Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors

Rating:
Summary: SSDD
Review: This does not add much to a full portrait of Jim Morrison. Despite Manzarek's closeness to the subject, he seems to paint a "happy-go-lucky" fun-to-be-around guy EXCEPT when the drunk rears his ugly head. His Jim has the good/bad and no greater dimension than these. Another reviewer said that Manzarek's New Age tirades were tiresome--they are, they hurt the flow of what story there is, and there seems to be no cogent belief system here, just a varied bundle of chakras, Dionysius (sp???), rebirth, astrology and numerology. This book could have been much better...

Rating:
Summary: definitive,cannot be upstaged
Review: Correct that Stone's movie was off-mark, like the attempt to do "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" This book is the..final word on impact J.M. made.

Rating:
Summary: All the stories of Jim and Ray now in once central source
Review: A literate tale of Ray, Jim and the Doors. A hard core fan will know most of the stories already from other interviews, videos, and Ray's recent oral history on CD. New fans of The Doors, or those otherwise interested should hang on most words. Some great never seen before pictures of Ray, his family, and of The Doors are included. Be warned, however. have your Webster's handy and any current guide to philosophy. But that's a large part of what the Doors were also about - using your brain - NOT destroying your brain.<P>I wish that Ray would have discussed his life after Jim's death. After all, as he mentions in his book, Robbie, John and Ray will always be members of the Doors. The post Morrison years, the development of the "poetry album," his work with "X" and Michael McClure (both with strong Doors/Morrison influences), and even the band's efforts putting together the box set would have been great. <P>Finally, what is really neat is to see the hidden role of his wife Dorthy emerge. His love for his wife, and her mystical knowledge finally shines forth as the 20th Century Fox.<P>Load your CD, turn the treble down, the bass up, dim all but your reading light, grab your favorite drink, and dive in.

Rating:
Summary: Great stories about the Doors
Review: Manzarek's book provides great insight into the formation of the Doors and how Oliver Stone got it wrong in his movie. The reader gets an amazing portrait of all the Doors, but Manzarek's discussion of Jim Morrison is particularly poignant. The only down side of the book is Manzarek's New Age tirades that are scattered throughout the book. His "philosophical" arguments are tired and his logic is at times baffling (it's safer to drive when on pot than when drunk because fewer potheads are involved in accidents). These are annoying, but not overwhelming, problems with the book. Overall, Manzarek's book paints a vivid picture of himself and provides fans of the Doors with some new insights into the band.

Rating:
Summary: Intellectual, Psychedelic & The Desert Song
Review: .
What impressed me very much about Ray Manzarek's book are both his observations of the 1960's time era and his knowledge of Greek and Nietzschian thoughts pertaining to Morrison and Dionysian darkness within the Doors music and creativity. His descriptions of Morrison's early acid trip where he envisioned a Satyr following him down the street; that would be the theme of his Dionysian career in the spirit of music, tragedy, dithyrambs and poetry. And Manzareks thoughts on the 1960's, drug use - it's psychedelic spiritual meaning as opposed to the designer drugs of escapism and the comparison of alcohol, the fundamentalism of the government contrasted the peace loving flower movement of mind expansion are worth reading the book by itself. It was like I was saying such things. His further description on the Satyr and Bacchius; this is coming from an intellectual from the 60's, with perception to see "behind" surface societal and cultural conditioning.

I truly became subjective inside the story, and that's what a good novel is supposed to do. And here it was actual history, a time era, a band, the people, and of course, Jim Morrison, his friend and someone you can see he deeply loved. I felt as though I was sitting in his car with him and Dorothy the day he first heard a Doors song on the radio - "Light My Fire" - and shouted out the window, "There playing our song!" "We're on the f----n' radio!"

Manzarek tells of Jim verses "Jimbo," and I can't help but think of Nietzsche's other personality, the shadow side, that finally consumed him in the end into his 11 last years of insanity. This "Jimbo" is someone spoken of objectively and there is no malice here, but brotherly affection and you can really see that after reading Denzmore's account, which has some accounts not mentioned by Manzarek: one example - that of Jim coming into the Manzarek house/studio late at night, drunk, obnoxious, gesturing, smashing and standing on Manzarek's records with his sandy feet at the beach house they rented where Manzarek lived and the band rehearsed.

I also very much enjoyed Denzmore's "Riders on the Storm" and can say a lot of positive traits of his account. However, I favor Manzareks book for his insights on his experiential meditations, trips, Dionysian comparisons and ultimately his warmness that permeates through the pages. Now Denzmore also had very insightful experiences and thoughts to convey, on the love generation, Edith Hamilton, Michael Harner, Jim Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, a host of others and of course Nietzsche and I also highly recommend Denzmore's book. Both Denzmore's and Manzarek's books complement each other significantly.

I once met Ray Manzarek at a Sci-fi/Movie/Music convention in New Jersey. He was sitting at his own table along with host of other artist's tables. I was with my young son and introduced myself, shook hands, made eye contact. I could feel his energy and that for me is enough. Nothing was said; as if words are ultimately meaningless, unless much is said, and even then, it's only the non-verbal, the power, the Dionysian and essence that has real meaning. All else is interpretation; and lacking at that.

Rating:
Summary: Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors
Review: Undeniably one of the greatest dimensional rock bands ever formed, The Doors were a force not be reckoned with, and that statement stands as true as it did in their 1967 heyday, as it does now in 2004, thirty-seven years after-the-fact.
Made up of four seemingly indestructible units, The Doors, (named in homage to both mid 1800's poet William Blake whom mentions the "doors of perception," in his book The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell, and early 20th century novelist Aldous Huxley whom penned The Doors Of Perception and Heaven and Hell,) The Doors were a controversial band whom through their six official studio albums, displayed an impeccable artistry and vision of both musical and poetic direction; this story of a too-short career is documented brilliantly and quite possibly best in organist Ray Manzarek's auto-biographical memoir, "Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors."
Through it's three-hundred-fifty-two pages Manzarek's personable form of writing is radiantly displayed as he recalls everything from his warm upbringing in Chicago where he found boogie-woogie and the blues, to 1971 where he received an absurd phone call from manager Bill Siddons announcing his singer's death; along the way inserting large portions of philosophical meaning to everything from Jim Morrison to life as a whole.
In conclusion if you're looking for a luminous account of an extraordinary man and an extraordinary band, look no further than, "Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors."

Rating:
Summary: Patronizing and narrow-minded
Review: First and foremost, I am a HUGE Jim Morrison fan. I am also an avid seeker of truth and am interested in seeing how the other members of the band perceived Mr. Mojo Risin. While John Densmore's book was very candid and dealt with the effects Jim's alcoholism had on The Doors, Mr. Manzarek attempts to justify Jim's behaviour by claiming it was part of his persona. Ray is also very haughty throughout the book citing several examples of their audience "not getting it"-the "not getting" it parts were the audience responding to poor performances. His constant reminders of being antiestablishment grew weary after the first couple of chapters. Raymond does everything he can to glorify Jim, despite Jim's obvious destructive behaviour. If you're a true Doors fan, don't waste your time with this one. I wish Robby would write one, in my opinion John's book coupled with Break On Through gives the best window into what Jim's life with the Doors was like.

Rating:
Summary: A passionate, proselytizing, polemic
Review: This book is a passionate, proselytizing, polemic - a jolt of energy shedding light on this fascinating period of rock history. In his reminiscences of the glory days of the '60s, Ray Manzarek, The Doors' keyboardist, is rightly convinced that he and his band played a pivotal role in shaping the soundscape of those special and turbulent times.
The trade-off for sharing Manzarek's enthusiasm for the zeitgeist is his slightly gauche style - obviously there are no ghost writers tidying things up here! The repeated references to chakras and kundalini coils can be bewildering if not distracting, but Manzarek's ability to cut to the chase makes the book an easy and rewarding read. An added bonus is the many musical references: Manzarek doesn't talk down to his readers in describing the musical process of the Doors' songs, so we get discourses, for example, on the use of a major seventh chord in the minor-keyed "Crystal Ship" (indeed, nearly every Doors song was in a minor key, hence the brooding undercurrent that marked their sound as something more complex and sinister than the other "summer-of-love" rocksters).
Manzarek comes across as a sensible older brother to Jim Morrison (there was a 4-year age difference), and he and the other band members tried to get Morrison off booze but the singer seemed to believe it was his fate to live a bright, short life. It was heroin that eventually killed him in Paris at the age of 27.
Light My Fire is essential reading for Doors fans and required reading for anyone interested in the ferment that was the '60s. Above all it is a loving portrait of the friendship and artistic collaboration of two essentially opposite personae.
Manzarek believes in the '60s - that it was a watershed decade and that people of his and subsequent generations still have the ability to rekindle the fire of all that was great about that era.

Rating:
Summary: Youch! Ray the Historian...
Review: Since this book appeared in 1998, The Doors--sans John Densmore, who had an iota of self-respect--have played Las Vegas. Thank God Jim Morrison didn't live to see his bandmates mutated into an embarassing lounge act, singing his songs in the performance graveyard that is Vegas.

It's clear Ray Manzarek does not like Densmore. It's clear now and it's bitingly clear in this book. Ray Manzarek has a real go at the history of The Doors, rewriting it exactly as he'd like it to sound in his mind. Ray conveniently ignores entire albums, tours, and other events in favor of waxing on about the chi, about how unbelievably incredible The Doors were and still are. He has a lot of love for Jim Morrison, but even this is tinged with a nasty shade of green. Instead of facing the fact that Morrison had a serious drug and alcohol problem, Manzarek creates an alter ego for Morrison known as 'Jimbo'. See, it's all 'Jimbo's' fault. Jimbo is the redneck alcoholic idiot that Morrison would become at random times, not the regular Jim Morrison who was a brilliant poet and all around nice guy.

You can imagine why he hates Densmore. Riders on the Storm, Densmore's version of the story, clearly shows that the drummer felt guilt over Morrison's spiral downward. Densmore came off as honest; he didn't beat the reader over the head with endless babble about Dionysus or the Age of Aquarius and the massive amount of acid Ray appears to have taken.

Meanwhile Manzarek would rather attach some kind of cosmo-spiritual explanation to Morrison's decline. He claims to have seen the spirit literally leaving Morrison's head the night of the final Doors performance in New Orleans in 1970. It's embarassing, it's manipulative and it speaks volumes about Ray's character.

Ray always looked like an erudite. He was well-spoken and he loved Morrison, backing his friend up as a serious poet.

However, Ray comes off as vindictive, clouded, and plain silly in this book. He has a serious beef with Oliver Stone, referring to him as a fascist, a term Ray still throws around like it's 1968. Ray was horrified at another version of The Doors' story by another artist since Ray wants it told according to hiw own memory. Unfortunately, what Ray remembers is very selective. This book spends eternity to reach the release of the first Doors album in 1967 and the same year follow, Strange Days. Ray just doesn't want to get too involved in the REST of The Doors' days. He hardly makes mention of the fact that after Morrison died the band kept going, releasing two studio albums and touring. Conveniently, those two albums STILL have never been released to CD. As with their impressive resume of doctoring live albums, The Doors are unmatched in selling the same material over and over while keeping the stuff fans really want tucked away (hence the boxset delay and its underwhelming content).

I would recommend this strictly as an offical version of the story from one of the band. However, be very careful in reading Ray's story. He wants everyone to remember The Doors only as he does...

Rating:
Summary: Hippy dippy Doors
Review: This book is a must-read only because Ray Manzarek wrote it. He was in the band, so I'm willing to overlook his many "hippy-dippy" tangents. I don't particularly care for Manzarek's writing style, but there are some interesting anecdotes. I particularly enjoyed hearing about Jim, Ray and Dorothy Manzarek all living together, during the "starving artist" years before the Doors broke on through. They go to the grocery store to buy dinner and Jim shoplifts!!! Ray comes off as an easy-going, amiable guy with a pretty good sense of humour. But he does gloss-over a bit. It sounds like Jim was closest to Manzarek, out of all the Doors. When Jim tells Manzarek he's having a nervous break-down and needs to rest, Manzarek doesn't want to hear it. I guess he couldn't understand what Jim was going through, Manzarek is so stable and never had the demons Jim had. But he does come off as a bit insensitive, someone who just wanted to keep on rolling in the big bucks, no matter what Jim's frame of mind, although he won't admit it. At least John Densmore admits his mistakes, saying he was taken over by greed and the one thing Jim taught him was integrity. Don't pass Manzarek's book up, just read John Densmore's "Riders On The Storm" first. It's a more enjoyable, well-written, at times funny book. Manzarek's book has too many hippy-dippy ramblings, absolutely nothing to do with the Doors, that should have been edited.