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Riding back to a legendary gig
Interview - Riders On The Storm
Ray Manzarek of Riders On The Storm spoke to Charlotte Chambers prior to their two-day residency on December 30 and 31 at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm.
CC: You last played the Roundhouse in 1968. Tell me about that legendary gig.
RM: It was magnificent. Californian psychedelic rock and roll came to London for the first time. The bill was The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, live, and we played our butts – [corrects himself – bums] – off for two nights. Wild ‘Dionysian’ revelry.
The second night we played until dawn. I remember walking out into the London streets afterwards – I’ve never done anything like that before or since.
CC: Why was that night so special?] The audience – the English are probably the most intelligent in Europe. [What about the world?] The Japanese are probably number one in the world. America was up there in the early ’60s. We were very intelligent, but we seem to have lost a great deal of our native understanding of the basic functions of life. We are now born-again fascists.
CC: Do you still listen to bands from the ’60s?
RM: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Canonball Adderly, Philip Glass.
CC: What about bands from now?
RM: The Chemical Brothers, Beck, Bjork, Blur. I’m a keyboard player, I like electronica.
CC: Why do you think The Doors are such a cult band?
RM: I have no idea, that would have to be considered by people like you, I’m on the inside. [What do you say when people come up to you?] You have to be gracious. You have to say thank you.
CC: Why isn’t John Densmore (drummer) playing with you?
RM: He chooses not to. We invite him to and he chooses not to. I don’t even know that he can. He’s in another world. He’s ‘locked in a prison of his own devise’ – and those are Jim Morrison’s words.
CC: What would the band have been like without Jim Morrison?
RM: There wouldn’t have been a band, the band came together because of me and Jim, we were at film school together. We put the band together to do poetry and rock and roll.
b Why are people so fascinated with Jim Morrison?
RM: He’s Dionysian – he represents the secret of the unconscious shaken loose. |
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