by Ray Manzarek
As we walked, we talked: of the current rock and roll scene, of politics, of literature, of cinema, of the secrets of female sexuality, and of the fact that we were walking on the end line of Western civilization. Twelve miles out to sea from where we strolled became international waters and the West was over with. The Western dream of expansion and Manifest Destiny ended at that beach. It had emigrated from Europe, beginning in ancient Greece and moving across the European continent to England, outward bound across the Atlantic to the shores of the new continent. The New World. New England. And then, “Westward ho!” the great migration began, eventually covering the entire continent to bring us to the place where we stood. Jim and I on the beach in Venice, California. The West had run out of land. There was nothing left. Beyond us and the great expanse of the Pacific was Asia. And perhaps it was the beginning of their time in the sun. But not yet. Not in that summer of 1965. The sun was shining down on us. We were in the energy and the energy was us.
But since the West had ended…what about the Western Dream? Was it still viable? Did it still matter? And was it inextricably bound with the three Jerusalem-based religions? Or was it time for a new dream? Some kind of rock and roll dream. Some kind of racially mixed, culturally mixed, religiously mixed, rhythmically based new dream.
I want to tell you about
Texas radio and the big beat.
It comes out of the Virginia swamps,
Cool and slow,
With plenty of precision and a backbeat
Narrow and hard to master.
Some call it heavenly in its brilliance,
Others mean and rueful of
the Western Dream.
These were the kinds of things we talked about as we headed north to the Santa Monica Pier. We were going to Muscle Beach, the exercise area at the side of the pier. The infamous, wicked, and bloated Muscle Beach of yore. Where men of beef and babes of boobs strutted their inflated stuff. Except in the summer of ’65, the barbells and the dumbbells were gone. The powers that be had removed the heavy metal due to a controversial morals charge. Gang rape by the beef masters of a beach bunny…or perhaps a beach boy. It took place back in the late fifties and there were still legends of buggery and other unnatural penetrations making the rounds. There was nothing left of the golden days but a sign over a small boardwalk bar, proclaiming itself to the setting sun as the official Muscle Beach Bar. What had replaced the weights were free-hand parallel bars, rings, and balance beams. Wholesome gymnastics apparatus. The Olympian ideal. The beef men had moved elsewhere, perhaps to the original Gold’s, or Vic Tanny’s, or Vince Gioranda’s; but definitely indoors, away from the tourists, out of the sun, out of the light, and into a high-protein-enzyme, anabolic-steroid, amino-acid dreamworld. And God bless them in their muscle quest. Personally, I can understand the motivation. It’s called “the biggest motherfucker on the entire planet.” Mr. Fucking World Biceps Huge!
Jim and I, however, were headed to the rings and things. We were going to get ourselves in shape for the coming onslaught on traditional values, the revolution right around the corner. We were going to dip and swing and chin and climb ourselves into fine-tuned psychedelic warriors ready to do battle with the Philistines of the Establishment. We began on the rings. A series of rings suspended from an iron support of semicircles and a top bar running for ten to twelve yards. About ten to fifteen rings, approximately three feet apart. The object was to swing from ring to ring, hand over hand, like a monkey in the trees. You’d hold the first ring, stand on the little elevated platform, leap off, and swing out to the next ring, grab it, and let go of the first ring as you pulled yourself back and forth to gain momentum to grab for the third ring. And so it went, ring to ring, out to the end, turn, and work your way back and up on to the little platform. Voilà! Kids would do it easily. Like little monkeys. Big guys, however…well…shit, we fell off at the second ring the first time we tried it. And I’ve got a good grip. Piano hands. But, man, that was hard. And gravity pulling on my arms and shoulders…Ouch! Jim fared no better than I. We looked at each other and shook our heads in mutual disgust.
I said, “Jim, we’re pathetic. The kids can go all the way out and back and we can only do two rings. What a couple of pussies.”
He agreed. “We are a disgrace to college graduates all over America. Ray, you and I have a lot of work to do. So let’s get started!” he mockingly barked.
“All right,” I shouted back. “Let’s hit it!”
And, goddamn it, we did. We started a regimen of every other day at the rings, alternated with song creation at UCLA. Jim was coming up with more variations and permutations on his lyrics that required more and more invention on the keys from me. I loved it. He was exploding with ideas, and I was constantly pushing myself to try different and more imaginative chord changes, harmonic patterns, solos, rhythms, funk grooves, blues riffs, and jazz and classical modes of playing to support and embellish his poetry. We were definitely progressing. The Doors were on their way to creating an important body of work. Or, as the potheads used to say, this was some good shit!
At the beach apparatus, we worked our hands almost to bleeding, doing dips on the parallel bars, pull-ups on the chinning bars, push-ups on the low, sand-level parallel bars, and swinging on the damned monkey rings. We stood on that little platform, holding the first ring, and leapt out into space, grabbing for that second ring about a hundred times before we could make it to the third ring. But when we did, we knew it was the beginning of our mastery of that piece of exercise iron. The monkey rings could no longer mock us. We were becoming the monkeys. And sure enough, in a little under a month, Morrison and Manzarek had become monkey men and were swinging all the way out to the end and back. Like the kids could do it. Except we were the big guys and, goddamn it, we could now do it, too! And it felt good. Hand over hand, ring after ring, with a rocking motion, suspended in air by nothing more than the sheer power of the grip of your hands on metal, moving fast enough to create a cool breeze on your face…and we became simian. For a brief moment we forgot being human and stepped back a couple of evolutionary eons to become beasts again. And there was a joy to it. An exuberant joy of simple, pure physicality. It was free of all worry. Free of all thought, for that matter. As we hurled ourselves through space we entered the holy now. We were in the animal mind, in our case the ape mind, and we were having what Joseph Campbell calls a “peak experience.” It was as brief as the time it took to traverse those rings, but I want to tell you…it was fine!
That afternoon, when Dorothy came home from her computer gig, I couldn’t wait to tell her…
“Honey, we did it! All the way out and all the way back,” I gushed.
She beamed at us. “Well, congratulations, you guys. I’m proud of you.”
Jim beamed back. “Pretty good, eh, Dorothy? Pretty neat.”
“I’ll say, Jim. To be honest, I never thought you two would make it all the way out and back.” Dorothy had come with us on the Saturday of our first week’s attempts at self-propelled flight. She saw us reach feebly at the third ring while slipping off the second, arms flailing, foolishly falling to the sand. “This looks awfully hard, Ray,” she said back then.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I mocked, and then pounded on my chest. “We’re the monkey men.” Jim whooped like a howler monkey and did his best ape walk. Dorothy laughed.
“Of course I had faith in you guys…but those rings are hard,” she said.
“I’ll say, look at my hands,” I said, and thrust my hands out, palms up. Calluses and gnarly skin!
“I know about the calluses, Ray. I can feel them on my breasts.”
“Dorothy!” Jim mockingly said. “I’m embarrassed.”
“Honey, not in front of company,” I joked. Then serious…“You can? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
She gave me a little push on the arm. “No, you big lug. I was only teasing. Congratulations!”
I beamed, too. “Let’s celebrate. Let’s eat meat.�
�
“Let’s fire up the barbecue,” Jim said. “I want a T-bone steak.”
Dorothy shook her head. “Payday’s not till Friday, Jim.” This was Wednesday. We were short.
“How much do we have?” he asked. We started to count our collective moneys and found ourselves with enough cash to buy the trimmings but hardly the steaks.
“Let’s go to the market,” Jim said. “I’ll handle this situation…you guys leave it to me.” He grinned. And the devil flashed behind Jim Morrison’s eyes.
At the market on the corner of Ocean Park and Lincoln we went about our shopping business in a calm and casual manner. The three of us walked behind a shopping cart and ambled over to the produce section.
“Head of lettuce,” Dorothy said as she plucked an iceberg from a stack of green and plopped it into the cart.
“Three baked potatoes,” Jim said, and dropped three Idahos into a bag.
“Why are you wearing your pea coat, Jim?” I asked. “You catching a cold or something?” It was summer. It was hot, for God’s sake.
“Part of the battle plan, Ray,” he said enigmatically.
“Broccoli for our iron.” Dorothy said as she bagged a big green bunch of B.
“Let’s go take a look at the meat counter,” Jim said, doing a Mae West imitation. “I want to see how three steaks look.”
“They look unaffordable, Jim,” I responded. “Unaffordable and delicious.” I did a W. C. Fields back at him.
Dorothy laughed and maneuvered the cart through the aisles to the beef. Along the way we plucked some Alta Dena milk and butter from the dairy case, Thomas’ English muffins from the bread rack, and my favorite, a bottle of Gallo Hearty Burgundy. A damn fine blend for an unsophisticated palate. And my palate was certainly naive. Now it was time for the moment of truth. We were at the meat counter and everything looked great. Lamb chops, pork chops, roasts, and steaks. Lots of steaks. Jim ran his hand over the wrapped packages. Each steak enclosed in its own little cellophane shroud. He stopped at the T-bones, shuffled them around, examined them closely, and made his choice. Three big beauties.
“Let’s go,” he said, holding the three packages in his hands. Dorothy pushed off. I was next to her and Jim was right behind us. Walking too close to us. We were almost to the checkout and I turned to him.
“Move back, will ya. You’re bumping into me.” And then I saw it. The steaks were gone!
“Where’s the meat?” I asked. And he opened his pea coat and grinned that Southern lazy-boy grin of his. Stuck in his pants, under his belt, were the three steak packages! He quickly closed his voluminous pea coat, folded his arms across his chest, and we all moved into the checkout line. Bing, bing, bing, the trimmings were added up. Dorothy paid the bill. The victuals were bagged. I grabbed the two bags and we began to move to the front door and freedom. Jim, wise guy that he always was, stopped and turned back to the cute checkout girl.
“Say, you’re not free this weekend, are you? Like, Friday night? I thought we could catch a flick together or something.”
My brain went ballistic! We’re stealing steaks and he’s asking the checkout girl for a date! We’re committing a felony or something and he’s playing Cool Hand Luke. Jesus!
The girl smiled. “Sorry, I’m married.”
“Well, didn’t hurt to try,” said Jim, smiling. “I’ll be seeing you again.” He never unfolded his arms.
“I hope so,” the girl said. “Bye…for now.”
And we were gone. Free. Piled into the car, raced to Fraser, fired up the grill, baked those potatoes, buttered the broccoli, tossed the salad, and the two monkey men and their patroness ate those charbroiled steaks. Man, it was good!
Now in and around this time of Jim and Ray and Dorothy living together was also our time of LSD ingestion. It was legal back then. Almost everyone we knew was a pot smoker but very few were takers of soma-LSD-acid! It was simply too dangerous for most—and still is! I would never, and do not, advocate the taking of LSD…by the emotionally unstable. But I, of course, impetuous youth, took it as soon as it made itself available to me back at UCLA. I reasoned: If smoking grass is as innocuous, harmless, and pleasant as it is…hell, why not try some acid, too? The marijuana high was quite delightful and certainly non-addictive. There didn’t seem to be any real drawbacks to it other than the damn tars and phlegm in your lungs. The stuff was loaded with tars and resins that you could feel in your lungs and occasionally produced a loose mucous hacking cough. Not a pleasant sound. Thank God nobody smoked pot the way people smoke cigarettes or it would be the lung cancer ward in a quick decade. Nobody could smoke a pack of pot a day. Maybe a joint or two, but that was it. I could never do more than that.
The other drawback was in the operation of heavy machinery. I wouldn’t want to operate a bulldozer or a crane when I was stoned. I wouldn’t advise anyone to manipulate a wrecking ball while high, either. Hell, you could miss the target. Whoops, hit the wrong building…not good. Threshing machines out in a field of wheat could be okay, though. Hard to keep the lines straight, but no potential for real damage. Jet fighter pilots taking off from and landing on an aircraft carrier probably shouldn’t smoke grass. Once you’re in the sky, it would be quite nice, but not during a precision landing. The reflexes slow down a bit, so whenever your ass is on the line and you need to have split-second physical timing…well, don’t get high. Wait till afterward and then treat yourself. “It’s Humboldt time!” Driving in the Indianapolis 500 is no good, on the street…be careful. I don’t recommend it. Although, shit, it’s a lot better to smoke the weed than drive drunk. How many people are killed and maimed by drunk drivers? You know the answer to that…too many! Pot accidents? Sure, there are some; but probably a lot fewer than random, straight-drivered fender-benders. And kids should never do it. Makes them lazy and stupid. And they’re lazy and stupid enough already. Kids need discipline and study and practice. They need to develop some expertise before they can kick back and relax. Kids are relaxed. That’s all they are, all the time.
The negatives of marijuana were few. The positives were delicious. Relaxation, increased perception, color enhancement, delight in food, delight in sex, increased logical brain connections—“Oh, I get it now!” and “I understand” and “I never saw the connection between those two things before” and a general and overall groovy feeling, as we said in the sixties. Of course those logical brain connections are exactly what your religious leaders and your federal, state, and local government officials do not want you to make. They’d be out of a job if you actually looked behind the curtain. They definitely don’t want you opening the doors of perception.
Word of a substance called LSD-25 began to spread around UCLA as early as 1963. Rumors and written reports from San Francisco and word of experiments at Harvard by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were beginning to tantalize the more adventurous student heads. And the word was…“LSD-25 is the new sacrament. It is the new food of the Gods.” In Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience and in The Psychedelic Quarterly, a scholarly publication on psychotropic substances that also came out of Harvard, we started reading about mystical states of consciousness that were being attained by the new “soma eaters,” and these were being compared to the enlightened state of the Buddha. To Zen enlightenment. To the attaining of satori. To Nirvana. The exact same things the Beats were talking about. So here’s this substance that may or may not actually open the doors of perception.
Well…of course I had to try it! And if I was going to try it, you know Dorothy was going to try it, too.
However, our first trip took us nowhere. Nothing happened. Geoff Goodrich had sold me 100 mics, and he was a trustworthy guy; a folksinger–guitar player–filmmaker and completely honest. So I went to him and said, “Geoff, what the fuck, this stuff doesn’t do anything.”
“What’d you do?” he asked.
“We split the hundred and sat around all afternoon waiting for it to come on…never did,” I replied.
&
nbsp; He said, “That hundred mics was for you. That’s a mild dose. I didn’t want to give you too much, just see what happens on a hundred. You can’t split it. Fifty’s not enough to get anybody high.”
“Oh,” was all I could say. He reached into his omnipresent knapsack and took out two small vials of colorless liquid.
“Here’s two one-fifties,” he said. “My treat. You take one, give Dorothy the other.”
“No, man. Let me at least pay for one,” I said as I handed him a ten-dollar bill. A lid of grass was ten dollars, so one hit of acid was expensive in comparison.
“Deal,” Geoff said. “Now go home…and enjoy yourself.” He grinned.
So we took it. Ray Manzarek and Dorothy Fujikawa. Apprentice seekers, beginning bodhisattvas, pilgrims in search of the Golden City. We made a nice setting for ourselves on Fraser, lit some incense, took our 150 each…and we were off! Flying on the wings of love…to Nirvana, to the Pure Land.
It was absolutely stunning. We were in our little one-bedroom apartment above the garage, looking out over the rooftops of Venice, out onto the setting sun…and had entered the cosmic state. It was divine. It was expansive and harmonious and beatific and one. I was alive! For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to be truly alive.
Here’s what happened to me on that fateful acid trip. After falling in love with the sun (talk about pure God energy; the closest approximation to the secret of the origin of life is the solar energy coming off that great golden globe that shines down on us all) I was lying on the floor with my eyes closed…and I had entered the womb. I had gone back to the womb. Lying there in a fetal position, I had gone back to my mother and was completely safe and secure. I knew I was Ray Manzarek, in Venice and on LSD, but I was experiencing the womb again. I opened one eye to look at the setting sun, but I closed it quickly. I wasn’t ready to leave yet. It was not yet my time of emergence. I hadn’t cooked enough. The child was still undone. Like bread not yet golden. So I simply lay there, being in the womb. Being in that warm, soft place…in that fetal position, just feeling so good that I came to a realization. I understood, at that instant, what the concept of being born again was all about. Jesus the Christ says in the Christian Bible, “You must be born again.” And I knew what he meant. You must go into yourself…all the way into yourself…to your beginning, your origin. Into the waters of your unconscious. Into the core of you. A Zen koan asks the question, “What were you before you were born?” Well…you must be born again.