
The Doors
A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $20.97
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Ray Porter
-
By:
-
Greil Marcus
About this listen
The best critic of popular culture in America considers the attraction of the Doors, which has endured despite the band’s short life, sampling the lasting songs and legendary performances that made Jim Morrison and his band rock ’n’ roll legends.
A fan from the moment the Doors’ first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock ’n’ 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 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 of the 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. All these years later, it is a new story.
Griel Marcus is the author of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, When That Rough God Goes Riding, The Shape of Things to Come, Mystery Train, Dead Elvis, In the Fascist Bathroom, Double Trouble, Like a Rolling Stone, and The Old, Weird America. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America. Since 2000 he has taught at Princeton and Berkeley, in Minnesota, and at the New School in New York. His column Real Life Rock Top 10 appears regularly in the Believer. He has lectured at University of California, Berkeley, the Whitney Museum of Art, and Princeton University. He lives in Berkeley.
©2011 Greil Marcus (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Set the Night on Fire
- Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar with the Doors
- By: Robby Krieger, Jeff Alulis
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after 50 years, The Doors’ notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Set the Night on Fire is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors’ most vital years, and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band’s career.
-
-
Robby Krieger says it best!
- By Michael Gokey on 12-07-22
By: Robby Krieger, and others
-
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
- The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock 'N' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N' Roll
- By: Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung contains the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus.
-
-
He Bangs! He Bangs!
- By Charlie Wonder on 08-31-22
By: Lester Bangs, and others
-
Folk Music
- A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs
- By: Greil Marcus
- Narrated by: Ian Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan’s story through seven of his most transformative songs. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.
-
-
Monstrously Pretentious
- By Steve L on 11-06-22
By: Greil Marcus
-
American Prometheus
- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- By: Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.
-
-
An American Tragedy
- By Edith on 12-13-07
By: Kai Bird, and others
-
The Philosophy of Modern Song
- By: Bob Dylan
- Narrated by: Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. And while ostensibly about music, they are really meditations on the human condition.
-
-
Needs chapter headings
- By kaon on 12-22-22
By: Bob Dylan
-
Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You
- A Memoir
- By: Lucinda Williams
- Narrated by: Lucinda Williams
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totaling twelve different places by the time she was eighteen. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career. But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions.
-
-
Someone should have told her
- By Jill on 05-09-23
By: Lucinda Williams
-
Set the Night on Fire
- Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar with the Doors
- By: Robby Krieger, Jeff Alulis
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after 50 years, The Doors’ notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Set the Night on Fire is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors’ most vital years, and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band’s career.
-
-
Robby Krieger says it best!
- By Michael Gokey on 12-07-22
By: Robby Krieger, and others
-
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
- The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock 'N' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N' Roll
- By: Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung contains the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus.
-
-
He Bangs! He Bangs!
- By Charlie Wonder on 08-31-22
By: Lester Bangs, and others
-
Folk Music
- A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs
- By: Greil Marcus
- Narrated by: Ian Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan’s story through seven of his most transformative songs. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.
-
-
Monstrously Pretentious
- By Steve L on 11-06-22
By: Greil Marcus
-
American Prometheus
- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- By: Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.
-
-
An American Tragedy
- By Edith on 12-13-07
By: Kai Bird, and others
-
The Philosophy of Modern Song
- By: Bob Dylan
- Narrated by: Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. And while ostensibly about music, they are really meditations on the human condition.
-
-
Needs chapter headings
- By kaon on 12-22-22
By: Bob Dylan
-
Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You
- A Memoir
- By: Lucinda Williams
- Narrated by: Lucinda Williams
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totaling twelve different places by the time she was eighteen. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career. But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions.
-
-
Someone should have told her
- By Jill on 05-09-23
By: Lucinda Williams
-
Led Zeppelin
- The Biography
- By: Bob Spitz
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 21 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of the definitive New York Times best-selling history of the Beatles comes the authoritative account of the group many call the greatest rock band of all time, arguably the most successful, and certainly one of the most notorious.
-
-
Sex & Drugs & Rock-n-Roll.... in that order.
- By Joe on 01-03-22
By: Bob Spitz
-
Exit Stage Left
- The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars
- By: Nick Duerden
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nick Duerden has spent many years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet. Without exception, they are at their most interesting when they've peaked, and when they are on their way down. In many ways, this is when these former idols are at their most heroic, too, because they reveal themselves not only to be humane and sensitive, but also still driven to create, to fulfil their lingering dreams, to refuse to live quietly.
-
-
Mixed Bag - Mostly Boring
- By Greg Thompson on 10-22-22
By: Nick Duerden
-
Into the Black
- The Inside Story of Metallica, 1991-2014
- By: Paul Brannigan, Ian Winwood
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The second volume of Metallica's definitive biography opens as the band breaks through to mainstream with its fifth album, Metallica (a.k.a. The Black Album), topping the Billboard charts and its hit single "Enter Sandman" dominating the airwaves. By 1993, after a two-year tour, Metallica had become the biggest hard-rock band in the world. Success naturally brought new challenges, and the band ran the risk of alienating its original fans.
-
-
I was hesitant to purchase..
- By James D S on 10-06-18
By: Paul Brannigan, and others
-
Dubliners (Tantor Edition)
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce that was first published in 1914. The 15 stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written at a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.
-
-
Superb reader for Joyce
- By Paul on 06-14-17
By: James Joyce
-
On the Road with Bob Dylan
- By: Larry "Ratso" Sloman
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1975 as Bob Dylan emerged from eight years of seclusion, he dreamed of putting together a traveling music show that would trek across the country like a psychedelic carnival. The dream became reality, and On the Road with Bob Dylan is the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at what happened when Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue took to the streets of America. With the intimate detail of a diary, Larry "Ratso" Sloman’s mesmerizing description of the legendary tour both transports listeners to a celebrated period in rock history and provides them with a vivid snapshot of Dylan during this extraordinary time.
-
-
How to Love this Love-It or Hate-It Book
- By Dubi on 06-06-14
-
Dreaming the Beatles
- A Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
- By: Rob Sheffield
- Narrated by: Rob Sheffield
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn't another exposé about how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles' music on their parents' stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? Find out.
-
-
Wonderful ramble
- By Tad Davis on 05-18-17
By: Rob Sheffield
-
Detroit 67
- The Year That Changed Soul
- By: Stuart Cosgrove
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 16 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's January 1967-and one of the worst snowstorms in decades is blanketing Detroit, Michigan. Berry Gordy, owner of Motown Records, is trapped in his home, unable to do anything about the internal war ravaging his most successful group, The Supremes. Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard are imploding as Ballard battles alcoholism and the aftermath of rape. But soon, even more chaos will descend on Detroit.
-
-
Slightly disappointed
- By Louis G. on 06-08-24
By: Stuart Cosgrove
-
The Double Life of Bob Dylan
- A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966
- By: Clinton Heylin
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2016, Bob Dylan sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reportedly for $22 million. As the boxes started to arrive, the Foundation asked Clinton Heylin—author of the acclaimed Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades and 'perhaps the world's authority on all things Dylan' (Rolling Stone)—to assess the material they had been given. What he found in Tulsa—as well as what he gleaned from other papers he had recently been given access to by Sony and the Dylan office—so changed his understanding of the artist.
-
-
Expansive and well researched.
- By Zack Groom on 07-02-21
By: Clinton Heylin
-
Chronicles
- Volume One
- By: Bob Dylan
- Narrated by: Sean Penn
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One explores the critical junctions in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities: smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough.
-
-
Understanding
- By Charles on 11-24-04
By: Bob Dylan
-
The Family
- By: Ed Sanders
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In August of 1969, during two bloody evenings of paranoid, psychedelic savagery, Charles Manson and his dystopic communal family helped to wreck the dreams of the Love Generation. At least nine people were murdered, among them Sharon Tate, the young, beautiful, pregnant, actress and wife of Roman Polanski.
-
-
The most complete history of the saga
- By Douglas on 07-15-24
By: Ed Sanders
-
The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Rich Cohen
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A book inspired by a lifelong appreciation of the music that borders on obsession, Rich Cohen’s fresh and galvanizing narrative history of the Rolling Stones begins with the fateful meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train platform in 1961 - and goes on to span decades, with a focus on the golden run - from the albums Beggars Banquet (1968) to Exile on Main Street (1972) - when the Stones were at the height of their powers.
-
-
My eyes hurt from constantly rolling them.
- By Skater Dad on 07-04-16
By: Rich Cohen
-
A Long Strange Trip
- The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
- By: Dennis McNally
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 29 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan exploded out of the early 60s roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. Dennis McNally, the band's historian and publicist for more than 20 years, takes listeners back through the Dead's history.
-
-
Amazing story!
- By Michael Knoll on 11-04-18
By: Dennis McNally
Critic reviews
What listeners say about The Doors
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- BASmith
- 10-04-23
Great stuff if you’re willing to to cleanse your doors.
As always with Marcus’s work, less about the band and their endless, mythologized exploits and more about the music, the context in which it was made and heard, and the sociological impact of the music as it was made.
An excellent trip if you’re willing to push past the hippy, happy, bullshit 1960s sheen most people want to gloss over everything from the era with and look at the broader, narrower picture.
The Doors’ story is a dark one, full of excess and tragedy, but out of that came some of the most incisive music and poetry of those last mean years of the sixties. This book captures the spirit of those times, and of The Doors, their music and its impact, beautifully.
Highly recommended.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 01-29-21
depressing
this read was a real bummer, and it's just full of negativity. It was obvious to me that the author is not a doors fan!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ashlea
- 12-20-11
The worst book ever written
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
If you buy this book hoping to learn anything about the doors then don't bother. There is no factual information about the doors, no real research whatsoever. A total waste of time I'm afraid.
What was most disappointing about Greil Marcus’s story?
This book is the self indulgent ramblings of the author with no clear or relevant information to impart to the listener.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
No.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful