'Listening to the Doors'

From Camille Paglia, at New York Times, a review of Greil Marcus', The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years:

Within an electrifying few years during the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll was transformed from a brash diversion of antsy teenagers into a serious genre that threatened to rival the traditional fine arts. Instrumental in this swift development was a Los Angeles band, the Doors, whose charismatic but tormented and self-­destructive lead singer, Jim Morrison, attained cultlike status after his mysterious death at age 27 in Paris in 1971, only four years after the release of their first album.

Whether rock ever completely fulfilled its early promise is arguable. What seems incontrovertible, however, is that rock’s fabulous commercial success could be ruin­ous to young bands, which were pushed by record companies into the artificial environment of punishing tours in cavernous arenas designed for sports. The gifted Doors were among the first victims of this still near-universal corporate strategy.

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HAT TIP: Kathy Shaidle.