Greil Marcus
discusses
The Doors:
A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years
with an introduction by WERNER SOLLORS
DateDec
1
Thursday
December 1, 2011 7:00 PM |
LocationHarvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 |
Tickets
This event is free; no tickets are required.
|
Harvard Book Store is very pleased to welcome music journalist and cultural critic GREIL MARCUS for a discussion of his newest book, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years.
A fan from the moment the Doors' first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock & roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over. Forty years after the singer Jim Morrison was found dead in Paris and the group disbanded, one could drive from here to there, changing from one FM pop station to another, and be all but guaranteed to hear two, three, four Doors songs in an hour — every hour. Whatever the demands in the music, they remained unsatisfied, in the largest sense unfinished, and absolutely alive. There have been many books on the Doors. This is the first to bypass their myth, their mystique, and the death cult of both Jim Morrison and the era he was made to personify, and focus solely on the music. It is a story untold; all these years later, it is a new story.
"Music critic Marcus offers a relentlessly beautiful and insightful evaluation of the music of the Doors ... but also a complete rethinking of the Doors’ work as an entire story that captures the 1960s as 'a place, even as it is created, people know they can never really inhabit, and never escape'.... He contrasts a fascinating range of official and bootleg live recordings of such hit singles as “Touch Me” to show that by 1970 'a war between the band and its audience was underway, a war whose weapon were contempt on both sides.' This is an impressive tribute." —Publishers Weekly
Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes
As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.
(617) 661-1515
info@harvardsquarebookstore.com
Media Inquiries
(617) 661-1424 x1
tmetal@harvardsquarebookstore.com
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