Documenting and honouring The Doors

American rock band The Doors were one of the most influential music ensembles of the 60s with Ray Manzarek’s unforgettable lyrics and stage persona. By 1972, a year before the band stopped performing, the Doors had sold over four million albums domestically and nearly eight million singles. Their music is still widely heard and now a documentary celebrating Ray Manzarek will be shown in Nicosia on February 12.

Entitled The Doors: Break on Thru – a Celebration of Ray Manzarek, the film is a hybrid concert and documentary capturing a 2016 performance in Los Angeles. Through the film, the two surviving Doors members, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, honour Manzarek on what would have been his birthday on February 12.

The Doors were born when Manzarek met Jim Morrison on Venice Beach in 1965. Manzarek became the beating heart of The Doors and the architect of their intoxicating keyboard sound. His evocative playing fused rock, jazz, blues, bossa nova and an array of other styles into something utterly, dazzlingly new.

The setlist from the concert consists of Doors songs performed by John and Robby alongside a cast of all-star guest musicians including Taylor Hawkins and Rami Jaffe (Foo Fighters), Robert DeLeo (Stone Temple Pilots), Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction), Exene and John Doe (X), Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule), Brian Ray (Paul McCartney), Andrew Watt and more.

The film also includes rare archival footage of the band, conversations with Morrison and Manzarek, and esteemed music journalist Ben Fong-Torres, as well as new interviews with John and Robby.

 

The Doors: Break on Thru – a Celebration of Ray Manzarek

A hybrid concert and documentary capturing a The Doors 2016 performance in Los Angeles. February 12. Pantheon Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.