|
|
JOHN DENSMORE DRUMMER
ON THE STORM
by Teri
Saccone
Perhaps more than any other band,
the Doors personified the rebellious spirit of the 60s. With
their self-titled debut album, the Doors erupted onto the
scene in 1966, replete with an innovative sound, attitude, and
message. In contrast to the peace-and-love hippie propaganda
of the era, the Doors explored the darker side of death, sex,
war, and anarchy. Aside from the talents of
frontman/poet/singer Jim Morrison, the rest of the band were
supremely gifted musicians: drummer John Densmore, keyboard
player Ray Manzarek, and guitarist Robbie Krieger. Although
more than 25 years have elapsed since Morrison passed away in
Paris, the band's international popularity has not diminished.
In France, the Doors remain a huge cult band.
Over the
years, John Densmore has become well-regarded for his
jazz-inflected, powerfully elegant drumming with the Doors.
Besides his music career, he is also an actor and writer,
having chronicled his observations and experiences with the
Doors in his 1990 book "Riders On the Storm" (Delacorte Press,
Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group). It is a very
personal and often humorous account of the fascinating story
of the band and John s search for self-discovery. Writing the
book was cathartic for its author, who struggled with his past
and the loss of his friend and mentor, Jim. "The book was a
way to work through a lot of what I went through," he
declares. " I dedicated it to John Lennon because he exposed
so much of his personal life that it was inspiring to me.
Public people also have relationship problems and have to go
to the bathroom just like everybody else. "You know, my book
has never been published in French which is a shame, with Jim
being buried there and all," he remarks regrettably. " I don t
understand why."
WHAT S A TYPICAL DAY LIKE FOR
YOU?
JD: I get up around 7 AM -- thats because I
have a 4 year-old. Then I do my yoga, hang with my kid, eat
breakfast. Then, either work on my novel or get on the phone
to make calls. I also exercise. I take walks and ride my horse
way out in the country. I've also been trying to help a
singer-songwriter, John Coinman. I made four demos for him,
put a band together, produced everything, and played drums.
Hopefully, we ll get to do a whole album.
HOW
WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE MUSIC?
Well, it's pretty
hard to describe. I guess it's rock 'n' roll with Zen Buddhist
lyrics. It's Southwest sounding -- the sound of the desert. I
did those demos months ago and I'm trying to hustle them a
deal and then we can make six or seven more songs. We did
four.
YOU RE ALSO INVOLVED WITH DOORS
BUSINESS, TOO.
Recently, we finally got the money
to transfer "An American Prayer" -- Jim s poetry album -- onto
CD. So we were in the studio working on that. We did make a
video for one of the songs which MTV in the States would not
play because it's in the spoken word category and they don't
play spoken word. The rest of the world played that video. I
guess the U.S. is behind the times, in my opinion.
DO YOU THINK THE ARTS STILL HAVE A PLACE IN
THE U.S. UNDER THE PRESENT RIGHT-WING SENTIMENT?
The whole trend of the country is towards the right, so
the arts are not that important. Taking money away from
children, the elderly and arts programs is the thing to do to
balance the budget, according to the Republicans. I'm getting
a little political here.
THAT S FINE.
There's still great art being done. It's hard getting it
through, though. American MTV and Rolling Stone magazine are
so big now that they've gone corporate and they've got
conservative. The' ve made some money and they re afraid of
losing it so they get tight. It s funny, Newt Gingrich was
gonna be on MTV for an interview because they gave Clinton
equal time when he was trying to get elected. Ray (Manzarek)
made a joke and said "Is Newt gonna sing since they don't
allow spoken word on MTV?"
YOU COLLABORATED ON
TWO ALBUMS WITH KRIEGER AND MANZAREK AFTER MORRISON'S DEATH.
We didn't want to give up the musical
synchronicity, (pauses) but we didn t want to replace Jim. I
mean, who could fill those leather pants? (laughs) So Ray and
Robbie tried to sing, ha ha. By the second one we started
fighting musically and we decided, "Our spearhead, our
forefront is gone. It s time to go our own ways."
TELL ME ABOUT THE PLAY THAT YOU VE APPEARING
IN?
I've always occassionally played drums for
small, avante garde theatrical productions, mainly just to see
people. If you're writing, you re all alone with the blank
page or the video computer screen so it's good to be with
people. For a while I was drumming for the Actor s Gang. It
was a small theatre company run by (actor) Tim Robbins before
he became a big success. I had a great time performing with
them.
My wife is an actress and she was in a play by
an Argentinian playwrite, Eduardo Pavlovsky. The director
wanted to do another play by this man and he wanted me to drum
and I said "Great." It was a piece about a man and a woman and
relationships. Then he convinced me to do the man part so I m
acting and drumming. My wife's drumminga little too, to
balance it out. I gave her a few lessons. The play's an
interesting piece called "Circa."
WHAT OTHER
DRUMMING PROJECTS ARE YOU INVOLVED WITH?
Besides
the play, there's another thing my wife and I are up to that s
real interesting. I was involved men's groups with Robert Bly
who wrote Iron John, before it became a big movement. It s all
about sharing feelings. I met a fellow at one of these men's
conferences who ran a prison program in Louisiana. He had
gotten permission from the warden to give drums to the
inmates. This just blew my mind. So I bought 20 drums for the
inmates of Dixon Correctional Insitute in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana and sent them down there. Six months later I went
there with my wife who was eight months pregnant with that
four year-old I was talking about and we went in the prison
and had a whole afternoon of drumming and dancing and crying
and sharing feelings and it was just unbelievable. My wife and
I wanted to film this program but the warden got real nervous.
He thought it would be an exposé on the prison, but we were
just trying to show that this program helped a lot. The
program eventually was booted out because it works. The whole
turn of the country is to incarcerate everybody. But I think
deep down people know that the streets aren't safer. This
program -- called Project Return -- is now on the outside,
helping ex-offenders get their high school diploma, giving
them counseling. When inmates get out their families don't
know how to deal with them, they can't get a job because they
have "ex-convict" etched on their forehead. This program gives
them a hand up instead of a hand out. They have to write from
prison to get into the program and they must show that they
are serious about it. For this program, the recidivism rate --
the rate at which ex-offenders return to prison -- is four
percent as opposed to 60 percent in the rest of the country.
Anyway, we filmed this program and the drumming, and we hope
to get it on television. I just teach them simple beats and
talk about how if we all play together for 15 minutes, when we
finish, we kind of form an instant community of the drum which
helps us access instant community for sharing deeper feelings.
When you've drummed together, there's a real oneness there.
One thing this men's movement got me thinking about was that
so-called primitive cultures had initiations at 13 and it was
clear: "You re a man know and you have to go out and hunt." We
don t have these clearly defined rituals so it takes us to 35
or 40 before we really know who we are. Of course it s
continual. I don t mean to sound like a guru who knows where
it's at believe me.
YOUR BOOK, RIDERS ON THE
STORM, REVEALED NOT ONLY YOUR LIFE WITH THE DOORS, BUT ALSO
YOUR OWN PERSONAL SEARCH AND STRUGGLES.
The book
was a way to work through a lot. I dedicated it to John Lennon
because he exposed so much of his personal life that it was
inspiring to me. Public people also have relationship problems
and have to go to the bathroom, just like everybody else.
DID YOU KEEP A DIARY OVER THE YEARS?
No. I just kind of went through all my memories.
It took me years to write it.
HOW DID THE
NOVEL WHICH YOU ARE CURRENTLY WRITING COME ABOUT?
It's partly out of a response to the Oliver Stone
movie ("The Doors"). I love Oliver for trying. He was in
Vietnam during that era so that was his fantasy of what it
would have been like to be Jim, from a bunker in Viet Nam. I
think the film was the story of a tortured artist, which
Oliver is similar to. But I'm a little more interested in the
earlier 60s, before things got a little too decadent. There
was a real feeling of hope for social change on the street. We
really thought "Man, we re gonna change this around." Maybe it
was naive, but I will say that the civil rights movement, the
peace movement and the women's movement were all from seeds
planted in the mid- 60s. I'm kind of tired of people viewing
the 60s as just hippy burnouts who got stoned. Although, we
did get stoned and I m not trying to gloss-over Jim's
self-destruction or anyone else's. Jerry Garcia is an example
of the best and worst of the 60s: he was a wonderful, giving
spirit yet he could not face the demons of addiction. So yeah,
we did burn out, but I don t feel than any movies or books
have looked at the mid- 60s and the war at home, as we called
it. There have been a lot of movies on Vietnam which were
important films, but what was happening in this country at the
time was astoundingly important. We stopped the Vietnam war.
The people actually stopped the war! I'm interested in that
and in those unsung heroes who were trying to do something.
Maybe they can re-inspire people in the 90s. So that s what I
m writing about. I know those times well.
THERE ARE THOSE WHO SPEAK OF THE 60S IN
REVERENTIAL TONES.
I don t want to go back and I
can t go back. No one can. But I m slightly nostalgic for the
passion of the time. It's like the old question "If you had to
do it over again would you do it differently?" I wouldn't,
because then I wouldn't be who I am now and we're all a
product of our experiences and I'm happy now.
AMAZINGLY, ALMOST 30 YEARS HAVE PAST SINCE
YOUR RECORDED THE FIRST DOORS ALBUM. THE GROUP HAD ONLY BEEN
TOGETHER A YEAR YET YOU WERE INCREDIBLY TIGHT.
I
had studied jazz a lot before that. I m still not real crazy
about the first album. The second album ("Strange Days") I
like a lot because we were more relaxed in the studio and we
were experimenting a lot. Each of us individually had played
for years and Jim had read every book written so he was
certainly a word man. When Ray and I met we talked about
Coltrane and Miles and we had the same influences. When we
played it all came together real quick. Recently, I went to
hear Elvin Jones who was John Coltrane's drummer. I gave him
my book backstage. I was pretty nervous because jazz is such
an art form and it was possible that he would look down at
rock 'n' roll. I said to him "I wrote in here that you gave me
my hands." And he was so sweet and appreciative that it made
my day. Oh man, it felt great just to give something back to
somebody. I copied every lick of his and could play his style
exactly. I didn t play his style on Doors records but that was
my roots, it gave me my. technique.
SPEAKING
OF TECHNIQUE, YOUR PLAYING HAD MORE EMPHASIS ON YOUR HANDS
RATHER THAN YOUR FEET.
Like Mitch Mitchell, I
have very fast hands. Due to the old school jazz and Be-bop
playing, my hands are real fast. My feet are not as fast as
they could be. When fusion came along I just about died: those
guys are so fast with their feet. I still have some work to
do. But I love some of that bass drum stuff: funk, fusion oh,
man! I'm always trying to get my foot to go faster.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT YOUR UNIQUENESS WAS AS
APPRECIATED DURING THE DOORS HEYDAY AS IT IS
NOW?
When people ask what made the Doors last so
long I tell them it was the drumming! (laughs) Ginger Baker at
the time was the number one rock guy and a great soloist. He
had more technique than me. Thank God technique isn't
everything. I'm more an ensemble player and my uniqueness,
Bruce Springsteen told me a few years ago at the Hall of Fame,
was that in silent parts like in "The End," I would just drop
a bomb in there for some reason. I don't know how to explain
my style but I'd listen to the words closely and try to be
musical.
YOU CERTAINLY HAD A FLAIR FOR DRAMA.
Yes. I love the drama and the dynamics. That's
what I loved about the Doors. Ray also knew that if you played
real loud and then real soft, oh man, it s just so musical.
I SUPPOSE YOU CAN APPRECIATE A BAND LIKE
NIRVANA, WHO ALSO MAXIMIZED THE USE OF
DYNAMICS?
Oh very much. Wonderful.
BY THE WAY, WHAT DO YOU LISTEN TO THESE DAYS?
Oh, everything. I don't listen to a lot of grunge
or rap, but I admire it and respect it and I m really glad
it's there. I'm kind of interested in world music. It's
fascinating that English-speaking countries are listening to
music in other languages now and just going with it and I
think that's a healthy thought. You can get the essence of a
culture just by the music you don't have to have the literal
interpretation of the words.
THE DOORS DIDN T
HAVE A BASS PLAYER LIVE, BUT YOUR BOOK MENTIONS THAT YOU DID
HAVE BASS PLAYERS ON THE ALBUMS.
Moog synthesisers
hadn't been invented yet, but Ray found a keyboard bass. We
thought it was adequate so we decided that we wouldn't get a
bass player and we'd be different. Anything to be different.
But when we got to the studio, the Fender Rhodes piano bass
just didn't record that well. We actually recorded with it for
the first album and then we had a bass player -- an L.A.
session guy -- just overdub Ray's bass lines exactly the same.
The plucking gave it a little more touch, and as I said the
synths hadn't been invented which have great bass. For the
second album there were a bunch of different guys playing
bass. But they always did exactly what Ray had played.
DID YOU PLAY DIFFERENTLY LIVE TO COMPENSATE
FOR LACK OF A BASS PLAYER?
Having just Ray's left
hand as opposed to a bass player was pretty interesting for a
drummer: it wasn't a separate mind holding the beat down which
is very helpful. So I had to work real hard at keeping the
tempo the same. When Ray would play a solo with his right
hand, sometimes he'd speed up because his left hand was the
bass and he d get into it. But on the other hand, if there had
been a bass player he would have been playing more lines,
playing more fills which is natural for a musician to do. So
there was a little more room in our sound which I filled with
little percussive comments and accents on Jim's singing. That
was the effect that had on me.
DID YOU TUNE
YOUR OWN DRUMS BACK THEN?
Yes. I tuned them
loosely to the one, four, and five chords. I had been playing
drums since I was in junior high -- marching band, etc. -- and
it gave me a good background. I kind of developed what some
people say is a unique sound: I love the heads to get real old
and loose and rancid and get them to talk back. If you listen
to "Hello I Love You," for example, you can hear that the head
is really old and it gives it a personality. Then when the
head would break and I'd have to get a new one I couldn t
stand the sound for several weeks cause it sounded too slick.
AMERICAN DRUMMERS OFTEN MENTION SCHOOL
MARCHING BANDS AS OFFERING GOOD TRAINING.
The
stereotype of marching band would be stiff, military-type
music, which is correct. But playing with 40 other musicians
gave me a sense of the ensemble side of music. So when it came
time to mix our songs in the studio, I had something to say
about every aspect of the music. I had played in all kinds of
orchestras, dance bands, everything. That helped me a lot and
gave me a perspective on the levels, the echo, EQ's, the
sounds of every instruments.
YOU WERE INTO
SOME HEAVY JAZZ PLAYERS AT A REALLY YOUNG
AGE.
People always say that they're in awe that I
saw all these greats live so many times. What happened is that
I had a piano playing friend and a high school buddy named
Grant -- who's in the book-- who might have started me on it.
We were jazz nuts. We d go to the record store and see these
LP's by these jazz guys and think they were the coolest. Then
we'd get our fake i.d.'s and go see them live. We actually
looked down on rock 'n' roll! But then the Beatles came along
and we thought "God! That s far out!" We liked it and slowly
got into rock and blues and all that, but we started with
jazz.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR DRUMKIT BACK
THEN?
Gretch was my original drumkit, then I
played Ludwig for many years. Now I have a Pearl kit and a
Ludwig snare.
DID YOU KEEP YOUR FIRST KIT THAT
YOU RECORDED WITH?
No but I have the original
snare which I use and an old floor tom. There are a few laying
around. I have one that's in the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas
(laughs)
DID YOU DEVELOP A DIFFERENT SOUND FOR
YOUR LIVE PLAYING?
Well, I didn't know this about
the heads before I started making records. When I got into the
studio, I realized that you have to muffle drums a little bit
in order to make them sound better. That ringing sound live
just doesn't sound good. When I started recording and
listening to other records, I understood that.
L.A. WOMAN -- WHICH WAS RECORDED LIVE -- HAD A
LOT OF COMPLEX STRUCTURE CHANGES AND TEMPOS.
Oh,
thanks. It was basically more bluesy and we were into
different rhythms.
WASN'T MORRISON IN ANOTHER
ROOM DOING THE VOCALS?
He was in the bathroom. The
other albums were more structured than that one. The first
album was fairly live and then in the middle period we kind of
tried to make a "Sergeant Pepper". For the last album, we
denied technology and went back to eight-track. 16-track had
been invented and we used it on the previous album, "Morrison
Hotel" . But we wanted to record "L.A. Woman" in a rehearsal
room and we wanted to be real relaxed and produce it ourselves
and it came out real raw, and with a lot of feeling.
IN YOUR BOOK, YOU SAY THAT "STRANGE DAYS" AND
"L.A. WOMAN" ARE YOUR PERSONAL FAVORITES. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY
WAS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE SESSION?
"Waiting for the
Sun". Jim's self-destruction was just coming in and I was just
torn. That's when I quit the band but came back into the
studio the next day. I couldn't give up the music, the path in
life I had found, but our singer was destroying himself.
Onstage it was great. But that album was when Jim started
really drinking. You may remember from the book that a couple
of years after he died, I went into a bar that was near our
old rehearsal hall and the bartender, who was an old guy, said
that he never saw anybody drink more than Jim. Oh, man. This
guy had a disease. I didn t know that and our culture didn t
understand that back then. Jim was an alcoholic with a
biological problem.
FANS WOULD PROBABLY LIKE
TO BELIEVE THAT THE THREE REMAINING DOORS ARE STILL CLOSE --
THAT YOU GET TOGETHER SOCIALLY. HAVE YOU REMAINED
FRIENDS?
Oh, sure.
YOU MADE SOME
VERY CANDID COMMENTS ABOUT THEM IN THE BOOK.
Well,
I guess at times in the book I did paint Ray a bit
Svengali-like. But then the book sold more records, so he was
happy! Oh, no, did I say that? (laughing) Robby had always
been my best friend for many years, although not as much
lately. We just went in different directions: I re-married and
had a little kid so now I know a lot of people with little
kids. But we re still friends. Robby has a band and he plays
about half Doors songs and half originals. He recently played
at the House of Blues in L.A. and I went down and sat in with
him and it was great fun. Now and then we get together. And
Ray too.
YOU ALSO GOT TOGETHER FOR THE ROCK N
ROLL HALL OF FAME AWARDS A COUPLE OF YEARS
AGO.
That s because Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam
wanted to sing with us, and that was fantastic. He sang "Break
On Through," "Roadhouse Blues," and "Light My Fire." Boy, was
that fun.
IS THERE A POSSIBILITY OF A
REUNION?
I always thought it'd be nice to do an
instrumental album. It certainly could be a soundtrack to a
film because we always wrote for Jim's vocals so we could
easily write for visual. It's an idea in my mind. Maybe in a
few years, I don't know. I'd like to go out on the road right
now just for the fact that I heard that Mick Fleetwood had a
chiropractor on the road years ago. (laughs) When I heard that
I thought "Oh my God! now that s great!" Nevermind all the
elaborate riders they have in contracts for the food
backstage.
THE DOORS ARE PART OF YOUR EVERYDAY
LIFE, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVEN T RECORDED TOGETHER IN MANY YEARS.
DOES BEING AND EX-DOOR EVER BECOME A BURDEN?
Yes
and no. It certainly gives me the freedom to write a novel.
But you have to stay on top of it. For example there's been a
recent movie "Strange Days." We usually license our songs
although we don't do that for commercials. I haven't seen the
movie but I read a review and even though it's by a woman
director, it s another one of these extremely violent movies
that says violence is bad. There's rape and murder and really,
haven't we had enough? So I took the money I got from that and
gave it to a group against domestic violence. I felt like my
karma wouldn't be clean if I'd accepted that money.
SINCE THE BAND SPLIT, DID YOU INTENTIONALLY
SEEK OUT OTHER CREATIVE VEHICLES SUCH AS ACTING AND WRITING?
I've always respected my intuition. A lot of
people self-destruct after the downside of a huge peak such as
The Doors. But I stumbled into this acting class and I
thought, "This could keep me out of trouble for a while." I
realized that performing is what I do whether it's playing,
acting or writing and it's the process that counts, not the
goal. | |
 |
|
|
|
| |
