Light My Fire

by Ray Manzarek

  I rocked my piano for all it was worth. I added all the great rockers to my blues men and I sang my lungs out to all the hits of the day, pounding that left hand while doing a glissando and then triplets with my right. I had long since moved out of the rumpus room, away from the country German Golem, and upstairs to the living room and a refined and tasteful spinet piano. And I smashed on that sucker. Altered the whole purpose of piano lessons. I was supposed to play Bach…and I did…but I loved to rock. Hell, my mom and dad loved it, too. As long as I got good grades and continued my classical music studies I could play anything my mad teen mind desired. And my fevered brain desired rock and roll and the blues.

  When I was a bit older—in 1958—I actually saw Muddy Waters perform live at Pepper’s Lounge on 43rd and Vincennes. The Hoochie Coochie Man himself. On the weekend. For his people. Pepper’s was a cool and funky nightclub situated in the breadbasket of the South Side of Chicago. Neon sign, blood red, in the front window proclaiming PEPPER’S LOUNGE, daring you to enter. Wooden tables and chairs left over from another era—probably a speakeasy in the thirties—bar with neon under the bottles to give it that film noir glow and a bandstand no more than two feet off the floor on the opposite end. And on this weekend night of my baptism into paganism, the place was packed. Maybe 350 people…and three of them white…me and my two friends from school, Dick Ellman and Frank Mazzoni. Three white boys looking for the truth. And we found it in that neon juke joint.

  That night, Muddy was playing for his people, his audience, the working men of Chicago. Men employed, like my father, in industrial automobile, aircraft, and agricultural manufacturing. Workers in the factories of the city of broad shoulders. Union men. Men with good-paying jobs. Men who gave an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. And now it was the weekend. They had money in their pockets. And they had come to see the great Muddy Waters, and they were ready for anything.

  I’m drinkin’ T.N.T. I’m smokin’ dynamite

  I hope some screwball starts a fight.

  ’Cause I’m ready, ready as anybody can be.

  I’m ready for you, I hope you’re ready for me.

  —Willie Dixon

  They were dressed to the nines. In a blues club. The men were wearing suits and ties. The women were coiffed, perfumed, and well appointed. Everyone looked good. It was a big deal, it was a night out on the town. The men of the South Side of Chicago were taking their wives or girlfriends to Pepper’s Lounge for an evening of entertainment. For drinks and a show. Except in this case the showman was a shaman.

  And Muddy was in great form that night. He had entered the alternate space occupied by mystics, artists, and the insane. He was on fire. He was the very definition of the term blues man. I saw one of the most incredible performances of my life. Muddy was absolutely spellbinding. Captivating. And he was home. He wasn’t playing for a white college crowd. He wasn’t playing at the Newport Jazz Festival for an audience of quasi-appreciative dilettantes. Hell no. Dionysus was in his temple and his devotees were in attendance. And he rocked us!

  I want you to rock me

  Rock me all night long.

  I want you to rock me, baby

  Like my back ain’t got no bone.

  —Muddy Waters

  The band was deep in the pocket. Steady and insistent. Drums, bass, guitar, piano, and harmonica. A Chicago blues band. James Cotton was on harp—unfortunately, Little Walter had already gone off planet—and the great Otis Spann was on piano. Spann was the man. He and Johnnie Johnson with Chuck Berry taught me how to play blues/rock piano. They were the masters of the craft. Listening to them gave me the way into the labyrinth. And the way was in the silence. The space. Here’s what you do: You leave space for the guitar player to make his statement; maybe you comp a little behind him, play a simple little repetitive pattern as a foundation for him to float over. Allow him to make his musical statement…and then you answer him. You follow the same procedure with the singer. But when it comes time to do your own solo then you become the lead. The psychic energy is all yours. When I solo, I am the lord and master. I control the destiny of the song. All must obey me. I have a paroxysm, I go manic…and then I acquiesce. I harmonize again with the energy of the group. The collective energy. I become a cog in the gear, again.

  And the secret is to listen. Listen to the other guy, give him his space, complement what he’s saying with a few little punctuations, and then answer his statement with your own statement of wit and profundity. And…“practice, practice, practice!”

  So seeing Otis Spann live was just the greatest. Being at that club and watching Otis and Muddy do it live…well, I’m adjective-less. They had entered the space beyond words. The space of energy and vibrations. The abode of the elementals. The essence. And they took us all with them. As the evening progressed and the blues continued to work its magic, the well-dressed men in their suits and ties, and their ladies all coiffed and bejeweled, began to become undone. The top button began to be unbuttoned, the tie was pulled down a little to allow space for the expansion and contraction of neck muscles not accustomed to confinement. M’ladies hair began to tumble from its fifties perch. A ringlet of hair falling loose and down onto the forehead. A now-moist forehead glistening with little beads of perspiration. A drop of sweat falling from the tip of a gentleman’s nose. The heat was on the increase…and another round of drinks was served. People started to loosen up. The atmosphere started to darken and intensify. Restraint was tossed aside. Inhibitions forgotten. And the audience began talking to Muddy as he was singing onstage. They were telling him, “Go, Muddy! Get it, man! All right, all night!” And in response he would do a little gesture, one of those little hip wiggles of his, or he would ever so quickly brush his hand across his crotch or, as the evening lengthened, quickly grab and squeeze the Morganfield family jewels. And a woman or two would shriek. A cry of delight. Of anticipation. I turned to look and ladies were giggling, their men moving with undulating grace behind now heavily lidded eyes. Pepper’s Lounge had become electric. Man, what an evening. The passion and the raw power that had been unleashed were overwhelming to this white boy.

  I realized then that I had entered into a different realm, a Dionysian realm in which the forces of fecundity now prevailed. Europeans—Western civilization—would call it the darkness; but it wasn’t darkness as a negative, it was the darkness of fecundity. It was the darkness of creation. The darkness of passion. It was where sex comes from. It was the regenerative powers of the earth. All of nature, all living things, everything regenerates itself from these dark forces. The Dionysian forces. In 1958 Chicago I had no idea what it was called, but I knew I was experiencing something I had never experienced before. And it was not European. It was not proper. It was not correct. But it was so full of passion and exhilaration that it was undeniably the way to live your life.

  People were undulating and gyrating at their tables, at the bar, in the aisles, everywhere at Pepper’s that evening. No dance floor. Tables had taken up that space. Muddy Waters was playing and the house was packed beyond legal limits. And rocking beyond Judeo-Christian limits. We were right up close, Dick, Frank, and I. And everyone was getting it on. Drinking, laughing, talking, wiggling; all husky and deep in the throat. You could hear the tone of people’s voices settle down into a deeper register as the night uncoiled itself. Perhaps the alcohol had begun to take hold, but I think it was the Dionysian revelry, the passion, the spell Muddy was casting that was really responsible. Muddy Waters was casting a spell like a shaman. That’s what was going on that evening. It was a shamanic ritual, and had we stayed till closing hour at four in the morning—we left at two A.M., and it was about as much as three novice white pups could possibly absorb—God knows what we would have been capable of. Why, we could have healed the sick. We could have raised the dead. We could have made the little girls talk out of their heads. If you were ready, ready as anybody can be. And…if you had your mojo working! And that night, everyone did. Lord, have me
rcy!

  After I graduated from St. Rita High School and left behind, forever, those two thousand guys, I went off to De Paul University. Very good Chicago-area college, and co-ed. Yes, finally. Girls! In class with you, in the hallways, in the locker next to yours. There to be spoken to, laughed with, drooled over, and asked out on dates. Girls! How sweet and fine they are. I went crazy.

  And because of that craziness I never really learned anything in class. My fours years at De Paul were, in hindsight, only for the purpose of extracurricular activities. To wit…girls and art. I was an economics major in the College of Commerce and that, along with the music school, the law school, and the graduate school of business administration, was located smack dab in the middle of the Chicago Loop. The heart of the action. Downtown central. The Art Institute was two blocks away. Orchestra Hall, the home of the Chicago Symphony, with Fritz Reiner at the helm, was down the street and around the corner. The World Cinema, a foreign-film art house, was right next to Orchestra Hall. Lake Michigan was three blocks away, due east. The Field Museum of Natural History—an amazing collection of dinosaur bones, American Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese art and artifacts—was within walking distance, as were the Shedd Aquarium and the Hayden Planetarium. The great Chicago Public Library was directly across Michigan Avenue, opposite the Art Institute. Hofbraus and beer stubes from the turn of the century dotted the downtown for your whistle-whetting pleasure, offering roast beef sandwiches on rye with German mustard for your consumption at great and long wooden stand-up bars, not unlike my first country German piano. Architectural landmarks by Louis Sullivan dotted the downtown Loop: the Marshall Field department store, the jewel box–like Auditorium Theater. (Within a decade, the Doors would actually perform at the Auditorium Theater. Being on that stage, looking out at the tiers of seats, was like being on the inside of a Tiffany lamp…a golden Tiffany wall sconce. Perhaps the most beautiful venue I’ve ever performed in.) And the streets themselves were in a constant state of bustle with businessmen, secretaries, shoppers, tourists, and skid-row bums. What a delicious stew, and what a setting in which to place a college.

  So I dated girls and immersed myself in the arts. I saw the great and enormous Picasso exhibit of the late fifties. A touring show that Dorothy also saw when it came to Los Angeles. Destiny, huh? I saw, “live and in person,” Les Demoiselles d’Avignon! I saw The Three Musicians. I had a small print of it on my wall at home. A cubist rendering of my two brothers, Rich and Jim, and my rock and roll trio—complete with family dog silhouetted on the right. When I saw it in person it was mind-boggling. The colors were so vibrant, the size was so overwhelming, the lighting was so dramatic that I almost fell to my knees. A genuflection and a sign of the cross in the Catholic manner seemed the only proper response to…well…God on canvas. This was not a reproduction. Picasso, the master himself, had actually put brush to oils and oils to canvas. This canvas! This very canvas that I was standing in front of, bleeding. And he had done it in 1921 and it was here! The real thing. Ahh…art.

  I went to the World Cinema to see “foreign films.” I saw Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheus—my favorite. Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, a very adult flick of ennui and alienation. Emotions that I did not understand back then and I’m not sure I understand today. And I saw Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. A magnificent work of art. I’ve seen it fifteen to twenty times since that first viewing at the World Cinema. And does it stand the test of time? Does it stand up to repeated viewings? Do I want to see it again? Affirmative! Those are the questions to which a cinematic piece of art must answer a resounding “Yes.” If it doesn’t…it ain’t art. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and The Seven Samurai get a resounding yes! I love him. And Ran was made when he was in his seventies. Perhaps his greatest work of art…at seventy-five! What a strength of will. And Bergman, in his late sixties, making the equally brilliant Fanny and Alexander. Pray that we can all be consumed with such an artistic fervor, such passion, at those ages.

  The films I saw at that little theater next to Orchestra Hall were mind-boggling. I didn’t know that sort of film could be made, could be allowed to be made. I wasn’t much of a movie buff back in the fifties. Hollywood product. Who cares? James Dean, yes. Anything else, forget it. But the World Cinema opened my eyes to the possibility of art in the cinema.

  I did a lot of dating at De Paul University. Lots of good-looking women. A real melting pot of Irish, Italian, Polish, German, WASP, and Jewish chicks. Hot times and hot dates. Great and frustrating necking. It was the fifties, so girls were always trying to save themselves for their husbands. Man, drive you crazy with heat. You’d neck in the car. Clinches and gropings and tongues in mouths; arms and legs and tastes of lipstick and saliva and steam on the windows from the joint body hots. I was hard as a rock, she must have been lush with lubrication, we were “ready as anybody can be,” ready for consummation, ready to bang the gong…and “No, no, no. Let’s not go that far, Ray.”

  I was crazed. She couldn’t pull back now!

  “We have to, Barbara,” I begged. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  “No, Ray. I’m saving myself.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just not right.” She gets religious on me.

  “It is right…it’s beautiful,” I schemed. “We should make love…now. Here.” I hesitated from saying please.

  “I can’t, Ray. It’s a sin.” Damn Catholic girls.

  “It’s not a sin, I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that…only God can.”

  My hand is on her breast. It’s full and hard and youthful. Steam is rising from the top of my head. She is beautiful…I think. I lust after her. I want this woman.

  “Barbara, this is all a sin. Everything we’ve done tonight.” I try logic. “Why not just complete it?”

  “I won’t do it, Ray. I won’t…I won’t.”

  I grab her and kiss her full on the mouth. Her tongue darts against mine like a snake. We suck on each other’s tongues. I press against her, her leg is against my dick. Little Ray is pure throbbing gristle. He’s crazed, beside himself. I have no control over him. He rules me. He wants to explode. I begin to undulate against her leg. I’m gone. I can’t take it any longer. I’ve got to come! So…BAM! I ejaculate in my pants. Blessed relief. Shivers of ecstasy. I squeeze her against me. Warm time. God, that feels good! But now it’s in my pants and no longer in my body. Uggh, what a mess.

  I check my watch as the warm semen spreads around in my shorts. “I think it’s time to go, Barb. I don’t want your parents to be mad at me.”

  “Ohh, Ray, let’s not go yet.” She’s steaming, too. She doesn’t want to come down from her estrous high. I don’t want her to, either. But the warm semen will rapidly cool and get real sticky…and, besides, I’m done. And she’s not going to let me touch her lamb pit, anyway.

  “No, Barb. I think it’s better we go now.” I start the car and off we go. Out of Marquette Park. To her home. I kiss her good night. I can’t walk her to the door. I’ve got a huge stain of cold semen on my pants. How embarrassing.

  “I’ll see you in school, Ray.” And it’s over. And that, my friends, was sex in the fifties. Bummer!

  Until my first love, that is. We met in my sophomore year. She was beautiful. She wore black leotards. She was blond and she was hip. One of my friends said to me, “Got yourself a beatnik chick, ehh, Ray?” We started fucking right away. Did it on my own bed in my own house. I brought her home—my family was away—we got naked, and I entered a woman for the first time in my life. Yes! It was everything it was supposed to be. I exploded into a condom and we were safe and sated. And then I discovered her flesh. The lust subsided and the poetry began. And being naked, on top of a woman, in some kind of late-adolescent love was almost divine. The softness of female flesh, with its pliability, its resilient firmness; with its eye-dazzling silky down, its intoxicating
perfumed headiness…well…I’m in love. It’s the best thing on earth. It’s the consummation, the purpose, the reason for flesh. Hell, otherwise we might as well be made of wood.

  We lasted three years. I went to California, she went to Europe.

  My sexual knowledge was well taken care of. After all, how difficult is it? My artistic knowledge, however, still had a long way to go.

  I’m sittin’ here wondering

  if a match box’ll hold my clothes.

  I ain’t got no matches but I sure

  got a long way to go.

  —Carl Perkins

  Orchestra Hall was the scene of my next epiphany. Courtesy of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony. I would go on Wednesday afternoons, the matinee, and student tickets were two bucks. It didn’t matter what they were playing, it was Fritz Reiner and it was going to be huge. Of course, the seats were the worst in the house, but so what? It was Orchestra Hall and it was only two bucks.

  I paid my deuce and began the climb to the top. A great and magnificent auditorium spread itself out in front of me as I pushed open the doors on level six. I took a seat, head nearly against the ceiling, but it was just fine. An ornate and baroque ceiling, carved and filigreed, and a great sight line. It was like the first dip on a roller-coaster ride. A very steep angle. Had we been on a thrill ride, this would have been one of the scariest rides of all, looking virtually straight down. I felt a slight touch of vertigo. But there they were, the orchestra, tuning up. And the sound was glorious. The tuning cacophony. Always filled with possibilities. The sound of the void, out of which order will be plucked.