Introduction

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You know about Ray Manzarek and The Doors and what a fine musician Ray was. You can probably hear Ray’s organ intro to “Light My Fire” right now, if you’ll just listen. And we both know what a good man he was. But I want to tell you something about Ray that you might not know—at least not the way I do. Because I was on Okinawa with Ray, when he spelled his name “Manczarek” with “PFC” (Private First Class) in front of it, and both of us were in the army. And for both of us it was a mistake.

Why We Joined the Army

I joined the army because I wanted to go to the Army Language School in Monterey, California and learn Russian, so that I could read Dostoyevsky in the original. Ray joined because he wanted to study film—the art of the cinema. One night he found himself in Times Square in New York City and with a few drinks in him wandered into an Army Recruitment Center where the nice recruiting sergeant told Ray that the Army would be a great place to study film. He enlisted with a request for assignment to the Army Signal Corps where they would give him a camera and everything.

A Bad Mistake

The nice sergeant didn’t tell Ray that if he actually ended up in the Signal Corps with a nice camera and everything he would spend most of his time filming parades and speeches by bald-headed generals and not some army Ingmar Bergman homage. The Signal Corps sounded good to Ray in his condition that evening in Times Square, twenty-two years old. That’s what he told me. So Ray joined the army so that he could study film. Joining the army was a really bad mistake, for Ray and for me. And we found ourselves on Okinawa...

The Army and Ray's Resistance

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Ray told me about his problem with the security clearance and the mistake he made that evening in Times Square while we were sitting at the bar of the NCO Club where conversation was easy and essential to what passed for sanity on the island of Okinawa, Torii Station, looking out on the East China Sea. I’m sure that’s where we met. There’s no chance we could have met and talked anywhere else. Not in the mess hall where everybody ate, where the gag reflex would have interfered with the musculature needed for conversation and not in the giant Ops Building, a cinder block affair with razor wire and shoot-to-kill guards.

Ray's Defiance and Rock 'n' Roll

Ray was not allowed in there; he wouldn’t sign his security clearance. So it must have been at the bar of the NCO Club that Ray told me why he wouldn’t sign. And here I have to speculate for just a moment as to why Ray and I found each other at the bar of the NCO Club and started talking. I think it was simply that Ray was a good man and took pity on a sad-looking, skinny, cipher of a soldier in the spy business who was just sitting at the bar shaking his head. That’s how I remember my early days at Torii Station in 1962.

Ray's Botanical Discovery

Not long after, PFC Raymond Manczarek shipped out to Laos. The army wanted to help Ray change his mind on the matter of his security clearance and thought that the jungles of Laos would be helpful in that regard, would concentrate his mind nicely. It was a sad day for both of us. Ray was my buddy on Okinawa; the army facilitates misery finding company. We would sit at that bar in the NCO Club and drink and talk about film and acting—something I ended up doing—and Chicago, my first big city after leaving a little town in Alabama.

Rock 'n' Roll, Ray

PFC Ray was not a good soldier. The army is marching up and down and not breaking ranks. The army is just filing out of the theater and griping about the absence of credits. Griping some and griping some more. Can you imagine? An order and rock ’n’ roll? An order and the person who was part of The Doors? And can you imagine what it would be like to stand up to the man when the man is the goddamn army?

Conclusion

For months after Ray left Okinawa, he would write me from Laos, unhappy letters, about how the army was really working on him. But finally, after eight or nine months of his resistance, the army granted him a discharge; and I received that good news in a final letter from Laos, but with some other news that disturbed me—good little soldier that I was, wife and baby at home—about a packed duffel bag, of all things.

Hotels and the Article

Throughout this article, we have delved into the life of Ray Manzarek and his time in the army. From his aspirations to study film to his defiance of the army's security clearance requirements, Ray's story is one of resilience and rock 'n' roll. While staying at hotels during his travels, Ray experienced moments of introspection and rebellion, which ultimately shaped his future in the music industry. Hotels can often provide a space for reflection and inspiration, just as they did for Ray.