Ray Manzarek is Dead As Fuck
(February 12, 1939 - May 20, 2013)
If you don’t know who Ray Manzarek is off the top of your head, it’s okay because you’re not alone. He was the co-founder, keyboard player and principal songwriter for The Doors.
The Doors you’ve definitely heard of, right? They’re the band that’s loved and worshiped by every girl you know that constantly writes “I was born in the wrong decade” all over everything, even though most of them just learned who The Doors were and traded in their Taking Back Sunday albums for Strange Days about 6 months ago.
Jim Morrison was the face of The Doors and he was just as brilliant as he was a drug-addled degenerate. The two kind of go hand in hand, but just because you are one, doesn’t mean you are also the other. Don’t get it twisted and try it for yourself.
Anyway, after Morrison died in 1971 (officially from “natural causes” but unofficially from overdosing on heroin in a Paris nightclub where the owner panicked and paid two drug dealers to take Morrison back to his nearby apartment and dump him in the tub) Manzarek decided that he was just as important to the band as Morrison was.
He took over lead vocals on the two post-Morrison albums that weren’t very good, then spent the next three decades playing songs while having someone read Jim Morrison’s poetry and trying to convince drummer John Densmore to let him license Doors music for commercials (something that Morrison vehemently opposed) so he could make a few extra bucks. Densmore never gave in and ended up suing Manzarek and guitarist Robby Kreiger when they started trying to tour as The Doors of the 21st Century.
He also wrote a book called The Poet In Exile, in which a rock star known as “The Snake Man” fakes his own death, then later reunites with his keyboard player (named Roy in the book) and apologizes for mistreating him and thanks him for keeping his legacy alive.
It’s safe to say that Manzarek had some issues about being second fiddle to Jim Morrison.
Granted, Manzarek did some great things post-Morrison - like discovering the punk band X and producing their first 4 records and his songwriting on the actual Doors records is phenomenal. But later he threw all that greatness out the window when he collaborated with Skrillex and deemed it the “first Doors song of the new millennium.”
He died earlier this week of bile duct cancer. Now that he’s dead, maybe someone will finally realize his dream and turn The Poet In Exile into a movie that I can skip without even thinking twice about before putting on WAYNE’S WORLD 2 as a tribute to Jim Morrison.
