Light My Fire - Illuminated

One of the most well-known American pop music bands of the 1960's was The Doors. Far and away the most popular member of the band was front-man and lead singer Jim Morrison, who, in 1971, joined an exclusive club to which few would wish to be accepted: the club of musicians who met their demise at the age of 27.

But in 1998, it was keyboardist Ray Manzarek who was interviewed by NPR's Terry Gross. The interview may be read here or listened to here. Hear, hear!

Ray was an extremely intelligent, interesting, friendly and charming interviewee. In fact, I found myself thinking that he was the kind of person with whom I would really enjoy to spend time. Such a positive person. An absolutely delightful interview.

(An interesting aside. Around the same time, I listened to another interview conducted by NPR's Terry Gross, this one of David Hyde Pierce, who was then starring in the hit sitcom Frasier. What I found so fascinating was the contrast between the interviews. Whereas every question put to Ray served as a springboard to a sprawling 5-plus-minute-long tale of adventure, David's replies, while polite, informative, and interesting, were brief and to the point, almost to the point of being perfunctory, as if he were taking a test and his goal was to reply to each question in a manner which would simply ensure that he would get credit for answering that question correctly.)

In the interview, Ray, an expert racounteur, regaled with various stories revolving around the band, such as how the band formed from a chance encounter on the beach between Ray and Jim, and Jim's antics during his tenure with the band, which on at least one occasion landed him in jail.

For me, the highlight of the interview is when Ray discusses, at great length, the recording of the band's most famous song: Light My Fire. This happens to be not only my favorite song by the band, but one of my favorite songs of all time, to my ear a perfect synthesis of the "coolness" and improvisational style of jazz with the "sweetness" and "edginess" of pop rock music.

For 15 minutes, Ray gives a wonderfully detailed exegesis on the genesis of all aspects of the song, including:

• The lyrics and melody, a collaboration between guitarist Robby Krieger and the other band members and Johann Sebastian Bach;
• The time signature and the rhythm, influenced by both jazz great Johnny Coltrane and Latin flamenco music;
• The chord structure, with a clever interplay between major and minor keys;
• The introduction, a musical pattern known as a circle of fifths, based on the aforementioned baroque composer; and
• The 4-minute instrumental, an eloquent dialog between Ray's keyboard and Robby's guitar (which, much to the outrage of the band members, is cruelly excised by the producer for the single version, to bring the song's length down from 7:05 to 2:52)

Ray analyzes each of the above elements of the song with consummate musical erudition, bringing a crystal clear illumination of the evolution of how this masterpiece of a song came into being. And I must mention that Ray has his keyboard with him during the interview, so throughout, he is constantly elucidating his expositions musically.

So of course, once the interview was over, I decided that the thing to do was to now listen again to the song Light My Fire, having now learned all of the myriad facets of the song. The result was an experience that I will never forget. Like many experiences, it is very difficult to explain in words. I can use an analogy and say that it was like seeing life in black and white and suddenly seeing it in color for the first time. Every single second of the song just exploded in my mind, rife with the multiple layers of musical meaning contained therein. With every note, I was hearing simultaneously the note itself, and Ray's beautiful explanation of the process that had gone into its creation. What a superlatively rich experience!

Dear reader, if you wish to do yourself a great favor, I highly recommend that you treat yourself to this experience, and listen to the interview and the song, in that order. I'd be most happy to hear your reactions.

Footnote. In the interview, Ray states that the song's introduction, which he terms the "turnaround", was the last piece of the song to be composed. I find this very odd, since every phrase of the instrumental seems to be an improvisation based on that turnaround. As I composed this post today, I just learned sadly that Ray died earlier this year. So it looks like I will not get the opportunity to ask him about this point.