Story of Pop

The Radio One Story of Pop, Part 23, published by Phoebus Publishing in December 1973, is a UK weekly partwork issue priced at 25p. This is the twenty-third installment of a 26-part series billed on the cover as "The First Encyclopedia of Pop in 26 Weekly Parts." The Doors are the lead cover feature, with Andrew Weiner contributing the interior piece titled "Thinking-mans Rock." International pricing is printed along the bottom margin, listing Australian, New Zealand, South African, and North American editions at varying prices, confirming wide distribution beyond the UK. A French-Canadian issue was released in mid-1975 under the name Histoire Du Rock.

The cover photograph dominates the upper two-thirds of the page and shows all four Doors posed together, smiling, in what appears to be a candid or loosely staged outdoor setting. From left to right: Robby Krieger in a light jacket, Ray Manzarek in a dark top with an open-collar shirt, Jim Morrison center with long dark curly hair and a grey-toned jacket, and John Densmore on the far right in a tan coat and dark sunglasses. The photo has the warm, slightly saturated color palette typical of late 1960s press photography. The masthead sits above the photo in bold, stylized lettering; "Story of Pop" is rendered in a playful script that shifts from green through gold to blue and red, with starburst accents and a gold disc graphic at the center. "The Radio One" appears in plain block text at the upper left, and "The First Encyclopedia of Pop in 26 Weekly Parts" runs in clean white type at the upper right. The lower portion of the cover transitions to a white band carrying the issue's contents list in bold black type: "THE DOORS: Thinking-mans Rock," "JAMES BROWN: Mr Dynamite," "THE FOUR TOPS: Super Soul," and "PLUS: On Stage, Glitter Rock & more." The Part 23 designation and the 25p price appear in a boxed call-out to the right of the contents. A strip of brick texture runs along the very bottom edge, adding a slightly graphic, editorial quality to the layout. The overall design is energetic and commercial, consistent with the UK pop press aesthetic of the early 1970s.

Andrew Weiner's feature, "Thinking-mans Rock," uses The Doors as a focal point for examining the intellectual and literary pretensions that distinguished the band from their Los Angeles contemporaries. By December 1973, Morrison had been dead for over two years, and the surviving trio had already dissolved the band. This timing matters for collectors: the piece is retrospective rather than current-events journalism, which gives it a slightly elegiac character unusual for a weekly partwork aimed at a broad pop audience. Weiner was writing for readers who needed context as much as celebration, and the article sits within a format that was itself encyclopedic in intent. The framing of The Doors as thinking-man's rock, rather than simply as a psychedelic or hard rock act, aligns with the kind of critical reappraisal that was beginning to take shape in the UK press during this period. For those building a research library around the band's critical reception, this piece represents an early example of that reframing, and sits well alongside resources like The Doors Artistic Vision and Bank of America of Louisiana for understanding how the band's image was being constructed and debated in print. The partwork format means this issue was sold weekly at newsagents and was not designed for long-term archival preservation, so copies in genuinely clean condition are harder to locate than their original print run might suggest. Compared to dedicated Doors coverage in contemporaneous titles like Teenset (March 1968) or European publications such as Poppin, this issue offers a more retrospective and analytically framed treatment. The cover placement is significant: being the lead feature on a Phoebus partwork with wide UK and Commonwealth distribution gave The Doors considerable visibility at a moment when the band no longer existed as a functioning unit. The Doors 13 compilation had been released the previous year, so there was a commercial context for renewed press interest.

This is a common UK newsstand partwork with no known limited variant. Copies surface regularly through UK ephemera dealers and online marketplaces, though clean examples without tanning, creasing, or address labels are increasingly difficult to pin down. For collectors focused on UK press coverage of The Doors, particularly retrospective critical writing from the early post-Morrison period, Part 23 earns a place on the shelf. Its cover alone, with all four band members prominently featured, makes it one of the more visually appealing periodical finds from 1973.