Surveying the ballroom I\u2019m pleased it\u2019s similar to intimate clubs where The Doors generally played best. About five hundred people are filling the room and sipping drinks if they drink at all. For years, before my reformation, I would\u2019ve viewed such mature restraint as an affront and camped at the two rear-corner bars. Ray Manzarek was never much like that. He sometimes got high, like guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore, but when people talked about the wild Doors they were really saying, \u201cJim Morrison is crazy,\u201d and anticipating another drama from wild and wonderful rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n
\tWhen a man emerges from the dressing room, I don\u2019t recognize him until realizing it\u2019s like I\u2019m on acid and peering through a hallucinatory lens that transforms young Ray Manzarek into a gray grandfatherly fellow, with a double chin, who resembles a proud member of the establishment, a retired English teacher, perhaps. I\u2019m not going to upset him with that observation. He\u2019s stepping on stage for a concert in Bakersfield and hasn\u2019t played here in forty years. Most fans are a generation younger than Ray but that much older than the fresh and often frenzied faces from concerts in the late 1960\u2019s. Some have brought their children. They\u2019ll see him perform not with his three legendary band mates but a bluesy guitarist named Roy Rogers.<\/p>\n
\tLike a serene jazz artist, Ray begins playing the piano, rather than his iconic electric organ. His first song is a presidential boogie in mock celebration of George W. Bush, and upon finishing Ray admonishes the audience that he isn\u2019t stepping outside with any angry rednecks: \u201cThat\u2019s why I brought my brother, a local boy\u201d who lives forty miles into the mountains at Lake Isabella. A couple of jazz pieces then celebrate Miles Davis and Bill Evans who played with Miles. Roy Rogers and Ray delicately handle this mournful and repetitious material. I\u2019m sure most in the audience are thinking about The Doors. Sensitive to that, Ray has arranged to punctuate the concert with question and answer sessions.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIf there are any questions about Jim Morrison\u2019s manhood \u2013 how thick it was in Miami\u2026 Did he really whip it out? \u2013 I\u2019m asked about it every day,\u201d Rays says. \u201cOne guy told me Jim came on stage, twice.\u201d Rays says Jim didn\u2019t expose himself in Miami in 1969, though he was charged, tried, and convicted for his behavior that night. What Ray doesn\u2019t say \u2013 though I\u2019m quite willing to \u2013 is that alcoholic Jim Morrison was outrageously drunk, profane, and abusive and needed psychiatric treatment unavailable at the time. Ray has elsewhere acknowledged this.<\/p>\n
\tAfter Ray sings about having the Bakersfield blues, driving \u201cup to Lake Isabella, right along that mean old Kern River,\u201d he tells about a 1959 experience, when he was twenty. On the south side of Chicago, with a white friend, he shyly entered Pepper\u2019s Lounge to listen to the great blues band of Muddy Waters. Ray praises them for attracting the \u201cwell-dressed and coiffed black middle class\u201d and playing with a \u201ccircle of energy, a oneness, like The Doors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tYeah, it\u2019s time for them, and Ray sings lead as he pounds out \u201cLove Me Two Times\u201d baby, love me twice today. The magic\u2019s still there, and I\u2019m tempted to run up on stage and join in. Next, Roy Rogers steps away while Ray plays \u201cThe Crystal Ship\u201d as a beautiful piano solo, evoking \u201canother magic kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhat were your best and worst experiences with The Doors,\u201d someone asks during the next conversational break.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe worst was when Jim Morrison died,\u201d Ray says, \u201cand the best was walking with Jim on Venice beach and discussing existential matters. Why are we here? What is the point of this existence?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhat do you think about the film The Doors\u201d?<\/p>\n
\t\u201cDirector Oliver Stone hates me and I hate him,\u201d he says. Ray feels the director distorted Jim\u2019s life by cutting out the sober and introspective times and simply splicing a series of drunken episodes.<\/p>\n
\tTwo non-Doors compositions are played before Ray tells about the band\u2019s 1967 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The impresario, notorious for his \u201cstone face,\u201d told the The Doors to smile when they came on. After Ed left, his producer warned them not to sing \u201chigher\u201d during their abbreviated rendition of chart-topping \u201cLight My Fire.\u201d Jim, wearing tight leather pants, sang this classic the right way, and afterward the irate producer scolded the \u201cboys\u201d and told them they\u2019d \u201cnever do another Ed Sullivan show.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cSo what?\u201d Jim said.<\/p>\n
\tRay sings and plays a good \u201cBack Door Man\u201d before a man asks why The Doors didn\u2019t have a bass player on stage. Feigning indignation, Ray holds up his left hand as Topo Gigio, Ed Sullivan\u2019s favorite puppet, and lets the hand explain that it is the band\u2019s bass. I\u2019m afraid Ray\u2019s a little glib responding to the next question about why The Doors didn\u2019t play at the Woodstock festival in 1969. He says all the guys felt they were a big city blues, jazz, and rock band and didn\u2019t want to go out into the sticks of upstate New York. Besides, if it rained, as it did, Robbie Krieger might\u2019ve been electrocuted while playing the guitar. Really, The Doors were banned a lot of places, and reluctantly invited others, because of Jim\u2019s legal problems after Miami. <\/p>\n
\tThat\u2019s forgotten during Ray\u2019s virtuoso piano performance of \u201cRiders on the Storm.\u201d He thanks the clapping fans and leaves the stage but they keep pounding and he and Roy Rogers return to play the rearranged song. As Ray walks away the final time, I run up and tap his shoulder and he turns and stares: \u201cNo way, man. Let me touch you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Surveying the ballroom I\u2019m pleased it\u2019s similar to intimate clubs where The Doors generally played best. About five hundred people are filling the room and sipping drinks if they drink at all. For years, before my reformation, I would\u2019ve viewed such mature restraint as an affront and camped at the two rear-corner bars. Ray Manzarek…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,92,327,251],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n