By now it is known that Ray Manzarek was largely responsible for the Doors' different musical sound: a sound that has influenced and affected the course of rock & roll: a part of the circle that has come full. Growing up in Chicago and hearing the Blues had a good deal of affect on the sound that Manzarek's music would shape into
...."South Side of Chicago around 35th and Western, St. Rita High School, De Paul University, and the Blues on the South Side of Chicago. Man, that's what really did it...That's made me everything I am. Just hearing Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker and Magic Sam and etc. and etc, on the radio killed me. To hear that stuff on the radio, I just went crazy for it. That and Jazz. . . Lots of Miles Davis, and since I studied piano and took piano lessons, I got into a lot of classical music too, so a lot of these things together, that's what made it."
But it wasn't till he got out to California and met Jim Morrison that music became a full time activity. In Chicago it was just. . . "beer bars. I played Friday and Saturday nights at fraternity parties, Buddies Rhythm Lounge and places like that for $10-$15 per night. It was just a part time gig for me. I never really considered music even when I went to California. I was in the film school in UCLA where I met Morrison. We were in the same class. Weekends I'd play in bars in LA but still had no intention of going into it full time. Then after graduating I found myself wondering "what the hell am I going to do?" After being in school all my life, there I was: school finished, got my degrees, nothing else I can do. Now it's time for the real world, the outside world. . . .After not seeing him for three or four months I met Morrison on the beach one day. I asked what he'd been up to. "Writing some songs." he replied. I asked him to hear some of them and after he sang me a bit of "Moonlight Drive" it just blew me a way and I thought what a great song, let's get a rock and roll band together. He told me that's exactly what he wanted to do. So we did it. That was the only thing we could do. It was either that or go on Welfare."
The Doors' music is a unique blend of rock, blues, jazz, classics and poetry. And so Ray Manzarek keeps playing it and letting itself be developed. "The Whole Thing Started With Rock and Roll and Now It's Out of Control" is the title of his second solo album. But even months before it was finished, this is what we were talking about when Ray Manzarek came to Triad to record an interview for radio broadcast.
"Rock and Roll got the whole thing started--it went over to England; the Beatles and Stones picked up on it, reinterpreting Blues and Anerican music in general--sent it back to us; we picked up on the English thing and psychedelisized it and sent it back to England, and it just keeps bouncing back and forth between America and England. Now we've been in the process of re-examining our 50's roots: Locomtion, Jim Dandy to the Recsue and all that stuff. It's been done before in the 50's and sometimes even be tter back then. So now that we've re-examined our roots, we've got to open ourselves up to the rest of the world. There's an entire world of music out there that few people people know about. There's African rhythms and Brazilian sambas, there are Bossa N ova rhythms. There's Chinese and Japanese music--strange, unreal sounds, erie sounds; there's Middle Eastern music; there's music all over the place. What I'm trying to do and what I think is going to happen, is that we'll keep our basic rock and roll fou ndation and bring in tastes and bits of these other cultures. Then music is going to go crazy--you'll hear sounds you've never heard before. It may take two or three years for it to happen, but when it does it's going to be great: A real global music wit h a basic rock and roll foundation!"