Book Review: The Doors: The Complete Illustrated Lyrics

By The Doors, Compiled by Danny Sugerman

Title: The Doors: The Complete Illustrated Lyrics

Author/Compiler: Danny Sugerman (introduction), with lyrics by The Doors (primarily Jim Morrison, with some by Robby Krieger)

Publisher: Hyperion Press

Publication Date: October 25, 2006

Purchase Link: Amazon (affiliate link)

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There are books that offer nostalgia, others that offer insight, and some that feel like long-lost companions. The Doors: The Complete Illustrated Lyrics, compiled by longtime Doors associate Danny Sugerman, is all three. It's not simply a collection of words once sung by Jim Morrison and his bandmates—it’s a beautifully curated celebration of a band that walked its own strange, poetic path and invited us to follow.

This book doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive biography or a conventional history. Instead, it invites you into the mindspace of The Doors, to linger over their language, to get lost in their imagery, and to see their words not just as lyrics but as poems, spells, mantras. And then, of course, there’s the visual component: the illustrations, photographs, and design details that make this more than just a lyrics book—it’s a tactile archive of the Doors’ artistic essence.

The introduction by Sugerman sets the tone perfectly. In his tribute, he paints the band as something apart from the typical rock mythology. They weren’t tied to the sunny idealism of San Francisco psychedelia, nor were they part of the British Invasion, nor the folk-rock LA scene that birthed so many of their contemporaries. The Doors, he writes, were “a world unto themselves.” This phrase stuck with me as I made my way through the book. It’s true. They were.