April 1, 2007

In September 1981, Rolling Stone published its famous cover of Jim Morrison with the unforgettable cover line "He's Hot, He's Sexy, and He's Dead." The world was in the grips of a Doors revival, spurred by the use of the band's music in "Apocalypse Now," the publication of the best-selling Morrison biography "No One Here Gets Out Alive" and the release of the "Doors Greatest Hits" album. Doors-mania seemed to peak a decade later when Val Kilmer's portrayal of Morrison in Oliver Stone's movie "The Doors" sealed the singer's romantic rebel image for yet another generation.

It's a single-song world, and I don't think the album is more important than the individual songs, which I think is how young people listen today.

Twenty-five years later, the second coming of the Doors seems never to have waned. The hits collection was just certified 10 times platinum; the band recently received both a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and, next month, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is mounting "Break on Through: The Lasting Legacy of the Doors" to commemorate the band's 40th anniversary.

The latest Celebration of the Lizard King also includes the release of all six Doors studio albums in newly remastered and expanded versions: "The Doors," "Strange Days," "Waiting for the Sun," "The Soft Parade," "Morrison Hotel" and "L.A. Woman." (The discs came out last year as the "Perception" box set.)

Listen to the "Perceptions" sampler

The new editions contain some revelatory moments, including the restoration of the true speed and pitch of the band's debut album -- which was slowed down in playback and never fixed -- and Morrison's previously censored yelps of "She gets high!" in "Break on Through (to the Other Side)." Revisiting the Doors catalog -- passionate, inconsistent, sometimes inspired and sometimes maddeningly dated -- is a reminder of the wild peaks and valleys these "missionaries of apocalyptic sex" (as Joan Didion once called them) were able to reach in a career of just four years.

Keyboardist Ray Manzarek continues to tour with guitarist Robby Krieger as Riders on the Storm, after litigation with drummer John Densmore over use of the Doors' name. (Ian Astbury recently stepped down as the band's vocalist, and has been replaced by former Fuel singer Brett Scallions.) Manzarek expresses wild enthusiasm about the new remasters and the legacy of the definitive Los Angeles band. The cozmik hippie-speak he often slips into, entirely irony-free, jumps out of the phone across three time zones.

"We were four guys who opened the doors of perception, and said come join us in a state of freedom," says Manzarek. "You listen to that band and you can sense that they are free men, beholden to no one but the love in their own hearts."

MSN Music: After all the reissues, repackagings, box sets and compilations of the Doors material through the years, is it hard for you to return to these albums as individual works?

Ray Manzarek: Going back to the single discs, the way we recorded them in the first place, really means reliving those existential moments. You can only make your first disc once -- it's an absolutely thrilling event, yet it's fraught with danger because you don't know if the public will accept it, and you don't find out for a while. Those are your little babies, your little creations, and we didn't know for six months if that first album was going to be accepted. The album came out in January 1967, and "Light My Fire" wasn't really a hit until that summer. It got to No. 1, I think, in July, knocking the Beatles out of that spot.

So I relived that entire experience when we were listening to that album and remastering it. And to hear the albums in such pristine quality is stunning.

Is there any danger that after the reissued version and then the remastered version and the expanded edition, what an album actually is gets blurred? That if you and I are both talking about, say, "Strange Days," we could be talking about different things?

I don't think you can ever alter the thing in and of itself, because the conception of "Strange Days" -- there's no other way for it to be other than as it is. But it's a single-song world, and I don't think the album is more important than the individual songs, which I think is how young people listen today. Then maybe they go back to the full albums.

You can only write one song at a time, you can only record one song at a time -- in the studio, you don't know what order it will be, in the same way that you don't shoot a movie in sequence. "What do you want to play today?" "I don't know; what do you feel like?" "'Strange Days?'" "OK!" -- it's in tune with exactly what is going on today, that Zen moment in time pulled out of the ether and made into reality. That's why it's still valid today -- we tried to grab that moment in time and capture it, or else come back and try it another day. When we got it, we would smile and nod at each other, we knew, and (producer) Paul Rothchild would say, "That's it, you got it!" And then he'd say, "But let's do one more just for the hell of it." He was always exceedingly meticulous and we loved him madly, but we would never get it again after that one time.

How was it for you to listen to the 30 minutes or so of the band rehearsing "Roadhouse Blues" included on this edition of "Morrison Hotel"?

It's like a documentary film taking place inside my head. People ask me if I learned anything new doing these remasters. I learned that we sometimes had to really work to get it. With that song, you'd figure it's a blues, it would be nice and easy. But something about that song just needed chipping away, like Michelangelo's David. Folks, this is how it goes in the recording studio -- making a record is a very hard thing to do.

I'm surprised you say that realization was new for you -- I'd think the hard work might be the thing you would remember most.

That's the part you let go of -- like my bad experiences in the military, in Okinawa and Thailand in '63 before the Vietnam War. I could tell you endless stories, but forgetting all the bad stuff. That's a great thing about the human mind, it lets go of that and holds on to the wonderful stuff, like that final version we did get of "Roadhouse" with John Sebastian playing that harp. It was one hell of a funky version when we put it down.

Also, that rehearsal version of "Celebration of the Lizard," how some things didn't make it in the final version that was on "Absolutely Live." You go into the studio to try things -- Jim said, "Hey, let's go to the studio for the heck of it," though it still hadn't fully come together. Just to fool around, play with it, see how it sounds. And it didn't work. It wasn't there yet, it needed to cook some more, to heat up, go into the alembic.

You're creating a song from nothing to solidity, to gold, and that's a difficult transformation. So it's interesting to hear what didn't make it, to hear the Doors make mistakes. People who are improvising don't get it perfect. Charlie Parker got it as close to perfect as anyone could, and he still said if you don't make a mistake, you're not trying hard enough.

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