The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years
Greil Marcus is our greatest historian, but he isn鈥檛 interested in generals and battles. To Marcus, the figures who define us are the ones we can barely see. Thus in 鈥淭he Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice,鈥� he all but yawns as he describes Lincoln delivering his Second Inaugural Address in 1865, because his eye is caught by a figure in the seats above the president. It is John Wilkes Booth, come to size up his prey.
鈥淚nside the great national ceremony of continuity and renewal,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢here was a man walking alone at night through a forest as bats flew through the trees.鈥� To read Marcus is to get a glimpse of the headless man who flits by your bedroom window as lightning crackles behind him, and if others choose to draw the curtain against that figure straight out of Irving and Poe, it鈥檚 Marcus鈥檚 job to remind us that he鈥檚 always in the shadows, waiting.
That鈥檚 why, when it comes to art, Marcus is more interested in what he calls termite art, a term he takes from film critic Manny Farber, who likes painting, movies, and music that 鈥渇eels its way through walls ... with no sign that the artist has any object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art, and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement.鈥� And that鈥檚 why Marcus is so passionate the Doors, a band known mainly to today鈥檚 listeners through the three-minute versions of their songs on oldie stations rather than the longer pieces of their albums and live shows.
Of such a song, 鈥淟.A. Woman,鈥� Marcus writes: 鈥淎s the performance takes shape all four musicians sound as if they are so sure of the song they can trust it to keep going even if they seem to stop playing it. And they do seem to stop, over and over again, less playing the song than listening to it.鈥�
If you think that doesn鈥檛 sound like the best way to woo listeners, you鈥檙e right. Or at least it鈥檚 not an approach designed to please fans who only want to hear radio hits. Some of the best passages in The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years are the extended descriptions of what Marcus calls 鈥渢he drama of a band at war with its audience,鈥� in which lead singer Jim Morrison and listeners exchange taunts that would be unthinkable today at a concert by Usher or Taylor Swift.
Then again, in an interview with 鈥淩olling Stone,鈥� Morrison said, 鈥淵ou give people ... what they think they want and they鈥檒l let you do anything.... [But] if instead you hold a mirror up and show them what they鈥檙e really like, what they really want, and show them that they鈥檙e alone instead of all together, they鈥檙e revolted and confused. And they鈥檒l act that way.鈥�
Like Morrison and the Doors, Marcus likes to set the reader up and then go his own way, and when I say he鈥檚 a writer鈥檚 writer, I mean that he has a knack for saying whatever he wants but in a way only he can pull off.聽 Thus in mid-book he riffs on lesser-known bands (Moby Grape) and movies (鈥淧ump Up the Volume鈥�) and completely obscure novels (Wayne Wilson鈥檚 鈥淟oose Jam鈥�). He gets especially windy on art, as when he starts on a discussion of Eduardo Paolozzi鈥檚 1947 collage 鈥淚 Was a Rich Man鈥檚 Plaything鈥� and goes on for another 16 pages, bringing in architecture and pop art and comic strips before he returns in an oh-yeah-I-almost-forgot way to the Doors, though in a paragraph or two he鈥檚 left them for avant-garde artists Wallace Berman and Shawn Kerri.
The thing is, it works. A three-minute song is comforting, and so is a tight prose argument; both distract us briefly, console us, and return us to our everyday lives. Both are escapist, whereas Marcus and his subjects want us to look at life, not avert our glance.
I bet Greil Marcus wishes the world operated according to the terms laid out by Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, 鈥渨ith malice toward none,鈥� as the president said, and 鈥渨ith charity for all.鈥� And I bet he wishes John Wilkes Booth had never been born. But he was, and he grew up to be a killer, and he slew the best leader we ever had. And I don鈥檛 know what kind of house Greil Marcus lives in, but I bet that, like the rest of us, he gets an annual termite inspection. That doesn鈥檛 mean he wants there to be such a thing as termites; it simply means he knows they exist, and that they know about us already, so we better find out everything we can about them.
All good artists show us what the world is like, but artists like the Doors, in Morrison鈥檚 words, show us what it鈥檚 really like.
David Kirby is the author of 鈥淟ittle Richard: The Birth of Rock 鈥榥鈥� Roll.鈥�
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