Post by darkstar on Apr 2, 2005 16:19:32 GMT
IRISH TIMES – JUNE 12, 1999
TURNING THE KEY TO THE DOORS AGAIN
The Indefinite Article
By: John Kelly
Any encounter with a co-founder of The Doors is always in danger of
turning into a long conversation about Jim Morrison. A real live Door
is, after all as close as anyone might get to the shade of the singer
himself, and the temptations to dwell are huge.
In circumstances like these, the death of a lead singer back in 1971
might not be the easiest subject to broach – the keyboard player
perhaps a little weary of endless speculation about the dead handsome
frontman. But not so with Ray Manzarek. Being the sort of person who
says things like, "Man, it's good to be alive!" and
having written a
book called Light My Fire – My Life With The Doors, he is quite
happy
to talk about anything. He is, it would seem, is on some kind of
mission of explanation. He wants, he says, to be a bridge to the 21st
century.
"I'm one of the older acid-heads left over from the
1960's and by God
I'm going to tell you what LSD and psychedelics and spirituality
and
rock `n' roll and good deep sex is all about. And hopefully
you can
begin to lose some of the cynicism. What I'm trying to do with
the
book is help today's young people understand what the 1960s were
all
about – the idea, the underlying philosophy and principals of the
1960s. Wearing flowers in your hair, going to San Francisco, smoking
a lot of dope and getting laid wasn't really the point of the
1960s
that was the point of being young."
"The 1960s was a battle between lovers and the profit-mongers and
the
profit-mongers won. I want to get the lovers back in there! The war
is not over! The war will be concluded in the 21st century and the
lovers always win!"
While quite certain that every interviewer gets a similar spiel,
there is nevertheless relief that Manzarek himself is not another
slow-witted victim of 1960s excess. Energy levels are high – he
is
cheery, warm, talkative and he certainly hasn't been idle. Since
the
Doors finally closed at the start of the 1970s, he has worked as a
record and video producer, making no fewer that three videos about
his old band. He regularly performs at music and poetry events with
the poet Michael McClure and his recorded output includes an
adaptation of Carmina Burana (with Philip Glass). The rest of his
time, however, has probably been spent answering questions about Jim
Morrison.
"I assume that Jim Morrison is gone. But everyone else is so
excited
and concerned about how he died. And of course it's not how a
poet
dies, it's a poet's words that are the important thing. Bit
the words
require reading and understanding and a bit of quiet on your part.
Put your cocaine down, put your crack down, sit down and shut up. The
death of Jim Morrison is a kind of hysteria and what I was trying to
do was dispel the hysteria. There used to be a saying in the
1960's: "May the boy Jesus shut your mouth and open your
eyes."
Manzarek is nevertheless well aware of why Jim Morrison became such
an icon of his times. The tragedy of death certainly sealed it, but
even in life, he was playing to a gallery of very serious devotees.
Image was always central to the Morrison myth and while Manzarek
might well deny it, the famous Jesus picture may well have been a
calculated act. Whatever the intention, to the adoring fan, Morrison
always seemed rather more than just a talented frontman.
"That's in a way what killed him – carrying the weight of
those
projections became very, very difficult for Jim," he says.
"Jim is a great lead singer. I can play the piano. But don't
project
anything else onto me because I have all the failings – I'm
afraid,
I'm a loser, I'm a liar, I'm sniveling and conniving and
I cheat and
lie. I do everything. I'm really a bad human being. We're all
bad
human beings and that's why we're here on planet earth. We
are all
sinners and now we have to rise above that and conquer that within
ourselves."
The book is certainly enlightening on the music itself. The
influences on the Doors are acknowledged with some clarity as
Manzarek explains how they created their sound. And they had very
definite ideas too about what they were trying to achive. Morrison
saw himself as a poet, John Densmore was a jazz drummer, Robby
Krieger played flamenco and bottleneck blues guitar while Manzarek
himself could turn his hand to just about anything. The trick was to
combine it all at a period when the Beatles resigned supreme – a
time
when there was no great room for a Californian band with big ideas.
"The Beatles were basically the cute Fab Four – cute lads
– very,
very good but still the Fab Four. The Stones were on the other side
doing blues and they were cool and we always dug the Stones – but
we
thought quite frankly that we could play better. We were going to do
poetry and rock just the way the beatniks did poetry and jazz. We
wanted to set up a foundation for a very good poet to do his poetry.
This psychedelic, southern American, Tennessee Williams, beatnik
musical foundation. That's what we set out to do. I don't
want to
blow my own horn, but we invented the genre."
Manzarek, perhaps surprisingly, remembers quite a bit about the
1960s. He describes Doors gigs as being "like communion"
– a
spiritual act of oneness with the tribe. We were like tribal animals
dancing and pulsating." He also recalls those infamous nights in
the
Whisky-A-Go-Go where the Doors from California hooked up with Them
from Belfast and the two Morrisons got to sing together on stage. For
Manzarek, the jam between Jim and Van ("those two wild
Irishman") was
one of those occasions where they actually achieved "that Muddy
Waters shamanistic thing on stage."
Ray Manzarek is inevitably tied to the myth of Jim Morrison and the
Doors. But there is a reality here too, Manzarek and Morrison were
best friends from their days at UCLA and together, in the summer of
1965, they excitedly formed one of rock's most significant
groups.
And behind all talk of shamans, drugs, lizards, love and poets, Ray
Manzarek knows, like the rest of us, that the Doors were an
extraordinary and innovative band who blew the roof off American rock.
"Well, it's got to be very entertaining! I think one of the
obligations of any artist is to make something that's going to
make
the audience say, `Wow! Hey what's that?' It can be
hideous, it can
be gorgeous, it doesn't matter. Rock `n' Roll is an art
form and I
think it's extremely serious. But you can also take it to the
other
extreme in which it's nothing but entertainment. A lot of the
rock `n' roll today, the big touring shows and the biy bands
and the
girl bands, that's not much different than the circus. What you
got
from the Doors was real – no kidding. We tried to make it
entertaining but it was real. Like Jim said, `You never know when
you're giving your last concert – so you've got to let it
all hang
out."
*Light My Fire – My Life with the Doors by Ray Manzarek is
published
by Arrow in the UK.
www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0224/
TURNING THE KEY TO THE DOORS AGAIN
The Indefinite Article
By: John Kelly
Any encounter with a co-founder of The Doors is always in danger of
turning into a long conversation about Jim Morrison. A real live Door
is, after all as close as anyone might get to the shade of the singer
himself, and the temptations to dwell are huge.
In circumstances like these, the death of a lead singer back in 1971
might not be the easiest subject to broach – the keyboard player
perhaps a little weary of endless speculation about the dead handsome
frontman. But not so with Ray Manzarek. Being the sort of person who
says things like, "Man, it's good to be alive!" and
having written a
book called Light My Fire – My Life With The Doors, he is quite
happy
to talk about anything. He is, it would seem, is on some kind of
mission of explanation. He wants, he says, to be a bridge to the 21st
century.
"I'm one of the older acid-heads left over from the
1960's and by God
I'm going to tell you what LSD and psychedelics and spirituality
and
rock `n' roll and good deep sex is all about. And hopefully
you can
begin to lose some of the cynicism. What I'm trying to do with
the
book is help today's young people understand what the 1960s were
all
about – the idea, the underlying philosophy and principals of the
1960s. Wearing flowers in your hair, going to San Francisco, smoking
a lot of dope and getting laid wasn't really the point of the
1960s
that was the point of being young."
"The 1960s was a battle between lovers and the profit-mongers and
the
profit-mongers won. I want to get the lovers back in there! The war
is not over! The war will be concluded in the 21st century and the
lovers always win!"
While quite certain that every interviewer gets a similar spiel,
there is nevertheless relief that Manzarek himself is not another
slow-witted victim of 1960s excess. Energy levels are high – he
is
cheery, warm, talkative and he certainly hasn't been idle. Since
the
Doors finally closed at the start of the 1970s, he has worked as a
record and video producer, making no fewer that three videos about
his old band. He regularly performs at music and poetry events with
the poet Michael McClure and his recorded output includes an
adaptation of Carmina Burana (with Philip Glass). The rest of his
time, however, has probably been spent answering questions about Jim
Morrison.
"I assume that Jim Morrison is gone. But everyone else is so
excited
and concerned about how he died. And of course it's not how a
poet
dies, it's a poet's words that are the important thing. Bit
the words
require reading and understanding and a bit of quiet on your part.
Put your cocaine down, put your crack down, sit down and shut up. The
death of Jim Morrison is a kind of hysteria and what I was trying to
do was dispel the hysteria. There used to be a saying in the
1960's: "May the boy Jesus shut your mouth and open your
eyes."
Manzarek is nevertheless well aware of why Jim Morrison became such
an icon of his times. The tragedy of death certainly sealed it, but
even in life, he was playing to a gallery of very serious devotees.
Image was always central to the Morrison myth and while Manzarek
might well deny it, the famous Jesus picture may well have been a
calculated act. Whatever the intention, to the adoring fan, Morrison
always seemed rather more than just a talented frontman.
"That's in a way what killed him – carrying the weight of
those
projections became very, very difficult for Jim," he says.
"Jim is a great lead singer. I can play the piano. But don't
project
anything else onto me because I have all the failings – I'm
afraid,
I'm a loser, I'm a liar, I'm sniveling and conniving and
I cheat and
lie. I do everything. I'm really a bad human being. We're all
bad
human beings and that's why we're here on planet earth. We
are all
sinners and now we have to rise above that and conquer that within
ourselves."
The book is certainly enlightening on the music itself. The
influences on the Doors are acknowledged with some clarity as
Manzarek explains how they created their sound. And they had very
definite ideas too about what they were trying to achive. Morrison
saw himself as a poet, John Densmore was a jazz drummer, Robby
Krieger played flamenco and bottleneck blues guitar while Manzarek
himself could turn his hand to just about anything. The trick was to
combine it all at a period when the Beatles resigned supreme – a
time
when there was no great room for a Californian band with big ideas.
"The Beatles were basically the cute Fab Four – cute lads
– very,
very good but still the Fab Four. The Stones were on the other side
doing blues and they were cool and we always dug the Stones – but
we
thought quite frankly that we could play better. We were going to do
poetry and rock just the way the beatniks did poetry and jazz. We
wanted to set up a foundation for a very good poet to do his poetry.
This psychedelic, southern American, Tennessee Williams, beatnik
musical foundation. That's what we set out to do. I don't
want to
blow my own horn, but we invented the genre."
Manzarek, perhaps surprisingly, remembers quite a bit about the
1960s. He describes Doors gigs as being "like communion"
– a
spiritual act of oneness with the tribe. We were like tribal animals
dancing and pulsating." He also recalls those infamous nights in
the
Whisky-A-Go-Go where the Doors from California hooked up with Them
from Belfast and the two Morrisons got to sing together on stage. For
Manzarek, the jam between Jim and Van ("those two wild
Irishman") was
one of those occasions where they actually achieved "that Muddy
Waters shamanistic thing on stage."
Ray Manzarek is inevitably tied to the myth of Jim Morrison and the
Doors. But there is a reality here too, Manzarek and Morrison were
best friends from their days at UCLA and together, in the summer of
1965, they excitedly formed one of rock's most significant
groups.
And behind all talk of shamans, drugs, lizards, love and poets, Ray
Manzarek knows, like the rest of us, that the Doors were an
extraordinary and innovative band who blew the roof off American rock.
"Well, it's got to be very entertaining! I think one of the
obligations of any artist is to make something that's going to
make
the audience say, `Wow! Hey what's that?' It can be
hideous, it can
be gorgeous, it doesn't matter. Rock `n' Roll is an art
form and I
think it's extremely serious. But you can also take it to the
other
extreme in which it's nothing but entertainment. A lot of the
rock `n' roll today, the big touring shows and the biy bands
and the
girl bands, that's not much different than the circus. What you
got
from the Doors was real – no kidding. We tried to make it
entertaining but it was real. Like Jim said, `You never know when
you're giving your last concert – so you've got to let it
all hang
out."
*Light My Fire – My Life with the Doors by Ray Manzarek is
published
by Arrow in the UK.
www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0224/