by Ray Manzarek
We went into the control room to listen to the two takes and it became a party. Pam was there with a couple of six-packs, Dorothy was there, Rothchild had a girl, Robby had brought a female friend, Jim had brought a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and the control room was at full capacity and full volume. The speakers were blaring the playback at us, the alcohol was being consumed, a joint was being passed, and we were all muy contento. The Doors, in the studio, at last.
After choosing one of the takes and setting aside an appropriately long time for party, glee, and general ya-ha, it was time to get back to work. We were going to tackle the “Alabama Song” next, Dorothy’s choice of thirties Berlin cabaret for the Doors. Paul had brought in a strange device called a Marxophone. It was a turn-of-the-century autoharp with little hammers attached to the base that allowed you to lay it flat and play it somewhat like a keyboard. It gave off a ringing, jingle-jangle sound, all tinny and old-timey. It was a great choice for the song. We recorded the basic track, Jim put on a perfunctory guide vocal—he would get the master vocal later—and after a few passes and sound adjustments we had it. I put on the Marxophone overdub and we were done for the evening. “Light My Fire” and the “Alabama Song,” a good day’s work.
Jim was in a great mood. Everything was going extremely well. We were in a unique, existential moment; the recording of our first album. A moment in time, an event in the life of a band that can happen only once. And this was it. And it was going great. So great in fact, that Jim thought to himself, I think I’ll drop a little acid. He was riding the waves of “Light My Fire” and wanted to add more euphoria to his euphoria (his tragic flaw). So during my overdubs he popped a tab, of course without telling anybody. He just sat in the control room with Pam listening to the tinny sounds emanating from that weird, hot-rodded piece of Victoriana I was playing and placed a tab of acid on his tongue and washed it down with a gulp of beer. Folks, trouble was coming.
The LSD was slow to come on. Rothchild said, “What a great day. Let’s all go home and do it again tomorrow.” We began to straggle out of Sunset Sound, feeling very content with the world, the music, and ourselves. This existential moment was everything we had hoped it would be. The muse was with us and we were capturing the essence of our songs on tape, for all time, for all the people. The world could now hear Doors’ music on record. It felt good to be alive.
Jim and Pam were the last to leave. Bruce turned everything off and the three of them headed for the parking lot. Jim said, “See ya, Bruce,” tossed the keys to Pam—“Why don’t you drive, Pam”—slipped into the shotgun seat, and the acid kicked in. Bam! Boiing! Ba-room!
They drove for a while. Jim wanted to be part of the “soft parade” on Sunset; the stream of cars and young people. Young people in their soft and luxurious raiment. He was in his element, the American West. He was young, gifted, and white…and he was blitzed out of his brain. Pam later said he was hanging out the window and singing at the top of his lungs. Singing “Light My Fire” for the multitude. She had to pull him back in lest he tumble out of the car and splatter himself on the street of dreams. And when she did, his mood changed. A premonition of danger came over him. A dark scud descended on his over-amped psyche.
“We’ve got to go back to the studio,” he said.
“Why, Jim?”
“Something’s wrong, I can feel it. Turn around!”
“Jiiimmm,” whined Pam. “Let’s just go home.”
“This is serious, Pam. Just make a U-turn, right here. Now!”
“In the middle of Sunset?”
“Now! Do it!”
And he jammed his foot onto the accelerator on top of hers. The car leapt forward. Pam started spinning the wheel hard left to avoid hitting the car in front of her and they fishtailed into the opposite lanes, miraculously missing everything à la Neil Cassady, and sped off back to Sunset Sound, Jim’s foot still mashing Pam’s into the metal pedal.
“Jiimm…why are we doing this? Do you want to get us killed?”
“Do you want us to lose our tapes?” he shouted.
“Why would you lose your tapes?”
“Because there’s a fucking fire in the studio!” He was raving. “Now drive, will ya? Go!”
Pam had no choice but to believe him. He was that intense. She barreled down Sunset and screeched into the parking lot, and Jim was out of the car in a flash. But the gate was locked! He climbed the fence—“scaled the wall”—and leapt over the security chain-link. He raced to the back door and it was open! He was in and running down the hall. He threw open the door to the studio and sure enough…he was right. Red. Everything was red! His mind was racing. Holy shit! What do I do? Nobody’s here. They don’t even know about the fire. It’s all up to me.
And then he saw it. A fire hose in the corner. An old-fashioned hose and nozzle with a red valve crank on the side. Must have been left over from the forties or something, but it looked efficient. Jim ran to it, pulled the hose free, and cracked the valve, and the fire snake sprang to life. Water spewed onto the red. That burning, devouring red that was going to eat up our tapes and destroy the wonderful music we had just made. All of our work would be consumed by that terrible red. All of our efforts would be for naught because of that vicious, terrible, evil red. But Jim was there to save the day! He would save our music and our instruments. He would save John’s drums and Robby’s Twin Reverb and my Vox Continental and the multitrack tapes and…well, everything. And so he sprayed the red. Aiming the hose this way and that, covering the room with liquid. But the damned red wouldn’t go away. It just kept glowing and throbbing and pulsating. That red. That evil, devouring red wouldn’t succumb to the water. Why? What kind of fucking fire was this? What kind of hellfire of sulfuric damnation wouldn’t be extinguished by the semen-squirting, phallic monster Jim held in his hands? What the fuck was this RED?!
Well, my friends, it was the work light. In the center of the room, on a stand, with a little screen cage around the bulb was a red work light. The kind they had in the movie studios back in the forties. A red work light. No fire, no flames, no danger to the tapes, no nothing. Nothing but red from the red work light. Jim’s psychedelic eyes had, of course, seen a whole conflagration. We had both read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and this was the next time! But, by God, Ensign Morrison was there to save the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard in a most prescient and heroic manner. Out, damned red! The waters of the unconscious would obliterate all evil.
And then he realized what the red was. Holy shit! Turn the hose off, quick! Everything’s okay. Mission accomplished. Now get the fuck out. Fast!
He cranked the valve shut, dropped the hose on the soggy floor, and hauled ass. Through the door, down the hallway, out the exit door, and over the chain-link fence. Huffing and puffing, he ran to the car and jumped in.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Was it a fire, Jim? Did you put out the fire?”
“Yeah, I put it out. Now go!”
“But, Jim, your boot…”
“What?”
“It’s stuck in the fence.”
Pam pointed to the chain-link fence. And there it was. His left boot. On the other side. Its toe wedged between the links. Impossible to get out from the parking lot side. Jim would have to climb the fence, extract the boot, put it on, climb the fence again, and then beat his retreat. He only considered that possibility for an instant.
“Fuck the boot, let’s go.”
The next day, Paul received a call from one Tutti Cammarata, owner of Sunset Sound, and was asked to come to the studio to survey some water damage…and to see whether or not he could identify a boot that was found at the scene of the crime. A boot that was wedged, absurdly, in the chain-link fence at the rear of the property. Paul did, Paul could, Paul called Elektra, and Jac Holzman said he would pay for the damages. They were actually slight, Jim kept his hose hysteria in the studio with our equipment—he never got into the control room—and Paul called each of us to c
ancel the session for that day. He told us the story of the water and the boot. But he never told Jim that he knew what had happened. And the next day it was business as usual. We finished recording the album in four more days and left Sunset Sound…still intact and still standing.
We asked Paul where he wanted to mix the record.
“You guys are booked into Ondine for the whole month of November, aren’t you?” he asked.
We nodded. Billie Winters, one of Jim’s occasional amours, had booked us, two weeks earlier, into the most prestigious and hippest discotheque on the planet. She was friends with the owner, Brad Pierce, and he was buddies with Ondine’s number-one denizen…Andy Warhol.
“Well, that’s where we’re going to mix,” Paul enthused. “New York!”
n.y.c.—the heart of the beast
Honey, get packed. We’re going to the capital of the world,” I said to Dorothy when I heard the news about Ondine.
“Where’s that?”
“Baby, we’re going to New York!”
Dorothy squealed and wrapped her arms around my neck. “New York City?”
“Yep. Billie Winters got us a gig at some hip new club. They say it’s Andy Warhol’s favorite hang.”
“For how long?”
“The whole month of November.”
Dorothy squealed again and kissed me hard on the lips.
“I love you,” she said.
I wrapped my arms around her lithe body. “I love you, too,” I said as we smothered each other with kisses.
“I knew this was going to work,” she softly said as my tongue darted in and out of her mouth.
I stopped for a moment. “You mean us, or the band?”
She smiled. “You big jerk, I mean the whole thing!” And she buried herself into me.
And we made love. There in that wonderful glass-enclosed beach house. In our little bedroom, on the mattress on the floor, looking out on the ocean and up into the clear blueness of the sky canopy. We dissolved into each other. And it was long and sweet and good. But it was one of the last times we would make love there.
We gave up the beach house—it had done its work, our apprentice days were over, “Light My Fire” existed, our first album was in the can, and we were going to New York. We put our books and our few summer clothes into storage. Jim simply packed a bag and left Pam to attend to their apartment on Norton Avenue. Robby and John, who were still living at home, simply bade adieu to Mom and Dad. And on the morning of October 31, 1966—All Hallow’s Eve—we all boarded a plane at LAX for the big show. We were going into the heart of the beast. To the Big Apple. And we were going to teach those sophisticated, jaded, intellectual, decadent New Yorkers what psychedelic was all about! They had seen everything…but they had never seen the Doors. And we were ready!
Or so we thought.
We fell into the phantasmagoria of New York City on the very first night. We checked in at the Henry Hudson Hotel on West 57th Street—our attorney, Max Fink, had arranged for and prepaid our rooms—and immediately headed for the club on East 59th. We walked all the way down 57th and Dorothy and I thought we were in heaven. People, energy, life, sophistication, luxury, elegance, knowledge, worldliness…everything a budding aesthete could ask for. This was the big city! We were not in cowboy L.A. anymore. We were in the center of the world, the true axis mundi.
And we entered Ondine. Or rather, should I say, we fell into Babylon. There should have been a sign above the door, All Things Are Permitted Here. Or perhaps, Enter and Be Free. Or, All Flesh Is Good. It was Halloween night and the denizens had disguised themselves. Everyone was in costume. Devils and witches, angels and sailors, Playboy bunnies and crones, ghouls, fiends, reprobates, dandies, and beauties.
All strange order of monsters
Hot on the trail of the woodvine
We welcome you to our procession
What a show. What a spectacle. A small, nautical-decor boîte stuffed with fantasy. Engorged with role playing and psychological gamesmanship. Jim was home. You could feel it in the atmosphere. You could feel it in him. These people, this city, would allow him to adopt any persona of his choosing. Any mask, any role, any game. It was all permitted. It was all encouraged. And it was just what he wanted. Here, finally, was the opportunity for a serious debauch. This was mind games. This was domination. This was sexual power and it began with a cafe au lait Playboy bunny undulating up to Jim and asking him, “Are you guys the band from California that’s supposed to start tomorrow?”
Jim looked her up and down, his eyes finally settling on her fine and bulging breasts. “Yeah,” he said. “How’d you know?”
She giggled, “You don’t look like you’re from New York.”
“Well…you don’t look like you’re from the Playboy mansion, either,” the retort meister said.
“This is an authentic bunny costume,” she pouted. “I got it from my girlfriend. She works as a bunny.”
Jim shifted his gaze from her breasts to her ass. “I’m not saying it’s not the real thing. You’re just a little out of alignment.”
And he put his hands on her divine rear and proceeded to slightly adjust her little white puff of perky tail fur. She squealed with delight.
“There,” he said. “That’s better. You were starting to list to one side.”
“You’re outrageous,” she cooed. “What’s your name?”
He took her arm and began to lead her off to the bar. “James,” he said. “James Phoenix.”
He’d always wanted to use that name. He felt Morrison was just too mundane. No mystery. He actually wanted to change his name for the album. I said no way. I wasn’t going to let him change that all-American Jim Morrison. That was the name of the heir apparent. The prince. The king-to-be. James Phoenix was the name of a rascal outlaw. That name could never become president of the United States. And that’s where this was all headed.
Dorothy and I just shook our heads as “James Phoenix” walked off into the Fellini side show, an African-American Playboy bunny on his arm. Robby and John were simply stunned by the whole thing. Their mouths were at half mast. But they did see the chicks, and the women were fine.
One of them came up to us. A chick in a sequined evening gown. A very beautiful young woman, but with small breasts and not exactly the right hourglass figure. She looked at us and laughed.
“What did you guys come as…bumpkins?”
And she sidled off. Still laughing. And from the rear the truth presented itself. She was a man. No hiding those angular hips in that sequined skin.
Dorothy said, “That she’s a he.”
“Fuckin’ faggot,” snarled Densmore.
“These people are amazing,” said Robby. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“And we’re going to play here for the next month!” I burbled ecstatically.
The four of us just looked at one another and grinned. We were all home. And “Knock on Wood” came on the sound system and the club erupted. Everybody started dancing to Ondine’s “song of the month.” What a show. What a spectacle. We had entered the gates of Babylon. Strange days had found us!
The next night it was our turn. We were going to burn them down. We knew the people of New York were still into R&B. It was a soul and funk town and it had the best dancers on the planet. The regulars at Ondine were the snakiest, hippest undulators on a dance floor I had ever seen. But they didn’t know trance dancing. They didn’t know psychedelic. And completely unawares, they were about to get an overdose of psychedelic music from the four tripped-out acidheads from the benign, soma shores of Venice Beach, California. The Jungian rockers in that strictly Freudian town. The transcendental meditators in the temple of Mammon. The Doors.
We mounted up at about nine-thirty P.M. on that Night of All Souls after the Witches’ Sabbath. I lit a couple of sticks of incense that I had wedged into the Vox between the chrome Z legs and the English red body. The sweet smoke immediately began to change the atmosphere. A tranquillity
descended. An expectancy, an anticipation of the unknown. But without fear of the unknown. More the imminence of the joy of discovery. An adventure was about to begin and we all knew it.
And we launched into “Backdoor Man.” The music pumped snakes out into the club. The rhythm was solid and grounded. Jim let out a few guttural, primal grunts that hit the collective audience’s lower three chakras and the dance floor filled immediately. He had them. The New York maenads were his. Dionysus had entered Babylon, and his new followers were released from their chains. The New Age could begin. And then he began to sing…
I am a backdoor man,
Yeah, baby, I’m a backdoor man,
Well, the men don’t know
But the little girl understand.
—Willie Dixon
And the satyr cackled. That damned little satyr had followed Dionysus all the way across the country and stood off in the corner watching the East Coast maenads—the daughters of Undine the water nymph—undulate. And he was drooling and cackling and hopping on those silly little hooves of his and he was in love. New York girls, rock and roll music, the hippest nightclub in the city…what more could a libertine reprobate ask for? The party had begun and he was there!
The party lasted for thirty days and thirty nights. The nights belonged to Dionysus but the days belonged to Apollo. Dorothy and I explored that city from the Battery to the Museum of Natural History—the great and dark and lodgelike American Indian hall, where Joseph Campbell had his first epiphany. We walked for blocks and blocks in a state of amazement and euphoria. Everything was there. All the art one could possibly digest. Galleries, theater, dance, music, the cinema, museums. All the best. And…shopping! Shopping to drive a woman mad. The fall fashions by the world’s great designers were there for the purchase. It only took money, and lots of it. Dorothy the fashion maven was in designer heaven. But unfortunately she could only look. There was barely enough money for breakfast and lunch. Dinner was free for employees at Ondine; London broil, french fries, and string beans every night…but it was damned good London broil, succulent and tender, and the fries were crisp, and the string beans were nicely buttered.