Ray Manzarek & Michael McClure – Love Lion (1991)

During the early 1990s, ex-Doors legendary keyboardist teamed up with the Beat poet and playwright Michael McClure from San Francisco (who was also one of the closest friends of American poet Jim Morrison, The Doors‘ lead vocalist and lyricist) to perform together live. Their music was a combination of spoken word by Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek’s piano. Stylistically, the spoken word poetry of Michael McClure touched, in a rather surreal and dreamy manner, on a variety of topics or subjects such as philosophy, love, creation, geopolitics (i.e. a song on Czechoslovakia), or an in memoriam Jim Morrison tribute (partly with the background piano music from the well known Doors song Riders on the Storm from the band’s last studio album L.A. Woman which was released in 1971), a legend of rock music. The duo released Love Lion, a live performance of their combined poetry and piano music recorded at the Bottom Line music venue in New York City. The live album was released in 1993 through Shanachie label. It has a total length of one hour and almost 7 minutes.

Below you can watch an interview of ex-Doors keyboardist and founding member Ray Manzarek and Beat poet and playwright Michael McClure from the 1990s on how they met, a little bit on Jim Morrison, and a few words on Ray’s record The Golden Scarab which was released way back in 1974 (the interview also includes a brief live performance of the two):

Below you can watch the entire live performance of Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure entitled Love Lion, an interesting, introspective, captivating, and touching poetic performance on behalf of Beat poet Michael McClure with the energetic, vibrant, sensitive, and soothing backing piano music of ex-Doors legendary keyboardist and founding member Ray Manzarek. I truly hope you’ll like watching and listening to their collaboration! All the best and rock on! Spoiler alert: the concert starts with a wise quote by American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau: ‘That government is best which governs least.’

P.S. Moral of the first touching song: ‘[..] What’s liberty when one class starves another?‘

Documentation sources and external links:

• The album’s page on www.allmusic.com
• The album’s page on www.discogs.com
• Manzarek and McClure: Love Lion on www.raymanzarek.com (Ray Manzarek’s official website)