By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times     Friday, January 7, 2005

LOS ANGELES --  Danny Sugerman, who as a teenager followed his fascination for the classic ’60s rock band the Doors into the group’s inner circle, where he found a surrogate father in singer Jim Morrison as well as a lifelong calling, died Wednesday at his home here of lung cancer. He was 50.

   Sugerman was 12 when he was taken to a Doors concert, where he was immediately swept up in Morrison’s charisma.  He began taking the bus from his family’s home to hang around and assemble scrapbooks at the group’s office in what is now West Hollywood.

   “He was very persevering,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger recalled Thursday.   “We’d tell him to leave, and he’d always come back. ... He was just this crazy kid who really loved the Doors.”

   The group eventually put him on the payroll and assigned him to answer fan mail.   Morrison took him under his wing, sneaking him into rock clubs and strip joints and introducing him to literature, philosophy and drink.

   Morrison died of a heart attack in Paris in 1971, and by that time Sugerman had developed a serious drug habit that he would struggle with until 1986.

   “If rock was a religion, then drugs were the sacrament,” Sugerman said in a 1989 Los Angeles Times interview.   “It’s simple -- when I was a kid, everyone told me, ‘Stop. Stop. STOP.’   And Jim Morrison was the first person to say, ‘Go. GO. GO!!!!’ ”

   While the three surviving Doors -- Krieger, drummer John Densmore and keyboardist Ray Manzarek -- continued on for two more albums, Sugerman stayed on the rock scene, writing reviews and articles for music publications and founding a fanzine called Heavy Metal Digest.

   When Manzarek quit the Doors in 1973, Sugerman became his publicist and manager in his solo career.   He also worked with renegade rocker Iggy Pop.   Eventually, Sugerman’s role evolved into caretaker of the Doors’ legacy, overseeing a multitude of reissues and compilations of the band’s records over the years.

   He co-authored, with Jerry Hopkins, the 1980 Morrison biography “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” a bestselling book that, along with the appearance of the band’s “The End” over the opening sequence of “Apocalypse Now,” helped spark a resurgence of interest in the Doors.   He was also a consultant on Oliver Stone’s 1990 biographical film “The Doors.”

   “He was the force behind the band, really,” Densmore said Thursday.   “Here’s a band who hasn’t toured -- me, Robby, Ray and Jim, I mean -- in what, 35 years?   And each generation got turned on to us via Danny.   We’re talking passion here.”

   “He’s the one who got Elektra (Records) to put out ‘The Doors’ Greatest Hits,’ ” Manzarek said. “That and ‘Apocalypse Now’ and the book, all of it together, it was like a Triton missile.   Boom, boom, boom. ...  That’s what we were setting out to do, to always have the Doors there for a new generation to discover.”

   Sugerman compiled two other Doors-related volumes and wrote a book about Guns N’ Roses, and he chronicled his drug years in the 1989 memoir “Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess.”

   Reviewing the book in the Times, Carolyn See wrote, “I don’t think I’ve ever read a more eloquent explanation of the glamour, the pull, the loveliness, the insistence, of the drug life. ... This is such a smart book.”

   Sugerman is survived by his wife, the former Fawn Hall, who was Oliver North’s secretary during the 1980s’ Iran-Contra scandal.   His other survivors are a brother, Dr. Joseph Sugerman, and a sister, Nan.

Danny Sugerman Dies at 50

Doors manager, writer succumbs to cancer

   Sugerman, who died at his home on Wednesday, was responsible for reigniting interest in the band with the best-selling 1980 Doors memoir "No One Here Gets Out Alive," which he co-wrote with veteran music journalist Jerry Hopkins.

   He also served as a technical advisor on Oliver Stone's 1991 movie "The Doors," which starred Val Kilmer as the group's magnetic late frontman, Jim Morrison.

   "Danny was the No. 1 Doors fan of the world," Doors drummer John Densmore told Reuters.  "I told him no one loved Jim as much as he did."

   Indeed, Sugerman stated in his Doors book, "My personal belief is that Jim Morrison was a god."

   The Doors, famed for such tunes as "Light My Fire" and "Riders on the Storm," enjoyed a wild heyday in the late 1960s.  Sugerman went along for the ride, hooking up with the band when he was 14 after seeing them play a show.

   He answered fan mail, compiled a scrapbook, and then Morrison suggested putting him on the payroll as a management associate.  He went on to manage the affairs of Densmore, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger after Morrison died of heart failure in 1971.

   Densmore, who visited Sugerman shortly before he died, said he had been sick for some years.  "Cigarettes took him out," he added.

   Sugerman is survived by his wife, Fawn.