>We lost two great ones with both Johnny Cash and
Warren Zevon. My
>favorite hard-boiled/noirish lyrics are from The Door
"Riders on the
>Storm" :
>
> There's a killer on the road.
> His brain is squirming like a toad.
>
>Great imagery there!
I dunno, it seems sort of adolescent, over-blown
pretentiousness to me, like much of his so-called "poetry."
Jim Morrison was a poseur, who was lucky enough to die before
he embarrassed himself any further.
Zevon and Cash were the real deal, grown-ups who didn't have
to resort to drunkenly waving their weenies around to show
how "cool" or rebellious they were. They all went through
their tailspins, but Zevon and Cash persevered, and came out
stronger. It's hard to imagine Morrison ever pulling out of
his dive -- he actually believed his own press too
much.
But then, I've always thought the Doors were over-rated. To
me, "The End," which a lot of fans proclaim their
masterpiece, was sort of hammy and obvious, whereas some of
Zevon and Cash's more simply-stated, almost dead-pan lyrics
were downright chilling.
As in much of hard-boiled, it isn't just what's said, but how
it's said.
Shooting a man just to watch him die and Jeannie and her
father riding off into the night trumps cocktail-weenie
14-minute versions of "I am the Lizard King, I can do
anything" any day.
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