Jim Cherry's Blog (78)

Before going out this summer with the Manzarek-Krieger Band, Robby Krieger is keeping his guitar in tip-top shape playing this with the Experience Hendrix Tour (starting March 6!), and now in May Kreiger who has a side project in the Band The Roadhouse Rebels, which features Steve Molitz from Particle and John Avila from Oingo Boingo/Mutaytor. They’ve added to the band Rich Robinson from The Black Crowes and drummer Joe Magistro from the Rich Robinson Band. The band will play a mix of Doors…

Today is the anniversary of The Doors’ “Miami incident” at the Dinner Key Auditorium in which Jim Morrison was accused of indecent exposure. The subsequent trial and Morrison’s conviction affected the rest of his life, people close to Jim said it weighed on him even after he went to Paris. The Doors as a band was affected, it immediately ended a tour and John Densmore said it was “a million dollars in gigs”, and thereafter the band had to post a $5000 bond on the condition that if anything…

The Doors are doing it again! First the collaboration with Skrillex and electronic music for the recently released “Re:Generation Music Project” movie with the song “Breakin’ a Sweat” now hip hop artist Tech N9ne has announced that he is working with the surviving members of The Doors. The news was released via Twitter and Facebook, but not much information has been released as to what the song recorded is or when it will be released. In a recent pod cast Tech N9ne alluded to his working…

The movie the Re:Generation Music Project was screened in select cities on Thursday Feb 16, and officially opens in theaters Feb 23. The Doors lead the way in a lot of the promotion of Re:Generation, in the article The Doors Lead Way to Regeneration a  lot of links to articles and interviews were included in the article.

Since that article came out the Artisan News…

Hi Everyone!

I've been running a serialization of my Doors inspired novel, The Last Stage, and I forgot that I hadn't posted anything about it here. Below is the first chapter and a link to chapter 2 at the blog I'm posting it at. I've been posting a chapter a day except on Sunday's. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.----Jim

Is Everybody In?

I’m dead. Not the cold corporeal type of death, but a warm, living death, a ghost…

It's quickly coming up on Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek's birthday. Born 2/12/39 it will be Ray's 73rd birthday. To celebrate and remember the coming day here are a couple of past Doors Examiner articles on Ray's birthday.

Last year we took a look at Ray Manzaerk’s Birthday that includes a slideshow of Ray's childhood Chicago neighborhood.

Back in 2010 for…

Most of us know The Doors as history, but there’s a living history, not only in the members of the band, but also a history fans participate in, there’s a generation of Doors fans who saw the band in the 60’s, there’s also the generation of fans that lived through The Doors history, and virtually participated in it when Doors drummer John Densmore filed suit on February 4, 2003 against The Doors of the 21st Century.

The Doors are famous among fans that the band operated as a democracy…

One of the fun things about school used to be writing compare and contrast papers on subjects and maybe that’s what The Doors are offering in “L.A. Woman, the 40th Anniversary Edition.” This two disc set has the original “L.A. Woman” album as it appeared in 1971, although the songs are remastered they’re not the 2007 remastered/remixed versions.

The first disc is the “L.A. Woman” we all know and love and doesn’t need to be reviewed 40 years on. “L.A. Woman” has been well defined, The…

On January 28, 1968 Jim Morrison was arrested with author Robert Gover in Las Vegas. You can read the events of that arrest in The Doors Examiner article "Doors Lead Singer Arrested with Author." Last year on this anniversary Robert Gover was kind enough to share his thoughts and rememberances of Jim Morrison in a Doors Examiner article, here's the article as Robert…

Hey Everybody!

I know I've mentioned to a few of you my Doors inspired novel The Last Stage. For those of you who would like to read it I've posted the book as a serial on a blog, the first two chapters are up and a new one will go up everyday! Here's the introduction with links to the chapters.

Writers want to be read. Readers want to read good books and discover new writers. It’s a leap of faith to ask readers to invest in an unknown writer and ask readers to buy a…

It started with a static electric shock. Patricia Kennealy met Jim Morrison for the first time in the Plaza Hotel in New York for an interview for Jazz & Pop magazine January 25th, 1969. Kennealy who had seen The Doors perform the night before at Madison Square Garden didn’t know what to expect from Morrison, but from that meeting started an on-again, off-again relationship that lasted the rest of Morrison’s life.

Aside from Pam Courson, Kennealy may be the most well known of…

The Doors played Madison Square Garden on January 24th, 1969, becoming one of the first group to start playing large stadiums and simultaneously hitting the apogee of their career.

In moving to the larger stadiums The Doors realized they were losing the intimacy of the smaller venues they had played up until then in favor of larger paydays and reaching a larger audience at the same time. Bill Graham warned the band of this and even offered them dates at the Fillmore East, but The…

John Densmore reopens The Doors of Perception- There are a couple competing interviews with John Densmore and Ray Manzarek, both seem to offer an “olive branch” of reconciliation. In the interview with the Maui News in the article "John Densmore reopens The Doors of Perception," Densmore says in his forthcoming book he offers that “olive branch” but doesn’t say exactly what that may be.

Egyptian Theater Q&A-At Friday January 20th’s question and answer session following the…

Last night at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles was a screening of “The Doors Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Making of L.A. Woman.” It was attended by Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, Bruce Botnick, Jim Ladd, Jeff Jampol, and Jac Holzman. While The Doors Examiner wasn’t able to attend the screening pictures have become available through photographer Kevin Winter with Getty Images. You can see the photos in the slide show in the left hand sidebar of this article., at…

For the second time in two years The Doors have released a documentary on film about the band. In spring of 2010 it was “When You’re Strange” with footage taken mostly from Jim Morrison’s film “HWY.” This year to kick off the self described “The Year of The Doors” is the film “The Doors Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Making of L.A. Woman.”

“The Doors Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Making of L.A. Woman” tells the story of the making of The Doors seminal album, “L.A. Woman”. Relying on mostly footage taken…

January 17, 1970 The Doors start a two night stand at the Felt Forum that was to be a tour in support of the forthcoming release “Morrison Hotel”, it was also the start of the final year of The Doors as live touring band with Jim Morrison.

The previous year had been a bad one for The Doors, in the aftermath of the March of 1969 concert in Miami Jim Morrison was charged with indecent exposure and the rest of their tour was cancelled. The Doors took advantage of this enforced hiatus…

In talking about personalities associated with The Doors we naturally talk about Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, secondarily Paul Rothchild, Jac Holzman and Bruce Botnick. When we talk about The Doors management we usually talk about Danny Sugerman, but for the last ten years or so, Jeff Jampol has been the manager of The Doors and Jim Morrison’s estate, as well as other rock legends, such as Janis Joplin and Peter Tosh.

Full article and video at…

January 12th, 1993, The Doors are inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The Doors were inducted into the Hall of Fame with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam giving the opening remarks. Ray, Robby and John appeared on stage with Jim Morrison’s sister Anne Cherney. Ms. Cherney’s remarks were brief thanking everybody in her family’s name for honoring Jim. Robby told an anecdote of his parents loaning The Doors $300 so the band could buy some needed keyboards, Robby said he didn’t think the…

In times gone by there used to be small books about writers, not quite biographies, more like biographical meditations on the writer, his work and his life; the best known example of this may be Henry Miller’s book on French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, a book that Jim Morrison and Dennis Jakob surely knew. In “Summer With Morrison”, Dennis Jakob, a UCLA film school friend of Morrison’s, does the favor to Morrison in writing a small book of meditations, it isn’t a throwback or even an…

While Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek where making their way to the UCLA film school, on January 11, 1964, The Whisky a-go-go opens its doors and into rock history. The Whisky very quickly rose in prominence on the Sunset Strip as well as in the music industry.

Founded by Elmer Valentine, Mario Maglieri, and Phil Tanzini, The Whisky, which had to spell it’s name without the e in whiskey because Los Angeles city zoning laws didn’t allow clubs to be named after alcohol, boasted live music…