Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek is dead after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74.
From Rolling Stone:
“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”
Health’s singer-guitarist Jake Duzsik penned a moving tribute to Manzarek, part of which reads…
The mythological entity of “The Doors” subverted the mundane reality of life (and ultimately, of death). But beyond the band’s best-of albums and the bootleg T-shirts, there’s the inescapable truth that this music was made by men, and whether or not they accomplish great things or do nothing much at all, men get old and die.
Of the countless times I’ve heard the kinetic organ pulse that announces my favorite debut album of all time, I’ve not often thought of Raymond Daniel Manzarek as a man apart from his band’s myth. So it’s strange to consider that the broad hands that tracked those chords over 40 years ago might also have been covered in skin as thin as paper as they lay cold yesterday in a hospital bed in Rosenheim, Germany.
It reminds me that whether we play music or just get to listen, we only get to do it for awhile. He did it well.
May he rest in peace. I’m sure he’s already fired up a fat one with Jim Morrison.
(Pic via Shutterstock)
