Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 21:43:41 GMT
It was November llth,a week after The Doors had been in London. Ray Manzarek was back on his own to promote "Carmina Burana". I had been told by A&M,his record company that I could get an interview before he returned to The States. So, I went back to Blakes Hotel where we spent nearly three hours in conversation about every aspect of Ray's career. For the purpose of this section, I've only included parts relevant to The Doors.
Rockmine: For starters, you've been quoted somewhere as saying you first got together with Jim in 1962 in a Jazz band.
Ray: No, I was playing in..let's see, it was 1963, I was playing in a jazz band in Los Angeles. Jim was a student in the film department as I was and we were just ... Jim wasn't a musician ... Jim came to some of the gigs that we played. We played a place called Mother Neptune's; sort of a late beatnik coffee house in Los Angeles and played jazz, sort of Horace Silva like and Jim came down occassionally.
Rockmine: Were you playing with Ed Cassidy at that time?
Ray: Exactly, Ed Cassidy was in the band. Ed Cassidy, a poet named Michael Ford in Los Angeles played bass and we had a trumpet player and a tenor player. We were like a Horace Silva like group.
Rockmine: How long did that last?
Ray: Oh,that was just for fun. It might have been off and on for the course of a year, perhaps. That was about it.
Rockmine: You studied music?
Ray: I actually studied music. I sat at the piano and read music, yes. I didn't study in college but I was continuing lessons. In college I was involved in economics at De Paul University and then I went to UCLA to study film, So music has always been sort of a sideline for me.
Rockmine:That explains why you're that bit older than the other members.
Ray: Exactly.
Rockmine: Going back,were you screaming Ray Daniels?
Ray: I was. With Rick and The Ravens for a while. It was Rick And The Ravens with Screaming Ray Daniels.
Rockmine: What sort of following did you have?
Ray: Oh,a cult of about five. I think they were assorted girlfriends and one or two male groupies and that was about it.
Rockmine: Looking back on it, you've said in the past that you had a contractual commitment to the two albums but people have said that the contract with Elektra was finished.
Ray: The original contract was finished with L.A. Woman and then after Jim died and we decided to carry on, we signed with Elektra Records for a five album contract and we did two records on the contract and then we decided not to continue any more.
Rockmine: What was the feeling behind those, because you rehearsed some of the songs ...?
Ray: We rehearsed some of the songs while Jim was in Paris. Jim was in Paris and we were in our rehearsal studio putting songs together and I think if we did any song ... I can't quite remember .... we might have done one of the songs with Jim before he left ... as a matter of fact I think we did ..."Get Up And Dance", yes was one of the songs we did rehearse with Morrison.
Rockmine: Did you not also do "Down On The Farm"?
Ray: Ah, yeah, I think so. Right, I think "Down On The Farm" also ... right. They were just a couple of things that were in a sort of rough state and we just fooled around with them briefly.
Rockmine: Now both the albums were hit very hard by the critics ...
Ray: Yes,they were ... my goodness ... I'm sorry, God ... you know ... we didn't have Morrison .... what can I tell you ... we did the best we could and we tried to sing as well as we could and granted, you know, nobody else in the band had the charisma of Morrison but then no-one else who's come along in the last twelve years has had the charisma of Morrison, so why kill us?
Rockmine: Do you think any of the criticisms had any justification?
Ray: Well, you know, these weren't the greatest ... ultimately that's why we put The Doors to bed. We didn't feel that this was the greatest music either. It was good music and it was fun to do and we had a good time doing it but it just wasn't the same without him and to continue on without Morrison just wasn't the right thing to do.
Rockmine: Can I pick up on something here ... It seems there was constantly this talk of Morrison as the shaman [...Yeah]. Now,am I right in assuming that the shaman was the Indian medicine man [...Yeahl who would be driven into a frenzy by the beat of the drums [...Exactly].Now,it's rather like African drummers who're called Master drummers because they're in touch with something that nobody else has. I get the feeling that Morrison is just this name that people keep coming up with. I was listening to the Amsterdam gig (where Jim was taken to hospital and missed the show) and you still had the same control over the audience. There wasn't this person out front but it seems to me as if Morrison, The Shamen, was picking up the power from you guys ...
Ray: Well the shaman would never do his performance or go into his shamanistic trance unless he had his band with him. The shaman and the band worked together and the musicians worked together in the same way with Morrison ... you know ... we needed Jim ... Jim needed us, we all worked together and when Jim was there he was the leader and he would take the energy and we would go with him and just give him the energy and allow him to go insane. If he wasn't there, we you know ... like in Amsterdam, we did our best. The power existed in every member of The Doors. We all understood that sinking into the rhythm of the music and we all tried to do that and when we all did it together it was invariably an incredible show.
Rockmine: The thing that strikes people is the organ sound that you came up with [Uh-huh]. There are very definable parts of The Doors which didn't require Morrison to be there to have a hypnotic effect.
Ray: Yeah, well ... we were all into ... that's why The Doors were successful. It was Jim Morrison as the centre and the figure and the spokesman, the figurehead and the central core of the energy but we were all into the same thing. That's why we were a band. I think that's what makes The Doors special in that everybody in the band was into the same sort of thing.
Rockmine: "Full Circle" ... it seems in some ways that you knew it was the beginning of the end. The Doors music has always been doom laden but this lacked something ...
Ray: Exactly, well that's why [and it's not just the vocal], that's why I said, when we talked about what would we call this album, I said, "Hey I've got a good idea for the title, let's call this album "Full Circle"" because that meant a coming to the end ... that was it ... The Doors had come full circle and it was now time to close The Doors.
Rockmine: What was the feeling, then? Did you say that's it, we'll never play again together?
Ray: Well, at that point, yes. That was ... "That's it, thank you very much, John, Robbie ... Goodbye ... Thanks a lot ... it's been a lot of fun. We've had a lot of great times and it's now time for us to go our separate ways and get on with the next phase of our lives. The seven year cycle had come to an end as it were. I think Jim died too early for us to complete our seven year cycle. It was five years into it and we needed another year or two to complete a seven year cycle and it was over with. However,we obviously did get back together to do the poetry album ... "An American Prayer".
Rockmine: Can we leave that just now as I want to go chronologically through your career. One of the things that gets me is that even going back to The Doors interviews that I have the amount that Jim actually did was minimal. There aren't really that many Morrison interviews. There seem to be more of you ... again, I don't know how wrong this is but it seems to me that:
a) you were the oldest in the group.
b) you were probably the most musically accomplished in the group.
c) it was your organ that kept the whole thing together especially with your bass line ...
Now to a lot of people,Morrison was the band [... Right]. In the last week, I've spoken to a few Doors collectors and they say Morrison was the front man but Manzarek was the band ...
Ray: Well,that's all very nice,thank you very much ... you know, I certainly appreciate everyone liking what I did but again I'll have to keep coming back to the fact that without any one member of the band, The Doors wouldn't have been The Doors. Robbie Krieger's guitar ... his snakey guitar and his bottleneck guitar it was wonderful to work with him and John Densmore was such a responsive and listening drummer. I think as I might have said earlier and if you don't have this ... The Doors listened to each other. We could always hear ... we knew what Jim was saying. I knew what John was doing, I could hear Robbie. We all listened to each other. That's perhaps one of the keys as to why The Doors played well together is that the musicians all listened to each other. It was not like every man out for himself ... Okay you got the rhythm and just go ahead and play as loud as you can. We didn't do that ... we listened carefully to each other.
Rockmine: For starters, you've been quoted somewhere as saying you first got together with Jim in 1962 in a Jazz band.
Ray: No, I was playing in..let's see, it was 1963, I was playing in a jazz band in Los Angeles. Jim was a student in the film department as I was and we were just ... Jim wasn't a musician ... Jim came to some of the gigs that we played. We played a place called Mother Neptune's; sort of a late beatnik coffee house in Los Angeles and played jazz, sort of Horace Silva like and Jim came down occassionally.
Rockmine: Were you playing with Ed Cassidy at that time?
Ray: Exactly, Ed Cassidy was in the band. Ed Cassidy, a poet named Michael Ford in Los Angeles played bass and we had a trumpet player and a tenor player. We were like a Horace Silva like group.
Rockmine: How long did that last?
Ray: Oh,that was just for fun. It might have been off and on for the course of a year, perhaps. That was about it.
Rockmine: You studied music?
Ray: I actually studied music. I sat at the piano and read music, yes. I didn't study in college but I was continuing lessons. In college I was involved in economics at De Paul University and then I went to UCLA to study film, So music has always been sort of a sideline for me.
Rockmine:That explains why you're that bit older than the other members.
Ray: Exactly.
Rockmine: Going back,were you screaming Ray Daniels?
Ray: I was. With Rick and The Ravens for a while. It was Rick And The Ravens with Screaming Ray Daniels.
Rockmine: What sort of following did you have?
Ray: Oh,a cult of about five. I think they were assorted girlfriends and one or two male groupies and that was about it.
Rockmine: Looking back on it, you've said in the past that you had a contractual commitment to the two albums but people have said that the contract with Elektra was finished.
Ray: The original contract was finished with L.A. Woman and then after Jim died and we decided to carry on, we signed with Elektra Records for a five album contract and we did two records on the contract and then we decided not to continue any more.
Rockmine: What was the feeling behind those, because you rehearsed some of the songs ...?
Ray: We rehearsed some of the songs while Jim was in Paris. Jim was in Paris and we were in our rehearsal studio putting songs together and I think if we did any song ... I can't quite remember .... we might have done one of the songs with Jim before he left ... as a matter of fact I think we did ..."Get Up And Dance", yes was one of the songs we did rehearse with Morrison.
Rockmine: Did you not also do "Down On The Farm"?
Ray: Ah, yeah, I think so. Right, I think "Down On The Farm" also ... right. They were just a couple of things that were in a sort of rough state and we just fooled around with them briefly.
Rockmine: Now both the albums were hit very hard by the critics ...
Ray: Yes,they were ... my goodness ... I'm sorry, God ... you know ... we didn't have Morrison .... what can I tell you ... we did the best we could and we tried to sing as well as we could and granted, you know, nobody else in the band had the charisma of Morrison but then no-one else who's come along in the last twelve years has had the charisma of Morrison, so why kill us?
Rockmine: Do you think any of the criticisms had any justification?
Ray: Well, you know, these weren't the greatest ... ultimately that's why we put The Doors to bed. We didn't feel that this was the greatest music either. It was good music and it was fun to do and we had a good time doing it but it just wasn't the same without him and to continue on without Morrison just wasn't the right thing to do.
Rockmine: Can I pick up on something here ... It seems there was constantly this talk of Morrison as the shaman [...Yeah]. Now,am I right in assuming that the shaman was the Indian medicine man [...Yeahl who would be driven into a frenzy by the beat of the drums [...Exactly].Now,it's rather like African drummers who're called Master drummers because they're in touch with something that nobody else has. I get the feeling that Morrison is just this name that people keep coming up with. I was listening to the Amsterdam gig (where Jim was taken to hospital and missed the show) and you still had the same control over the audience. There wasn't this person out front but it seems to me as if Morrison, The Shamen, was picking up the power from you guys ...
Ray: Well the shaman would never do his performance or go into his shamanistic trance unless he had his band with him. The shaman and the band worked together and the musicians worked together in the same way with Morrison ... you know ... we needed Jim ... Jim needed us, we all worked together and when Jim was there he was the leader and he would take the energy and we would go with him and just give him the energy and allow him to go insane. If he wasn't there, we you know ... like in Amsterdam, we did our best. The power existed in every member of The Doors. We all understood that sinking into the rhythm of the music and we all tried to do that and when we all did it together it was invariably an incredible show.
Rockmine: The thing that strikes people is the organ sound that you came up with [Uh-huh]. There are very definable parts of The Doors which didn't require Morrison to be there to have a hypnotic effect.
Ray: Yeah, well ... we were all into ... that's why The Doors were successful. It was Jim Morrison as the centre and the figure and the spokesman, the figurehead and the central core of the energy but we were all into the same thing. That's why we were a band. I think that's what makes The Doors special in that everybody in the band was into the same sort of thing.
Rockmine: "Full Circle" ... it seems in some ways that you knew it was the beginning of the end. The Doors music has always been doom laden but this lacked something ...
Ray: Exactly, well that's why [and it's not just the vocal], that's why I said, when we talked about what would we call this album, I said, "Hey I've got a good idea for the title, let's call this album "Full Circle"" because that meant a coming to the end ... that was it ... The Doors had come full circle and it was now time to close The Doors.
Rockmine: What was the feeling, then? Did you say that's it, we'll never play again together?
Ray: Well, at that point, yes. That was ... "That's it, thank you very much, John, Robbie ... Goodbye ... Thanks a lot ... it's been a lot of fun. We've had a lot of great times and it's now time for us to go our separate ways and get on with the next phase of our lives. The seven year cycle had come to an end as it were. I think Jim died too early for us to complete our seven year cycle. It was five years into it and we needed another year or two to complete a seven year cycle and it was over with. However,we obviously did get back together to do the poetry album ... "An American Prayer".
Rockmine: Can we leave that just now as I want to go chronologically through your career. One of the things that gets me is that even going back to The Doors interviews that I have the amount that Jim actually did was minimal. There aren't really that many Morrison interviews. There seem to be more of you ... again, I don't know how wrong this is but it seems to me that:
a) you were the oldest in the group.
b) you were probably the most musically accomplished in the group.
c) it was your organ that kept the whole thing together especially with your bass line ...
Now to a lot of people,Morrison was the band [... Right]. In the last week, I've spoken to a few Doors collectors and they say Morrison was the front man but Manzarek was the band ...
Ray: Well,that's all very nice,thank you very much ... you know, I certainly appreciate everyone liking what I did but again I'll have to keep coming back to the fact that without any one member of the band, The Doors wouldn't have been The Doors. Robbie Krieger's guitar ... his snakey guitar and his bottleneck guitar it was wonderful to work with him and John Densmore was such a responsive and listening drummer. I think as I might have said earlier and if you don't have this ... The Doors listened to each other. We could always hear ... we knew what Jim was saying. I knew what John was doing, I could hear Robbie. We all listened to each other. That's perhaps one of the keys as to why The Doors played well together is that the musicians all listened to each other. It was not like every man out for himself ... Okay you got the rhythm and just go ahead and play as loud as you can. We didn't do that ... we listened carefully to each other.