Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors

Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors

by Ray Manzarek
Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors

Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors

by Ray Manzarek

Paperback(BERKLEY BO)

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Overview

"The best book yet about The Doors." —Booklist

The inside story of the Doors, by cofounder and keyboard player Ray Manzarek. Includes 16 pages of photos.


"A refreshingly candid read...a Doors bio worth opening." —Entertainment Weekly
No other band has ever sounded quite like the Doors, and no other frontman has ever transfixed an audience quite the way Jim Morrison did. Ray Manzarek, the band's co-founder and keyboard player, was there from the very start—and until the sad dissolution—of the Doors. In this heartfelt and colorfully detailed memoir, complete with 16 pages of photographs, he brings us an insider's view of the brief, brilliant history...from the beginning to the end.
"An engaging read." —Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780425170458
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/15/1999
Edition description: BERKLEY BO
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 525,065
Product dimensions: 5.98(w) x 8.96(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Ray Manzarek was a cofounder and member of The Doors. After Morrison's death in 1971, he went on to produce the seminal punk rock band X, and to record some solo projects, including the critically acclaimed Golden Scarab with Tony Williams and Larry Carlton. He has directed three platinum-selling videos on The Doors as well. When not in the studio, he tours live with Obie award-winning beat poet Michael McClure.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The best book yet about The Doors." —Booklist

Interviews

Before the live bn.com chat, Ray Manzarek agreed to answer some of our questions.

Q:  Why did you decide to write this book more than 25 years after Jim Morrison's death and the end of The Doors?

A:  I wanted to write a book that would help serve as a bridge into the 21st century. That would, perhaps, serve as a guide to the future. That would give some insight into the mind of the '60s and help kindle a reawakening of artistic and spiritual impulses in the young people of today -- who, after all, will create the future! And to dispel a lot of the silly exaggerations about the "crazy and wild" Jim Morrison. Also, most of the books about Jim were written by people who weren't even there. I'm tired of them.

Q:  What are your thoughts on the 1991 Oliver Stone movie "The Doors"?

A:  The movie was wrong! Jim was not a jerk and drunk all the time. He was a sensitive poet: artistic, witty, funny, and charming. Oliver Stone is a dope. Got it really wrong. It wasn't made by a psychedelic person. It really seems to be a movie about Aerosmith or The New York Dolls.

Q:  Who would you consider some of your literary influences? What about musical influences?

A:  I would list my musical influences as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bill Evans, Joe Zawinul, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, and Ravi Shankar.

Q:  How would you describe Los Angeles in the late 1960s? What do you think about current-day Los Angeles?

A:  L.A. in the 1960s: a palace of spiritual search. A hedonist's delight. An artistic hotbed of creativity. An anger at the war in Vietnam. Clean, alive, excited, throbbing, sexual, spontaneous, sun-infused.

Today it's different -- angry. (But then, isn't all of America? We need a psychedelic revival. We really need to get off crystal meth and crack. "White powder" equals bad stuff.) We're angry at each other. Road rage! Bad drugs. AIDS. Too much booze. Gang shootings. Bad schools. Teenage unwed mothers. Greed at the top. Fear and depression at the bottom. Sounds like where you live, too...huh?

Let's change it around. Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages. Let's discover the Christ, the Buddha within ourselves. Let's become the lovers that Jesus wanted us to be. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." You are your neighbor. You are all things. You are God.

The future belongs to the lovers.

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