The keyboard player and songwriter Ray Manzarek was a founder-member of the Doors, the Los Angeles group who seemed to embody the possibilities, contradictions and limitations of the rock medium more than any other in the late Sixties. The tall, professorial-looking musician exuded a gravitas commensurate with the dark, questing nature of the band's tours de force "The End", "When The Music's Over" and "Riders On The Storm" and with the fate that befell their shamanic frontman Jim Morrison, who died in mysterious circumstances in Paris in July 1971. This added to the mystique around the group, who have sold over 100m albums and been the subject of several documentaries, and Oliver Stone's biopic (Kyle MacLachlan portrayed Manzarek).
