Ray Manzarek, keyboard player and founding member of The Doors, who had a dramatic impact on rock `n’ roll, has died aged 74, in Rosenheim, Germany…
The Doors (1968)
Manzarek founded The Doors after meeting Jim Morrison in California.
The band became one of the most successful rock `n’ roll acts to emerge from the 1960s. Manzarek, from Chicago, continued to remain active in music after Morrison’s 1971 death. He briefly tried to hold the band together by serving as vocalist, but eventually, the group fell apart. He played in other bands over the years, produced other acts, became an author, and worked on films.
The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Manzarek’s lead instrument work with the band, when guitar often dominated, added a distinct flavor to the Door’s sound.
The group is best known for its hits L.A.Woman, Break On Through to the Other Side, The End, and Light My Fire, and came to symbolize the decadence of Los Angeles, as the counterculture grew in the US. Morrison and Manzarek were kindred spirits, as Manzarek discovered when Morrison read him the lyrics for a song called Moonlight Drive.
“I’d never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before,” Manzarek said.