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Jerry Hopkins | |
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Born | Camden, New Jersey, U.S. | November 9, 1935
Died | June 3, 2018 82) Bangkok, Thailand | (aged
Occupation | Author, journalist |
Nationality | American |
Website | |
jerryhopkins |
Elisha Gerald Hopkins (November 9, 1935 – June 3, 2018) was an American journalist and author best known for writing the first biographies of Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison of the Doors, as well as serving for 20 years as a correspondent [1] [2] and contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine. He also penned several other biographies, wrote history and humor, and was a writer-producer for Mike Wallace, Steve Allen and Mort Sahl. [3]
Hopkins published 37 books and an estimated one thousand magazine articles. Some of his books have been translated into over a dozen languages.
Hopkins was born in Camden, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Haddonfield, a town founded by Quakers. His parents operated a dry cleaning store.
He attended a Quaker school through 6th grade and public schools through 12th. He earned a BA in journalism from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, in 1957 and, following a short period as a reporter for the Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and brief service in the US Army, an MS in journalism from Columbia University in New York in 1959.
After freelancing articles to the then-young Village Voice while at Columbia, he worked as a reporter for the Times-Picayune and as news editor of WWL Radio in New Orleans (1959–1961). He joined Mike Wallace as a writer-producer in New York for one year (1961–62) then moved to Los Angeles where he was a talent coordinator and writer-producer for Steve Allen (1962–1964). He also wrote and produced television programs for Mort Sahl, ABC-TV and Universal Studios (1964–1966; 1971). He wrote his first books during this period, an as-told-to autobiography of a health faddist, Bare Feet and Good Things to Eat (1965) and an astrological spoof, You Were Born on a Rotten Day (1969).
From the mid-1960s, when he left television to open the first head shop in Los Angeles and the third in the nation (1965, Newsweek citation) and then wrote for Rolling Stone [1] [2] as Los Angeles correspondent (1967–1969), he wrote features and columns for alternative newspapers, including the popular "Making It" column for the Los Angeles Free Press . He contributed articles to TeenSet magazine and its successor AUM. He MC'ed the first love-ins in Los Angeles, edited a collection of material from the underground press, The Hippie Papers (1968) and wrote a history of rock and roll, The Rock Story (1970).
Leaving Rolling Stone temporarily in 1969 to write Elvis: A Biography (1971), it was while serving as the magazine's London correspondent (1972) that he began researching his Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive. It was rejected by more than 30 publishers before publication in 1980, when it topped the New York Times bestseller chart and was credited by many with helping kick-start the Doors' revival as well as inspiring a new publishing genre, the rock biography. A sequel to the Elvis biography, Elvis: The Final Years (1981) followed, along with biographies of Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, and Raquel Welch, the latter of which was authorized but not published.
By now he had moved to Honolulu, where he edited a monthly newsletter about Hawaiian music and dance and published several books taking Hawaiian culture as their subject, including The Hula (1981), a history; How to Make Your Own Hawaiian Musical Instruments (1988); Elvis in Hawaii (2002); and Don Ho: My Life, My Music (2007). He also was an editor at Pacific Business News in Honolulu and a speechwriter for Mayor Frank Fasi.
After moving to Thailand in 1993, he wrote for numerous travel, food and airline magazines and collaborated with photographer Michael Freeman on Strange Foods: An Epicurean Adventure Around the World (1999), which was expanded and reissued as Extreme Cuisine with a foreword by Anthony Bourdain (2004). A collection of expatriate profiles, Bangkok Babylon (2005); a book of stories and essays, Thailand Confidential (2005); and Asian Aphrodisiacs (2006) followed. His 37th book, profiling Western novelists who helped forge the Asian myth, Romancing the East, was published in 2013. [3]
Hopkins was married four times, to Sara Cordell (1959–1963), Jane Hollingsworth (1968–1976), Rebecca Erickson Crockett (1980–1988); he had two children by his second wife, Erin Hendershot (b. 1970) and Nick Hopkins (b. 1972), and eight grandchildren. He and his wife, Lamyai (m. 2003), a citizen of Thailand, divided their time between a flat in Bangkok and a house and farm six hours away in rice country near the Cambodian border.
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".
The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential rock acts of the 1960s; mostly due to Morrison's lyrics and voice, along with his erratic stage persona, and the group was widely regarded as an important part of the era's counterculture.
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Robert Alan Krieger is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter best known as the guitarist of the rock band the Doors; as such he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Krieger wrote or co-wrote many of the Doors' songs, including the hits "Light My Fire", "Love Me Two Times", "Touch Me", and "Love Her Madly". After the Doors disbanded due to the death of Jim Morrison, Krieger continued his performing and recording career with other musicians including former Doors bandmates John Densmore and Ray Manzarek. He was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
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Ed Caraeff is an American photographer, illustrator and graphic designer, who has worked largely in the music industry. He has art directed, photographed and designed hundreds of record album covers from 1967 to 1981 for numerous artists, including Bee Gees, Elton John, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night, Tom Waits and Dolly Parton. His photography has appeared on the cover of four issues of Rolling Stone and is included in the permanent collection of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The 27 Club is a list consisting mostly of popular musicians, artists, or actors who died at age 27. Although the claim of a "statistical spike" for the death of musicians at that age has been repeatedly disproven by research, it remains a cultural phenomenon, documenting the deaths of celebrities, some noted for their high-risk lifestyles. Names are often put forward for inclusion, but because the club is entirely notional, there is no official membership.
Wally Heider (1923–1989) was an American recording engineer and recording studio owner After a career as an engineer in the 1940s [source?] and 1950s, he was instrumental in recording the San Francisco Sound in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 albums were recorded in his studio including Volunteers by Jefferson Airplane, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere by Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Electric Warrior by T. Rex, Tupelo Honey by Van Morrison, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Amazing Grace by Aretha Franklin and Abraxas by Santana.
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Live at Winterland is a live album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It compiles performances from the band's three concerts at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where they played two shows each night on October 10, 11 and 12, 1968. The album was released posthumously by Rykodisc in 1987 and was the first Hendrix release to be specifically conceived for the compact disc format.
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Peter Langley Jones was a British journalist, author, editor, promoter and presenter who wrote mainly on show business matters, especially pop music, for magazines including Record Mirror and Billboard. He was involved in the early careers of both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, pseudonymously writing the first book-length biographies of both bands.
TeenSet was an American music and fan magazine published by Capitol Records. Beginning in 1964 as a free album insert for fans of the Beach Boys, the magazine was sold separately in 1965 and it grew in popularity. It was introduced as a vehicle to promote the Beach Boys and other Capitol artists, but in the hands of editor Judith Sims, the magazine broke new ground, rising above its fan club origin. Quickly establishing itself as the gateway to the inner circle of the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, TeenSet parlayed this trust to introduce their readers to new artists, in the process greatly increasing the visibility of Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Janis Joplin and the Mothers of Invention. The magazine benefited from articles by music critic Sue Cameron, London correspondent Carol Gold, psychedelic maverick Robert Shea, and photographs from Jim Marshall and Michael Ochs. It began as an early teen girls' magazine but by 1968 was shifting to focus on late teen girls and young women in their early twenties.