Ray Manzarek
Founding member of The Doors; Born: February 12, 1939; Died: May 20, 2013.
RAY Manzarek, who has died aged 74 of cancer, was the keyboardist who cofounded The Doors after meeting Jim Morrison in California. Best known for hits such as Break On Through To The Other Side, The End and Light My Fire, the band became one of the most successful rock’n’roll acts to emerge from the 1960s and symbolised the decadence of Los Angeles as the counter-culture grew in the US. They continued to resonate with fans long after Morrison’s death in 1971 and still do.
Of Polish descent, Manzarek was born in Chicago and at school showed ability at sport. Music and the arts were his great passions and he went on to study film at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Morrison, who was then a poet, by chance at Venice Beach. The pair began to talk of forming a band together after Morrison read him the lyrics for a song called Moonlight Drive. “I’d never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before,” Manzarek said. “We talked a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars.”
The band would make far more than that. The Doors, which included guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore, have to date sold more than 100 million albums. Their music has been featured prominently in movies.
Outwardly, Manzarek and Morrison seemed very different. The strikingly tall, dark and handsome Morrison looked the part of rock star, while Manzarek, with glasses, retained a more professorial look. Manzarek was key to the sound and success of The Doors – his electric organ was a defining aspect next to Morrison’s booming voice in the band’s blues and jazz influenced take on rock’n’roll.
More than that, Manzarek is among the most notable keyboard players in rock history, playing it as a lead instrument at a time when the guitar often dominated.
The band recorded eight albums between 1967 and 1972 and Manzarek found the right touch for a wide range of songs.
They broke up shortly after Morri- son’s death from heart failure in 1971, but their mythology exploded following the 1980 publication of the biography No One Here Gets Out Alive and the 1991 film, The Doors, by director Oliver Stone.
Manzarek continued to remain active in music. He briefly tried to hold the band together by serving as vocalist, but eventually the group fell apart. He played in other bands over the years, produced other acts, became an author and worked on films.
He released two albums with the rock band Nite City in the late 1970s and six solo albums, most recently Translucent Blues in 2011 with bluesrock guitarist Roy Rogers.
In 2003 Manzarek and Krieger became locked in a legal battle with drummer John Densmore after the two reunited under The Doors name and later The Doors of the 21st Century, but toured as Manzarek-Krieger.
Manzarek, in a 2006 interview, embraced the idea of old age and was insistent that rock stars could continue to perform and tour as long as they wanted to – in fact, they could get better.
“We occupy these bodies for 70, 80, 90 years, and it’s so much fun being alive on planet Earth that you want to keep this thing as fresh as you possibly can,” he said. “The spirit, the mind, the soul, what’s inside of you just gets hipper and hipper as you get older. You get a whole broadened outlook on things,” he added. “That just naturally keeps going, but the damn body slows down.”
Manzarek was also the author of two novels and most notably the 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors.
He lived in northern California’s Napa Valley wine country for the past decade and had been seeking treatment in Germany for bile duct cancer.
He is survived by his wife Dorothy, his son Pablo and two brothers, Rick and James.