Keyboard Magazine, September 1977

Ray Manzarek: From 'The Doors' to Nite City By Steve Rosen More than ten years have passed since Ray Manzarek made his album debut with the Doors, and in that time, a lot of young keyboard artists have burst upon the scene and left their marks on rock and jazz. Their approaches have been as varied as their imaginations would allow, but many of them can claim common roots tying their early musical ideas to Manzarek's ear-opening, classic solo on "Light My Fire," recorded on the LP The Doors [Elektra, 74007]. His flowing melodic style, an integral element in the sound of the Doors, demonstrated that rock could be played with substance and originality. Since the dissolution of that group, Manzarek's playing has branched out to include work on the synthesizer, reflecting the musical changes he had helped precipitate. And yet, his playing with Nite City, the band he has led since March, 1976, also echoes his earlier work. "Ray Manzarek maintains his image of the classically-influenced, piano playing hip mystic," Tim Hogan notes in the Los Angeles Free Press. "A definitive fuser of delicate jazz, flamboyant classical strokes, and hellfire, storming,

Manzarek's latest effort, Nite City [20th Century, T-528], features vocalist Noah James, guitarist Paul Warren, bass guitarist Nigel Harrison, and drummer Jimmy Hunter. James recently left the band, allowing Manzarek to take over more of the singer's duties.

When did you begin playing keyboards?

When I was seven years old, my parents bought an upright piano, put it in the recreation room, and said to me, "Well, Raymond, it's time for you to learn the piano." At my first lesson, my teacher opened a book to a little exercise on the first page. He played it, and then said, "Now you do it." I looked at the little lines and dots and said, "This is impossible!" But after a few weeks I finally figured it out and I stayed with that piano teacher for a couple of years.

Did you practice a lot as a child?

I never really got into it, although I had to practice for half an hour after school and a half an hour after dinner. We lived right across the street from the schoolyard, so when I could hear the guys playing baseball over there in the afternoon after school, that half hour seemed like an eternity.

When did you know that you wanted to be a keyboard player?

It was when I was eleven years old and I heard the blues for the first time. I grew up in Chicago, and up to that time all I had known about was "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" and "The Shrimp Boats Are A-Comin'." But one day at the playground, somebody had a portable radio tuned to the right-hand side of the dial-the ethnic side-and when I heard the blues there, it just blew my mind. I'd never heard music with such a sense of rhythm and such a minorish, strange overtone to it; the harmonies, the way the singer would sing, and the whole approach to the music was just totally different from white popular music. From then on I was hooked on Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, and the Chicago Blues school.

When did rock and roll come into the picture?

It happened on day when one of those stations played a song called "Mystery Train" by a new guy named Elvis Presley. They didn't know he was a white guy because he didn't sound like it, and I didn't know he was a white guy either. But it was different from the black music because it had acoustic rhythm guitar patterns with a country kind of feel. That was rockabilly, or rock and roll and hillbilly music. Little by little I got into white music and then rock and roll hit. Chuck Berry, LIttle Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis were very big influences on me.

Did all this new music inspire you to go back home and practice? That's exactly what it did. I'd try to learn to play the songs the way those guys did. Then I got together with a couple of friends-a drummer and a quasi-guitarist-and we'd play little rock and roll gigs around town. Also, my brother had a rock band called Rick and the Ravens; they'd do surf-rock and I'd come on and sing some blues songs, like "Little Red Rooster," "King Bee," and some of Muddy's tunes. What keyboards were you playing then? I was still just playing piano. I played a Wurlitzer electric piano when that first came out, but I didn't play organ until the Doors got together. I used a Vox Continental on the first two albums (The Doors and Strange Days [Elektra, 74014]) and on the road for a long time. It was the perfect instrument to put the Rhodes piano bass on because it was as flat as a pancake.

Why did you play keyboard bass with the Doors?

We never found a bass guitarist we wanted to work with. We had guys like Harvey Brooks and Douglas Lubahn playing bass on the sessions with us, but when the band was forming we looked around for bass players and never really found any. Then one day we were auditioning at some place-we didn't get the gig because we were too wierd-but they happened to have a piano bass on top of an organ, and when I saw that I said, "That's perfect. I'll just play the bass with my left hand and play the organ with my right hand." The Rhodes keyboard bass didn't record that well since it didn't have an attack, but in person you could turn it up real loud and it was fine.

Who influenced your keyboard bass style?

My left hand influences came originally from boogie woogie pianists like Pinetop Smith and Albert Ammons when I heard their left hands repeating those figures over and over, so when the time came for me to play the bass lines for the Doors, I had those two things going; I was able to keep a repeating line going with my left hand while being free to improvise with my right. In the course of modern popular jazz there have been a lot of guys who have done this; Lennie Tristano was the king of the left hand during the 1940s.

Who have your other influences been?

It's a combination of the blues things and Russian classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stravinsky's sense of harmony really blew me away and appealed, or course, to my Polish soul, too. So what I try to do is to add that Eastern European ethnic minor sense of drama and heaviness to our good old American rock and roll beat; it's Africa and Eastern Europe, the steppes or Central Asia, the Ukraine, and Warsaw. Lately I've been getting into African and Brazilian rhythms, too.

How do you think your playing has changed since your days with the Doors?

Well, I've gotten better. All those years of playing and practice and stretching your mind and attempting different things has an effect.

Do you feel, then, that your playing on the Nite City album is the best you've done to date?

Yeah. I'm getting better and better all the time. When I really start repeating myself and getting into ruts is when I'll quit for sure, but I don't feel that way at all now. I feel that this band has opened up a whole new vista. I've just leaped from one plateau to another and I'm at a much higher plateau now. Harmonically and melodically, strange things are starting to go on in my mind that have never gone on before.

Are you practicing much now? I'd like to practice more but every time I start, my son Pablo comes running over and starts pounding on the piano. Then when I start playing loud, he says, "No! Too loud, Daddy!" So what I do at home is invent things, and in the invention comes the practice. I ought to practice my scales and technical exercises, but I probably won't. What equipment are you using now?

Onstage I use a cut-down Hammond portablized B-3 organ, with an ARP Odyssey synthesizer on top of it and the mixer on top of the Odyssey. The other equipment is an ARP String Ensamble, a Clavinet and a Rhodes.

How do you like the Rhodes?

The Rhodes is the perfect American keyboard; like the American car, it's good for six months, then it just falls apart-although I've been lucky. I've had one that's been worked on and it's lasted about three years. I don't know what kind of work has been done to it; I'm terrible at that kind of stuff.

Did you ever use a Hammond with the Doors?

No. I used a Vox for about two-and-a-half albums. Then Vox was sold to somebody and the organs started falling apart. I'd go out on a gig and in half a set I'd break about six or seven keys. I eventually got a Gibson Kalamazoo. It had a little more versatility than the Vox; it could make the sort of piano-ish sound I used on "Back Door Man" [from The Doors], plus it had a little knob sticking up on the volume pedal which could bend the note a half-step down. We used it on "Not To Touch The Earth" [from Waiting For The Sun, Elektra, 74024]. Even synthesizers don't really do that.

Are there any specific drawbar settings you use on the Hammond?

Yeah. Full out! Let it rip! I like to have the low and high ends of the drawbars out and the middle ducked down or do just the opposite by ducking a little of the low and high ends and featuring the middle drawbars. But for the most part I just play it full out because I'm not looking for variations in the sound of the Hammond. I'm much more concerned with getting the purest organ sound I can.

Do you enjoy working with synthesizers?

Yeah. They are a lot of fun. Unfortunately, when I started working with synthesizers I had to become technical, so I sat down with the little ARP book and started to go through it. It was like learning to play the piano with all those unfamiliar terms, but there's no other way to talk except in terms of oscillation and waveform modulation.

Did you ever use a synthesizer with the Doors?

We used some synthesizer on Strange Days in 1968. The late Paul Beaver came dowm with his Moog synthesizer, and that was probably one of the first times it was used in rock and roll.

What sort of amplifiers are you using now? I will endorse no amps at this moment. Nobody has come up with anything I like. Didn't you use Acoustic amplifiers with the Doors? Yeah. Well, we were using all kinds of amplifiers. We started off with anything we could get our hands on. Do you use any pedals or special effects? Yeah, an MXR Phase 100 phase shifter and a Cry Baby wah-wah pedal, plus I'm going to get a phase shifter for my Clavinet. Is there any special equipment you use in the studio?

I'll use anything and everything, whatever they have. I get stuck sometimes while recording, so when I can't really come up with anything, I get up, take a walk around the studio, stand on my head for a while, and then go back out there and it's all right. I actually work pretty fast in the studio.

Does your approach to the different keyboards vary from instrument to instrument?

Of course. Every instrument has an entirely different approach, and that's what is great about the keyboards; what you play on the piano is not what you play on the Clavinet is not what you play on the organ is not what you play on the synthesizer. Each one makes me play a different way because of the nature of the instrument. On the piano you can get into a very lyrical thing or you can get into a very hard choppy rock and roll thing. Clavinet automaticaly puts you into a funky thing, but it can also be used like a harpsichord, which is nice. Of course you use a legato technique on the organ where you sustain notes, and the synthesizer is cuckoo; all the craziness you can think of you do on the synthesizer.

Can you describe the Ray Manzarek style of improvisation?

Of course I like to hear a guy play fast and clever solos and all that kind of jazz stuff, but I really like the idea of inventing melody lines with logical figures that have a begining and build to some sort of climax before the solo is over. I think some people tend to run changes too much in solos. A lot of players really get hung up on their technique; guitar polayers are really guilty of this. But it doesn't matter if you have the worst technique in the world if you can just play a couple of interesting notes per eight bars that lead to other notes that all go together to make up a melodic whole. That, not technique, is the art of music. Technique is just something that gets you there. I think all musicians should think of the notes they are playing rather than their fingers going over the notes. Forget about your fingers; play what's in your heart. On the other hand, God knows I wish I had better technique.

But do you ever find yourself stealing licks from other musicians? Does that sort of thing reflect "what's in your heart" if it fits in with what you're playing?

Well, I don't just say, "Hey, I'm going to steal this lick." What I like to do is make the lick very obvious and give an inkling of where my likes and roots and all that business come from. I like to stick in something from Miles Davis or cop something from Coltrane. And that's not stealing; it's saying, "Hey, this is what I like and has anybody else out there heard this? Wasn't it great when you first heard it?" On the album I did by myself for Mercury, The Golden Scarab [Mercury, SRM 1-703], there's a song called "Downbound Train" where the piano passage at the begining of the solo is from part of Wynton Kelly's piano solo on "So What" from the Miles Davis album Live at Carnegie Hall [Columbia, PC-8612E].

Did Jim Morrison's singing with the Doors shape the way you played then as opposed to the way you play now?

Yeah. If you're going to be in a band, you have to modify your playing to fit into the framework of the other musicians you're working with. I think a band is four or five guys who have gotten together and each one sublimates his ego to the total ego of the band. I can get into a lot more modes with Note City that I cound't get into before, or that I wasn't ready to get into, with the Doors. The Doors was an accumulation of all my influences up to that point but even as I got them all out with the Doors I was in the process of accumulating a whole new series of influences. So I played one way with Jim Morrison and I played another way more recently with Noah James. And yet I always play Ray Manzarek.