Greil Marcus Breaks Through The Doors

Dmitry Kiper, a current nonfiction fellow, reviews The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years: “In the twenty-five minutes it takes to drive from Berkeley to San Francisco—in the spring of 2010—Greil Marcus made a curious discovery. Flipping through radio stations in search of a good song, he was surprised to notice that The Doors, whose reign lasted only from 1966 to ’71, were still getting plenty of airtime. You know the songs: ‘Light My Fire,’ ‘L.A. Woman,’ ‘People Are Strange,’ ‘Love Her Madly,’ ‘Riders on the Storm,’ ‘Break on Through,’ ‘Roadhouse Blues,’ ‘The End.’ In his new book on The Doors, Marcus wonders, ‘What were all these songs doing there? And why did most of them sound so good?’” Read More