Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 11, 2005 18:18:21 GMT
Ray Manzarek talking about American Prayer.
Tell us about the new American Prayer.
It's the first time the entire album will be out on CD, plus it'll have two new pieces. We've also included one bonus track which they can play on the radio, a three-and-a-half minute version of 'The Ghost Song'.
How was the original American Prayer received when it was released in 1978?
I don't think anybody was actually ready for the record. It was the first full-length rock'n'roll poetry record and it was 15 years ahead of its time.
Will the new CD surprise people who've never heard the original American Prayer?
I think people are going to be surprised, because they think of Jim Morrison as this screaming, hell-bent-for-leather maniac, a wild lizard king. When they hear him read his poetry they're finally gonna know the sensitive Jim Morrison I knew when I first met him. You can hear the vulnerability.
When we were walking on Santa Monica beach, you pointed to the area where you and Jim used to lift weights.
Yeah. When we first walked on the beach, I asked him to let me hear one of his songs. He sang 'Moonlight Drive' in a haunted, shy, Chet Baker-like voice. He was singing from the same place Chet Baker sang from, except that Jim had a better voice.
Who is buying Doors albums these days? It took a long time after his death for the band to become hip again.
There was a period right through the '70s when everything was either country rock or glitter rock, and you couldn't hear The Doors anywhere. Then Danny Sugerman and I said, "Wait a minute, we're not going to allow this to disappear..." Little by little, we just started beating the drum for Jim and the band. That culminated in The Best Of The Doors, which we put together for people who knew of The Doors but didn't know what to buy.
The two crucial events seem to have been Francis Ford Coppola using 'The End' in Apocalypse Now and the publication of the biography No One Here Gets Out Alive. Plus The Doors had a big impact on punk rock – you even produced X.
Jim was a big influence on Patti Smith. Punk rockers loved the fact that his songs and poetry were so dark and ominous.
What are your memories of The Doors' Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993?
It was so bizarre. A bizarre, sick evening of men backstage playing power games with each other. Jim would have loved it. He would have had a great time, because it was a psychodrama. People were vying for power like young bucks fighting each other to get the attention of the female.
How did Eddie Vedder come to sing with you at the induction?
It was Jon Landau's suggestion for Eddie to sing with us, so we called him up in the North-west. We did one rehearsal: he knew the words and the whole thing. Obviously we were gonna do 'Light My Fire', and then we suggested 'Roadhouse Blues'. And Eddie said, "Yeah".
Do you see any comparisons between Vedder and Morrison?
He has a touch of the shaman about him, like Jim. He is an Indian Pacific North-west shaman, whereas Jim was a desert, Hopi shaman.
How did there come to be five Doors songs on the Forrest Gump soundtrack?
When we got the request, immediately we all said, "Time out, we don't give five Doors songs to anybody". But they asked us to come down and see the film, and we thought the use of the songs was so tasteful that we gave them the OK. When songs work in films it's delightful. To sit back in an audience and hear 'The End' come on at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, it's absolutely thrilling.
Harvey Kubernik, Mojo, July 1995
Tell us about the new American Prayer.
It's the first time the entire album will be out on CD, plus it'll have two new pieces. We've also included one bonus track which they can play on the radio, a three-and-a-half minute version of 'The Ghost Song'.
How was the original American Prayer received when it was released in 1978?
I don't think anybody was actually ready for the record. It was the first full-length rock'n'roll poetry record and it was 15 years ahead of its time.
Will the new CD surprise people who've never heard the original American Prayer?
I think people are going to be surprised, because they think of Jim Morrison as this screaming, hell-bent-for-leather maniac, a wild lizard king. When they hear him read his poetry they're finally gonna know the sensitive Jim Morrison I knew when I first met him. You can hear the vulnerability.
When we were walking on Santa Monica beach, you pointed to the area where you and Jim used to lift weights.
Yeah. When we first walked on the beach, I asked him to let me hear one of his songs. He sang 'Moonlight Drive' in a haunted, shy, Chet Baker-like voice. He was singing from the same place Chet Baker sang from, except that Jim had a better voice.
Who is buying Doors albums these days? It took a long time after his death for the band to become hip again.
There was a period right through the '70s when everything was either country rock or glitter rock, and you couldn't hear The Doors anywhere. Then Danny Sugerman and I said, "Wait a minute, we're not going to allow this to disappear..." Little by little, we just started beating the drum for Jim and the band. That culminated in The Best Of The Doors, which we put together for people who knew of The Doors but didn't know what to buy.
The two crucial events seem to have been Francis Ford Coppola using 'The End' in Apocalypse Now and the publication of the biography No One Here Gets Out Alive. Plus The Doors had a big impact on punk rock – you even produced X.
Jim was a big influence on Patti Smith. Punk rockers loved the fact that his songs and poetry were so dark and ominous.
What are your memories of The Doors' Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993?
It was so bizarre. A bizarre, sick evening of men backstage playing power games with each other. Jim would have loved it. He would have had a great time, because it was a psychodrama. People were vying for power like young bucks fighting each other to get the attention of the female.
How did Eddie Vedder come to sing with you at the induction?
It was Jon Landau's suggestion for Eddie to sing with us, so we called him up in the North-west. We did one rehearsal: he knew the words and the whole thing. Obviously we were gonna do 'Light My Fire', and then we suggested 'Roadhouse Blues'. And Eddie said, "Yeah".
Do you see any comparisons between Vedder and Morrison?
He has a touch of the shaman about him, like Jim. He is an Indian Pacific North-west shaman, whereas Jim was a desert, Hopi shaman.
How did there come to be five Doors songs on the Forrest Gump soundtrack?
When we got the request, immediately we all said, "Time out, we don't give five Doors songs to anybody". But they asked us to come down and see the film, and we thought the use of the songs was so tasteful that we gave them the OK. When songs work in films it's delightful. To sit back in an audience and hear 'The End' come on at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, it's absolutely thrilling.
Harvey Kubernik, Mojo, July 1995