Product Description

"Wryly intelligent...mixes juicy behind-the-scenes bits...with energetic, note-by-note accounts of the evolution of the band's songs."--People

No other band has ever sounded quite like the Doors, and no other frontman has ever transfixed an audience quite the way Jim Morrison did. Ray Manzarek, the band's co-founder and keyboard player, was there from the very start--and until the sad dissolution--of the Doors. In this heartfelt and colorfully detailed memoir, complete with 16 pages of photographs, he brings us an insider's view of the brief, brilliant history...from the beginning to the end.

"A refreshingly candid read...a Doors bio worth opening."--Entertainment Weekly

"[An] engaging read."--Washington Post Book World

* By the keyboard player and co-founder of the band who saw it all
* Includes 16 pages of photos
* Extraordinary reviews from People, Entertainment Weekly, Washington Post Book World and others...Booklist calls it "literate, perceptive, and thoughtful" and says it "may be the best rock bio of the year"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248851 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Legendary Doors keyboardist Manzarek cannot seem to figure out whether his close friend and bandmate Jim Morrison's wild antics were the result of a poetic desire to push the envelope as far as the singer could, or if the famous 1960s rebel (who died in Paris at the age of 27) was just a gifted drunk. This ambivalence gives rise to an interesting, open-minded chronicle of one man's (Morrison's) alcoholism and its impact on his loved ones. Manzarek surely loved MorrisonAthey were friends and collaborators before either man had met the other two musicians who would complete the Doors's lineup, drummer John Densmore (whom Manzarek claimed Morrison never liked) and guitarist Robby Krieger, who penned "Light My Fire," "Touch Me" and "Love Me Two Times" with little or no help from famed lyricist Morrison. Manzarek takes every opportunity to philosophize about the ills of capitalist America, and he incessantly, passionately alludes to Greek mythology, Hinduism and Christianity when relating tales of his rock band's rise and fall. It's all love, peace, happiness and Morrison, except for the caustic passages regarding Oliver Stone and his big-budget biopic, The Doors, which Manzarek despises. "Grow up and see it like it really is, you fascist," the keyboardist writes at one point, which makes one wonder why Manzarek, an award-winning filmmaker and graduate of the UCLA film school, didn't make the movie himself. 16 pages of photos, not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Manzarek, musical leader of and keyboard player for the Doors, takes us back to the strange days of 1960s L.A. in a striking personal memoir and ode to Jim Morrison. After singer-lyricist Morrison's untimely demise, the band drifted apart, but its music and Morrison's leering public persona get dredged up periodically by new generations of fans. Manzarek and fellow UCLA film graduate, budding poet, and aspiring lizard king Morrison were the band's nucleus, to which Manzarek added guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore, whom Manzarek found in a transcendental meditation group. As the Doors, the four captured the orgiastic mood of the Age of Aquarius, L.A. style, by mixing mystical lyrics and extended musical jamming with the signature sound of Manzarek's carnival-like electric keyboard stylings. They enjoyed a commercial success rooted in the singles charts, which provoked dismissive criticism from the album-oriented rock-critic cognoscenti of the time. Manzarek posits that if Morrison had not fallen in with the wrong crowd (a problem then as now), he would have enjoyed an enduring career either as poet or rocker (like, perhaps, Henry Rollins?). Literate, perceptive, and thoughtful, this is the best book yet about the Doors and their legendary singer, not to mention Manzarek, and may be the best rock bio of the year, on a par with Dave Davies' Kink last year. Mike Tribby

From Kirkus Reviews
If anyone were to write a Jim Morrison tell-all, band- and soulmate Manzarek would be the man. But, to his everlasting credit, he didn't. Using his Doors experiences as the hook, Manzarek reels readers in with personal, often charming, if occasionally cloying, reflections on his life before, during, and since the Doors. He begins with his childhood in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, where his parents introduced him to the sensuous pleasures of the blues and meat-eating (a recurring themedon't ask). Later he attended UCLA film school, where he met Morrison. From there, the two lives followed parallel paths to different destinations. Manzarek, the more responsible (or less volatile), met and married his sweetheart, Dorothy, his wife to this day. Morrison became the band's charismatic front man whose fixation with nihilism and violent imagery, when mated to his heavy drinking and drug use, created what Manzarek calls ``Jimbo,'' a sociopathic, drunken brute, ``a monster. . . . the creature who eventually took Jim to Paris and killed him.'' Rather than luxuriate in the sordid details of Morrison's self-destruction, however, the author mostly prefers to revel in the giddy pleasures of life with the band: the genteel poverty of the early days; camaraderie and bickering among Doors members while on tour; success as known at the top; and even the truth about the Doors' ill-starred 1969 concert in Miami (for the record, Morrison never exposed himself). If Manzarek feels any rancor over the end of the Doorshe claims that Jim's 1971 sojourn in Paris was a hiatus, not a break-upit is directed toward the hangers-on who steered Morrison down his path to self-smashing. Although Manzarek does reserve choice words for the director of the Doors movie, Oliver Stone, such as ``fascist,'' ``psychotic,'' and ``bonehead.'' Whatever. Even these screeds make this pop-culture memoir more engaging. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

insightful
This book makes me uncomfortable. i really like Ray on one hand, and find him insightful and intelligent, and have a very similar philosophy on life and existence...and yet, why is he so glaringly uncaring about Jim? No, i am sure he loved Jim on some level, but still...what's missing?

Why did he want to use Jim for art and not care about Jim the person? Only cared about what he wanted out of Jim, the great poet...no wonder Jim created "Jimbo", with the "friends" he had to put up with.

How could this man who talks about love be so uncaring about someone as close to him as Jim? It doesn't add up.

If it weren't for that, i'd really like Ray, now it's just...what's going on here? i don't get it. Art isn't more important than the people, Ray. the Doors is less important than Jim and his suffering, than anyone in the Doors.

An interesting read, though.

i'd like to get in touch with real fans of Jim Morrison...if anyone wants, plesae email me at tontheon@yahoo.com

The Doors were modern but still artists
There were two different Jim Morrisons, says Ray Manzarek, whose vision along with Morrison's created the group, and whose organ playing helped distinguish its sound.

There was the Good Jim. Poetic. Artistic. Polite. So unselfish he suggested the group split all royalties and songwriting credits equally although he wrote most of the songs and was responsible for the group's singular image. Drenched in the modern and avant-garde culture of the previous century. Possessor of a huge literary bookshelf which he knew so intimately he would win repeated bets that he could identify a book pulled from its shelf, just by hearing a few lines read from it at random. Possessed of a special Dionysian spirit that Ray saw as one of the unique forces of the 1960s, and of a desire to lead others to it. Ray thought an artist ought to be president some day, and that Morrison, with his good looks, WASP roots and Native American shaman vision, might just be the guy.

Then there was the Bad Jim, a persona Manzarek dubs "Jimbo" - a drunk with a mean streak and racist tendencies, who sought to destroy the Good Jim's poetic voice. Manzarek, married to a Japanese-American, felt this acutely. Alcohol brought Jimbo to the fore. Over the Doors' short lifespan - releasing albums from 1967 to 1971, with their touring curtailed after Morrison's 1969 obscenity bust in Miami - his bandmates found him increasingly difficult to work with, and never knew on a given day if poetic Jim or drunk Jimbo would show up.

When Morrison died in Paris in 1971, a death certificate attested merely that he'd died because his heart had stopped. Most likely, he had by age 27 drunk himself to death, perhaps aided by heroin. Jimbo had won out.

The good Jim is worth remembering. Doors music still resonates 40 years later because it was truly creative, and Jim Morrison was a large part of what made them special. Art rock as a movement is usually placed in the 1970s, but the Doors were ahead of the wave, with a sound and vision spawned in 1965 while the Beatles and Beach Boys were still dominating the airwaves with teen music.

Manzarek and Morrison met at the UCLA Film School. Primarily a musician, Manzarek says he was drawn to film as a medium because it drew on all the arts. His wife was an artist. Morrison, with no musical background, was a poet. The three of them, living together for a spell, drenched themselves in art of every sort. Early stoners and acid heads, they were genuinely in pursuit of the muse.

There lurks a suspicion nowadays that modernism, in every genre, is bogus, allowing the untalented, unschooled and unskilled to rip off the unsuspecting. Think of every ridiculous modern "artwork" whose creator ever conned an art museum into devoting prime space to it - when all it was, was an entire canvas painted orange. Or a red one with a green dot in the middle. Or a sneaker nailed to a canvas. Something that made you think, "I could have done that. But why would I have wasted the time?"

The Doors remind us it doesn't have to be like this. Manzarek and Morrison were avant-gardists but also well schooled, drawn together initially through their mutual appreciation of modernist jazz master John Coltrane. Manzarek had played classical piano as a youth, had grown up in Chicago where he was exposed firsthand to the Chicago blues during its heyday in the 1950s, and had a comfortable familiarity with rock and other pop genres. Morrison had no musical background but had mastered a good century or so of avant-garde literature - Rimbaud, Celine, Jean Genet, Kerouac, the other Beats and many more. While in school, they dug all those New Wave film directors. Drummer John Densmore was a jazz drummer and also a Coltrane fan. Guitarist Robby Krieger had a background in flamenco and folk, picking the guitar with his nails instead of using a pick.

Their sound was their own - blues, jazz, rock, flamenco. Morrison's unique poetry reflected his own personal search for the beyond; their very name alluded to a William Blake poem and to their desire to strip away the barriers to true perception of reality. The Doors were modern but still artists, succeeding because they had a strong foundation in modernism of every genre and a background in classical work as well.

The Doors, artists trying to break the commercial pop or rock band mold, faced an uphill battle. Numerous record companies rejected their sound as too different and too threatening. The Doors couldn't coast; they had to be good.

They pursued their art the way artists in more classical genres go about it, standing on the shoulders of those who had gone before, immersing themselves in the modernist oeuvre - that's not an oxymoron - as they set out to create its next step.

Morrison sought for man to become free, personally and sexually. His work hasn't dated because he focused on timeless themes like sex, death, life, and rebirth, using universal imagery such as sun and water. Manzarek concurred and hoped this freedom would effect a social and political transformation. Ecstatic liberation is more likely to yield chaos, as the Doors learned the hard way in Miami when their stage nearly went down amidst thousands of surging fans. And while according to Manzarek, Morrison never actually flashed Mr. Mojo Risin' at the crowd - instead taunting and teasing the crowd with their own crude desire that he do so - his irony was easily lost on the judge and jury that convicted him.

Manzarek's telling is overripe with California New Age speak, a mish-mash of Eastern and Western religious influences, constant references to "chakras" and other mystical gobbledygook, and an obsession with finding "fascism" everywhere. Whatever one may think about it in light of later events, though, it's true to its time. This is what 1960s ferment was about. The Doors went where no one had gone before. That's what artists are supposed to do.

RAY ONLY TALKS ABOUT HIMSELF
I bought this book because the first couple of pages SEEMED to be about Jim Morrison and the Doors but it turned out that Ray only talks about himself as if he was a 16yrs old and has no mature writing in this book. Only the last few chapters of the book are actually about Jim and he keeps it brief. He only talks about having sex with his wife. NOT IMPORTANT TO SELLING A BOOK ABOUT THE DOORS AND JIM. THIS BOOK WAS HORRIBLE