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IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY (DOORS EDITION)
I’ve been meaning to post something about Ray Manzarek, who is with Jim Morrison now.
It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said about him, and if yr a fan of The Doors or X (whose album Los Angeles was produced by him), you pretty much know 99% of everything you need to know about him.
So I might as well point you to this nice post with Exene Cervenka and John Doe remembering Ray.
As for me … well, I’ve been a Doors fan since high school. Which is saying something, because at that time, The Doors were not a cool band to like in early 80s suburban Nashville. In the dawn of the Me Decade, The Doors were quaint relics from the Summer Of Love. My sister wrote them off as “keyboard music for hippies”.
So naturally, I liked them, and by the time I was in the military I had all their albums and had read No One Here Gets Out Alive. A lot of soldiers in my unit seemed to identify with The Doors (albeit mainly because they’d all seen Apocalypse Now), though I do remember one guy expressing disbelief that I could possibly listen to them at 0700 while we were getting ready for morning formation. “Dude, it’s too damn early to be digging on The Doors.”
A lot of the attraction for me was due to the charisma and legend of Morrison, of course, but Manzarek was easily just as responsible for defining the Doors sound (as well as preserving the legend/myth of Morrison).
Also, for some reason I always liked that Manzarek wore glasses on stage. It’s a minor thing, sure, but he embodied the intellectual side of The Doors more than Jim’s bad-boy poetmonger. I thought he looked cool.
Also, those sideburns.
It’s a hell of a legacy, even if maybe that legacy is a little muddied by Manzarek’s legal disputes with John Densmore and Morrison’s family over the right to use the Doors name on tour and licensing their music for TV ads (soon to be a book by Densmore, out next week).
Anyway. Respect.
And here’s one of my favorite Doors tracks that highlights Manzarek’s musical genius.
Run with me,
This is dF
It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said about him, and if yr a fan of The Doors or X (whose album Los Angeles was produced by him), you pretty much know 99% of everything you need to know about him.
So I might as well point you to this nice post with Exene Cervenka and John Doe remembering Ray.
As for me … well, I’ve been a Doors fan since high school. Which is saying something, because at that time, The Doors were not a cool band to like in early 80s suburban Nashville. In the dawn of the Me Decade, The Doors were quaint relics from the Summer Of Love. My sister wrote them off as “keyboard music for hippies”.
So naturally, I liked them, and by the time I was in the military I had all their albums and had read No One Here Gets Out Alive. A lot of soldiers in my unit seemed to identify with The Doors (albeit mainly because they’d all seen Apocalypse Now), though I do remember one guy expressing disbelief that I could possibly listen to them at 0700 while we were getting ready for morning formation. “Dude, it’s too damn early to be digging on The Doors.”
A lot of the attraction for me was due to the charisma and legend of Morrison, of course, but Manzarek was easily just as responsible for defining the Doors sound (as well as preserving the legend/myth of Morrison).
Also, for some reason I always liked that Manzarek wore glasses on stage. It’s a minor thing, sure, but he embodied the intellectual side of The Doors more than Jim’s bad-boy poetmonger. I thought he looked cool.
Also, those sideburns.
It’s a hell of a legacy, even if maybe that legacy is a little muddied by Manzarek’s legal disputes with John Densmore and Morrison’s family over the right to use the Doors name on tour and licensing their music for TV ads (soon to be a book by Densmore, out next week).
Anyway. Respect.
And here’s one of my favorite Doors tracks that highlights Manzarek’s musical genius.
Run with me,
This is dF