Ray Manzarek

So Ray Manzarek has died, sadly, at age 74. The man probably most responsible for introducing Jim Morrison to the world (for better and for worse) and, even moreso, for stoking Morrison’s legend after his 1971 death to a degree where the Doors and Morrison saw the most startling post-death surge in popularity in rock history, is gone. And that’s sad.

Like most who came of age in the late 70s/early 80s when the Doors meteoric return was captured by this epochal Rolling Stone cover, I became a Doors maniac when I was in the 7th grade. And like a whole great lot of those people I was thoroughly tired of them by the time 10th grade rolled along. That was about the window. They were awesome when I was 13 and then poof! They were irrevelant by 15.

To this day I don’t know exactly how I feel about them. I'm not a fan and haven't been since about 1983, but to paraphrase something Dave Bry very astutely wrote on The Awl, how can I totally discount something that meant so much to me when I was 13 years old?

On the good side, they had a wholly unique sound, dark and mysterious and as forboding as anything of their era. They had a couple exceptional songs and a few good ones. Despite a total lack of training, Morrison’s deep voice lent itself well to their atmospheric sound. And, let’s face it, no one—not even Robert Plant—has ever more looked the part of rock-n-roll god than Jim Morrison did. The danger, the cutie-pie stare, the sexual aura, the cool—he had it all, and the Doors indeed benefited from it.

On the downside, well…let's face it, they really weren’t that good. For the most part Manzarek’s organ—which along with Morrison’s voice was the focal point of most of the band’s music—was way too lite-jazzy for me and seemed to drone on and on. Morrison’s lyrics ranged from merely indulgent (“And our love become a funeral pyre?” Really?) to just horrible (“Warm me up with your inner stove”—UGH!) The man couldn’t help himself—there are too many examples of bad writing mistaken for Faustian depth to really get into it here. But let’s just say this: English teachers rue the day a line like “I’m gonna love you ‘til the stars fall from the sky for you and I” was written, as it surely spawned 1,000 imitators that were even more trite and displayed even poorer grammar.

Also? Jim Morrison was a cad and a creep, by all accounts. Was he the only one in rock-n-roll? Heavens no. But he seemed to enjoy his status more than anyone, to wear it as a badge of honor. It seemed he wanted that to define him even more than his music. And that kinda sucks.

There’s a passage in No One Here Gets Out Alive, the definitive Morrison bio I read when I was 12—and at the time felt like it changed my life (um, it didn’t)—that speaks to what an asshole he was. To paraphrase, he’s just gotten done having sex with a young prostitute/groupie when his long-suffering girlfriend Pamela Courson knocks on the door. Jim shoos Pam away, and then painfully rips several rings off the young girl’s fingers (the book made it clear this hurt like hell), ushers her out the window and gives the rings to Pamela as a gift. Know what that sounds like? A pure sociopath. So, yeah, forget womanizer or reprobate or whatever other labels can be affixed to so many keepers of rock-n-roll decadence. This is more than that—Jim Morrison was a dick.

And it's for that reason (well, that and the bad poetry) that I've spent most of my adult years laughing at the Doors when I think of them (which, honestly, isn't that often), rather than any kind of real reverence.

Yet still, for all of the self-importance and lousy writing and debauchery, there were some songs that made them legit, at least for a short while. And Manzarek often times seemed to be the only adult in the room, driving them towards success. It’s Ray’s rumbling bassline, for example, on “Break on Through,” the very first song on the Doors’ very first album, that still stands today as one of the most audacious and menacing opening shots in rock history. It’s Ray’s moody, controlled chaos that lends “Riders on the Storm” its terrifying seductiveness. And it’s Ray whose restrained yet tasetful work augments Robbie Krieger's guitar and drives along my personal favorite Doors song, “People Are Strange,” lending it a haunting, ghostly feel.

  

Listening to this and I can hear threads leading to R.E.M.’s “Maps and Legends,” or maybe some of the darker tracks by the Pixies and, much later on, even the Decembrists. It’s one of the only songs that seems to successfully make sense of Morrison’s insipid “Lizard King” image—courting the darkness that comes with being an outcast and existing on the fringes. (“Faces come out of the rain when you're strange. No one remembers your name when you’re strange.”) For one of the very few times in the Doors’s five year, six-album career, Jim Morrison actually relies on subtlety and doesn’t overdo it. As a result, “People Are Strange” is a highlight that most anyone would be proud of.

It’d be nice to think that Ray Manzarek, who was more devoted to keeping the Doors music and mystique alive for the past 40 or so years, had something to do with this.