by Ray Manzarek
“In your mind,” I repeated gently.
“I don’t have a door in my mind,” she said.
“It’s symbolic,” Jim added.
She looked at him. “Of what?”
It was the first time I had ever seen Jim stumped. “Uhh…of the…well, like opening the door…in your mind. You dig?”
She just shook her head. And added…“No.”
It was hopeless. “We have a demo. Can we play it for somebody?” I asked, trying to get to the business at hand.
“Play it for who?” she asked.
I thought I had entered an Ionesco play by mistake. It was beginning to sound like theater of the absurd dialogue.
“Play it for anyone who will…listen to it,” I stammered.
“I know that,” she said. “Like who?”
My brain screamed “Help!” I spoke with great difficulty, trying to maintain an even strain. “Uhh…well, like someone in A&R, for instance. Do you have someone who listens to new demos?”
“Yes, we do.”
An opening! I pressed my advantage. “Can we speak to that person?”
“No, you can’t.” It was back to Ionesco.
“Why not?” I repeated.
“You’re not allowed to…”
My God, it was now Kafka. We had entered the Castle.
“Not without an appointment.”
“Can we make an appointment, then?”
“No,” came her reply. “You can’t.”
It was Kafka.
“Why not?” It came out in a whine. It was actually whining. I was losing it.
She leaned forward and said, “Because we don’t accept unsolicited demos.” She smiled smugly and sat back in her chair. The winner.
“You mean demos…off the street?” Morrison sarcastically asked.
She looked Jim in the eye. “That’s right,” she replied. “Now why don’t you four Doors take yourselves back out on the street…where you belong.” We were dismissed.
I was getting depressed. When we got back to Fraser I said to Jim, “Maybe we ought to hang this up, man. Maybe you could sell your songs or something. Sell ’em to some publishing company. At least you could make a few bucks that way.”
“Raaayy… what’s the matter with you?!” He was aghast.
“I’m fucking depressed.”
He punched me on the side of the arm. “Don’t be depressed,” he said. “Come on, where’s that sunny disposition? Mr. Aquarian Age. Mr. Sun Worshiper…” Another punch. “Come on!”
“I’m just not so sure we’re gonna make it. We’ve been turned down by everybody. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
“You can’t give up yet,” Jim replied. “Something good’s gonna happen. You’ll see.” He grinned. “I can feel it.”
“I hope so,” I maudlinly answered.
“We’ve got an appointment with Liberty Records tomorrow, don’t we?” Another punch. “This could be the one!”
“I sure as fuck hope so.”
It was the one, all right. The worst one.
For reasons unknown to me, I wound up going by myself. Jim was nowhere to be found, John and Robby had things to do of a more pressing nature, and Dorothy was at work. It was an omen but I refused to read the signs. No one wanted to go on this appointment at Liberty Records. It was with a big cheese, too. A guy who had produced a number-one single by some Ventures-like imitation. A surf-style instrumental hit of twangy guitars with a faux Twilight Zone riff. It had an outer-space name and went to the top of the charts. Strictly cud fodder but still…number one. And I was to have a meeting with him. Well, okay!
It was all uneventful until I was ushered into his office. Hell, at least I was in the building; better than Capitol and Ms. Robot the secretary. But then I saw him. Vegas to the max. A swinger. A rat pack wanna-be. The kind of guy who called women “broads,” who whored and drank and gambled and corrupted anything he could get his hands on…but was also religious. A regular churchgoer and an upholder of the American way of life, who hated all pot-smoking long-hairs. And that was me. He took one look, saw the enemy, and turned to ice. His eyes went colder than Lou Adler’s. I was no longer in a shark’s den, I was in the room of a man who could kill. A man who could kill me! I shivered, gulped, and began my spiel.
“We’re a rock and roll band called the Doors. Our lead singer is a poet and real handsome.”
He snorted. “Poet?”
“He’s gonna be a star.” I nodded. “We got some really great material. This is only a sampler. You know, a demo.”
“Poet?” Guttural and incredulous. The concept of poetry and rock had never occurred to him. It had no folder in his mental file cabinet, therefore: How could it exist?
I handed him the demo. “Why don’t you listen to ‘Moonlight Drive,’” I suggested.
“‘Moonlight Ride’?” he grunted as he took the black platter.
“Drive,” I corrected.
“Don’t get smart with me.” Guttural and dangerous.
Ingratiating and humble. “No, sir, it’s called ‘Moonlight Drive.’”
“Yeah…?”
“That’s the title. It’s there on the label.”
“Yeah…?”
I thought I was talking to Uncle Joe Grande in Touch of Evil. He looked at the label.
“Where…”
“I think it’s number three.”
And then I caught a break.
“I’ll start at the top. I like to listen to the whole thing. Gives me a sense of what it’s all about.”
“That’s good,” I agreed in my most agreeableness. “A lot of A&R guys aren’t smart enough to know that.” Liar, liar, pants on fire! I wanted to call that one back as soon as it hit the air. But he didn’t flinch.
As he put the record on the turntable he spoke to it: “I don’t like potheads.” He hit the switch and turned to me. “You’re not a pothead, are you?”
I gulped again. “No…no I just wear my hair long. That’s all.” Liar, liar.
“Like the Beatles, huh?”
“Yes…like the Beatles.” I smiled, nodding like a spring-necked doll on the dashboard of a candy apple red ’62 Corvette.
“I like the Beatles,” he grunted. “They’re number one.”
“Yes, I like them, too.” I said, spring neck bobbing.
Mercifully, the music started. He sat down and listened to the first three songs. “Moonlight Drive,” “Hello, I Love You,” and “Summer’s Almost Gone.” His head moved in time to the music and he was really concentrating. I thought he was digging it. He looked like he was digging it. I was getting excited. But after “Summer’s Almost Gone” he spun around in his chair and jerked the tone arm off the record.
“I hate this shit,” he said as he ripped the disc off the spindle.
“Wait, wait!” I pleaded. “Play the last one. It’s something like your outer-space hit. It’s got a repeating note like Outer Limits, real fun lyrics.” Ingratiating smile again.
“Yeah…? Like Outer Limits?”
I said the right thing. Now he had an association. The cud mind needs something to compare a thing to. It can’t handle the idea of something in and of itself. Something unique. It must make a comparison. It must be like something else. Now he had a handle…and played “Go Insane.”
Mistake! When he heard those fun lyrics he lost it.
Once I had a little game,
I liked to crawl back in my brain,
I think you know the game I mean,
I mean the game called go insane!
When Jim screamed “go insane,” Joe Vegas ripped at the tone arm.
“This is sick!” he shouted. He flung the record at me. I caught it before it hit the ground. “This is pothead stuff!”
“But isn’t it kind of like…” He wouldn’t let me finish.
“Get out of here,” he shouted. “Get the fuck out of my office. This is sick!”
I rose, knees trembling. “But I
thought you liked—”
“I don’t like this music.” He came out from behind his desk and grabbed my arm. “I hate this shit.” His eyes were blazing. He was gone.
He roughed me toward the door—“Now get out of here!”—and shoved me out of his office.
“And don’t you ever come back here. Fucking pothead!” As he slammed the door I could hear him muttering “Go insane? Fuck me!”
I walked out into the clear California light, depressed again.
Two days later, Dorothy was fired from her job. She had been replaced by a machine. All the tape cleaners were now superfluous—victims of automation. Shit.
The next week, when I went to pay the rent with her last salary money, old Oscar the arthritic landlord, who lived in the front house on Fraser, in his wheelchair and darkened living room, which he never left, with smells of dankness and death and mold and old, told me as I placed seventy-five dollars between his disease-locked fingers…“You’ll have to move out, Ray, you and that bunch up there. This is your last month.”
“But…why? We haven’t made any noise or anything.”
“Too many people,” came his curt reply. “I rented it to two people…you’ve got four up there now. Can’t have it. No, sir, no more.”
“But…” I was speechless.
“You’re out! That’s it.”
He was right, there were four people now. An Army buddy of mine, Britt Leach, had joined us. He was from another part of my life. I had done my time a few years earlier. I thought I would enlist and get into film (you got your choice if you joined up) before they drafted me and made me a rifle-toting mud hog. Film was filled so I took darkroom still photo instead. I went to Fort Ord in Monterey (John Steinbeck country) for basic training. We looked down on the lights of Salinas on night maneuvers and prowled Cannery Row on free weekends. Then Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for photog training. And New York City for weekends! I saw Coltrane and Mingus live! Last Year at Marienbad and many other art flicks. MOMA and the Met and Greenwich Village. It was fabulous. And then off to Okinawa, where I played jazz with Logan Walker, a great tenor player of Gene Ammons-like girth and intonation. Then Thailand, where I first encountered Cannabis sativa. Thai stick! Wow. And back to Okinawa and a week at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and finally home. With a mess o’ weed stuffed into my securely locked footlocker. It lasted us a good eighteen months.
Fortunately Jim, Robby, and John got out of their required military obligation. Back in those days, universal conscription—the draft—existed. Everyone had to do two years in the Army or enlist in some other branch of the killerdom. And a war was going on! Vietnam! Fuck!
And they were scared shitless. Being drafted meant the end of the Doors and probably going off to be a grunt in ’Nam. And that could mean death. The ultimate fear. Although Oliver Stone seemed to like the idea well enough. So when the draft notices came around, Jim stayed awake for an entire week on pills, went down to the draft board, and did a Morrison crazy on them. They let him go immediately—“Unfit for military service.” Robby got doctor papers from his uncle in Phoenix saying Robby had mental problems and other brain disorders. They let him go, too. John did a version of Jim’s trick and also checked the box labeled homosexual. BAM! He was out that fast! They were free…and we could all breathe again.
Britt had come to L.A. fresh out of Gadsden, Alabama, wanted to be an actor—did in fact become one—and needed a place to stay. I had figured two sort-of Southern boys could get along in tight quarters, so I let Britt sleep in the bedroom with Jim. They hit it off, no problems, no sweat, no big thing. Oscar, however, blew an arthritic fuse…and we were out. Man, I was depressed.
No prospects, no place to stay, no steady money coming in, nobody liked our demo. We had bottomed out. On top of it, my acid-shattered psyche was already fractured. The internal man had collapsed and I was gradually piecing the “new Ray” back together through yoga asanas, meditation, and much philosophical reading. But adding all this external disappointment to my internal turmoil was fate’s way of being too capricious. The Doors’ diamond had been formed through serendipity, through fate’s blessings, but now I was being tempered in fate’s alembic. The alchemical fire was burning me in its blast furnace and I either was going to be hardened or shattered. It was existential time again. I was at another crossroads. Hell, we all were.
My belief in the efficacy of the energy was being sorely tested. Was I actually going to be able to live in accordance with my psychedelic visions of harmony, love, and trust in the sweet, divine energy of creation? The energy that supports us all—you can call it God’s love, if you need to—the energy that is us. Could I live in communion with the Christ within? Could I hurl myself into the chaos with nothing but my trust in the energy? Could I leap into the void space and fly? Did I actually believe in the goodness of existence, the divine rays of the sun, the beneficence of mind itself? Could I actually overcome these adversities through belief in the possibility of our all becoming the new man?
This was the task.
Here’s what happened: The four of us—Britt, Jim, Ray, and Dorothy—needed new places to live. We had one month. Britt moved out about two weeks later. Packed his duffel bag and headed off to a bachelor apartment in Hollywood to pursue his acting dream. Dorothy and I began driving around Venice, looking for something suitable for a young couple in love. We wanted something charming, something romantic. Just a little place, but cool, with lots of character. In other words, exactly what we already had on Fraser. Shit.
We drove and drove, looked and looked. Nothing. Nothing small. Nothing inexpensive. Nothing charming. I was getting very depressed.
However, a phone call came for Jim at Felix’s house. Jim had left Felix’s number as his; I didn’t have a phone. Very few calls ever came for Jim and they were all from his friends. But this time it was different. This call was from Columbia Records! We had dropped off a demo at the front desk and, unlike at Capitol, it worked its way up the ladder, all the way to Billy James, second in command in A&R at the biggest record company in the world. And he wanted us to come in. He liked the demo!
The gray scud over my spirit lifted. The sun was shining again. The depression dissipated. Columbia Records! Oh, yes!
Trust in the energy, my friends.
Jim and Dorothy and I drove into Hollywood, to the 1930s Art Moderne Columbia complex on Sunset and Gower. Streamlined Moderne, à la Raymond Loewy. A nifty set of buildings. I love that style.
We left John and Robby back at their homes, just in case. Didn’t want to subject them to any Liberty Records–like scenes. I wouldn’t want to subject anybody to that long-hair-versus-Vegas-swinger kind of confrontation, let alone a couple of fragile meditators with tender egos. Jim and I would scope it out. Dorothy was along for the fun. Hopefully there would be plenty of fun.
We smoked a number in the parking lot and headed into the labyrinth. Eventually we found Billy’s secretary, Joan Wilson. She was attractive, blond, and very intelligent. Jim chatted her up. He seemed quite taken. She ushered us into Billy’s office and told us to wait. Billy was in the loo. We looked at his gold records. I wanted one of those. A framed Byrds album was on the wall. Billy had written the liner notes and compared some of their guitar riffs to John Coltrane. I thought that was a real stretch. The Byrds were country, they didn’t have any black in them at all. They couldn’t play jazz. Hell, they probably didn’t even know anything about jazz. They were folk-rock, for cri-sake. Country music. For whites only. But, what the hell, John Coltrane had been mentioned on the back of a hit album. That was incredible. And that was by Billy James. I felt real good about this meeting.
And in he came. A cool New York dude. He introduced himself, shook Jim’s hand, took mine…we looked in each other’s eyes and I burst out laughing! He was a head, too. All right! You could see it in his eyes. He grinned back at me, unsure whether I was being sarcastic, putting him on, or what?
“What’s funny?” he said.
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I stammered something in my hemp haze and then Jim jumped in to save the situation: “He’s just happy to see you. Kind of, you know, high on life.”
Billy laughed at that one. “Yeah, I’ll bet,” he said. “Why don’t you all sit down,” he offered as he went to his desk. Our demo was right on top. He picked it up and said, “I love this demo.”
Three brains went cuckoo. We had never heard those words before from someone who had a desk. Let alone an office…not to mention a secretary. Wow!
“You guys have got it.” (See, I wasn’t the only one who thought in terms of the it.) “But it’s really raw,” he continued. “You need a good producer.”
“Do you know of any?” Jim asked from cloud nine.
“Sure. They’re on staff here. I was thinking of Larry Marks for you guys. He’s hip. I’ll introduce you to him”—and then he paused for theatrical emphasis, a sly smile creeping across his face—“as soon as I sign you to Columbia Records.”
Three people levitated in that office. Ray, Dorothy, and Jim floated up to the ceiling, bounced off the Swiss-cheese acoustic tile, and swan-dived back to their seats. Signed to Columbia?! Holy shit! Our dreams became reality in an instant. Holy fucking shit! Signed to Columbia?!
“I’ll have legal get the contract together. It’ll take about a week for those suits to justify their salaries,” Billy said.
We laughed. Billy James was obviously an anti-Establishment type. He wouldn’t kowtow to the powers that be and yet he was sweetly sitting in a position of prominence. He could play the game and still be outside the arena. No mean feat in those days of “counterculture versus the Establishment.” Today, of course, it’s impossible. If you play the game, you are the game…and you love the game. Even if it drives you mad. And the game is…slowly…driving us insane. We are gaining the world—wealth, power, and fame, the goals of all right-thinking Americans—and gradually losing our souls. The spiritual rot is subtle…but inevitable. If you believe in the game, you lose. That’s the great irony, the joke of maya. You can acquire all the outward trappings of success—the wealth, the position of authority, the homage of the public, the respect of your peers…the power!…the sheer giddiness and hubris-inducing tendency of the acquisition of power, power for its own sake—but you must surrender your freedom. Your internal freedom. Your spiritual freedom. You can no longer be a free man on the planet. You cannot be a slave to success and be free. It’s really an either/or choice. It’s existentialism…and the choice is yours: bitch goddess of success or free human being. Slave to the game or slave to no one. Come the millennium, you’re going to see a shifting of the paradigm as more and more men and women opt for freedom. That’s what we did in the sixties. And that’s what’s going to happen again in the twenty-first century.