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'Jammin' with The DOORS"
Interview with Ray Manzarek
by
Jessa Lynn & Lee Kidd
at
Smith Baker Hall, Lowell, Massachusetts
October 2, 1993
[excerpted from SQUAWK Magazine, Issue #54]
Jessa: We've just heard this great concert with Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure at Smith Baker Center for the Jack Kerouac Festival in Lowell. During the performance you mentioned how Kerouac influenced you. Could you elaborate on that, Ray?
Ray: Sheez, I dug Kerouac, who as a Beat, wrote about freedom, and being out there in free space--beyond the dictates of the prevailing myth of the last 2,000 years. Besides, the Beats looked and sounded like they were having lots of fun, and girls liked them. I thought it would be a great way to meet and make it with girls. Now the whole Beat consciousness and resulting Beatnik scene is taking over America again, it's happening all over the place.
Lee: I was also impressed by your blues riffs tonight. It's the first time I've ever heard you play like that.
Jessa: Yes, with that boogie-woogie mix.
Ray: That's from my growing up on the South Side of Chicago, around 5th &Western Ave.
Jessa: How did The Doors evolve?
Ray: After graduating from UCLA in '65, Jim wanted to go to New York City. I thought that was too bad because we'd just started hanging out. He was a good guy. Two months later, I was sitting on the sand of Venice Beach, thinking about what to do with my master's degree...and who should come walking along; down to 135 lbs., he'd lost 30 lbs. but James Douglas Morrison, looking hard, lean, and mean. I said, "Hey, Jim, is that you!?" He came over, and said, "I've decided to stay here and have been writing some songs." So I asked him to sing me one.
When Jim sang "Moonlight Drive," "Let's swim to the moon, let's climb through the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide." I said, "Incredible! Do you have any more like these?" He did a couple of others, and I said, "These are the best rock lyrics I've ever heard. Let's get a rock n' roll band together."
Even now, when I listen to our "Strange Days," I enjoy our music from those Doors' days, with Jim's poetry and voice. We had the blending of a classical pianist, a jazz drummer, flamenco guitarist, and a poet. It was a brilliant combination of high quality, yet disparate elements, with people from different parts of the country--two from California, one from Chicago, and one from Florida--all coming together on the West Coast in the sixties. It's become one of the great American myths.
Lee: Do you think The Doors were inspired as much by poetry as by music? I mean that Morrison, at his best, liked poetry, but do you feel that the Beats were really a big influence on him?
Ray: Yes, The Doors got together to do poetry and rock n'roll. We first considered doing poetry and jazz; that cool West Coast jazz, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. But then we decided to do it with rock n' roll and the psychedelic fusion that nobody was doing lyrically then. The Beatles were still kind of a teeny-bopper band, with "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." They hadn't gone psychedelic yet. The Rolling Stones had just begun to venture into Chicago-style blues, which was nothing new for me from growing up there on the South Side.
Lee: Then your mutual regard for poetry and poetic expression really did have an influence in bringing you together?
Ray: Yes, absolutely, I admired Morrison's words. I thought they were just fabulous words for rock n' roll. I'd even say that Jim Morrison is one of the best poets of his generation; if not THE best. There's a battle between Dylan and Morrison. It depends on whether you're a Freudian or a Jungian, whether you're cosmically conscious, or still beholden to the prevailing myth of the last 3,500 years. I personally think Morrison is the better poet; more to my liking anyway--more Jungian and cosmically conscious.
Jessa: It also sounds like you've also been influenced by the philosophy of Buddhism.
Lee: We all jumped and shouted when you said you're having fun doing this. But tell us again: why are you doing what you do?
Ray: To kill some time before it kills me. Fuckin' time is going to kill every damn one of us. So in the meantime, I'm going to kill some time. And I'm going to have a hell of a good time doing it!
You've got to get into that place where the darkness lives, look it in the face, and say, "Gosh, I don't know if I'm going to come back, but I'm going to confront the demons, the madness, and the fears within me."
There's no reason to be afraid. Each of us is a divine creation on the planet, and the planet is here for us. People are over-reacting to everything, consuming things, shooting each other with gang warfare. It's all because of fear. Don't be afraid.
After all, what's the worst thing that can happen to you? The worst thing that can happen is you die. What happens when you die? Well, that's what we humans gotta find. I propose that what happens when you die is that you emerge. You merge into the energy of the universe, into the energy of light. It's the most wonderful place to be--full of energy, light, life.
Lee: It sounds like you're upbeat.
Ray: Yes, of course, it's very upbeat. There's always hope for the New Age that's coming. I'm talking about the astrological age. We're leaving the Age of Pisces with the sign of the Fish, and coming into Aquarius, the sign of the Water-Bearer. This will result in a drastic changes on earth.
No matter what the fascists do, they can't stop the New Age from coming. No matter how they try to squash it, Consciousness will rise. Kundalini or serpent power, and Goddess power is going to rise all over the globe and transform us. Hopefully, women will be able to instill in their men a deep confidence in love, so that the men can make love, not war. It's up to the women because men are basically beasts!
Lee: We see the Beats as our spiritual ancestors. We shouldn't worry so much about labels, but just go on and do our own scene. We need to define what's happening for us now in the nineties.
Ray: Yes, it's certainly true that the whole Beatnik consciousness is sweeping America as we speak, and the celebration of Beat poetry is happening all over. As far as I can see it, there's only one of two directions it can go--either artistic, spiritual, feminine consciousness-raising for men and women, where peace and love prevail on the earth--or just the opposite.
Yet they continue to cut down the forests. The men in power feel like they have cut down all the trees. It's like they want to convert the planet into a bone. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, they're really going after the old timber. They want to get that hard, solid, old-growth wood.
Lee: Actually what's been happening around here in New England--just to bring up the irony--is the forests are coming back. In Emerson's time, this land was all cleared for farming. Now after 150 years, the forests are creeping back. Being from the West Virginia-Ohio region, I've noticed that possums didn't exist in this part of the country until about fifteen years ago. They couldn't come this far East because they travel through the woods. Now there's possums every friggin' place you look. So all of this re-foresting is happening at the exact same time that the woods are being cut down somewhere else.
Ray: That's great! It's so easy to give up. Of course, the trees can reseed themselves. We're entering a New Age, and it's up to us to create it. It's our responsibility. We're the heralds of the light!
[exits whistling: "Break On Thru to the Other Side."]