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</div>This week I finished the Jim Morrison/Doors bio <em>No One Here Gets Out Alive</em> (I'd just read <em>Vanity Fair</em> by WM Thackeray, followed by A. Alvarez's <em>The Savage God: A Study of Suicide</em>, so I felt entitled to a little fluff). By about fifty pages in, I was wondering how anyone could stand to be around Jim Morrison, much less be friends or in a band with him. What an ass! Interestingly, in the book's "Epilog," one of the authors complained that Oliver Stone's movie <em>The Doors</em> depicted Morrison as an insufferable alcoholic asshole. Hmm. That was the impression I got from the book. Having stepped away from the book and reflected on it for a couple of days, I have determined that if Jim Morrison was really as completely drunk and debauched as the book indicated, there's no way he could have produced the songs and poems that he did&mdash;he simply would not have had time!

The book was fun reading; these trashy rock bios usually are. That's probably why I have such a fondness for them. I've read two biographies of Janis Joplin, the classic <em>Buried Alive</em> and the more recent <em>Scars of Sweet Paradise</em> (picked up cheap at Tower Books' going out of business sale in Nashville). A couple of months ago I finally read Pamela Des Barres' classic groupie memoir <em>I'm With the Band</em>&mdash;rather disappointing, considering how long I'd wanted to read it. I think the book would have been improved had someone encouraged Pamela to skip the excerpts from her teen diary. 

<em>No One Here Gets Out Alive</em> is a classic of the genre, and it suffers from many of the genre's flaws&mdash;foremost among them: bad editing. And I mean <strong>bad</strong> editing. For example, one passage refers to Morrison having curtailed his philanthropic activities when clearly "philandering" is meant. Small things like that. I'm not a huge Doors fan, but reading about them (of course) prompted me take a listen&mdash;good accompaniment for a beer and a sunny spring afternoon. 

Next up, <em>Hammer of the Gods</em>. 