Post by darkstar on Jan 2, 2005 0:12:08 GMT
THE DOORS TAPES
By Richard Hogan
Circus Magazine – January 31, 1981
For the late Jim Morrison, there was never enough time to wallow in the mire. The next whisky bar was always just around the corner – as so was the next little girl. Morrison unerringly found his way there. In the words of Doors organist Ray Manzarek, there was nobody more poetic, and there was nobody crazier than Jim Morrison. He was talking about going all the way to the edge and looking over the other side.”<br>
This adventurousness, this flying in the face of convention and danger alike, characterized Morrison and the Doors from their beginnings on a Venice, California beach. Everything they would do, no matter how bizarre or suggestive it might seem to those who watched them, was forecast in their earliest numbers – like the Bertolt Brecht penned “Alabama Song.” The whisky and woman braggadocio of 1967 became the weakness of 1968, and in the end, a 1971 death sentence for Jim Morrison.
After almost a decade of silence between Circus Magazine and the surviving Doors, Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger consented to a pair of interviews that put into perspective the strange mixture of glamour and hellishness that defined their years with the Doors. Except in the public imagination, Jim Morrison is dead; the three remaining Doors, however, are alive and well and living in Los Angeles.
Affable, soft spoken Robby Krieger has an album in the works. Though he hasn’t yet pacted with a record company, he’ll be rocking out with an assortment of oldies and contemporary songs, and expects to go on the road with that material after releasing his already completed jazz LP, which feature Apocalypse Now keyboardist Don Preston. Percussionist John Densmore has been drumming with the Bess Snyder Dance Company, and hopes to break into films as an actor. Ray Manzarek is producing a new band, the Zippers, in L.A., and is waiting to strike a deal for a movie version of No One Here Gets Out Alive. Former Doors producer Paul Rothchild is a t work on a record with Fast Fontaine, the L.A. lungsman who sang with Krieger, Densmore and Manzarek at a recent Doors reunion at the Whisky A Go Go.
The responses of Krieger and Manzarek show that there’s still light to be shed on a subject that has already filled three biographies and reams of newsprint. Manzarekl speaks in a articulate and sometimes over rehearsed way, his words resonating like this of some deep voice from the grave. Krieger is less than public relations man, and more the technical musician who seems to have taken the Doors experience in stride. He aims mainly to please himself – not some amorphous public – with his guitar and his songs.
Manzarek looks back, organizes and justifies; he probably could have been a social activist if he hadn’t been bitten by the Bill Evans/Jack Kerouac music and poetry bug. Ray’s junior by sevens years, Krieger (34) seems more relaxed. The viewpoints of the two rock innovators don’t always dovetail, and the occasional contradictions in their answers are more illuminating than any prefabricated official position put forth by the Doors’ office or their biographers.
CIRCUS: Was there a turning point for the Doors, a time when you realized things were getting out of control and going downhill?
Krieger: There’d always be a good show here and there, but basically when we moved into the really bug halls (mid-1968) that’s when it got bad.
Manzarek: I don’t think I ever felt worse on a stage than I did at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium (Summer 1967). I didn’t know whether I was playing Forest Hills or Forest Lawn Cemetery. We were in hell. What an awful gig. That was one of the all time lows.
CIRCUS: Who was taking the band downhill?
Manzarek: Jim was starting to drink a lot. That was when we got worried that he would do something inadvertently because he was drunk.
Also the establishment. In places like the Ed Sullivan Show, the rock band was treated like the geek act. All they cared about were Topo Gigio and the “lovely Kessler Twins.” It became a matter of life and death with the establishment and the Doors: They were gonna stop the Doors; the Doors “went too far” and “they” had to be stopped.” It wasn’t that Jim was doing anything. (It was the way they perceived him.)
CIRCUS: Was Jim’s drinking a reflection of the repression?
Manzarek: Of the pressure (the repression created), sure.
CIRCUS: What other pressures were he and the Doors under?
Manzarek: Personal pressures. Trouble with his old lady (Pamela Courson). He was always having fights with her. She was always trying to get him to quit the Doors and stay with her. He’d say, “But I am the Doors.” And when his poetry book was reviewed as “good writing for a rock star.” That killed him. He never called himself the Lizard King”; people couldn’t see beyond the image, and that got to him also.
CIRCUS: What happened to Pamela when Jim died?
Krieger: (Reportedly) she died of a heroin overdose (in 1974) in L.A. (Hesitantly) She was very depressed after Jim died. Every time I saw her, she was really sad. And I can see her turning to drugs.
By Richard Hogan
Circus Magazine – January 31, 1981
For the late Jim Morrison, there was never enough time to wallow in the mire. The next whisky bar was always just around the corner – as so was the next little girl. Morrison unerringly found his way there. In the words of Doors organist Ray Manzarek, there was nobody more poetic, and there was nobody crazier than Jim Morrison. He was talking about going all the way to the edge and looking over the other side.”<br>
This adventurousness, this flying in the face of convention and danger alike, characterized Morrison and the Doors from their beginnings on a Venice, California beach. Everything they would do, no matter how bizarre or suggestive it might seem to those who watched them, was forecast in their earliest numbers – like the Bertolt Brecht penned “Alabama Song.” The whisky and woman braggadocio of 1967 became the weakness of 1968, and in the end, a 1971 death sentence for Jim Morrison.
After almost a decade of silence between Circus Magazine and the surviving Doors, Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger consented to a pair of interviews that put into perspective the strange mixture of glamour and hellishness that defined their years with the Doors. Except in the public imagination, Jim Morrison is dead; the three remaining Doors, however, are alive and well and living in Los Angeles.
Affable, soft spoken Robby Krieger has an album in the works. Though he hasn’t yet pacted with a record company, he’ll be rocking out with an assortment of oldies and contemporary songs, and expects to go on the road with that material after releasing his already completed jazz LP, which feature Apocalypse Now keyboardist Don Preston. Percussionist John Densmore has been drumming with the Bess Snyder Dance Company, and hopes to break into films as an actor. Ray Manzarek is producing a new band, the Zippers, in L.A., and is waiting to strike a deal for a movie version of No One Here Gets Out Alive. Former Doors producer Paul Rothchild is a t work on a record with Fast Fontaine, the L.A. lungsman who sang with Krieger, Densmore and Manzarek at a recent Doors reunion at the Whisky A Go Go.
The responses of Krieger and Manzarek show that there’s still light to be shed on a subject that has already filled three biographies and reams of newsprint. Manzarekl speaks in a articulate and sometimes over rehearsed way, his words resonating like this of some deep voice from the grave. Krieger is less than public relations man, and more the technical musician who seems to have taken the Doors experience in stride. He aims mainly to please himself – not some amorphous public – with his guitar and his songs.
Manzarek looks back, organizes and justifies; he probably could have been a social activist if he hadn’t been bitten by the Bill Evans/Jack Kerouac music and poetry bug. Ray’s junior by sevens years, Krieger (34) seems more relaxed. The viewpoints of the two rock innovators don’t always dovetail, and the occasional contradictions in their answers are more illuminating than any prefabricated official position put forth by the Doors’ office or their biographers.
CIRCUS: Was there a turning point for the Doors, a time when you realized things were getting out of control and going downhill?
Krieger: There’d always be a good show here and there, but basically when we moved into the really bug halls (mid-1968) that’s when it got bad.
Manzarek: I don’t think I ever felt worse on a stage than I did at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium (Summer 1967). I didn’t know whether I was playing Forest Hills or Forest Lawn Cemetery. We were in hell. What an awful gig. That was one of the all time lows.
CIRCUS: Who was taking the band downhill?
Manzarek: Jim was starting to drink a lot. That was when we got worried that he would do something inadvertently because he was drunk.
Also the establishment. In places like the Ed Sullivan Show, the rock band was treated like the geek act. All they cared about were Topo Gigio and the “lovely Kessler Twins.” It became a matter of life and death with the establishment and the Doors: They were gonna stop the Doors; the Doors “went too far” and “they” had to be stopped.” It wasn’t that Jim was doing anything. (It was the way they perceived him.)
CIRCUS: Was Jim’s drinking a reflection of the repression?
Manzarek: Of the pressure (the repression created), sure.
CIRCUS: What other pressures were he and the Doors under?
Manzarek: Personal pressures. Trouble with his old lady (Pamela Courson). He was always having fights with her. She was always trying to get him to quit the Doors and stay with her. He’d say, “But I am the Doors.” And when his poetry book was reviewed as “good writing for a rock star.” That killed him. He never called himself the Lizard King”; people couldn’t see beyond the image, and that got to him also.
CIRCUS: What happened to Pamela when Jim died?
Krieger: (Reportedly) she died of a heroin overdose (in 1974) in L.A. (Hesitantly) She was very depressed after Jim died. Every time I saw her, she was really sad. And I can see her turning to drugs.
