Light My Fire by Ray Manzarek Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Light My Fire
Book Review: Suspend your disbeliefs
Summary: 3 Stars
I enjoyed this book. It was well-written and fun to read, with cool pictures inside. However, after researching the Doors and reading articles about them, I have learned that Ray Manzarek has a reputation for fabricating and glamourizing the truth. If you read this book, try to sort out what you don't believe. Many things in the book did happen, such as the Miami concert. I thought John Densmore's(drummer) book was more believable, realistic and better, but this one is definetly worth reading.Book Review: Take a step through the psychedelic portal!
Summary: 5 Stars
This has been one of the best books about The Doors I have read thus far. It is so refreshing to finally find a book that doesn't portray Jim Morrison as a raving, drunken lunatic, bent on destroying the American foundation and all that is good. Ray gives such an amazing, unparalleled view point to information that has been presented numerous times by many authors. He also includes touching recollections of Jim and his true personality that could only be unique to someone so close to that mysterious figure. Ray's honesty and actual first hand experience have to be appreciated. While this book definitely does not follow conventional form, it is very much worth reading. Would any true Doors fan be content with the mundane telling of such an intriguing story anyways? If you are simply looking for a date by date, information only based book, this is probably not the one for you. It does have many great factual details, but Ray also delves a lot into his own views of life and of situations he describes. This book must be approached with an open mind and heart, otherwise its brilliance and insight will be easily lost. If you're ready for a thrilling psychedelic journey with The Doors, then open this book and hold on tight! You're in for a great ride! ENJOY!Book Review: Thanks Ray
Summary: 4 Stars
Ray is a good writer. he has a style that speaks to you..he's passionate and opinionated. Most things that us fans know about the Doors have already been said, but Ray Manzarek brings new, personal memories to life in his book. It is a good read, and for Doors fans, we'll never get tired of hearing the story of how these guys got together and became one of the greatest bands in history. The book deals with Ray's life from childhood, and to his credit, he really shares everything with his readers. He comes across as very intelligent and likeable, while reading this book you might feel a certain affection for Ray, as if he is some ' far out ' uncle you never had. Mr. Manzarek has an angry side, too. Just read his thoughts on Oliver Stone whenever the subject of the Doors movie comes up. I wish the book had been a little longer, though. The author seems to to be in a hurry to get past the actual musical career of the Doors. The making of each album and what went down between albums is given a quick run-through. Instead, Ray chooses to concentrate on his upbringing ( I found it to be interesting and candid ),and his younger days in So Cal with his girlfriend and Jim. I felt an emptiness after I finished this book, and I wished it had kept going. I felt an emptiness for a time and place I'll never know, and I missed Jim, the man that Ray so lovingly brings to life. Jim Morrison died when I was six months old, but with Ray's book, I was transported to a magical time in the '60's. I can hear the intro to ' Break on Through ' right now...Book Review: The Doors were modern but still artists
Summary: 5 Stars
There were two different Jim Morrisons, says Ray Manzarek, whose vision along with Morrison's created the group, and whose organ playing helped distinguish its sound.
There was the Good Jim. Poetic. Artistic. Polite. So unselfish he suggested the group split all royalties and songwriting credits equally although he wrote most of the songs and was responsible for the group's singular image. Drenched in the modern and avant-garde culture of the previous century. Possessor of a huge literary bookshelf which he knew so intimately he would win repeated bets that he could identify a book pulled from its shelf, just by hearing a few lines read from it at random. Possessed of a special Dionysian spirit that Ray saw as one of the unique forces of the 1960s, and of a desire to lead others to it. Ray thought an artist ought to be president some day, and that Morrison, with his good looks, WASP roots and Native American shaman vision, might just be the guy.
Then there was the Bad Jim, a persona Manzarek dubs "Jimbo" - a drunk with a mean streak and racist tendencies, who sought to destroy the Good Jim's poetic voice. Manzarek, married to a Japanese-American, felt this acutely. Alcohol brought Jimbo to the fore. Over the Doors' short lifespan - releasing albums from 1967 to 1971, with their touring curtailed after Morrison's 1969 obscenity bust in Miami - his bandmates found him increasingly difficult to work with, and never knew on a given day if poetic Jim or drunk Jimbo would show up.
When Morrison died in Paris in 1971, a death certificate attested merely that he'd died because his heart had stopped. Most likely, he had by age 27 drunk himself to death, perhaps aided by heroin. Jimbo had won out.
The good Jim is worth remembering. Doors music still resonates 40 years later because it was truly creative, and Jim Morrison was a large part of what made them special. Art rock as a movement is usually placed in the 1970s, but the Doors were ahead of the wave, with a sound and vision spawned in 1965 while the Beatles and Beach Boys were still dominating the airwaves with teen music.
Manzarek and Morrison met at the UCLA Film School. Primarily a musician, Manzarek says he was drawn to film as a medium because it drew on all the arts. His wife was an artist. Morrison, with no musical background, was a poet. The three of them, living together for a spell, drenched themselves in art of every sort. Early stoners and acid heads, they were genuinely in pursuit of the muse.
There lurks a suspicion nowadays that modernism, in every genre, is bogus, allowing the untalented, unschooled and unskilled to rip off the unsuspecting. Think of every ridiculous modern "artwork" whose creator ever conned an art museum into devoting prime space to it - when all it was, was an entire canvas painted orange. Or a red one with a green dot in the middle. Or a sneaker nailed to a canvas. Something that made you think, "I could have done that. But why would I have wasted the time?"
The Doors remind us it doesn't have to be like this. Manzarek and Morrison were avant-gardists but also well schooled, drawn together initially through their mutual appreciation of modernist jazz master John Coltrane. Manzarek had played classical piano as a youth, had grown up in Chicago where he was exposed firsthand to the Chicago blues during its heyday in the 1950s, and had a comfortable familiarity with rock and other pop genres. Morrison had no musical background but had mastered a good century or so of avant-garde literature - Rimbaud, Celine, Jean Genet, Kerouac, the other Beats and many more. While in school, they dug all those New Wave film directors. Drummer John Densmore was a jazz drummer and also a Coltrane fan. Guitarist Robby Krieger had a background in flamenco and folk, picking the guitar with his nails instead of using a pick.
Their sound was their own - blues, jazz, rock, flamenco. Morrison's unique poetry reflected his own personal search for the beyond; their very name alluded to a William Blake poem and to their desire to strip away the barriers to true perception of reality. The Doors were modern but still artists, succeeding because they had a strong foundation in modernism of every genre and a background in classical work as well.
The Doors, artists trying to break the commercial pop or rock band mold, faced an uphill battle. Numerous record companies rejected their sound as too different and too threatening. The Doors couldn't coast; they had to be good.
They pursued their art the way artists in more classical genres go about it, standing on the shoulders of those who had gone before, immersing themselves in the modernist oeuvre - that's not an oxymoron - as they set out to create its next step.
Morrison sought for man to become free, personally and sexually. His work hasn't dated because he focused on timeless themes like sex, death, life, and rebirth, using universal imagery such as sun and water. Manzarek concurred and hoped this freedom would effect a social and political transformation. Ecstatic liberation is more likely to yield chaos, as the Doors learned the hard way in Miami when their stage nearly went down amidst thousands of surging fans. And while according to Manzarek, Morrison never actually flashed Mr. Mojo Risin' at the crowd - instead taunting and teasing the crowd with their own crude desire that he do so - his irony was easily lost on the judge and jury that convicted him.
Manzarek's telling is overripe with California New Age speak, a mish-mash of Eastern and Western religious influences, constant references to "chakras" and other mystical gobbledygook, and an obsession with finding "fascism" everywhere. Whatever one may think about it in light of later events, though, it's true to its time. This is what 1960s ferment was about. The Doors went where no one had gone before. That's what artists are supposed to do.
Book Review: This is Ray's version
Summary: 5 Stars
I am kind of glad that Ray wrote this book. I feel more like it's Ray's Biography, and I respect that. I did enjoy this book. This book talks about Ray's begging, middle (which includes Morrison), and near end. There were some nice little facts that no one else talked about. It also collides against Stone's movie (stating inaccuracies, and basically taking several strikes at Olive Stone personally). I do recommend this book. It gives you another side and basically a lesson that I was not ready for in my life but needed to be said (It's over, whatever happened...happened). So...yeah...I did enjoy this book and it did help me grow a little more.
-Thanks