Evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1sLx1tjPY
If you want, picture Riders on the Storm done in Vegas. I don't recommend you DO picture this, but picturing it is possible.
I bet he'd still be rocking leather pants and ladies well past their prime would toss panties at him.
Still, listen to that... Jim would be a lounge singer!
I'm inclined to agree, but I don't wanna take away all the effort that Densmore put into keeping it going and actually providing so much of the flavor.
But, without Ray's organ and bass line played on a whatchamacallit, I don't think The Doors would have made it as far as they did.
Manzarek was/is (though I'm not sure he even still plays) a fantastic keyboardist. And, without him, the Door's sound wouldn't have existed. But, without Densmore's effort to keep shit together, I'm not sure they'd have made it nearly as far.
Densmore has the patience of a saint. I'm pretty sure that, without him, Ray and Robbie would have quit pretty early on - probably about the first time Jim tasted fame.
Ray passed in 2013 in Germany. I agree about Densmore. Humble guy that probably had to referee way too many of Jims outbursts. His talents were the perfect match to Ray's playing with Robbie knowing to stay out of the way. All in all, really a good mixture of the three and using Jim to be the public focus was probably a good business decision. Jim had some interesting lyrics and concepts, but hardly worthy of the attention the group would have had based solely on those. I don't think his books of poetry sold all that well.
Huh... I'm not surprised he's dead. I really don't keep up with that stuff very well!
And, yeah... I put Jim up there with Dylan as far as quality of poetry goes - but he'd have never had the fame he had without the band making him what he was.
When I picture him as a lounge singer, it makes me smile.
At one point in my life, I emulated him to some extent. I just (thankfully) didn't have the fans. I'm not sure what I'd have done with them. LOL I'm pretty sure my life woulda been a wreck.
If it weren't for Ray Manzarek, he would have been a drunk beat poet in a retro-beatnik cafe in San Franpsycho.