Rolling Stone journalist and biographer Jerry Hopkins

Rolling Stone journalist Jerry Hopkins published more than 1,000 magazine articles over his lifetime, covering everything from food, travel and flower power to the life and culture of Asia and Hawaii.

However, it was his books about rock music and acting legends which won him worldwide acclaim – and earned him the title “the dean of the pop biographers”.

Hopkins, who has died aged 82, published 39 books, including several international bestsellers.

His cult classic, No One Here Gets Out Alive, a biography of rock singer Jim Morrison, was number one on the New York Times bestseller list in 1980 (remaining on the chart for nine months) and bounced back to number two in 1991 when it was the primary source for Oliver Stone’s film The Doors.

His 1971 book, Elvis: A Biography, became a 12-hour radio series broadcast by the BBC.

Other subjects included Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Raquel Welch and Yoko Ono and his books were published in 23 countries and 16 languages.

Born in New Jersey, he went to a Quaker school and got his start in journalism sending freelance articles to the Village Voice while he was still at university.

He worked as a news reporter and as a television writer and producer before quitting TV to open the first head shop in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s.

He was LA correspondent for Rolling Stone from 1967-1969 and Mc’ed the first love-ins in the city at the height of the hippie era.

Hopkins left Rolling Stone temporarily in 1969 to write Elvis: A Biography (1971), then returned as the magazine’s London correspondent in 1972 when he began researching his Morrison biography.

It was rejected by more than 30 publishers before publication in 1980 and was credited by many with helping kick-start The Doors’ revival as well as inspiring the rock biography publishing genre.

He moved to Honolulu, where he published several books about Hawaiian culture, before moving to Thailand in 1993.

There, 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). He married four times and is survived by his wife Lamyai.

Mr Hopkins was 82.