Light My Fire

by Ray Manzarek

  Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light…

  Or just another lost angel…

  City of night.

  City of night.

  City of night.

  City of night!!

  And we rocked that little room. Wrestled those songs into shape. Did a Jacob on the angel of creativity, and caught the muse. Everything was going great and the finish line was in sight. Jim had completed his vocals. All that was left for him to do was to put the whisper vocal on the song “Riders on the Storm”—right after the last verse:

  Riders on the storm.

  Riders on the storm

  Into this house we’re born

  Into this world we’re thrown

  Like a dog without a bone

  An actor out on loan

  Riders on the storm

  Then Jim would come in with a haunted, spooky whisper voice behind his singing:

  Riders on the storm

  Riders on the storm

  And it was very eerie. I should have known then that it was a portent. We finished the take and he came up to the office/control room. Everyone thought it was a great vocal. He was very pleased with the effort.

  “I like the effect,” he said. “Good idea, Ray.”

  And then Robby spoke up. “Ya know, that song feels like I’m out on the desert. I see thunderclouds, big ones, off in the distance. Why don’t we add the sound of thunder and maybe some rain? Put the listener out there, too.”

  Botnick said, “I’ve got access to lots of sound effects. Let me see what I can find.”

  Jim was just standing there, humming the melody line to himself…and smiling. The Doors were together, in the studio, making music. It felt right. We were into it and the art was good. It was working. We all knew it and smiled to ourselves. Just like Jim was smiling.

  And then he dropped the napalm.

  “I’m going to Paris,” he said.

  Silence. Psychic wheels began spinning. Doubts, omens, fears entered the room. A dark green thing attached itself to the base of my spine. Bruce and Robby stood frozen for a beat. John coughed nervously, unable to bear the tension.

  “We’re close to being finished here,” he continued. “Most of the mixes are done. Everything sounds great. Why don’t you guys go ahead and finish it up. I’m leaving for Paris in two days. Pam’s already there, she’s got a little apartment…got it all set up. I’m going to join her over there.”

  And that was it. A simple little statement innocently tossed out, and the fate of the band was decided in an instant. But we didn’t know it. No one did. Not right then. Not in the midst of all that creativity. All the brotherhood. All that art. All I knew was that the green thing put a tentacle into my stomach and tightened it a bit. This was not right.

  Something’s wrong, something’s not quite right.

  Jim would always be around for the final mixes. That’s when all the creativity and hard work would finally come together. When we would fine-tune all the variables. The volume levels, the EQ settings, the placement of the instruments in the sonic spectrum, the signal-processing devices, even the edits—everything had to be finessed and cajoled down to the two-track final mix. The mix that went on the record. The mix that everyone was going to hear at home. Our baby.

  This was the delivery of the baby. After months of gestation. From initial inspiration, to rehearsal, to seducing the muse of each piece, to capturing its essence, to finally being ready to put it all down on tape, to all-night recording sessions, trying to get the muse to come back and make love to us one more time while the tape machine was running (oh, she is fickle and demanding of surrender and can never be fooled or tricked into appearing), to vocal takes, to overdubs of tack pianos and bottleneck guitars.

  And Jim was going to leave before he heard the final, finished album—before he knew what form all those weeks and months of work would take at the end of it all?

  I should have known.

  Something was wrong, I didn’t know what, but it didn’t sit right. Still, I tried to be encouraging. Mostly because, deep down, I thought this trip was a good idea.

  “Paris, huh?” I said. “Now, that’s interesting, man. That would be a good place to get away for a while.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too,” he said.

  “How long, uhh…how long you gonna be there?”

  “You know, Ray, I don’t know,” Jim said, a look in his eyes like the thousand-yard stare. Faraway. Not really there, and yet seeing everything. Especially the tragedy, the fragility of life.

  All my life’s a torn curtain.

  All my mind come tumbling down.

  “I don’t have any plans yet,” he said. “I just need a break. Some time to myself. A couple of months, six months. Maybe a year. Who knows, man? I don’t.”

  “It’ll give you a chance to work on those notes from Miami,” I encouraged. “I want to read that book.” It was to be called Observations on America, While on Trial for Obscenity.

  He smiled. “I’m gonna rake ’em over the coals. This time it’s my turn.”

  “A new de Tocqueville,” I said. “We need one for the twentieth century.”

  He just smiled that sheepish little-boy grin of his and waved his hand at me. “Oh, man.”

  “Hey, you can do it. Who better?”

  In a way, his leaving made a strange kind of sense. After we delivered L.A. Woman, our sixth studio album in four years, plus Absolutely Live, that made seven albums. The number of steps to heaven. The number of the chakras—yogic energy centers that run up the spine from the coccyx to the top of the brain. The number of albums we owed Elektra Records on our renegotiated deal. After delivery, we’d be finished with our Elektra contract. We were free and clear. We could resign, sign with Atlantic Records (Ahmet Ertegun, the president, was courting us), not sign with anybody, break up the band, stay together, make films, write books, paint, dance, whatever. We were free to do whatever we wanted. Or to do nothing. Take a long break and think about man, God, and existence.

  To be honest, I hoped Jim would use the break to get away from his drinking buddies; get away from the hangers-on who were always attaching themselves to him and taking him to the too many bars, dives, gin mills, and wherevers. The sycophants. The leeches, as John and Robby and I called them. His “friends,” as they became called in later years. And the evening was always on Jim’s nickel, of course. Jim always paid. One way or the other. He would wine and dine those ne’er-do-well friends of his, and meanwhile they were just sucking up his energy, keeping him from being a poet.

  With them, he’d sit in a bar and talk all his energy away. Booze does that to you. So do guys that laugh too loudly at your jokes. Elvis had them. The Memphis Mafia. Jim had them, too. We called his the Santa Monica Mafia.

  They’d laugh and joke and cut up and carry on, and he wouldn’t be writing. He wouldn’t be creating. He should have been spinning out great passages of new verse, instead of talking it out and staggering home to Pam way past the midnight hour. How many great lyrics got lost in that senseless flood of drunken activity? How many great poems fell victim to those bad habits, wasted on besotted, uncaring ears that were just humoring him until they could divine how to weasel the next drink out of him, or the next high?

  They were a real sore spot with Pam Courson, Jim’s live-in lady and soul mate. Pam was always angry because Jim was running around and getting drunk with his friends. With them, he might disappear for days on end, only to pop back into her life as if nothing had happened. I guess you could say, euphemistically, they had a “stormy” relationship. However, volatile to the point of self-immolation would be more to the truth.

  …and our love becomes a funeral pyre.

  So to make things up to her, on her suggestion, he was going to take her to Paris.

  Hell, it seemed like a good idea; at least at the time. Paris was the City of Light—and he could certainly use an infusion of luminosity into that shadow world of his—the city of artists. He c
ould be the next generation of the bohemian ideal, an American in Paris. Our literary heroes had gone there. Why not Jim, too? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Jim Morrison, I liked the ring of that. Good company.

  And the inspiration of that glorious city. I wanted him to go to Paris and write again. Forget about being a rock star. It was time for Jim Morrison to be an artist again. Just like in the beginning. Just like in the summer of ’65, when we were young and idealistic, charged with energy and ready to change the world. I wanted that guy back. The sensitive, caring, funny human being I sat down with on the sands of Venice Beach six years before; the guy I put the Doors together with. That was the guy I thought was one of the best poets I had ever read. (Legendary beat poet Michael McClure has referred to Jim as “the best poet of his generation.”) That guy was an artist, and that guy was my bud.

  “Okay, I’ll see you, brother,” Jim said, that occasional lapse into a sorta-Southern accent—an endearing legacy of his Florida childhood—coloring his words. A lapse that occurred only under moments of stress or silly joy. Or sometimes, now occurring more frequently, when a bottle of Wild Turkey would take possession of Jim Morrison and turn him into a person I did not know. So off he went. Left the session, just like that. John and Robby and I just looked at each other, dumbfounded. All we could do was shrug our shoulders.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said Robby.

  “Me too,” I agreed. “Paris and writers, it’s a natural.”

  “Maybe he’ll get the muse back,” Robby said hopefully.

  “But what if he doesn’t stop drinking? He’ll never write anything good again,” John the worry-wart piped in.

  “Don’t worry, John,” I said, trying to allay his fears. “The poet’s in there, he’ll come out in Paris.”

  “Yeah,” he half snarled, “what about Jimbo?”

  We stopped for a beat. Silence. An entity of fear passed over us. John broke the silence by once again doing his usual nervous cough. We tried to go back to work. It was impossible. The finishing of L.A. Woman, without Jim, would have to wait for another day. We didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time we ever saw Jim Morrison, dead or alive.

  Two months later, we hadn’t heard anything from Jim. L.A. Woman had turned into our comeback album. Critics loved it. “The Doors are back!” “A unique blend of power and precision.” “Raw and real.” “Morrison’s lyrics are eloquent and revealing.” The first single, “Love Her Madly”—a chugging, tuneful tribute to a fight Robby Krieger once had with a girlfriend—was a hit. Our radio song. The intellectual long cuts (or epics, as we called them)—a necessary component of any Doors’ album—were represented by “Riders on the Storm” and the title cut. “Been Down So Long” and “Maggie M’Gill” covered our blues roots. Everything was jake with one exception…Jim wasn’t around.

  We were getting itchy to play so we went back into rehearsal, working on new tunes. Doing what we did, making music together. Robby had some new compositions and both John and I were turning our hand to actual songwriting. Rehearsals were going well, interviews were being requested to talk about L.A. Woman, the record company was very happy with the new album, offers for tours were pouring in, and no one knew that Jim Morrison had gone to Paris for some very necessary R and R. We didn’t exactly keep it a secret, but neither did we volunteer the information to anyone outside of the immediate Doors family. Consequently, everything was progressing and yet everything was on hold.

  John finally said, impatiently, “I’m gonna call him.” I said, “Why? Let him alone for a while. He doesn’t want anybody bugging him. He’ll call when he’s ready.” John paced the rehearsal room, unable to control his anxiety. “I just gotta know,” he said. Miraculously, Jim called John the next day.

  And the day after that, John reported in. Everything was okay. Jim was feeling good, having a good time. He had shaved his beard, he was excited about the critical acclaim for the record and, best of all, he was looking forward to playing again.

  “As soon as I get back we gotta go on the road,” he told John. “I want to play those songs live. We never got a real chance to do that.”

  “Exactly,” John enthused. “And you know what, we could even take a bass player out with us. Maybe a rhythm guitar, too. Like the album. Ray and Robby and I have been talking about it.”

  “Let’s take the bass player who played on the record,” Jim said, catching John’s excitement. “What’s his name?”

  “Jerry…Jerry Scheff,” said John over the transcontinental connection. “And we’ll take the other guy, too, Marc something or other.”

  “Well, shiiiit, John, let’s just book a little tour. What d’ya say?”

  “When?”

  “When I get back.”

  “When’s that?”

  “I don’t know…I’m having a pretty good time,” Jim answered. “I’ll be here a while yet.”

  “Well, okay,” said John. “I’ll tell the guys.”

  “Good, give ’em my love,” answered Jim.

  CLICK.

  That was the last time anyone heard from Jim. That was early June. A month later, on July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison died under what can only be called “mysterious circumstances.”

  I got a phone call from this guy who was, ostensibly, our manager. Actually, he was our roadie and we promoted him to phone answerer, but, wouldn’t you know it, it went to his head. He became arrogant. Lording it over concert promoters and writers requesting interviews. But what the hell, he was trustworthy. Bill “South Bay” Siddons.

  “Ray, I got some bad news. I just got a phone call from Paris. Jim’s dead.”

  Bullshit, I thought, because by the end of 1970/early 1971 a wave of paranoia had swept over the youth of America. Death and the rumor of death had descended upon us, entered our conscious mind, and filtered down into our subconscious, where they lodged like a bad cancer.

  In those dark years, everybody was dead…one way or another. Janis Joplin was dead, Jimi Hendrix was dead. Paul McCartney was dead because he was walking across the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover without shoes—the way they bury a corpse in Italy. He was barefoot, in a suit, and out of step with the other three lads, so he had to be dead—or so the rumor went. The Kennedys were dead. Martin Luther King was dead. And these were our heroes. This planet was also rapidly filling up with the ghosts of dead young soldiers—ordinary American and Vietnamese; and Vietnamese women and children, too. People were starting to get death obsessed. The whole thing was getting a little too weird for the conscious mind to handle, and rumors were sprouting like milkweed.

  For example, we were at a party, rock and roll in Hollywood. Lots of people. Lots of pot and cheap wine. Real boho style. Jim was supposed to be there but he was late, as usual. All of a sudden, somebody runs in and says…

  “Oh, my God! Oh, God! Jim Morrison’s just been killed in an automobile accident!”

  Of course Jim was driving the “Blue Lady,” his Shelby GT 500. A terrible and mean machine; so it was actually possible. Nobody knew what to do. We all just kind of blathered and moved our feet in nervous, panicky little steps. “How? Where? What should we do? Somebody call an ambulance. Send it where? It’ll come here. We don’t need it here, we need it at the scene of the accident. Where’s that? Ask that guy. Where is he? Who is he?” And no one knew who the guy was. Or was it actually a girl? No one could say for sure. A wave of anxiety and its evil twin, impotence, swept through our lower three chakras. We had entered the darkness and it was a fearful place.

  So what the hell happens next? Within five minutes, in walks Jim Morrison. Alive and ready to party! We say, “Jesus Christ, Jim, we heard you were dead.” He looks at us, quizzically, and then he comes up with the great Mark Twain line: “No, man, the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Everyone sighs a great relief, we laugh at our gullibility, and the party continues…long into the Hollywood night.

  So when Siddons told me our singer was dead
again, I didn’t believe him. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to think my good friend had died. I could only think, at that moment, of Jim standing in the middle of that party, a lazy smile spreading across his darkly handsome face as he enjoyed the absurdity of being pronounced dead while you’re still around to enjoy life. I thought about how ridiculous it all seemed that night and decided to dismiss the whole thing—treat it like a thousand other half-cocked legends I’d heard before. It was just more of that paranoid death miasma spreading its bile. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to Paris to check out some silly rumor.

  “I don’t believe it, Bill. And I’m certainly not going to Paris. Remember that party?”

  “I think it’s serious this time, Ray,” Bill said.

  I thought for a moment, noting the sense of panic in Siddons’s voice.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “There’s a noon flight to Paris, right? Book a ticket, first class, and get over there.”

  “I’ve already done that, Ray. I just need your okay.”

  “Well, you got it, man. Now go.”

  “I’ll call you,” he said, “from there.”

  “And, Bill,” I cautioned, “just make sure, will ya? This time make sure.” And I hung up the phone.

  Three days later, he did call.

  “We just buried Jim Morrison,” the voice on the line said.

  “Who is this?” I angrily shouted into the phone.

  “It’s Bill, Bill Siddons,” the voice meekly responded.

  “Bill! What the fuck do you mean, ‘buried’? You’re telling me this isn’t some silly paranoid fantasy? You’re telling me he’s really dead?”

  “It’s true this time, Ray.”

  “How could that be? What…what happened? I mean, was he hit by a car, or was he in an accident? Or did a fucking building fall on him…”