singing something, but I never paid any attention to it.
Could a Bryan Ferry book be next for Griel Marcus? “Hey, that’s an idea. I haven’t thought of that before. That would be great.”
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