| Rainer: |
Alright,
what was this thing, you know, you were talking
to me about on the phone, about your date of
birth? |
| Ray: |
Oh,
somebody has February 12, 1935, somebody else has
some other date, so the official date is February
12, 1939! |
| Rainer: |
Where
did you read that? |
| Ray: |
Yeah, I
read that in a Rock Encyclopedia. It's a German
one, I'm surprised that the Germans would get
anything wrong. |
| Rainer: |
Do you
know the title? |
| Ray: |
Ah no,
no, just some sort of Rock Encyclopedia. You
know, some encyclopedia. |
| Rainer: |
Yeah,
I'll check the bookstores. |
| Ray: |
And it
had, you know, the Doors, and it had each member,
and had their birthdates, and what instrument
they played, and a brief background on them. |
| Rainer: |
I don't
remember that I did it wrong. |
| Ray: |
No, no,
not you, you didn't do it wrong. I'm just trying
to get it right ! So what's the book you're gonna
write ? |
| Rainer: |
Well,
this is gonna contain some of the Doors
discography, you know, most of their records. You
know, including bootleg stuff you know,
everything I collected ... |
| Ray: |
Ahm,
ahm! |
| Rainer: |
...
during the past 20 years. So, and it's gonna
include all record covers and all original
singles and stuff like that. You might enjoy it,
you know, when you read it. |
| Ray: |
Good! |
| Rainer: |
So, I
try to my very best to do a next to complete one,
you know. Although this is very difficult, you
know. I found out about more than 500 records,
different ones, you know. |
| Ray: |
It's
incredible (laughs). |
| Rainer: |
It's
incredible, I tell you that ! You know, just a
little list. This is what is out in Germany on
singles ... (I show him the list of
German 45's I had in my bag) |
| Ray: |
Right! |
| Rainer: |
... on
45's. It's quite a lot. We also had "Waiting
For The Sun" out on a single. Why didn't you
publish this in America over here? |
| Ray: |
No, we
didn't. I don't know why. |
| Rainer: |
It made
a good single. Topped the charts... |
| Ray: |
Yeah.
It's a great song. I love that song. |
| Rainer: |
Can you
tell me something about, you know, where you come
from, and, you know ... your grandparents were
from Poland ? |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
right, right, on both sides, mother and father.
They're both from Poland. My father's side is
from a city called "Wijalistock", and,
err, the Kolenda family, Manzarek from my
father's side, obviously, Kolenda's (he
spells) K-O-L-E-N-D-A, and interesting
there were ... on my father's side there were two
brothers, who both left Poland at the same time.
And they were undecided as to where to go and one
said, "I'm going to Chicago", and the
other one went to Brazil. So I could've...
fortunately, I come out of the one who went to
Chicago rather then Brazil, so I guess I've got
some relatives down in Brazil. Although that
wouldn't have been bad either with the Samba and
everything, so I could have gotten into... and as
it is now I do a lot of Samba stuff so I love the
rhythms of Brazil .... |
| Rainer: |
So you
grew up in Chicago? |
| Ray: |
In
Chicago, right, I went to a grammar school called
Everett, (he spells)
E-V-E-R-E-T-T, Everett School on the south side
of Chicago, and then I went to St. Rita
Highschool, and then I went to De Paul
University, and got a bachelor's degree in
economics at De Paul University, and graduated
from there and went to UCLA to law-school at
UCLA, where I stayed in law-school for about two
weeks, and dropped out of law-school realizing
that that was totally insane for me to be in
law-school. And, ah, I didn't know what I was
going to do, I applied to be ... I thought I
would get an advanced degree in philosophy. I
applied to the philosophy-department and they
said, "Well, look, it's, you know, it's two
weeks of school already gone by," and it was
like maybe a week or two later after that so they
said, "Look, a month has gone by, why don't
you, if you want to apply, why don't apply next
semester." So I said, "Fine," and
then in between that somebody said to me,
"You know, UCLA has got a great
film-department," and I said,
"Film-department, perfect, that's what I
wanna do!" Music, theater, photography, all
of it; the cinema combining all of the art forms,
writing, acting, music, cameras, so, you know,
all the things that I was interested in all went
together into the film ... to make films, so I
thought that's what I wanna do. So I went and
enrolled in the film-department. |
| Rainer: |
How did
you become interested in making films? Thru' the
"Nouvelle Vague"? |
| Ray: |
Oh
yeah, right, through the "Four Hundred
Blows" by Truffaut, and "Orpheo
Negro", "Black Orpheus" the great
... that movie was just absolutely influential,
because you could combine really intense rhythm
and music and tell mythological stories. And
while was back in Chicago I was always involved
in theatre groups and I, you know, I did some
still-photography, and I've always been involved
in music, so all of it all went together to ...
perfect, the perfect artform. The great artform
of the 20th century combining all the various
disciplines. |
| Rainer: |
And
you're still working on video as well? |
| Ray: |
Videos
and I just finished "L.A. Woman". I
finished writing my screen-play to "L.A.
Woman", a contemporary erotic, psychological
thriller about a woman in Los Angeles and her
battle with the forces of darkness, and an
attempt to regain the light and the two guides
who represent good and evil, and her relationship
between these two men. And I just finished that a
couple of weeks ago and a demo-soundtrack for it.
We'll be doing one or two Doors songs. The title
character is a performance artist, singer and
poet, and she sings a Doors song, she sings
"Strange Days" in the movie and
"Love Street" along with some original
compositions, too. And so hopefully within the
next six months we can, you know, get ... I need
three million dollars to make a low-budget,
intellectual, artistic, exciting, erotic movie
with a great soundtrack. If all goes well,
hopefully in a year, year and a half, "L.A.
Woman" will be reality. |
| Rainer: |
Good.
Is this gonna be in the movies or planned to be
out just on video? |
| Ray: |
No,
film, movie, movie theatres. |
| Rainer: |
How
long is the film gonna be? |
| Ray: |
An hour
and a half. |
| Rainer: |
Really?
|
| Ray: |
Yeah!
Full length, a feature, make a feature. My
feature film debut, and I get to direct a feature
film. |
| Rainer: |
It's
based on the song "L.A. Woman" ... |
| Ray: |
...
based on the song, but set today. Contemporary
today. |
| Rainer: |
How do
you compare it to the video "L.A.
Woman", which is on "Dance on
fire"? |
| Ray: |
Well,
it's a ... "L.A. Woman", the video, is
sorta like a visual presentation of what the
movie "L.A. Woman" will look like, it's
the look of the film and the style of the film.
Then we add to that all the dialogue and the
story, and characters, and everything. (The
telephone rings in the background and I put off
the tape for a while. Ray talks with a
photographer, who is doing some new promo photos,
for a few minutes. In the meantime I realized
that Ray did not at all appear "to be in a
huff", but to the contrary was answering my
questions with his well-known enthusiasm and his
distinctive facial expressions. I have often had
the opportunity to talk to Ray before, and it
again became clear to me why he used to be
described as the spokesman for The Doors and why
the fans liked to listen to him. Ray Manzarek
talks in a lively fashion and underlines his
words with an abundance of gestures. His sonorous
voice makes him believable. Once he starts going
during a conversation there is no way to stop
him. A very pleasant interview partner. Dorothy
seems like his shadow, hardly ever leaves his
side and appears to be Ray's silent support.
During the conversation they exchange hardly
noticeable glances, as if Ray loved to be
reassured by her. Although Dorothy must have
heard some of the answers and stories countless
times, she was showing obvious interest in our
conversation. After the telephone call I pressed
my recorder button again and we continued our
interview.) |
| Rainer: |
Are you
going to use the same actors, like John Doe from
'X'? |
| Ray: |
No, no,
no, no. Some actors ... |
| Rainer: |
He was
really good in that 'L.A. Woman' video. |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
he was. Oh, John's terrific, man, yeah. |
| Rainer: |
Who was
that girl? |
| Ray: |
Christa
Erikson was the girl. |
| Rainer: |
One of
Danny's girl-friends. |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
at the time, right. (laughs)
|
| Rainer: |
At the
time, oh yeah. I met her two years ago. |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
very nice, very nice girl. |
| Rainer: |
Yes,
she is. |
| Ray: |
Now
we'll get some other people. It's yet to be cast.
|
| Rainer: |
Are you
still working with Michael McClure? |
| Ray: |
Yes,
yes, yes. Michael and I are playing as a matter
of fact in two weeks in Vancouver. And.. yeah, we
still do that. We just did ... I had a wonderful
three ... three gigs, three great performances in
Seattle, Portland and San Francisco with Michael
McClure and myself opening for Alan Ginsberg, so
it was a night of poetry and music that was just
amazing. Ginsberg was ... was fabulous. The man
is so filled with energy, you know, "On The
Road" ... I forget what the character's name
is that Alan Ginsberg is ... but this character
is always dashing about. Alan Ginsberg is still
dashing about. He's 65 years old and he's just
loaded with energy and charm and wit and, you
know, his mind is constantly racing and
invariably you have to take him by the arm and
say "C'mon man, it's late, we've gotta get
on the plane," you know, he says, "All
right, of course," and he dashes off towards
the plane and then you find yourself running
after him, and he's 65 years old. It's amazing.
And reading on stage he was great, so we had
three just absolutely incredible ... it was, it
was like being a beatnik, it was like, you know,
it was like 1960/58/60/62. It was absolutely
amazing. The audiences were just charged with
emotion, they were great for Michael and me, and
then for Alan. They were just over the top, just
screaming, just shouting, and ... it's rare to
see a poetry-reading with all that intensity
coming back from the audience. It was great. |
| Rainer: |
What
about going to England with this show? |
| Ray: |
Oh, I'd
love to, oh God, yeah, I'd love to get over to
Europe with it. Yeah, we've been, ahhhh ... we
did have ... Michael and I had a European tour
booked, but it didn't include, you know, London,
Paris, you know, Frankfurt, any of the ... it
didn't include any major cities. We were playing
in Toulouse, and Lyon, and I forget where, you
know, some small city in the Switzerland, and
then we had three gigs in Norway. |
| Rainer: |
In
Norway!? |
| Ray: |
Right.
I looked at the town and I said, "What is
this, this is insane," right. (laughs)
I said, "Where's Paris," you know,
"where's Milan, aren't we playing Milan?
Aren't we playing Rome, aren't we playing London,
Madrid?", you know, "Berlin,
Frankfurt." What's the city in southern
Germany? |
| Rainer: |
Munich.
|
| Ray: |
Munich!
"Aren't we playing Munich? What's going
on?" Everybody speaks English. Why are we
playing in places where people don't even speak
English? Let's go to Germany, for God's ... how
come we're not playing Germany? I wanted some
roast goose, an Eisbein, I wanted an Eisbein. If
I go to Europe, you know, I mean outside of
England and Paris, I wanna go to Germany, so I
can get my Eisbein. Kasseler Rippchen, you know,
I need that kind of food. (laughs)
|
| |
 |
Ray In Berlin, Germany,
1991.
Photo © Rainer
Moddemann/The Doors Quarterly Magazine |
|
| Rainer: |
(laughs)
That's good stuff... |
| Ray: |
Last
time we were in Munich somebody said,
"C'mon, we're gonna go out, let's go out to
a restaurant," and I said, "Okay, fine,
what kind of restaurant?" And they said,
"Well, you know, it's contemporary, sort of,
you know, like Nouvelle California cuisine?"
I said, "I don't want that, I don't want
that. I want Eisbein." And they said,
"Ahhh, okay, we know the place." So we
went to, you know, an old 17th-18th century house
and just had ... Dorothy had the most wonderful
... they had one quarter of a goose left, that's
what they had, some roast goose. We both wanted
the roast goose and there was only a quarter so I
had the Eisbein, of course, and the roast goose
was just perhaps the best roast I've ever had in
my life. |
| Rainer: |
Really?
|
| Ray: |
Oh God,
sensational. |
| Rainer: |
Along
with sauerkraut.... |
| Ray: |
Sauerkraut
and, right, red cabbage, sauerkraut, boiled
potatoes, you know, mass of beer, and a roast
goose, I thought this is heaven. 'Cos we had been
in Paris like for a week, week and a half, and
after the French food it was ... "could you
give me something with some heart to it, some
real, some serious, honest food here." |
| Rainer: |
That's
what we call 'soul food' in Germany. |
| Ray: |
That's
what it was, yeah, right, German soul food,
that's exact. We needed it, you know, after the
effete French food, you know, although, you know,
I love French food, but after a week and a half
of French food it's a little effete. (laughs)
|
| Rainer: |
There's
a lot of talk about your new album "Bamboo
Jungle". |
| Ray: |
Ahh,
it's not ready yet ... no. No, Pablo and I are
still working on various things. We'll get around
to that one to these days. There's no rush. |
| Rainer: |
What is
this gonna be all about? |
| Ray: |
Oh, the
tropic belt around the planet, the equatorial
belt, the rhythms and the music from the area
between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of
capricorn. Just the hot, the hot jungle belt
around the planet and all the various rhythms
that go on and the rhythms and the melodies and,
you know, contemporary, contemporary keyboard
adaptations with those rhythms. |
| Rainer: |
Sounds
interesting.... |
| Ray: |
Oh, I
can't wait to do it, but... |
| Rainer: |
You've
been working on this project for years... |
| Ray: |
For
years, 'n years, 'n years, 'n years, 'n years.
I've been sitting on a stack of tapes, I've
got... Dorothy: You're not gonna be serious until
you go to one of those places. |
| Ray: |
That
could be... |
| Dorothy: |
I think
you have to go to Bali first.... |
| Ray: |
Aha. |
| Rainer: |
Bali? |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
there's a Balinese piece, there's a ...
obviously, a lot of Samba stuff, there's some
African things, Middle Eastern music, ah, ... and
we just sort of put it all together and, you
know, do a contemporary adaptation, an homage to,
an homage to where rhythm comes from, that's ...
those people are all dependent on the rhythm as
we are now through Rock'n'Roll, you know, through
the, through the backbeat in America, if there
was, if there was no black man there would be no
Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are
what created Rock'n'Roll, and Jazz, and, you
know, the power of the beat on aetwo' and aefour'
rather than on aeone' and aethree', because
Western civilization was all either a walz or a
aeone' and aethree', "dum-ching, dum-ching,
dum-ching", like the "Whiskey
Bar". But you add the aetwo' and the
aefour', the rhythm, putting an accent on the
second beat..., you put an accent on the second
and the fourth beat and it becomes what white
people called it at the time "the devil's
beat ", the beat of the devil, the devil's
beat, because it's not the devil's beat, it's the
beat, it's the beat of the earth, the beat, the
rhythm of the earth, it's the beat of Dionysos,
it's Pan, it's ... it's the Gods' and the
Goddesses' in the forest, it's what it is. It's
Pooti, the bird ... (Dorothy enters the
room carrying a large cage. In it sits a
colorful, about 20 cm long parrot. "This is
Pooti," she says and opens the cage. The
bird glares at me with suspicion. Ray explains:
"He is a nice little fellow. He'll probably
come to you in a minute, just wait for it. Not at
once; he has to watch you for a while
first." Pooti slowly starts waddling across
the table and puts his head to one side. He then
slowly climbs up my arm. The grip from his claws
irritates me.) |
| Rainer: |
Pooti,
the bird ... |
| Ray: |
P-O-O-T-I,
Pooti. Pooti is an Australian parrot. |
| Rainer: |
Very
pretty bird. |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
he's a nice bird, he's a good guy. |
| Rainer: |
All
those colors... |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
'n he's probably gonna... check him out, go
ahead. At some point he'll come to you. |
| Rainer: |
Yeah. |
| Ray: |
Not
yet. First he's gonna look at you for a while. |
| Rainer: |
Okay. |
| Ray: |
He'll
eventually come over. |
| Rainer: |
He's
not used to me. I've got a dog at home, you know,
she's always friendly towards strangers, but, you
know, very suspicious at first. Aehm,
"Carmina Burana", I was really amazed
when I heard that first... |
| Ray: |
Oh
good, good, thank you. |
| Rainer: |
Did you
take some of the original chanting from from a
Carl Orff-record or.. |
| Ray: |
Well,
ah, no. I got it from the music. I got the
orchest-..., not the orchestral score, the vocal
score. I went down to one of, you know, the local
music ... music publishing places, and bought the
vocal score. The vocal score has the four vocal
parts, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and at the
bottom it has a piano accompaniment to work with
the singers. And as I was playing the piano
accompaniment looking at the meters of the
pieces, what time signatures they were in and
"what not", ah, I realized that the
music was so similar to the, to Doors music, the
first part of it, especially the piano part was
like exactly what I did ... get out, get out, no
cigarettes! (Pooti showed some interest
in the ashtray on the table and was just going to
pick up a cigarette butt, when Ray took away the
ashtray.) |
| Ray: |
First
part was exactly the way I would play, and do
play that; after looking at the orchestra and the
vocal score I thought this could all be done with
... this could be a whole Rock'n'Roll rhythmic,
guitars and drums, and it just fits, it fits
perfectly to it. So, with Philip Glass I set out
to, you know, to do a little rearrangement to
make it a little bit shorter because the piece as
it runs is about an hour and five minutes or so
and ideally on a black disc you wanna have about
twenty minutes a side, and at the time - '83/'84
- CDs weren't that big yet. On a CD I could have
done the whole piece easily, but on a black disc
to make 40 minutes I had to do a little
rearranging and compression and eliminate a
couple of pieces, but that was a lot of fun. It
was great working with Philip Glass and all those
people back in New York. |
| Rainer: |
Yeah,
that's what I was asking. How was it working with
an avant-garde composer? |
| Ray: |
Oh,
great! I mean he thinks.. |
| Rainer: |
You
with your background as a Rock musician. |
| Ray: |
Right.
It was, it was fine, it was wonderful, you know,
and we, ah, in a way played the same way, too.
Philip Glass composes in a similar fashion to
working out arpeggios to what I like to play
anyway, with a rhythmic pulse to it, so it was no
problem working with him at all. It was just the
opposite, very stimulating, and he had a great
keyboard-player with him, Michael Riesman, who
did a lot of the synthesizer parts; we'd work on
the things together. So Michael brought in the
orchestral score and we would go through the
orchestral score with an emulator and decide on
which part we wanted to use or which parts we
didn't need. 'Cause we had the drums, and the
guitar, and the bass and everything going so you
didn't need to add a lot of timpani or things
'cos the drums were covered. So, that was a lot
of fun, and all the singers were people that had
originally sung "Carmina Burana".
That's where Philip was instrumental in getting
people from the New York ... from the New York
opera, and, you know, classical singers who had
sung the piece before. And when they came into
the studio they had no idea what to expect, they
knew that they were gonna be doing "Carmina
Burana", but they didn't know that it was
going to be a whole contemporary version. And
when they heard the music, when they heard, you
know, the drums and everything and ... they had a
grand time. It was really fun to watch those
people sing. Okay, "Carmina Burana",
you know, to classical people "Carmina
Burana" is an old chestnut, okay, we know
that piece, yeah, my God, they're gonna do it
again, not again. But when they heard the drums
and the piano and the bass and everything just
really chugging, they were marvelous, they just
rose to the occasion, you could see the men out
there speak, they became the monks, you know, it
was great to watch them. And at the end of the
session they said "This was so much fun,
we've never had so much fun in a recording
studio." Well... it's Rock'n'Roll, man. (laughs)
|
| Rainer: |
Really,
really ... |
| Ray: |
That's
what it's all about. The rhythm, back to Africa,
back to the rhythm. |
| Rainer: |
Yeah,
this composition implies, you know, to have more
rhythm than the original, I always thought? |
| Ray: |
And
what Carl Orff did to it, Carl Orff got a lot of
heat for ... they were very, very perturbed, a
lot of classical scholars, music scholars, were
very perturbed, a lot of classical scholars,
music scholars, were very perturbed at what Carl
Orff did to the piece, because he had ... he made
one a tango, and, you know, he did all kinds of
things, so if you have an original recording or a
recording of the original text, and musical text
of "Carmina Burana", it's very
13th/14th century. Very medieval and none ... it
doesn't have that powerful rhythm but there was
something in the ... in the text that just struck
Carl Orff the right way, and he just said
"This has gotta be a piece of great power,
and majesty, and excitement". So he did that
and then, you know, 25, 30, 40, 50 years later
having the same experience from his version of it
when I did my version of it. |
| Rainer: |
In
Germany you can find it filed under the classical
section along with all other Carl Orff
interpretations, you know, there's your record,
you know. |
| Ray: |
Good! |
| Rainer: |
And it
still sells, you know. |
| Ray: |
Great! (laughs)
|
| Rainer: |
I got
many people to listen to it, we even use it at
school, you know, I'm a teacher and I gave it to
one of the music teachers, and he was so
fascinated, he uses it in his lessons. |
| Ray: |
Oh,
great, great. And from a musician's standpoint it
would certainly be ... God, I always thought it
would be a lot of fun to see how ... how the
adaptation was done because I juggled around some
of the parts, I would take a piece from here and
a part from this piece and a part of the other
piece and put those together into ... into
various ... into one piece, I mean, in a sense,
you know, violating Orff's original intent, but
staying true to ... I feel staying absolutely
true to Carl Orff's heart. You know, if not the
intellect, certainly his heart, and, you know,
that the piece is pure emotion anyway. So ... |
| Rainer: |
That's
true. Does this also go for The Golden Scarab'? |
| Ray: |
Ahhhh,
'The Golden Scarab', no, 'The Golden Scarab' is
just my baby, my baby entirely. That's all about
that's the hero's journey, that's Joseph's
Campbell. That's why it is called a rhythm myth,
it's a myth, it's a mythic story of a young man
and his quest for consciousness and all the
things that it takes him through. And all the
various things that happen to him until he
finally comes back around full circle to realize
that where he was is infinity to begin with and
to end with so he comes back to an infinity place
in time, where the only thing that ultimately
matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide
trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now
you're free. So it was a statement about
attaining freedom on the planet to finally work
your way free of, you know, at all the structure
of 2000 years of
Judea-Christian-Greco-Roman-Western civilization
to become a free man on the planet, not beholden
to any one form of thought, but worshipping at
the altar of freedom. And that's what it's about.
(In the meantime, Pooti has reached my
shoulder and is nibbling on my right ear. I move
my head to prevent him from making a meal of my
ear lobes. The Manzareks find Pooti's actions
amusing.) |
| Rainer: |
Why
don't you put this out on CD... |
| Ray: |
Yeah! |
| Rainer: |
The
vinyl is getting pretty rare, you know. |
| Ray: |
Yeah,
yeah. I'm, ah,... as a matter of fact, I have,
ahhh, it's interesting you mention that, because
sitting right over here in the corner there's one
of the two multitracks of 'The Golden Scarab'.
I'm gonna transfer them to digital, and ah, one
of these days. And, ah, you know, do a remix on
it, so, and hopefully get it out under some label
or another. |
| Rainer: |
That's
a pretty good idea. |
| Ray: |
Definitely.
And I'll remix it, so, there are the multitracks
sitting there just waiting to go. |
| Rainer: |
That's
really interesting ... |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
 |
Ray
Manzarek in his garden after the
interview (November 1990) saying "Do
I look too religious with that
shirt?" He signed the photo for me
in 1993.
Photo © Rainer
Moddemann/The Doors Quarterly Magazine |
|
(very special thanks
to Lindsey McFadyen)
|
|
