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With the death of keyboard player Ray Manzarek, I thought this would be a good time to take a look back at one of my biggest
musical influences, the Doors. Kiss was the band that got me into music, but it was the Doors that turned me in the direction
that I really wanted to go with my music. I had never really paid much attention to the band until I read a simple one page
article on them in a rock magazine. It related the much told story about how Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison ran into each
other on the beach and Jim singing the open lines to "Moonlight Drive" to Ray. I read those lines and thought to myself that
that was how I wanted to write a song. That was how I got into the Doors and the moment that changed the way I approached
music. I naturally went way overboard and started writing lyrics that were very poetic but didn't really mean a whole lot
half of the time. I later pulled back and decided that I wanted every line to have some kind of meaning to the song as a
whole. And here I am today. (Sad but true.) The Doors were a bit before my time. I vaguely remember hearing "Riders on
the Storm" being played on the radio when I was very young and trying to sing the lyrics all wrong. I thought it was a really
cool song. The Doors made a lot of great music in their short history as a band. Although Jim Morrison (as the front man)
received most of the attention, it was the band as a whole that created the music. Ray Manzarek's keyboard playing did a
great deal to define the sound that was the Doors. No one else had a sound that came close to what the Doors were doing and
Ray was largely responsible for that. You either loved it or hated it. There were a lot of us in my generation who were
rediscovering the Doors, and that was ten years after the death of Jim Morrison. The Doors had a timeless sound that I'm
sure is as vital today as it ever was. Thanks for the music, Ray. You will be missed.
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