Hopkins Jerry | Sugerman Daniel: Nitko odavde ne izlazi živ

Jerry Hopkins, Daniel Sugerman: Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive

Translation from English: Karmela Cindrić

Jim Morrison was a man who neither wanted nor could agree to compromises, a man who refused them, either in relation to himself or his art. And therein lies his innocence and purity – his simultaneous blessing and curse. Go all the way or die trying. All or nothing. Ecstatic risk. He did not want to create ready-made goods or lower the price of what he wrote, he could not feign despair or simulate ecstasy. He didn't just want to entertain or "work out; he was brilliant and desperate, motivated by a constant need to test the limits of reality", questioning the sacred, exploring the profane. And that's why he was crazy... crazy about creativity, crazy about authenticity. But because of the same traits, he became unstable, dangerous and conflicted with himself. He sought solace and relief in the same elements that initially inspired him and helped him create: opiates.

The influence of William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Friedrich Nietzsche is reflected in Jim Morrison's poems. Remembered for his theatrical, Dionysian, provocative and even obscene stage performances - there were often more policemen on stage than band members - Morrison looked for inspiration in the work of the French playwright Antonin Artaud and in the shamanism of American Indians. Genuinely interested in mythology, mysticism and symbolism, he read Frazer's The Golden Bough, and the name of the group The Doors, of which he was the singer, was derived from the title of Aldous Huxley's essay, The Doors of Perception. Trying to get through them himself, he did not hesitate to consume huge amounts of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs, so that he eventually succeeded: he broke through to the "other side" as a twenty-seven-year-old (‟The gate is straight / Deep and wide / Break on through to the other side...‟). He was buried in Paris, at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, and his company includes Marcel Proust, Frederic Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf... The cult biography of Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman, No One Gets Out of Here Alive, written in the spirit of the era, without a hair on the tongue, is essential reading for all admirers of this true great of rock music.

Jerry Hopkins is the author of 36 books. Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive, Morrison's New York Times bestseller biography, and Elvis: The Biography were the first books written about the two musicians, and together they have sold more than six million copies. In addition, Morrison's biography was the main source for Oliver Stone's film, The Doors. Other people whose biographies Hopkins has written include Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Raquel Welch and Don Ho. He was a correspondent and editor for Rolling Stone magazine for twenty years, a writer and producer for Mike Wallace, Steve Allen and Mort Sahl, as well as for ABC Television and Universal Studios. From 1993 he lived in Thailand, in an apartment in Bangkok and in a house on a farm near the Cambodian border, where he wrote mainly about Southeast Asia. He passed away in 2018.

Danny Sugerman was born in Los Angeles in 1954. He saw Jim Morrison and the Doors in concert in 1967 and became their constant companion. Landing a job at the Doors' West Hollywood office, he began answering fan mail and worked his way up to the position of junior assistant. Recognizing his writing abilities at such an early age, Morrison encouraged the young man to write about what he loved most: music. Sugerman published his first article when he was fifteen years old in Creem magazine. At the age of twenty-four, he wrote the book Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive, which made it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. His second book, The Doors Illustrated History, the official "book of memories" authorized by the Doors, has sold more than half a million copies. Ten years after the publication of Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive, Sugerman's autobiographical novel Wonderland Avenue was published to great acclaim. His next book, Appetite for Destruction, is a combination of biography and essay, based on the popular and controversial band Guns N' Roses. He died in 2005.