Light My Fire
by Ray Manzarek
List Price:
Our Price: $8.94
You Save: $8.06 (47%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.94 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Ray ManzarekEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-15
ISBN: 0425170454
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Book Reviews of Light My Fire
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.
Summary of Light My Fire
"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. "AAn? engaging read." --Washington Post Book World
Composers & Musicians Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Composers & Musicians Books
Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams--The Early Years 1903-1940by Gary Giddins
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2001-01-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.46
Price in other shops:
Willie Nelson: An Epic Lifeby Joe Nick Patoski
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2008-04-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.95
Price in other shops:
Stoned : A Memoir of London in the 1960sby Andrew Loog Oldham
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2001-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $72.99
Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Storyby Paul Whitelaw
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2005-08-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops:
Elvis: My Best Man: Radio Days, Rock 'n' Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presleyby George Klein, Chuck Crisafulli
Crown Archetype; Published: 2010-01-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $114.72
Johnby Cynthia Lennon
Crown; Published: 2005-09-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.14
Price in other shops:
Aaron Copland: THE LIFE AND WORK OF AN UNCOMMON MAN (Music in American Life)by Howard Pollack
University of Illinois Press; Published: 2000-03-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $37.49
Price in other shops:
Visions of Jazz: The First Centuryby Gary Giddins
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-05-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.75
Price in other shops:
The Oxford Companion to JazzOxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-10-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.93
Price in other shops:
Elvis Aaron Presley: Revelations from the Memphis Mafiaby Alanna Nash, Billy Smith, Marty Lacker, Lamar Fike
Harpercollins (Mm); Published: 1996-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $89.75
Similar Books and other products
The Doorsby The Doors
Hyperion; Published: 2006-10-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.95
Price in other shops:
The Doors - Live in Europe 1968Koch International; Release date: 2004-08-03; DVD
Best price: $8.45
Price in other shops:
The Doors Collection (Collector's Edition)Universal Studios; Release date: 2009-01-06; DVD
Best price: $11.47
Price in other shops:
Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrisonby James Riordan, Jerry Prochnicky
It Books; Published: 1992-10-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.69
Price in other shops:
When You're Strange: A Film About The DoorsUniversal Studios; Release date: 2010-06-29; DVD
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
The American Night: The Writings of Jim Morrison, Vol. 2by Jim Morrison
Vintage; Published: 1991-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.96
Price in other shops:
The Lords and the New Creaturesby Jim Morrison
Touchstone; Published: 1971-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.85
Price in other shops:
Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 1by Jim Morrison
Vintage; Published: 1989-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doorsby John Densmore
Delta; Published: 1991-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.60
Price in other shops:
No One Here Gets Out Aliveby Jerry Hopkins, Danny Sugerman
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 2006-04-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.85
Price in other shops: