Ray Manzarek:  I hope we sent you on some good trips.

CS:   Definitely some places I've never been before.

RM:   Very good.

CS:  I want to talk about the song writing aspect, the creative process of the songs. First I want to ask you about The Doors of the 21st Century. What are your plans. I mean what's new going on with this group.

RM:  Speaking of songs, we're working on new songs. Working on chord changes and rhythms and the whole thing. We're doing new material for The Doors of the 21st Century. What we've got is . let me see, I guess we should say, Jim Carroll of "The Basketball Diaries" is writing lyrics for us. John Doe of "X" is writing lyrics for us and Michael McClure, noted beat poet is writing lyrics for us. Michael McClure is a friend of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg . and was Jim Morrison's poetry mentor! They were close friends.

CS:  I didn't know Jim Morrison had a poetry mentor . from the 20th century.

RM:  Robby and I are writing the new music, along with Robby's lyrics and those are our collaborating lyricists.

CS:  It was always the perception that everybody in The Doors wrote their own parts, but who was the one who actually came up with ideas for new songs, who came up with the structure, who came up with the melody?

RM:  Jim would have the melody and Robby and I would come up with the chord changes. For instance in 1965, on Venice beach, Jim sang "Moonlight Drive" to me ... actually sang the melody line to which I heard the arrangement and the chord changes were underneath that. "Moonlight Drive" was virtually a done deal right off the bat.

CS:  Did other songs come about very quickly after that?

RM:  Jim sang "My Eyes Have Seen You" and we turned that into a Latin-Rock kind of song. So, basically that's what happened. On that first block of Doors songs, Jim would just sing the melody line and I would put the chords behind it. "Summer's Almost Gone" was another song that was done almost immediately. It just fell into place. The original chords and structure of that was done when Jim and I sat down at a piano. We would go to the UCLA School of Music and use one of the practice rooms. I played the piano and Jim would stand next to it and then sing ... that's how we'd work it out.

CS:  Over at UCLA in Schoenberg Hall?

RM:  Exactly, right.

CS:  Did it work that way all the time or did one of you come in with a melody pre-written and give it to Jim?

RM:  No, no. At first it was all based on the lyrics. Then when Robby joined the band, he joined playing lots of bottleneck-slide guitar stuff which then added another dimension to the music. Then one day ... lo and behold, it was serendipity and the Gods watching over your shoulder. Robby Krieger comes in with Verse/Chorus chords and a melody for a song he wrote himself called "Light My Fire".

CS:  So it wasn't like the way it was portrayed in The Doors movie by Oliver Stone. In that scene where you all set up your instruments in somebody's living room in Venice and John chimes in, "So now who's got any songs we can play?"

RM:  You just set up and write "Light My Fire" ... No! Never believe anything you see in the movies. Wrong. All wrong. Movies condense life into an hour-and-a-half. We did although set up and the first song we played was "Moonlight Drive."

CS:  Then "Light My Fire" was the very first song The Doors wrote as a group?

RM:  The very first one - the song is basically Robby's song. Robby wrote the first verse and chorus lyrics with chord changes 'A minor' to 'F# minor'. John dropped in the Latin rhythms and drum beats. My contribution was the organ 'intro' and the 'solo' sections and Jim wrote the lyrics for the second verse.

CS:  The Doors first (#1) hit record "Light My Fire" ... all from Robby Krieger?

RM:  Yes, those are his chords ... but all four musicians worked on it with the one communal mind that was The Doors. That's how it would go most of the time.

CS:  One band capable of cultivating from those four fertile imaginations?

RM:  Yes, Robby would . man, he was just loaded with ideas and then we would expand those ideas and create a song out of it. Jim would have finished lyrics and the melody, but no bridge ... so we would pluck the bridge from some other half finished songs floating around or we would create a bridge from any new songwriting ideas we might have had yet to actually try composing. Then if any of those ideas turned out to be good ideas ... we'd adapt that to any current songs that were not quite complete.

CS:  The Doors have an illustrious reputation for being masters of extended musical improvisations during solos, yet a lot of Doors songs are straight up traditional pop music "Verse/Chorus" song structures. Did The Doors come in with pre-written ideas for those extended musical improvisations or did you just 'Jam' out and find it there?

RM:  Did the songs come from jamming? No. Nothing came from jamming. We would experiment on stage. We played so long at the London Fog and the Whisky a Go-Go. We got three or four or five sets a night. Then performing in New York was virtually seven nights a week. So we would play and play and play.

CS:  Yeah, you need to fill time.

RM:  You gotta stretch it out on stage. For Jim to be singing and singing was virtually impossible. So there was room . we always left room for soloing.

CS:  So while I'd say 90% of all Doors songs are simple, straight-up, pop-blues-rock "Verse/Chorus" song structures, did the band actually considered itself to be an improvisational jazz band by writing the solo sections off the cuff like that ... So that would stretch it out.

RM:  It's interesting you know we were big fans of Miles Davis and John Coltrane and all that. Of course we wanted to stretch out and solo because we're jazz guys. Also the necessity, which is kind of fun, of playing four or five sets a night forced you to stretch it out a little bit more than usual.

CS:  So I understand the improvisational soloing aspects of Doors music, you being big fans of Miles Davis and John Coltrane jazz ... but, you guys are true masters of dynamics and tempo acceleration. The Doors could, in just one song, go from a rockin' rollin' roar ... down-slowly-down-slowly-down-slowly-down ... to a whisper. Then reverse gears and go up-faster-up-faster-up-faster-up back to a full head of steam for the wild finish. Where did that highly theatrical orchestration/songwriting technique come from?

RM:  That was from the Film School at UCLA.

CS:  Since you and Jim composed in UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, did you study the atonal music and dissonant chromatic 'twelve tone' composition theory of early 20th century composer, Arnold Schoenberg himself?

RM:  Sure, dissonance is what brought me into Schoenberg Hall. For instance, a perfect example of that is "A dead president's corpse in the driver's car - The engine runs on glue" ...

CS:  ... "and tar"!

RM:  What I'm playing is dissonant, totally dissonant that's the whole point of it.

CS:  Music becomes 'tone clusters' that have no key feeling or tonal center.

RM:  Oh, that's just Manzarek's fingers on the keyboards! That definitely comes out of Schoenberg Hall.

CS:  Did you study a lot of ethnic (modal) folk music while you were doing this. The Doors composed many songs using the scale tone sevenths such as the Dorian mode for a minor blues-based scale. The Phrygian mode for the Spanish-flavored flamenco scale and possibly both the Dorian and Phrygian scale modes for scales that sounded very Russian and Slavic.

RM:  Yeah exactly. We always thought we could do anything in music in rock and roll. Any music was applicable from Flamenco guitar to atonal music . to blues, to jazz . do all of it. The real point of it is that everybody studied their instrument. Nobody was coming in saying, "I want to be a rock star." Everyone was coming in saying, " I want to make a great rock and roll band".

CS:  Forty years later, these songs are still emotionally relevant to people. These tunes are just as fresh as the day they were done, because intrinsically they're just good songs. Beyond the celebrity and the mystery and all the other hype it always comes back to the music and that's really your legacy.

RM:  Well, that's the way it always was - and still is for us. If back in '66, if we attained stardom, well fabulous. Basically what we wanted to do is make great songs! The mystique of Jim Morrison didn't enter into the equation, for John, Robby, and I. Jim Morrison, as a poet, was the only thing that was important to us. Oh, and obviously Jim as singer, songwriter, tune-smith and poet. Jim was the lead vocal, Robby was the lead guitar, John was the lead drums and I was lead keyboardist. It was our charmed 'self-sustaining' magic circle . making each member as valuable as any other part in the circle because you completely surrender your ego. It's not me playing the keyboard. It's the parts that are necessary to make the song exceptional.

CS:  Then the song will tell you where you need to go, is that it?

RM:  Sometimes it's got to cook for awhile. Like certain songs came right away and other songs need to gestate over a certain period. You played it and you moved it around. A perfect example is "Waiting For The Sun." The third album is called "Waiting For The Sun" and we don't do the song on that album because it hadn't quite come together yet. When we finally did it in the recording studio, it was "No . that ain't it man, it needs more work," and it goes back into the oven of the communal mind and then it pops out later. Finally, finally, we got the thing together, the loud and the soft ... the beautiful and the beastly! Those juxtapositions of tender and savage at the same time.

CS:  Oh sure, and speaking of "Waiting For The Sun" ... I've personally always liked Doors songs outside in the bright sunshine. Actually for me, it totally heightens the emotional impact of Doors music ... (and Santana music!) Not so strange, if you consider both groups wrote tribal and pop compositions, mixed improvisational jazz musicianship with compelling rock transcendence, all grooving to potent and breezy Samba-style rhythms.

RM:  Bossa Nova was in the air and John loved that. So did I. So, you know, John being a drummer was into all kinds of stuff. Chico Hamilton was a big influence on John Densmore . and John's solos always were moving around on plenty of tom-toms which he played very tonally, just like tuned percussion. Ethnic music and rhythmic influences from around the world were always very important to John Densmore and they were very important to me as well, whereas Robby - his ethnic stuff was like Old American jug band blues and country and bluegrass and bottleneck slide guitar and stuff like that.

CS:  Right, every single Doors song is so individual, yet every single Doors song did impart that essential communal thing - you know, that bond between all four members, as a band. There are the instantly recognizable sounds.

RM:  They all do have that 'Doors' sound, but still I don't know how many other bands in 2004 can effectively add musical touches of Flamenco, Jazz, Blues, Classical and Southern flavors to their songwriting ? CS:  None, no one I can think of, no one who did it like you did!

RM:  It doesn't happen.

CS:  No it doesn't.

RM:  Yeah, I guess that's what makes The Doors unusual, although I don't think it's that unusual.

CS:  Still with that essential communal Doors consistency . I mean to say. It's not like the band was trying to imitate a Spanish sounding tune and something Indian or Asian based. The Doors still kept their essence as a blues-based rock group and then blended all the other diverse ingredients together very convincingly, but still keeping the essence of the rock group!

RM:  Well, that just came out. That's the way it was. "The End" is a perfect example of that. My God, that's a raga for God's sake. It takes you all the way up and all the way back down. But it's still a rock and roll song. And Densmore's drums at the beginning of that record are fabulous, with those big cannon shots. Then my bassline is that long hypnotic pattern which actually is a pretty standard piano or keyboard bassline for the left hand. The first time I heard that piano bassline, I was a teenager way back in Chicago and it was Ramsey Lewis doing jazz interpretations of the opera "Carmen" by Bizet. I heard that and I said, "I gotta try that." You know and I've been playing that same bassline ever since.

CS:  Well, that's interesting because one of the distinctions about The Doors is that they had no bass player, while one of the most integral yet subtle elements of Doors music was a lot of those endlessly repeating ostinato basslines. A digital bass 'loop' today in 2004.

RM:  Yeah, That's hypnotic. You know what's great we never had to force the bass player to play that stuff. You'd go insane. Imagine trying to play the bass to "The End." You know you'd play an octave with the 5th going (bum bum bum bum) ... over and over and over. Then he'd just speed it up a little bit and that's all he would play. Now what was great about playing the bass part is that my left hand never complained. And my mind never rebelled because the right hand was doing all the filigrees and the invention, while the left hand was the good solid foundation. I'd been playing the bassline to "Light My Fire" for so long, you know an A-minor triad to a B-minor triad - my left hand doesn't complain at all. In fact, my left hand loves to do it. Lefty, himself, is a very steady - a very steady guy ... just don't give him too much to do!

CS:  Obviously you didn't have trouble splitting your brain with two functions.

RM:  No, no, no. It's easily done. It's interesting. Keyboard players can all do that. Left hand takes care of all those low notes and the good rhythmic element.

CS:  Jerry Lee Lewis said, "He had a white right-hand and a black left-hand."

RM:  Ha. ha. That's about it. The Bach and the Boogie! So you know my playing is an "extension" of playing boogie woogie. An "extension" because I found out boogie woogie patterns play multiple notes on a piano with the left hand. I was on the electric keyboard bass, so you could only play a bassline of single notes. You know, I truly became a bass guitar player on the keyboards.

CS:  The question then, is about you and the drummer. did your melodic and harmonic duties to Jim and Robby, (as keyboardist) distract you as bassist from working the symbiotic union with the drummer.

RM:  Yes and no. It would seem that each song required a certain way of playing the bass and the kick drum. It was mainly John's kick drum and my left hand that were the crucial things having to do with performing the set.

CS:  That was the solid anchor for The Doors. Did his foot follow your hand or did your hand follow his foot.

RM:  It was both. You know, given a tempo then it was like " one ... two ... three ... four ... go." We both worked together to watch the tempo then the rest of it was locking in the snare beat on '2 and 4'. ... anything above and beyond that were John's improvisations. So ultimately, when my left-hand key bass and his right-foot kick drum were working together ... The Doors were free to float anything, musical or lyrical, over the top of that. Our 'rock rhythm' section was the first and only thing that was important in holding The Doors together.

CS:  Yeah, it's solid, it's not fancy but it's a matter of staying in the pocket.

RM:  You gotta stay in that pocket. That's life. Once you can totally surrender yourself to a groove and a beat, either musically, physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally . you'll instinctively drop into the pocket!