Rating: 
Summary: Good view from the Inside
Review: I became a fan of the Doors after a previous band got me into playing a lot of their music. With that in mind, I started from the beginning. I read Densmore's book, and this one. It's a very interesting look at both the men and the myth The Doors became. Its only major drawback was in Ray's almost-sycophantic worship of Jim, his own personal agenda, and the unabashed hatred for Oliver Stone. Yes, the movie sucked, but that doesn't make Stone a Fascist. Other than that, it was great.
Rating: 
Summary: The Doors will live forever!
Review: Light My Fire is a book that I loved to read because it felt real to me. I was born long after Jim Morisson died, but I feel like I know him as a friend now. Ray Manzarek portrays the life and times of the doors with such clarity and imagery that you feel as if you were actually there when all of the events took place. This book is easy to enjoy, and it makes us realize that Jim Morisson was great, but he was still human.
Rating: 
Summary: a fiest of friends
Review: The book is very amusing at times, really lovely actually... I don't think Ray is quite as capable of seeing through people as he may think though, but that doesnt really make the book unworthy to read. The scenes captured are often funny, sunny, warm, friendly ...inpiring. You get a good picture of the atmosphere...and it's like you feel like you were there. And it's not written like this happened Aaages ago, but nearly 'here'..nearly 'now'. It feels close. It made me feel quite happy.. A little minus though..is that Ray tends to explain actions and thougths, a little too often. I know it may be helpful to some people..but some things lose a bit of their value when spoken of. I think its more fun when you get to understand things and laugh yourself, instead of having everything explained to you.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed but worth reading anyway
Review: While I agree with other reviewers who cite Manzarek's mean-spirited attacks on Oliver Stone and John Densmore, I still reveled in this book. It captures the feel of the era better than any other I've read but for possibly Alice Echols' study of Janis Joplin's life and times, Scars of Sweet Paradise. Unlike Echols, Manzarek writes with the vibrancy and immediacy of someone who was not only there but in the midst of "where it's happenin' now." I found myself alternately laughing and crying at his ability to recapture what life in the 60's could be like. Don't pass this one up just because it's marred by the author's bias. After all, the Doors' story is HIS story too, so I'd say he's entitled to grind a few axes if he wants.
Rating: 
Summary: Beyond the Doors with Ray Manzarek
Review: Of the three other members of The Doors, keyboardist Ray Manzarek unquestionably had the closer relationship with ill-fated singer/poet Jim Morrison. In that, Doors fans will find much of interest in this autobiographical work, which also traces Manzarek's own childhood and post-Doors existence. Having read John Densmore's "Riders on the Storm" I was expecting alot more from this book...Manzarek having known Morrison even before the band formed. I was disappointed. Manzarek's recollections are rambling and full of editorials. On a number of occassions, he equated Morrison's drinking problems with a previous living stint in Florida...a ridiculous and hypocritical slight from a self professed "Child of the Sun". Then there are his continuous diatribes on Oliver Stone, who he refers to as a nazi. All in all, the book seems to serve as much as a tool for Manzarek's political vendettas as it does a Doors account. A worthwhile read for a Doors fan, surely, but sadly the least in its growing class in my humble opinion.
Rating:
Summary: A guide through the doors, but not a doorman
Review: Ray Manzarek's perspective of The Doors is one that offers us a glimpse into a room that many of us have up til this point watched through the hallway. In his book he gives us the real Jim Morrison, a man who struggled with an internal duality of timeless poet, and madman named "Jimbo." If there is anyone that knew Jim Morrison, it was Ray Manzarek, and to many of us who were not around, he is the one who can lead us to the real Jim Morrison. The anecdotes of the book are amazing, and give us the development of the band and of the times. I'm just waiting for the film graduate to make the movie from the book so that he can dethrone the one made by Oliver Stone a few years ago, which was a sensationalized , and otherwise hollow movie.
Rating:
Summary: Very insighful look into the Doors minds & souls
Review: After Reading Riders On The Storm and No One Gets Out Of Here Alive, and now Light My Fire, I found all 3 books very different and liked them all in different ways because they pretty much all take your mind down different paths. I thought Rays book was very good except for I have to agree with alot of other people as to the parts where he seems to have alot of animosity toward John Densmore and Oliver Stone..I thought Oliver Stones movie of the Doors was a very interesting and awesome movie, but I guess for Ray, alot of it was untrue and therefore does not look at what a awesome performance Val Kilmer and the other actors really did! But otherwise I thought he did a great job with the book! Revealing alot of what really happened from start to finish, gave alot great insights on each Members personality and spirituality and without everything being just being about Jim. He does not really get into Pam all that much and pratically leaves Patrica's name out of it almost competely..All & all the book is very interesting, but mostly insightful, just when you thought you knew everything. It's still a hard book to put down once you get started, not to mention great photos too..
Rating:
Summary: I now have a better under standing on the Doors.
Review: This story is about the Doors and Their life.It was a very intresting story and really told me alot of things that I didn't know about the Doors.
Rating:
Summary: Shaman Showman
Review: Another book written by one of the band members (John Densmore succeeded Ray a few years prior). Manzarek writes with descriptive detail, where I got sucked into the whole psychedelic whirlwind without ingesting the magic effects of LSD (those days are gone for me). I do agree with Manzarek's opinion about Oliver Stone. Stone's movie about the Doors was an absolute piece of crap; a sometimes erroneous fairy tale. I laughed at the Doors encounter with the bloated ego of Andy Warhol, who Manzarek pokes fun of with wit and sarcasm . All in all, I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to any Doors fan.
Rating:
Summary: Kinda nasty...
Review: Manzarek is enthusiastic, and this enthusiasm is sometimes catching. However, it really can't overcome the noxious combination of arrogance and mean-spiritedness that run throughout the book. The Doors--according to Manzarek--were the most ground-breaking, mind-blowing band ever, and anybody who doesn't like them unreservedly is to be viewed with utter scorn. And then there are his vicious little attacks on various people: Oliver Stone (whose sin, it seems, was portraying the Doors as men rather than gods), Andy Warhol (more talent than you ever had, Ray), and, perhaps most tellingly, John Densmore (I'm temted to attribute this to a dislike of Densmore's Riders on the Storm, but that seems a bit too simplistic, given the level of meanness on display here--who knows, really?). This last one really disturbs me quite a bit: he tries to conceal it most of the time, but his contempt for the Doors' drummer is all-too-obvious. The best bit in this manner is a scene that has no significance in terms of the rest of the book, but instead serves to say, in essence, "Jim never liked you anyway". Nasty stuff. His respect for Morrison is obviously real, but it's equally obvious that he is, shall we say, whitewashing certain aspects of the singer (and the band in general, of course). A full studio version of Celebration of the Lizard was never recorded because "it wasn't ready to be set down," or something to that effect--not, I emphasize, because Jim was never sober enough to go through the whole thing. Mm hm--following on that note, it's incredible how he glosses over much of the band's career--The Doors and Strange Days receive loads of detail; Waiting for the Sun through L.A. Woman receive almost none. Also interesting to note is the fact that he somehow "forgets" to even mention in passing the two albums that the band recorded after Morrison's death--evidently he can't rationalize this, so he chooses to ignore it. Peachy! All in all, Manzarek isn't a bad writer, and this could have been a truly brilliant memoire, but the large amounts of bile and revisionist history get in the way. Densmore's account had a ring of honesty and truth to it: this emphatically does not.
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