Ray Manzarek of The Doors
Last month Ray Manzarek debuted an on-line series which features Rock ‘n’ Roll personalities talking about their music. The series is called Break It Down. It is a series of webisodes that have a (so far) legendary rock star breaking down the elements of some of their songs. The Break It Down webisodes that feature Manzarek are three different vignettes that add up to about ten minutes of video. Manzarek is seated in his at home studio and discusses his Chicago roots, and The Doors briefly. Most of the videos feature Ray talking about how he and the rest of The Doors created Light My Fire. As he talks, he demonstrates on his Vox Continental organ and Fender Rhodes piano bass, much as he did on his CD The Doors: Myth and Reality. This is Manzarek in his element demonstrating the music as he elaborates on the process he, John Densmore, Robby Krieger, and Jim Morrison used in working up Light My Fire as a song. The last webisode features Manzarek just playing the organ solo of Light My Fire with kind of a “pop-up video” aspect to it.
L/studio features different sections that are dedicated to short video/films webisodes in different categories of interest. Break It Down is in the Arts/Music section, there is a humor section, Modern Life, and an experimental section. The second episode of Break It Down features Jon Anderson of Yes.
Comments
Great find!
Hi Daniel,
It was so cool to find! I did a little research and found it. It doesn't seem it got too much notice from Ray's side I didn't see it on The Doors forum or even on Ray's own message board until after I published it. Ray is very good at being a teacher of Doors songs and explicating on how the songs were worked up. I don't know much about technical music making but Ray makes it interesting & understandable.
Best!
Jim
I like that picture of Ray. It seems to be from the early 80s when he seemed happy and well adjusted. I guess maybe he was a greedy pathetic SOB then too but was able to hide it better.
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