Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 12, 2005 13:10:08 GMT
Interview by Pamela Des Barres
I was one of the lucky hippie-dolls who got to see the Doors play dozens of times. In fact, they were the house band at my second home, the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip, where I saw the Lizard King shred the place on many different occasions. I even made out with him a couple of times! (Hey, it was the '60s.) The Doors' groovy blonde keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, created the sound for those divine few Summers Of Love, filling the air with infinitesimal possibilities; I still feel stoned out of my skull whenever I hear the intro to "Light My Fire."
I saw Jim Morrison stagger down the Strip and slowly succumb to his demons (drugs, but mainly alcohol), and then one day he upped and went to France. I hoped he might finally pull himself together near the fine ghosts of Oscar Wilde, but he wound up lying next to them at the Père LaChaise Cemetery instead. However, nobody wanted to accept that Jim was really gone. An entire passel of people insisted he had never died at all, preferring to believe that he had faked his death and was living on a desert island somewhere, eating mangoes and smoking copious amounts of weed.
Now it's three decades later, and Ray Manzarek has invited me to his lovely Beverly Hills pad to discuss his swell new book, Poet In Exile, a fanciful, spiritual tome in which he addresses the "is Jim alive?" issue with his usual upbeat aplomb. We relax in the elegant living room and chit-chat about the good old daze...
How did you feel when the rumors about Jim being alive started?
Ray Manzarek : I thought it was so bizarre the first time I heard the rumor. That's the deep human need for a dying and resurrecting god. Not that Jim Morrison was a god, but the human impulse for resurrecting the dead--Osiris from the Egyptian, Dionysus from the Greeks, Jesus from Christianity. So it's been 2,000 years since somebody's done that dying-and-resurrecting-god routine. Elvis and Jim are doing that.
It seems people are always looking for some kind of god outsidethemselves.
Ray Manzarek : Yes, that's the problem with Christianity--we've projected everything outside of ourselves, and God is "other" and at a distance. Like that song, "God is watching us from a distance..." What is that all about? Who wrote that?
Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
Ray Manzarek : "I and the Father are One--what I am, so you can become." Christianity is certainly not the religion of Jesus Christ, which was about love. He's the original love-nut. Love they neighbor as thyself, love, love, love...that's what it was all about.
You can't love your neighbor until you love yourself.
Ray Manzarek : Good point.
Your new book is chock-a-block with Truths with a capital T.
Ray Manzarek : The dying and resurrecting Morrison is at it again! I wrote the book for all the people saying, "He's alive, he's alive, he's alive," and I've been denying it. So I said, "I'm not denying it anymore--he's alive!" Now, the important thing is not that he's alive, but what became of him? What did he do for the next 30 years? My hope is that the journey the poet goes through in the book is what Jim would have ultimately gone through in one fashion or another.
It's cool that you take him to India and he winds up on a desert island!
Ray Manzarek : I thought, "Let's make it entertaining, let's take him somewhere." And he says it in the book, "If enlightenment can happen to me, this drunken jerk a--hole, it can happen to anybody!" And that's his message for the new millennium, the new times, the new age--the message the keyboard player wants to bring back with the poet to start the band up again.
You sure gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Ray Manzarek : I actually had the term "New Age" in there, and the publisher said, "We can't use it, because it will be a New Age book." What difference does it make? It's coming, man, you cannot stop the new age--the Aquarian Age. I've been waiting since the '60s.
Me too! Do you really think earth can be a Garden Of Eden again?
Ray Manzarek : Absolutely. The Garden Of Eden is still here. We haven't been expelled from the Garden; the veil of Maya has been put over our eyes and we can't see the Garden Of Eden for the Garden Of Eden! Once we open our hearts, we'll say, "Oh my God, this is the Garden Of Eden, let's start planting as many plants as we can, and stop cutting the trees down!" People ask me, "Ray, what can I do?" First of all, every woman has to plant one tree in their lifetime. The guys have to throw their guns away. That's all you have to do. Very simple.
I was one of the lucky hippie-dolls who got to see the Doors play dozens of times. In fact, they were the house band at my second home, the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip, where I saw the Lizard King shred the place on many different occasions. I even made out with him a couple of times! (Hey, it was the '60s.) The Doors' groovy blonde keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, created the sound for those divine few Summers Of Love, filling the air with infinitesimal possibilities; I still feel stoned out of my skull whenever I hear the intro to "Light My Fire."
I saw Jim Morrison stagger down the Strip and slowly succumb to his demons (drugs, but mainly alcohol), and then one day he upped and went to France. I hoped he might finally pull himself together near the fine ghosts of Oscar Wilde, but he wound up lying next to them at the Père LaChaise Cemetery instead. However, nobody wanted to accept that Jim was really gone. An entire passel of people insisted he had never died at all, preferring to believe that he had faked his death and was living on a desert island somewhere, eating mangoes and smoking copious amounts of weed.
Now it's three decades later, and Ray Manzarek has invited me to his lovely Beverly Hills pad to discuss his swell new book, Poet In Exile, a fanciful, spiritual tome in which he addresses the "is Jim alive?" issue with his usual upbeat aplomb. We relax in the elegant living room and chit-chat about the good old daze...
How did you feel when the rumors about Jim being alive started?
Ray Manzarek : I thought it was so bizarre the first time I heard the rumor. That's the deep human need for a dying and resurrecting god. Not that Jim Morrison was a god, but the human impulse for resurrecting the dead--Osiris from the Egyptian, Dionysus from the Greeks, Jesus from Christianity. So it's been 2,000 years since somebody's done that dying-and-resurrecting-god routine. Elvis and Jim are doing that.
It seems people are always looking for some kind of god outsidethemselves.
Ray Manzarek : Yes, that's the problem with Christianity--we've projected everything outside of ourselves, and God is "other" and at a distance. Like that song, "God is watching us from a distance..." What is that all about? Who wrote that?
Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
Ray Manzarek : "I and the Father are One--what I am, so you can become." Christianity is certainly not the religion of Jesus Christ, which was about love. He's the original love-nut. Love they neighbor as thyself, love, love, love...that's what it was all about.
You can't love your neighbor until you love yourself.
Ray Manzarek : Good point.
Your new book is chock-a-block with Truths with a capital T.
Ray Manzarek : The dying and resurrecting Morrison is at it again! I wrote the book for all the people saying, "He's alive, he's alive, he's alive," and I've been denying it. So I said, "I'm not denying it anymore--he's alive!" Now, the important thing is not that he's alive, but what became of him? What did he do for the next 30 years? My hope is that the journey the poet goes through in the book is what Jim would have ultimately gone through in one fashion or another.
It's cool that you take him to India and he winds up on a desert island!
Ray Manzarek : I thought, "Let's make it entertaining, let's take him somewhere." And he says it in the book, "If enlightenment can happen to me, this drunken jerk a--hole, it can happen to anybody!" And that's his message for the new millennium, the new times, the new age--the message the keyboard player wants to bring back with the poet to start the band up again.
You sure gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Ray Manzarek : I actually had the term "New Age" in there, and the publisher said, "We can't use it, because it will be a New Age book." What difference does it make? It's coming, man, you cannot stop the new age--the Aquarian Age. I've been waiting since the '60s.
Me too! Do you really think earth can be a Garden Of Eden again?
Ray Manzarek : Absolutely. The Garden Of Eden is still here. We haven't been expelled from the Garden; the veil of Maya has been put over our eyes and we can't see the Garden Of Eden for the Garden Of Eden! Once we open our hearts, we'll say, "Oh my God, this is the Garden Of Eden, let's start planting as many plants as we can, and stop cutting the trees down!" People ask me, "Ray, what can I do?" First of all, every woman has to plant one tree in their lifetime. The guys have to throw their guns away. That's all you have to do. Very simple.