The Doors' Ray Manzarek dies at 74

cnn.com ^ | 05/21/2013 | n/a

[massmike]

The Doors' founding keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, died in Germany Monday after a long fight with cancer, his publicist said in a statement. He was 74.

The artist had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer.

The Doors formed in 1965 after Manzarek happened to meet Jim Morrison on California's Venice Beach. The legendary rock group went on to sell 100 million albums worldwide, establishing five multiplatinum discs in the U.S

Morrison died in 1971, but Manzarek carried on The Doors' legacy, continuing to work as a musician and an author.

[Moonman62]

Well, I was going to add this.

I wonder if the homage should be to McCoy Tyner, the piano player rather than John Coltrane.

Funny story: I made Dean's List at GA Southern. 10 As and one C. The C was in Piano.

That's like Mexican Americans going to night school, taking Spanish, and getting a B.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHegSV-Ad3U

[Borges]

I can’t imagine Sinatra as one of the ‘worst creeps of pop culture’. Have you seen the news lately?

Anyway Bach’s music has the character that it does because of the time he was writing. He was born almost 130 years before Wagner.

[real saxophonist]

Haha. Call my number, you get Cheech & Chong ‘Dave’s Not Here’.

[BluesDuke]

Interpreting "The End" in light of Vietnam is intriguing, but you might want to consider a) that Jim Morrison began writing the lyric about his breakup with a girl friend; and, b) what the Doors themselves said of the song otherwise:

Everytime I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song.... Probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.---Jim Morrison, in 1969.

Sometimes the pain is too much to examine, or even tolerate….That doesn't make it evil, though – or necessarily dangerous. But people fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah – I guess it is a friend...---Jim Morrison, focusing on the line "My only friend, the end . . ."

He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!---Ray Manzarek.

At one point Jim said to me during the recording session, and he was tearful, and he shouted in the studio, 'Does anybody understand me?' And I said yes, I do, and right then and there we got into a long discussion and Jim just kept saying over and over kill the father, f--k the mother, and essentially boils down to this, kill all those things in yourself which are instilled in you and are not of yourself, they are alien concepts which are not yours, they must die. F--k the mother is very basic, and it means get back to essence, what is reality, what is, f--k the mother is very basically mother, mother-birth, real, you can touch it, it's nature, it can't lie to you. So what Jim says at the end of the Oedipus section, which is essentially the same thing that the classic says, kill the alien concepts, get back reality, the end of alien concepts, the beginning of personal concepts.---John Densmore, the Doors' drummer, in his memoir Riders on the Storm

Take it all as you will.

Life hurts a lot more than death.

It should be kept in mind, too, that Jim Morrison was brought up in a psychologically abusive environment. His father, a Navy pilot and eventual rear admiral, and his mother had agreed never to spank their children but, instead, relied on ferocious military-style dressings-down, including harshly insulting beratings, that endured until the child in question was broken to tears confessing his or her failures (the Morrisons had two sons and one daughter)---even if it had only been a human mistake, as opposed to genuine misbehaviour.

Morrison broke off contact with his family (other than occasional contact with his brother) after he graduated UCLA (as a film student, two years before the Doors broke big), except for one occasion on which his father all but ordered him to give up his music career due to a "lack of talent"---at the time the Doors' first album was becoming a best-seller and "Light My Fire" was becoming the country's number one hit single---after a family member brought the Doors' debut to the elder Morrisons thinking their son was on the cover.

The earliest Doors promotion materials included a note that Jim Morrison claimed no living family. Rear Adm. Morrison himself shrugged it off by telling a reporter he took it to mean that his son was only too well aware of the parents' disapproval of the career choice "and maybe he was trying to protect us." Neither of Morrison's parents were ever known to comment about the Oedipal section of "The End," though if you're looking for any Vietnam reference in the song be advised that Rear Adm. Morrison's service including his having been the flagship commander (aboard the Bon Homme Richard, an aircraft carrier) of the 3rd Fleet Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and, upon his promotion to rear admiral, served further in the Vietnam War.

I don't know what it means on a deeper level, but on the same day his father was the keynote speaker at the ceremony decommissioning the Bon Homme Richard he once commanded, Jim Morrison died . . .

[2big2fail]

So, I actually came to the Manzarek party a little late, in the late 1970’s when he produced the first two albums by the legendary X, Los Angeles (upon which he played) and Wild Gift. Two of my favorites for over 30 years, now. I guess he would still play a song or two with X live now and then up until last summer. Awesome.

[a fool in paradise]

I’d say there were contemporary bands on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s that were more in league with the keyboard sound of the Doors than Strawberry Alarm Clock:

The Music Machine- Come On In
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_g84ubkwUg

The Music Machine- Eagle Never Hunts The Fly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKCl8cN90Kk

The Seeds - Up In Her Room
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOWCmRuD8HY

Sky Saxon Blues Band (formerly the Seeds) - The Moth And The Flame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ8SzrzRc4k

Sky Saxon Blues Band - I’ll Help You (Carry Your Money To The Bank)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ8SzrzRc4k

The lead singers of each passed away in recent years (Sky Saxon of the Seeds dying the same day as Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett).

[a fool in paradise]

I was in California a week before Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure did a gig together. I’d already had a CD of them together but did not get to see them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOkJnmXrJk

The show I saw of Robby and Ray together wasn’t as enjoyable as the show of just Robby by himself. I did want to see Ray in concert again, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rooY2UReI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLmYWGewf6Y&list=PLC599049395F6E014

[a fool in paradise]

I can’t imagine Sinatra as one of the ‘worst creeps of pop culture’. Have you seen the news lately?

Between running briefcases of money for the mob to the night the Rat Pack almost raped Marilyn Monroe, he was a bit of a sleaze.

[GSWarrior]

Manzarek recorded an album with blues guitarist Roy Rogers two years ago called Translucent Blues that was very good.

[Borges]

I’m not calling him a saint but by today’s standards...

[a fool in paradise]

Morrison was a drug crazed lunatic but so were Harry Nilson, John Lennon, and Keith Moon, none of whom get all the grief about it that Jim Morrison does every time his name is brought up.

[a fool in paradise]

Given that hip hop agents bullsh!t the bios of the thugacracy to make them appear to be even MORE criminal than they really are, it isn’t saying much about the actual person (just the anti-cultural impact of Big Media).

One rapper got exposed as being a former cop rather than a former drug kingpin (and he was a disgrace to all of those professions).

[mbarker12474]

I’m not calling him a saint but by today’s standards...

I'm not sure if even Lady Gagme or Madonna have actually masturbated on stage. And it would be easier for them because wouldn't have to pull out their pecker.

We conservatives should not be getting all mushy over the deaths of secular pop stars, whether they are from the 1960s, 2010's, or 19th century. Be careful who and what you idolize.

[Borges]

Name some ‘secular pop stars’ from the 19th century?

[Osage Orange]

Apparently you don't.

But plenty of people might.

You sir...are an ass.

FWIW--

[dragnet2]

Jim said as a kid, he was traveling with his family across some stretch of hot desert when they came across a brutal fatal accident involving some Indians from a local tribe..

As they slowly drove past all the death and vehicle carnage on the hot asphalt, he felt the soul of an Indian enter his body...

Probably why he used war paint and slammed whiskey as much as he did....I think I’ll have a shot...or two.

[Fiji Hill]

I sure do remember the Music Machine and the Seeds. Their songs were regularly played on KHJ, KRLA and KFWB, the Southland’s rock blasters, and the Music Machine often appeared on TV—I think it was Lloyd Thaxton’s show.

[Albion Wilde]

I can’t imagine Sinatra as one of the ‘worst creeps of pop culture’. Have you seen the news lately?

Well, you've got me there. Sinatra was one of the biggest creeps of his era. But nothing is sacred now; nothing.

Anyway Bach’s music has the character that it does because of the time he was writing. He was born almost 130 years before Wagner.

Hmm, time is no excuse for the downer I experience with Wagner, whereas many who wrote centuries after he did make me feel inspired or lifted up. I will admit, though, for me, no one can touch Bach.

[Fiji Hill]

Name some ‘secular pop stars’ from the 19th century

In the 1840's and '50's, Jenny Lind was probably more popular than Justin Bieber is today. Some of the big stars of the later nineteenth century, such as George Gaskin, Len Spencer, Arthur Collins and the band of John Phillip Sousa can be heard on Youtube.

[COBOL2Java]

LOL