Doors Press Conference London 1983

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors Press Conference
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2:11:83.
The conference was chaired by Robin Denselow, at that time,presenter of BBC-2's "Eight Days A Week".

Denselow: Well, hello and welcome to the I.C.A. Doors extravaganza. My name is Robin Denselow. These are The Doors ... On drums - John Densmore; guitar - Robbie Krieger and keyboards - Ray Manzarek ... who are here to promote some exciting new Doors artefacts ... a new live album of recently discovered Doors tracks, "Alive She Cried" and yet another book on The Doors with lots of pictures - "The Doors" by Danny Sugerman, who of course, worked on the best seller, "No One Gets Out Of Here" ... "No One Here Gets Out Alive".

Ray: ... "No One Here Gets Out Alive".

Denselow: I was very close.

Ray: "No One Here" ... No one in this room is gonna get out alive. However, we'll all have lunch later.

Denselow: Let's start with the album now on release. Why has it taken so long for these tracks to suddenly get discovered at this time? ... Ray?

Ray: Yes, exactly right ... um,we knew we had these tracks. We knew we had some live material in the can. These are some out-takes and bits and pieces that were accumulated over the years 1968, 1969, 1970 but the tapes ... somehow a stack of tapes mysteriously got lost in mis-filing. It was sort of like "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". You know, the last scene in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". They take that box and they just stick it somewhere at the end of everything and it's just in the middle ... Well, that's how our tapes were. They were mis-labelled and they were in some storage facility in Los Angeles and we'd been looking for them for a long time. We knew they existed; we didn't know where they were. We hired a private investigator (laughter from audience) ... he wasn't able to find them. I think he was the wrong fellow. It was a French detective.

Robbie: Clouseau ... (laughter).

Ray: Probably that's why he couldn't find them - but finally, a fellow who works for us offered a small reward to various storage facilities and said, "If you can find these tapes, there's some money in it for you" - and a day later, there they were ... the tapes popped up.

Denselow: So, they were just sitting around in a warehouse, were they?

Ray: They were mis-labelled and mis-filed and an enterprising young man said, "I found a stack of tapes, they're not labelled properly and we don't know what they are, so why don't you come down and listen to them and take a few with you and see what they are" ... and eureka! That was it. We said: "There they are, the mysterious missing tapes". So we went into the studio and started listening to them with Paul Rothchild, our producer and culled out what we considered to be the best takes, the best songs on the tapes, along with Danish TV footage. We did a TV show in Denmark the same time we did The Roundhouse here; after we did The Roundhouse with Jefferson Airplane.

Denselow: Back in '68 ?

Ray: You were there; we were there. was anyone else at The Roundhouse? Raise your hand anybody ... oooh ... okay ... good ... good.

Robbie: Nobody's that old.

John: They weren't born ...

Denselow: Is it just a mysterious co-incidence that the book and the album came out at the same time? Was this part of a cunning Doors marketing strategy?

Ray: A cunning Doors plot to manipulate the media ... No, unfortunately it was not planned. It was so beautifully timed that I wish we had planned it but it's pure serendipity. The book was actually supposed to be released in the summer. We had a June release in mind and for one reason or another it just staggered on and was finally released now ... So,it makes a nice package ... what you want to know about The Doors is in the live album and the book.

Denselow: Let's take the album first, with some songs that you haven't recorded before. "Gloria" for instance which apparently was a common warm-up number. Robbie, was this something you'd always played to warm-up, back in the early days?

Robbie: Yeah, we played "Gloria", like when we played bars, you know we'd have to do a lot of sets and we didn't have that many songs so we'd play songs like "Gloria", some Wilson Pickett type songs and stuff like that.

Denselow: This was when? Sort of '67?

Robbie: Late '66 before we really made an album or anything and then ... so what happened was we were doing a show in L.A. at the Aquarius Theater at our soundcheck. We were gonna record the show you know, so at the soundcheck we ended up doing "Gloria" and that's where this cut came from.

Denselow: You knew Van Morrison quite well, didn't you? Jim Morrison and Van Morrison used to get appallingly drunk together according to many accounts.

Robbie: Well, we played the Whiskey-A-Go-Go with Them when Van Morrison was still with Them, and one night at, I think it was the last night of the gig, we all got pretty soused and we ended up all getting on stage together and playing "Gloria". It's too bad nobody taped it.

Denselow: What about the other things here? There's a blues. Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" with John Sebastian playing harmonica. Where was that from, John ...?

John: New York ... Felt Forum.

Denselow: So, that was fairly late on, then?

John: Yeah, we always loved the blues and finally got to put one down.

Denselow: And what about the rest of the stuff on here? This is what, mostly European sessions ... ?

Ray: Los Angeles. Tracks recorded in L.A., New York City, Detroit, Boston and the Danish TV show, which hopefully we'll see a clip from later on. "Love Me Two Times" was recorded live and we cut it together with some stills and scenes from "The Illustrated History of The Doors" and you will see Jim Morrison in a never before seen clip.

Denselow: Wonderful ... and there's some ... for Doors rarities there's a "Texas Radio And The Big Beat" recorded in ... '68 ... two, three years before it was actually put on record. Is that right?

ROBBIE: That's right. The "Texas Radio..." that's on "L.A. Woman" was quite different from this one and this here was the first time I think that we ever did "Texas Radio ..." on stage and it evolved quite a bit.

Denselow: Were lots of songs like that? You used to have them in the set and sort of play around with them and eventually they'd pop up on record.

Ray: When we first started playing "The End" it was three minutes; four minutes long. Jim saw it as a simple little goodbye love song. It was a love song and he was saying goodbye to his lover ... "we'll never meet again" and playing at The London Fog in L.A. We had to play four sets a night so we had to stretch out ... we had to do something to fill the time. We had a repertoire of maybe ten, twelve songs so we had to do something to fill in four sets so "The End" somehow just expanded itself to the 11 minute song it finally became.

Denselow: What was the longest version you ever played? It must go a lot over ...

Ray/Robbie: Twenty minutes.

Denselow: Right, so anything else about the album of special note before ...

Ray: Marvellous album ... "Light My Fire". The longest version of "Light My Fire" - 10 minutes; 9 minutes and 51 seconds worth of music. Jim does "The Graveyard Poem" in there ...

Denselow: Let's ... First, have we any questions about the album?

Q: Is "Love Me Two Times" live on the album 'cuase there's no cheering or is it taken from the soundcheck?

Robbie: Those are from a TV show.

Ray: Yeah, it's live from TV. They were filming it and recording it at the same time.

Robbie: It's ten o'clock in the morning. No people there. It's quite odd really.

Denselow: This is what, just after you'd done the The Roundhouse. Did you enjoy The Roundhouse? I mean ... I remember at the time it was a very, very, quiet show. I mean, Jim Morrison said afterwards he was delighted it was so quiet and everyone was being well behaved and listening so intently but after hearing stories about what had been happening in The States, to see all the audience sitting there well behaved on The Roundhouse floor under television lights. I was a little disappointed at the time so I remember.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

John: Yeah, I heard that comment. I think we played great. It was a great night but everyone just sort of stared as oppossed to "Aargh!!".

Ray: Well, we'd heard a lot about you wild people over here and we thought we were coming to a hotbed of primitive ecstacy and we were actually quite surprised ... "Wait a minute, this is the crazy English audience we've been hearing about in California" ... and everyone was very reserved and very proper and very correct but it was a great show.

Denselow: You played very well, certainly ...

Ray: Psychedelic West Coast comes to London with The Doors and The Jefferson Airplane.

Denselow: There were rumours about rows going on backstage about who was going on first. Is That true?

Ray: There were, yes. "We're gonna go on first" ... "No you're gonna go" ... "We're the headliners" ... "We're biggest" ... "No, we're bigger" ... "We're bigger than you are" ... "Our record is higher in the charts" ... "No,ours is" ... "ours came out first". So, you know, we tossed it around back and forth.

Denselow: So, how was it decided?

John: We opened one night, they opened the next.

Robbie: We always had a kind of running battle with The Jeffesron Airplane because we were both California groups and it was a kinda rivalry.

John: Where are they now?

Ray: Hey, Jefferson Airplane is now the Starship ... very big. Very big on MTV. MTV ... hopefully you'll be getting a television music channel out here soon. It's a lot of fun in Los Angeles. Music videos just run all day and all night. Four o'clock, five o'clock A.M., if you want to turn something on. There it is ... music ... rock and roll ... and we get to see Kajagoogoo (laughter), Duran Duran, Boy George. The Eurythmics are great. Annie Lennox is terrific ... Um, lots of heavy metal being played in Los Angeles at the moment. Heavy metal seems to be very big in The States. Is heavy metal as big ...?

Denselow: It stays pretty big, yes.

Ray: Is Def Leppard ...

Denselow: Not as big as in The States but they'll come back one day and attempt it. To totally change the subject: do you enjoy the "English Invasion" so called in America, because you've just been producing a band called "X", who have a line in one of their songs, "Will the last American band to be played on the radio, please bring the flag". Is that the way you feel about it?

Ray: Well, actually it's a little tough. We're of course, enamoured of your accent, that's what it is. This is the mother country speaking the mother tongue, so anything you do is okay with us. The bands have been really good, though. I've enjoyed what's been coming over. It's very exciting. MTV has been really exciting and although Spandau Ballet is not my favourite group, I enjoy seeing the videos ... you know. Just keep sending them on.

Denselow: Right, let's turn to the mighty book ... lots of pictures and clips from various people's cuttings books and things like that, which makes something of a good companion volume to the Hopkins book. Let's talk a little bit about the very early days of The Doors. Ray, you started that off first by meeting Jim and inviting him to join a band when he was doing ...

Ray: Well, Jim was at the film school at U.C.L.A. We were both going to be film makers and ... early to mid sixties when the "nouvelle vague" exploded ... and the cinema just really became a marvellous artform and we went to U.C.L.A. to study film ... and right in the middle of doing it; along comes The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and the first British invasion as we called it. Merseybeat and everything else and of course, we were enamoured of the whole thing, long-haired guys coming out of art school from London.
"Hey, wait a minute, we're just like those people. Those guys are just like us. We're just like them and we graduated U.C.L.A. Jim was going to New York City and I said, "Well,I just got to California a couple of years ago, I'm gonna stay out here and enjoy the sun and try to get a job or something. God knows whay I'm going to do with my life; school is finished" ... and I said, "If I'm ever in New York, I'll look you up" and he said "okay man, see you later".
About a month and a half later, I'm on the beach. Middle of July sometime, in California. Sitting on the beach thinking what I'm going to do with my life and who comes walking down the beach but the shaman himself. This transformation ... Jim transformed himself. He went inside of a cocoon and came out absolutely gorgeous. He'd lost maybe thirty pounds. He was living on a friend's rooftop ingesting massive quantities of a certain psychedelic substance and didn't eat ... was living off his baby fat and he was approximately 165, 170 pounds at U.C.L.A. and then went down to maybe 135. Six feet tall, lean, hard ... his hair had grown. He looked like David, he looked like Michelangelo's David. I said, "God, you look great man, what you been doing?" He said, "Nothing, I haven't been eating" and he said, "I've been writing some songs" ... songs, aaahh.
He knew I was a musician and had played in some bands ... The Turkey Joint West with Rick And The Ravens and various gigs around town ... and Jim would come down every once in a while and get up on stage and sing Louie Louie and he said, "Here's my song" ... (quotes from "Moonlight Drive") and it blew me away; incredible! ... amazing! Amazing words. Then he did a couple of other songs. He had "A Little Game" and I forget what the rest of the songs were that he had at that particular time and I said, "That's amazing". Just wonderful lyrics. The best lyrics I've ever heard for rock and roll songs. "Why don't we get a band together?" He said, "That's exactly what I want to do". I said, "Well,what do we call the band?" and he said, "We're gonna call it The Doors". I said, "What the ... wait a minute ... you mean like in your head?" and he said, "That's it, The Doors". I said, "Oh ... great name ... like doors opening and closing" and he said, "Right, that's it".
And at the time, I was involved in the Maharishi's meditations, seeking to find enlightenment through non-L.S.D. sources, after taking acid and getting the shit scared out of me. You know, seeing God and then being thrust into the pit of Hell and realising I couldn't take this drug anymore. If I was gonna find God, I had to do it some other way because ... I got a glimpse of the whole thing, but then L.S.D. gives you both sides of it - Heaven and Hell. And in the Maharishi's meditation class, you took a series of six lectures before you were given your magic word - your mantra ... and who should be in that class but these two guys. It's amazing! I walked up to John ... somebody pointed out that he was a drummer ... Take it from there ...

John: And he said, "Let's form a rock and roll band" but he said, "The time's not right yet. I'll call you in a few months" ... That's odd, we could play next week ... He called me in a few months and we were playing with Ray's brothers but they sort of dropped out. Jim, I think was maybe too much for them.

Ray: I think Morrison was just too much.

John: And so, I brought Robbie round ... who played his bottleneck and Ray went crazy.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Denselow: What did you think of Morrison when you first met him? Was he a sort of startling character?

John: He was shy. He sort of stood in the corner of the garage. We played in the garage ... uh, kinda sung to the corner.

Denselow: Could he sing in the early days?

Robbie: Not really, no. First gig we had was at a party some friends of my parents threw. All I remember was that Jim got so drunk, he swallowed a quarter.

John: On purpose; he went, "See this" ... (makes swallowing movement) and they're big too. It's bigger than a twenty (pence).

Denselow: And he kept singing?

Robbie: This was after the singing.

Denselow: You started off from there ... and then playing dodgy L.A. clubs like The London Fog and other such legendary sleazy dives.

Robbie: I'm gonna read ... [Manzarek: our first review]. This is my favourite. It's The Doors at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. We're the house band. It says ...

Robbie goes on to quote from Pete Johnson's review in Los Angeles Times.

Denselow: How much of that was true?

Ray: Correct ... absolutely correct.

John: I remember when we read that, you know. It was supposedly negative but the description ... it was great. I'd like to see that.

Denselow: What was your aim as a band when you first started ... Morrison talked an awful lot later about the grand things of taking audiences where they hadn't been before. Using music in completely different ways ... all this sort of stuff. Was that actually verbalised between you?

Robbie: Naw ... we just wanted to have a good time, you know ... tour the country and be the American rock and roll band.

John: Yeah ... I think the choice of not to have a bass player was kind of ... we wanted to be different that way.

Denselow: Was that deliberate or just because you couldn't find somebody that fitted in?

John: Well, we auditioned bass players, a girl in fact ... but we sounded like The Rolling Stones ... sort of blues. So, we opted for a keyboard bass.

Ray: Well, fortunately that instrument came along. Up until I saw that thing in existence ... we thought we'd have to have a bass player. As John said, we did sound a lot like The Animals ... but wait a minute ... The Rolling Stones already exist and The Animals already exist ... There's no point us sounding like they sound and all of a sudden, there it was - that sweet little piano bass. It was about that big and it was like a third of a Fender Rhodes piano and it was all tuned an octave lower ... and I thought, "Okay, I can do that. You know I'll play the left hand, I can play boogie woogie piano, anyway, so I'll just do that ... right hand plays the organ" and that was our sound, like magic ... boom ... there it was.

Robbie: Plus it left a lot of room for me to fool around , you know, without the bass.

Denselow: But there was no definite idea of what you were going to do as a band as per Jim Morrison's idead of what the band should be about. Was that a gulf between you and him as to the aims of the whole band that you wanted to be an ordinary band and he wanted to something rather strange or rather different with it?

Robbie: No, I think in the beginning, Jim didn't have those kind of ideas, you know, he just wanted to have some fun and be in a rock and roll band but I think as soon as the songs started to develop, then his ideas started developing more than we ll as a group started to recognise what our purpose would be as The Doors.

Denselow: All that stuff about dealing with the sexual neurosis of a crowd.

Robbie: Yeah, all that stuff ... good stuff.

Ray: Right, remember the sixties. there were dreams in the sixties. We all thought we could change the world. Make it a fairer place if not a better place because certainly the trees grow whether you love them or not ... but we were gonna make it a fairer place for brother and sister. There was a lot of that in the sixties. Don't forget it by the way ... don't forget it. Give your other brother a fair shake, you know. That's what it was all about ... and musically, we were trying to immerse ourselves in this void.
This was a psychedelic time. The people on the stage here were all quote,unquote "acid heads". Jim Morrison had taken L.S.D. ... by ingesting that chemical, you get in contact with forces beyond yourself; your own ego ... and needs and wants, don't mean that much any more. I think we tried to do that in the music. To just give ourselves to the music. It was an unspoken thing ... we never really talked ... People have asked, "well did you guys talk about it and decide what you were going to do?" It was an unspoken thing. We didn't really discuss what we were gonna do. Jim had the words at the beginning, although later on, Robbie wrote a lot of the songs too.
Robbie wrote "Light My Fire" and Robbie would instigate a lot of the songs but we all just automatically knew the purpose of the music ... the purpose of a band playing together. It was this relationship between four men. I hate to say this but it was making love to each other ... We had this experience where psychologically, psychically, we merged our selves into this thing that was Doors music and the first time we played. When Robbie joined the band or came down to audition as it were ... and the first time we all played together we played "Moonlight Drive", passed around a joint, got a little high ... and Robbie put that bottleneck on his finger and just went across the strings and it was like Kundulini was uncoiling up and down my spine. Jim was ecstatic. Jim said, "We're gonna have that guitar on every single song" (laughter). Robbie said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I play a lot of ways, I don't just play bottleneck". Jim was completely in love with the bottleneck ... and then we played "Moonlight Drive" and it was one of the great experiences of my life.
I'd played music for a long time ... studying piano since I was seven, eight years old; played with a lot of bands; a lot of people. I never had that thing happen where individuals disappear and just the music came together. It really locked in. After playing one song together, the four of us ... we all sort of looked at each other and we knew, without speaking, without saying anything ... it was all in the psychic contact between the eyeballs. We all knew we had it. We knew that this was strong; that this was powerful; that this was going to go out into the world and we're still here talking about it to you, you know. It must have ... I think it worked.

Denselow: What about writing the songs? Were they rehearsed a great deal first? A lot of them are very, very precise, very carefully done ... listening to them now. I mean the pauses, the silences that made a great deal of difference to The Doors' music. It's very, very different to anything that's happened before or after in many ways .. a sudden long silence with a complete change of pace. Was that something tat happened spontaneously or something that you knew was going to happen at certain times? How did that work?

John: We rehearsed every day for eight months about and then we got our first gig and then, four months after that, we got a record contract.

Robbie: But the thing is most of the songs evolved when we played them offstage and those pauses and things like that, came about as an effect of dramatic ... You know, wanting to be dramatic on stage. You know, you can rehearse songs as much as you want in a garage or whatever, but once you get them onstage ... that's where they really get worked out.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Denselow: What about the whole drama side and the rock theatre but? I remember Morrison throwing himself on the ground and writhing around in "The Unknown Soldier" at The Roundhouse which, at the time was a very unexpected thing for people to do. That wasn't the sort of David Bowie rock theatre that came later. Was that something he personally evolved? Was that something you talked about at all or he just did it?

Robbie: He just did it, we never talked about it.

John: He just slammed himself on the ground. I looked over the drums ...

Ray: Waow! ... Jim are you all right? A lot of people thought he got electrocuted (laughs). I dropped the amplifier top to make a load gunshot and people swore he was electrocuted. Certain places we played, people would come up to the stage. Like ... help him! help him! The man is dead!
Uh, Jim on stage would become another person. Jim had that quality in him. Perhaps you know the story from "An American Prayer" of the dead Indians on the highway. When he was five years old and he was with his mother and father driving on the Arizona desert at dawn, they came across this carload of Indian workers ... American Indians and the car had overturned and the Indians were scattered on the highway bleeding to death ... and he told me this story long before we put it on record and he said, "The soul of one of those Indians jumped into my body and he's still in there". I thought to myself, "I believe it ... I don't believe it". It's another Morrison story ... it's bullshit, or it's absolutely the truth and I've never been able to decide which.
I think perhaps, after seeing him on stage as he progressed through his career, I think it was perhaps the truth because Jim became possessed. He became another person. He went outside of himself. He became a shaman. Shamanistic ecstacies took over. Dionysus was on stage, dancing wildly, madly. He was capable of anything on stage and would do anything as we all know by Miami, Newhaven. The man was actually arrested on stage for going too far. I don't think any performer has actually been arrested on stage for talking. Not for doing anything, just for talking to the people. Just talking to the police, he was arrested at Newhaven.

Denselow: Was this because he didn't want to be treated just as a great rock star? Which was the way he was being treated. He wanted to be seen as something even more than that ... and that's what led to the whole Miami incident.

Ray: It was much simpler. He wanted to be thought of as a poet. We got together to make poetry and rock and roll. The same way the beatniks made poetry and jazz in the fifties, we were gonna make poetry and rock and roll. Jim was a poet. That's what he was ... that's what he was for all of us. He was a poet. He was the lyricist of the band ... the lead singer ... and a poet.
We didn't care about the fact he could be an entertainer ... the fact that whatever he did on stage really didn't matter as long as the poetry was there ... as long as he was with us ... and we were with him in the music; and it all happened together. And when he became Jim Morrison, The Lizard King; psychedelic acid rock; the kings of psychedelic rock; kings of orgasmic rock. He said, "Wait a minute, that's not me, that's some overblown thing that the press has put together. I'm a poet"... and he was rejecting, I think in Miami, exactly Robin ... I think he was rejecting that whole public image the press had created and he was trying to be the poet. That's why he went to Paris.

Denselow: He'd been to see a revolutionary theatre troupe, The Living Theater, the night before which had allegedly affected him. Is that correct?

Robbie: It's possible.

Denselow: Tell me what it was like being on stage at Miami. What actually happened? ... Robbie for a change.

Robbie: Well, all I remember was it was this giant place and it was totally oversold and there were millions of people in there and it was very hot. You know how Miami gets when there's no air-conditioning ... and Jim was late. He missed his plane and by the time he got there, he was totally out of it and drunk. So, we finally get on stage and we did a couple of songs and Jim was missing the cues. He couldn't even remember the words. It was horrible, you know ... but pretty soon, everything just started going crazy. There was a cop on stage ... Jim was throwing the cop's hat in the audience and the cop was throwing Jim's hat in the audience and finally the audience started to come up on the stage and I thought the whole thing was going to collapse ... so, I think John and I ean up the stairs to get out of there.

John: I remember being hit with a can of paint. Someone threw paint which splattered all over us.

Robbie: Anyway, it was totally nuts, you know and then we were up on top on the balcony and I remember looking down and Jim had somehow gotten thrown out into the audience and it was like a mass of Babylon or something. There's just a snake of people kinda hanging on to Jim and he was going through the audience. It looked like a big snake ... a whirlpool of people.

Denselow: What was he trying to do?

Robbie: I don't know, he was just having fun. He loved to invite the audience up on stage ... everybody get down, you know.

John: I remember jumping off the stage and I landed on the soundboard. It was real chaotic.

Robbie: Anyway, after that, Jim somehow made it up to the dressing room and the cops were up there and we were all joking around and having beers and pretty soon everyone went home.

John: And we paid the cop for his hat, yeah.

Robbie: Then about a week later, we get the news that there's a warrant out for Jim's arrest and we couldn't figure out what ...

Denselow: This was obscenity and exposing himself ... all sorts of stuff like that.

Ray: Simulation of oral copulation.

Denselow: From your priviledged position on stage, I mean ... the eternal question ... Did he flash or did he not flash?

Ray: I didn't see it.

John: Well, as you said at the trial, "No judge, I didn't see Mr. Morrison's organ ... I play organ" (laughter).

Ray: And the judge went, "Order in the court, order in the court". I don't think it ever really happened. I think it was a mass hypnosis. I think the audience had a vision of Lourdes (laughter). It wasn't a catholic audience and they were ready. They were ready for the devil. They saw snakes. They saw serpents. They saw the devil ... psychedelic ... you know ... all that Jim ... was culminated in Miami. The acid rock, orgasmic rock, The Lizard King. Miami is a place of swamps. Lizards abound in Miami or in Florida, so they're well aware of that sort of primeval, primordial sense of lizard.
You know, we're all lizards inside. We come out of that ... you know, that evolutionary thing. It's the way it happens. We move out of various stages into other stages. We all have that reptilian sense about us. The Doors would immerse themselves in that reptilian mind to play their music. And they knew that was coming to see them and he told them, "I'm gonna pull it out. I'm gonna show it to you. I'm gonna show you what you've come to see".
The people didn't come to listen, they came to watch a spectacle ... to watch a show and The Doors were never a show. The Doors were music. We'd play music ... that's what we did and Jim said, "You haven't come to see a good rock and roll band play music. You've come to see something greater than you've ever seen before. Something more, something else. What the Hell can I do for you? We're just a rock and roll band. What do you want? I got it ... how about I show you my cock?" and immediately the audience went, "Haa Aye" (laughter). John and Robbie and I went, "Aargh, Oh God no ... he's gonna do it. No, Jim ... please, not in Miami of all places". The county of Dade. So he talked to them, he told them, "I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna show it to you".
He took his shirt off. He held his shirt in front of him, did that little dance of a bullfighter. The bullfighter was about to impale the bull. He was just pulling it back and forth saying, "Did you see it? Did you see it?" and he'd reach behind and sort of fiddle around and ... "There it is. There it is." ... that's what he was doing and they were convinced. He told them that's what he was doing and they were convinced they saw it. I never saw it. I never saw the thing happen. I never saw that snake show itself. The ivory shaft never appeared. Certainly, if it had appeared, we would have known due to the heft of it (laughter).

Robbie: Hold it, why don't we hear from you all?

The conference is opened up to the audience for questions.

Q: How much is left in the can after this album?

Robbie: Well,we got the best of whatever was left and stuck it on here. Now, there could be more stuff floating in. You know people send us stuff all the time. That's how we got this TV footage that we used for two of these songs. So, you know, hopefully in the future there might be something that we can put out but we will never put out anything unless it's of the best quality. We personally have control over that, so the record company can't just do it.

Denselow:There's nothing this good you know about at the moment.

John: No, we've been talking about a live album for a couple of years. We felt we had maybe half an album and then we found these tapes.

Ray: There is a great version of "Break On Through To The Other Side" ... there are two great takes of "Break On Through". I really wanted to put those on but we didn't have time. It was a matter of how much time can you get on an album and which songs ultimately we would use. So, "Break On Through" and there's also ... what's the other blues song ... a great version of "Rock Me" but we also have "Little Red Rooster" so we weren't gonna put two slow blues numbers on the same album. So, of all the stuff that's left, those are actually the only two things that might be worthy of coming out someday.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Q: Why didn't you make it a double?

Ray: well, there wasn't enough really for a double album. You know, the quality's got to be right. Quality's got to be up to snuff. The Doors should be at the top of their form. We're not gonna put out a record in which the tempo's not right and in which I make mistakes; Robbie makes mistakes ... Jim's not at the top of his form. We had a lot of takes like that. You know, when you play a show, it's not 100% magic all the time, so this is the best of what was available.

Q: Did you put any overdubs on it?

Ray: We fixed a few glaring errors. There were a few F chords when there should have been G chords on my part ... "whoops" ... "look out there, hold it" ... Inebriation takes over when you're on stage and sometimes you don't quite hit the right chord ... so that's the only thing we did ... correct some glaring errors.

Q: Have you put a bass guitar on it, 'cause it seems on every track you can follow the bass line really well?

Ray: You mean on this one you can follow the bass line - Oh, great; Thank you. Nice to hear that.

John: That's the keyboard bass.

Q: How big an influence was Pamela on Jim (laughter) and what ever happened to her? I know she died after he died. I'm interested in ...

Robbie: What happened to her after she died? (laughter)

Ray: We all wanna know!

Q: I just got a feeling she was helping to create a tension there and she was probably quite instrumental in taking him off to Paris. That's probably wrong but I just wanna know how strong she was.

John: She was his partner; his soul mate; they loved each other.

Ray: They loved each other and they hated each other ... phew!

Robbie: They fought.

Ray: Battle of the sexes ... good lord! Those two would just tear at each other but then they'd be cuddly little love birds and you'd pop in on them once in a while and they'd be doing all kinds of wonderful little domestic things. They took a flat here in London ... 38 ... [Robbie: Better not say] ... Well, he's not there now. Go ahead; what was it, 36 or 38 Belgrave Place [Robbie: Something like that.] ... Okay, something like that anyway.
Anyway, they took a flat and they were leading a very domestic life in London for a while and Pamela was always encouraging Jim to be a poet. She didn't like his antics. She didn't like the fact he would be carousing at night; seeking his wild ecstacies off stage as well as on stage ... and she was a very nice girl, but they fought like cats and dogs.

Denselow: Did she get on with the rest of you though? 'Cause, I mean if she wanted him to come off the stage and off the road and stop being in the band ... and just be a poet. You can't have wanted that?

Ray: But she was very nice. We got along with her just fine. We had a nice close relationship. Dorothy and I would go and visit them every once in a while. Jim and Pam were the best man and woman at our marriage and we have this little marriage certificate with Pamela Courson and James Douglas Morrison on it; a nice little momento. So, Pamela got along well with all of us but I think she didn't want Jim to leave The Doors. She wanted Jim to leave his drinking buddies as it were; to leave the other people who began to come around and suck on Jim Morrison's energy; all the people who were attached to Jim because he was a star and because he was such a charismatic performer.
A lot of people started to come and frankly indulge him; indulge him with drugs; indulge him with liquor; indulge him with women and just indulge him in general ... and Jim just being the crazy man that he was would go along with just about anything. Let's go ... you wanna party - I'm with you. Let's have a party because it was never enough for Jim just to have it on stage. On stage was the peak experience for him. I think he tried to recreate his ecstatic stage moments off stage also. I think that's one of the reasons he drank as much as he did and he partied as hard as he did. The shaman needed that ecstatic experience.

Q: Didn't you ever get frustrated with him? I mean, didn't you?

Robbie: I quit.

Q: Sorry ...

Robbie: I quit one night ... I loved him and I hated him. I loved him for his words and hated him for being such a hassle. Trying to get an airplane or whatever ...

Ray: Oh ... two o'clock in the morning waiting around at Denver for an airplane. At the Denver airport with Jim drunk out of his mind screaming in this huge airport ... Aargghh! ... the plane was two hours late and he was completely gone!

Q: Did you ever have a minder to take him to concerts and try to keep control of him?

Robbie: Yeah. We always tried to keep him; at least before the show ... tried to keep him in line but there was no doing it, you know.

Denselow: Did you employ anybody to make sure he ... ?

Robbie: Yeah. We had all kinds of guys ... They couldn't do it (laughter). I remember one night in New York. We did a gig in Long Island, New York and somehow between five minutes before the show and the beginning of the show - he'd managed to go to the bar and down about fifteen scotches ... Okay, I'll have another ... Give me another one.

Ray: We hired bodyguards to protect Jim and one of their secret missions was also to keep him from getting drunk. Jim would get the bodyguards drunk (laughter). These guys were paid and employed ... "You do not let him get drunk!" ... and he was so seductive and such a charmer that the bodyguards couldn't even resist him. And it was their job to keep him sober ... and he'd just go, "Come on, man, let's have one ... come on ... one drink's not gonna hurt you" (laughter).

Q: "Feast Of Friends" ... will it ever be released?

John: A little bit of it is in the "Love Me Two Times" video and we're gonna make another video and use some of it. I don't think as a film it will ever be released.

Q: Any reason for that? Is it flawed?

Robbie: There are so many bootlegs of it. Why bother to release it? ... Everybody has it already.

Denselow: What's it like for those of us who haven't seen it?

Robbie: Well, it's ... you know, we hired a couple of guys to follow around on tour with cameras ... and it's "The Doors On Tour".

Denselow: Jim was always going on about being a great film maker and wanting to be a film maker. In fact you were all studying ... Well, Ray was studying film. I mean was there a potential for a film director there in him? Was it something he could ever have done? Or was it far too disciplined an occupation?

Ray: He could have been an excellent director. He was multi-facetted. There were many things Morrison was capable of doing. When he went to Paris, he took his notes from Miami. During the trial in Miami he was writing notes the whole time and just taking down his observations ... and in Paris, he was going to write a novel or a commentary ... I don't know exactly what you'd call the book he was going to write. "Jim Morrison's Observations On America"; based on ... and centred around the trial in Miami. I was dying to read it. I couldn't wait to read that book. Jim talking about America and what it means to be an American. He was a very American fellow, you know, the all-American boy and it would've been fabulous. that would've been great. He had some film ideas. He wanted to act. There were many things that he could've done.

Q: After the Miami incident, was Morrison much more relaxed and happy on stage?

John: Well, we weren't on stage for about a year and a half. We couldn't get a gig after Miami.

Q: ...... Because of background noise ,this question wasn't picked up by my tape machine.

Robbie: No, he wasn't because when we finally did get some gigs, everywhere we'd play, they'd have ... like the vice squad would be right there next to the stage ready at the first sign of obscenity or anything.

John: And our managers would say, "Please Jim, don't say any ..." and he'd go out there and he'd say, "Fuck!" (laughter).

Q: What's happening to the film that was going to be made with John Travolta?

Ray: Thank God, nothing from our end (laughter)

Robbie: Actually, I think he's going ahead with it himself and he's not gonna be able to use any Doors songs.

John: I think they're making "The Rose" which is loosely based on Janis; so they're making "The Lizards".

Ray: No, we have nothing to do with it. Travolta's a nice fellow. I have nothing against him but he's just not right to play Jim Morrison.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Q: What do you know about this book, "Burn Down The Night"?

Ray: Yeah, it just came out over here didn't it. Well, it came out in The States about a year ago and it's a total sham. It's a complete fiasco ... It's a lie. If this fellow spent a day with Jim Morrison he was lucky. Robbie suggested that the guy never met Jim Morrison at all. The fellow is a Jim Morrison imitation. A Jim Morrison type of person who wants to be Jim Morrison. He sent us some poetry about three years ago ... Morrison-esque poetry ... It's all well and good but Jim Morrison wrote better than you do frankly and he just wrote this book to capitalize on Jim Morrison ... Morrison's noteriety. I don't think any of it happened.

John: It's all paraphrasing ... just words Jim would use like "lizards on my brain" ... or something ... It just doesn't make any sense.

Ray: But if it ... I tried to read it. I got half way ... It took me six months to get half way through it and I could't get any further. You know, I'd read ten pages at a time ... "God, this is awful" ... and come back to it a coupe of weeks later ... "Well, let me see what else he's written ... Uugh! ... really".

Q: How should one approach Jim's poetry?

Ray: Open. With an open mind, an open heart. Open yourself up to it. Open yourself up to the dark side.

Q: Is there any poetry that hasn't been published ... ?

Ray: Yes man. Unfortunately, we are not in control of James Douglas Morrison Publishing Incorporated Corporation ... that belongs to ... the publishing is in the charge of ... Corky Courson has it. Pamela's father. Jim left everything to Pamela. Pamela didn't make out a will. When Pamela died, everything reverted to her next of kin - her father. So, ther's a sixty-five year old retired high school principal that has Jim Morrison's poetry and he's been cataloguing it and categorising it for the last decade ... and I don't know what's there man ... I haven't gotten my ... Give me the boxes. There were boxes of stuff.

Q: Where does he live?

Yeah, let's all go get it. (laughter) He lives in Santa Barbara, California and if you're ever in Santa Barbara, California and you can get the stuff out, you know ... Anybody under sixty, I'd be happy to see have their hands on it (laughter). Notes from Miami are there ... Paris; things that he wrote in Paris ... stuff that he wrote before he went to Paris. He's got it all ... and he's done absolutely nothing with it.

Robbie: He keeps saying he's gonna put it out.

John: Supposedly in the next few years there might be something.

Q: What do you think of the rumours that Jim's still alive?

John: Well, if he's in Africa with Rimbaud, then leave him there, he's probably very happy.

Ray: Right, leave him alone. He hasn't called us. So, if anyone gets in contact with him, please let us know.

Q: Is it true that no-one's ever seen his body? ... dead that is (laughter).

Robbie: Ask the people in Miami ... that's true ... Yeah, Pamela was the only one we knew that saw the body.

Denselow: ... and some mystery doctor that signed the death certificate presumably ... but no-one's traced him.

John: Right. a hard guy to get hold of.

Denselow: I mean, you initially didn't believe he was dead. Did you? ... I mean, when youn played Paris as a trio afterwards you were making comments on stage implying he was still alive or that you weren't sure about the whole thing. was that right?

Ray: Well, not having heard from him for as long as we have - we assumed he was dead. I assume he's dead,you know. Jim Morrison is dead.

Denselow: But initially though?

Ray: Well, initially, eh ... the reason that we didn't go to Paris is because that report from Paris was like the sixth time Jim had died to my knowledge. He died in a car crash in L.A. He died falling out of a building in L.A. He died ... he died ... Jim's dead ... Jim's dead. We'd heard the story "Paul is dead" ... You know it was that period, 1970, '71, '72 people were dying and everyone was having rumours of death and it was like .. we got a 'phone call. I got a 'phone call Saturday morning saying Jim Morrison is dead in Paris ... Yeah, yeah, yeah ... sure, right. John had talked to him a couple of weeks before hand and he's dead again ... you know ... I don't believe it personally and Bill Siddons ...

Q: What about C.I.A. involvement?

Ray: (sighs) Well, I've heard that theory, yeah ... Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix ... Black man, white man, white woman ... You know, the flowering of American youth in poetry and art and music ... Trying to stop it all. It's conceivable ...

John: There was definitely some political weirdness at Miami ... that coming down.

Robbie: And there was an F.B.I. file on Morrison that we got a hold of ... so, they were ... The government was aware of The Doors.

Q: What political allegiances did Jim Morrison have?

Robbie: None really, we never took a political stand.

Q: No, but "he"?

Robbie: Oh, he ... none that I knew of ...

Ray: What was his political? ... He was a ...

Q: Was he a socialist?

Ray: No, he wasn't a socialist. No ... I thought that was what you were going to ask ... No. One man, one vote ... Vote 'em in ... Vote 'em out. Get the rascals out; That's the one power we have in America. Vote 'em out, man. You don't like that guy ... the Hell with him; write somebody else's name in. Get 'em out ... We'll ger Reagan out ... I think economic power is ... You lay down your dollar, you put your pound down in the market place. that's incredible power ... what you buy determines the shape of your country and who you vote for determines the shape of your country and I wouldn't give up those freedoms for anything.

Q: You were talking about bootlegs earlier on. What do you think of the massive amount of Doors bootlegs there are?

Ray: Phew ... I had no idea there were so many. I got a list of them the other day from ... a fellow came down from Scotland {Guess who?} and he brought this list of bootlegs and my God, I haven't heard half of these. I was there but I haven't heard them ... Well, fine - you know.

Q: Wouldn't the best thing for you be to try and capitalise on them and ... because there is an awful lot of stuff ... so, would you think about releasing some of the early "Whiskey" tapes, for example even if they might not be that wonderful standard but something like that would be really nice to have on a proper album.

Ray: Yeah, it would be nice. On the other hand, it's not up to ... It's just not up to the sound quality, you know. If we're gonna release a record and it's a Doors record released by The Doors then it's got to be up to sound quality. It's got to have the performance and it's got to have the sound. If it doesn't have that, then we're not going to put our name on it. If somebody else chooses to take a little tape recorder into a gig and then put that on a disc and if you want to buy that as a curiosity or as ... you know, more insight into The Doors, then well and good ... go ahead, you know.

Q: The music for "Apocalypse Now" ... it was fitted in very well ...

Ray: It did work nicely didn't it? Yeah. We were very happy with that. Francis did a very good job on it.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Q: Are you going to play together again?

Ray: Not at the moment ... no particular plans at the moment. If we do get back together to work on anything it might be on some film soundtrack or something but no particular plans right now.

Q: Isn't the posthumous Doors industry turning into a kind of commercial circus in a way? How do you feel about that? Like the book ... movies, TV kind of things; radio shows?

Robbie: Well, we try to keep it as cool as possible, you know ... If we were not doing it, other people would get a hold of it and then it would be a circus. So we try to.

John: We're proud of this so we're out here for that. All the rest of it, I don't know about.

Q: How do you feel about the mass popularity of The Doors retrospectively in The States? Isn't there something ghoulish about that?

Robbie: You mean because we're no longer playing?

Ray: Because he's dead ... I like Beethoven (laughter). Maybe I shouldn't, you know.

Q: I mean shouldn't there be something by this time ... I mean, a new sort of force in American music ... ?

Denselow: There certainly should be.

Ray: Yeah, yeah ... there should be, man. There should be ... there should be others ...em. We're not gonna let you forget about The Doors until The Doors ... you know, I'm gonna do interviews until you know what the Hell Jim Morrison was talking about ... until you've, you know ... until you've opened yourself up and found Morrison ... found the shaman ... found Dionysus inside of you ... I'll keep talking about it. We'll keep doing this until you're aware and we're aware ... we're all aware of that power. When that power manifests itself on this planet, man ... we don't have to talk about it any more at all. We don't have to say a word about it and when a new band comes along from Los Angeles ... Maybe it's "X" ... maybe not. When somebody comes along and they've got the power ... go, take it man ... You've got it. I'd love nothing better than to pass the mantle on to the next generation ...
Okay, come on ... let's go ... let's change this Goddam planet already ... we wanted to do it in 1968 and by God it didn't happen yet and now we're bringing the Goddam cruise missiles in here, you know. I mean, who knows what's gonna happen ... Let's change this world, it's ours ... Who's is it, you know ... This doesn't belong to our parents. It's not the old timers world. They've got the power but ... "They got the guns but we've got the numbers. We're gonna win - Yeah, we're taking over" ... Let's do it already. And that's why we do it man. that's why we're here now to tell you about Jim Morrison and what it all represented.

Q: But you're also talking about him ... I mean, you've been constantly referring to him as a shaman. I mean this sort of bestowing upon him this like messiah like quality which I personally find a bit distasteful.

Ray: A shaman is not a messiah. What is a messiah?

Q: Well, it's a sort of leader of men ... a changer of men. Giving him this religious aspect ...

Ray: Oooh,no ... No, shamanism is that ... Dionysus is in everyone of us, you know ... Do you know the followers of Dionysus were all women, you know ... You know what would happen with the women who would follow Dionysus? Check that out in your Greek history. We're all ... It's inside everyone of us ... We're all the messiah, you know. We're all messiahs. I think one of our problems is that we're looking ... Eh, the messiah's over there ... uh, here comes the messiah over here. Hi ... us ... right here. That's what it's all about. You're the messiah ... I mean, let's have a female messiah. Where's the next ... where's the great woman leader? Where's the great man? ... You know, we don't need leaders. We need to find God within ourselves ... We need to find the demons, the madness, the wildness ... We need to go like this every once in a while. We're rational, we're linear ... We're Apollonian. We'd better get in touch with our Dionysian selves. We'd better find that in every one of us.That's where your freedom lies. In just shaking loose.

Robbie: But a shaman is actually a person who is, like Morrison is a guy who ... like a medicine man ... and he's able to bring out this Dionysian quality in people and that's what Jim did. We're not saying he was a messiah ... all we're saying is that he was a guy who was capable of bringing out those qualities in everybody.







Q: Did you never get fed up with the way that Morrison got all the publicity in the group rather than yourselves?

John: I did ... That's why I'm wearing leather (laughter and clapping).

Ray: He's the lead singer ... lead ... it's called lead singer. It's not even called singer. It's called in The States ... I don't know exactly what you call it here but in The States, it's called lead singer. Mick Jagger is the lead singer. He's the only singer in The Rolling Stones but he's still called the lead singer. So the lead singer is the leader.The leader gets all the attention ... Morrison was out there saying words. What are you gonna say about keyboards? You know ... If I play a G minor, you know ... what can you possibly say about a G minor? It sounds minor. There's nothing to say about music. It's really very, very hard to talk about music because music' s such an abstract thing. It deals in vibrations and rhythm. How do you talk about that ... but Morrison was a human being up there ... opened, exposed. That's what he would do. That's what Miami was ... he exposed himself to the world, to the public. Said ... hey, this is me. This is everything I got, man. Here it is, right in front of you ... so naturally, you talk about that.

Q: But were you not disappointed when The Doors after Morrison's death were not so popular as before? With the two albums you released after his death. That must have been disappointing.

Well, it was in a way but I think it was a ... it was probably the three of us fooling ourselves in a way. Kind of closing ranks behind the fact that Jim wasn't with us. I mean, it was obviously a shock to us, you know ... Jim's death.

Denselow: Did you really think you could keep going as The Doors without him?

Ray: Not really ... not really. That's why we ... you know, we made two albums just to make music. We'd been making music together; making records together and then all of a sudden one of the members is gone ... Well, what do you do? ... What do you do with your life now? What do we do? Do we just stop ... stop doing what we've been doing for the last decade or five years? Do we stop doing what we've been doing so well together? We've had fun together in the recording studio. Great times in the recording studio ... Well, let's go into the recording studio and make another record ... make two records. But after the second record, we said.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

John: We certainly weren't gonna have a replacement for Jim.

Q: You must have wondered what you'd be doing now, if Jim was still around?

Denselow: Well, you were called the American Rolling Stones, weren't you. Do you think you'd be like that? (laughter).

Robbie: Probably we'd still be playing. I have dreams every couple of months that we're still ... "Okay, where's the next gig ... God, I hope Jim makes it"

Ray: I have those dreams ... he's back ... you know, every once in a while he comes back and he's been away and he's written a lot of songs and we're all set and ready to go again.You know, he's back down to 135, 140 pounds ... he looks a little older but he's hard; he's in good shape and he's all set and ready to go.

Q: Do you think it would fit in now, having The Doors nowadays?

Ray: well, in America, everything has been categorised so we have to try to fit in to either Heavy Metal, either Punk, New Wave or regular Rock & Roll or Easy Listening ... radio in America has just divided itself up so insanely ... So, I don't know if we'd fit in. You know, maybe now we wouldn't fit in ... It made sense in 1968, maybe it wouldn't make sense in 1983 ... I don't know.

Q: You could do what Bob marley did ... It was like a seperate music but still with a lot of message to his music ...

Ray: I think we'd be making films among other things ... We'd be doing theatrical presentations. The stage show would have been expanded beyond four people into ... into I don't know what ... Into some kind of theatrical presentation. We'd have had dancers perhaps ... perhaps masked actors. Jim talked about having masks on stage. We might have expanded the band ... taken a bass player along with us. maybe another guitar player to play rhythm ... who knows.

Q: You were talking about the power of The Doors. Do you think any other band is gonna match that?

Ray: Mmm ...

John" It's for you ...

Denselow: For you personally, though ... Do you like any modern bands. Obviously Ray likes "X" because he produces them but ...

Ray: Yeah, "X" has the power ... Um, African music has the power. I've heard some African recordings that definitely have the power. Brazilian Samba music ... some ... the music from "Black Orpheus" ... a lot of that music has the power. that power is a transcendental power ... either a sinking below your consciousness or a rising above it. Something that affects your body and puts you into a slightly altered state of consciousness. Anybody, any music can do it.

Robbie: I think the only music that's done it for me since Jim died was Bob Marley and The Wailers.

Q: What about Blue Oyster Cult?

Robbie: Well, I wouldn't say ... I wouldn't quite put them in the same class, you know. They're a good band and they're good friends of mine too.

Q: Can you explain that a little bit further? ... This thing with the power with the music ... I mean, people are saying Bob Marley. Bob Marley isn't my bag but Gustav Mahler could be ... Does it matter? ... Is that power in all ...?

Ray: yes, it's in everything ... It's in absolutely every kind of music ... and this is a wonderful opportunity for me to take advantage of this to plug my current album (laughter). Speaking of that ... If you like Mahler, I just did an electronic version of "Carmina Burana" with carl Orff and I think we got a sense of the power in there. Phillip Glass did the production and we did it for rock band, synthesisers and full chorus and it's Rock & Roll. It's contemporary music but it's also an adaptation of classical music and I tried to be as faithful as I could to what Orff did in "Carmina Burana" ... adapting it to a modern setting ... And I think the power is there. I get off on it anyway, you know ... The power for a musician ... What's wonderful about being a musician is that you get yourself off. You can get yourself off ... Booooom! ... And you're there; and then if you can join with a couple of other guys and one guy plays the drums and another guy plays the guitar and another gut sings ... And you can all do that same thing together. It's magnificent, you know ... It's heaven.

Denselow: That's what Ray's doing at the moment ... John, what are you doing at the moment? What have you been doing for the last year?

John: Uh, well. I just closed my play Sunday night in Los Angeles.

Denselow: This is as an actor?

John: ... As an actor and a drummer. I did a one man show ... em ...

Denselow: What was the play?

John: It was two one acts. The first half by Sam Shephard a play called "Tongues" and the second half, a one-act that I wrote,called "Skins".

Denselow: So you're now what? Primarily an actor?

John: Mmm ... well, I also jammed the other night with The Modifiers from Memphis in a Punk club ... so, I still like to play drums.

Denselow: Any good?

John: Yeah, pretty good.

Denselow: Robbie, what about you?

Robbie: I've been just into music and I've been recording some of my own stuff lately. Hopefully,I'll have something out by the first of the year.

Denselow: Anybody else?

Q: Did you three write the music together?

Robbie: Well, we all wrote the music together. It was ... It happened in different fashions ... Sometimes Jim would have a pretty complete song in mind and we would just come up with the chorus and so forth ... Sometimes I would come up with a whole song and sometimes Jim would just have some words and we would all ... sort of get together on the music. It happened on all different ways.

Q: What about that track called "Ships With Sails" ... was that an old Jim track?

John: No, I wrote that.

Q: It really cries out for his voice on there.

Ray: Mmm ... wouldn't that have been nice. Damn ... yeah ... Well,he was in Paris. We were in Los Angeles rehearsing, you know. We were all there ... well, we took a vacation but we'd get together once a week, maybe twice a week ... on a Monday and a Friday or something ... and start working out little songs and playing on stuff and Robbie would come up with some ideas and we'd just kinda jam together ... and we were doing what we would normally do. Writing songs and rehearsing and waiting for Jim to come back from Paris ... and he never made it.

John: Did you write that or did I write that? ... I wrote the melody.

Robbie: ... but I wrote the lyrics.

Ray: It doesn't really matter, you know. I mean we're here for three score and ten. You know, you live ... you die "and death not ends it ... journey we more into the nightmare". Uh ... what are we all doing here anyway? ... we're killing time. We're here in London ... we're having a great time ... I had some Tandoori last night (laughter) ... but what 's life all about anyway? You know, we made some music together ... hey, big deal, you know ... we had a transcendental moment together ... you know ... maybe we've entertained you ... That's fine, you know ... One of the guys died and we're left behind and he's on the other side ... We're all gonna join him, because "No One Here Gets Out Alive" (laughter).







Denselow: We'd better stop 'cause that's half an hour longer than it's supposed to be but let me very briefly ask all of you ... very briefly ... How would you like The Doors to be remembered? ... Robbie?

Robbie: Well, just for the music and for the pleasure it gave you all.

John: I'd like them to be remembered for the drumming (laughter and applause).

Robbie: That's good ...

Ray: We all gave up our egos as you can see ... I'm with Robbie ... just enjoy the music ... put the records on ... smoke a joint ... turn the lights down ... eh ... Put the record on ... Listen to our music. Listen to Jim's words. Don't forget the words.

Denselow: Robbie Krieger ... John Densmore ... Ray Manzarek ... Thanks a lot ... (applause).