Idolator Presents: Your Doors News Update

At Idolator, we listen to your requests, and at least one of you keeps insisting, “More Doors coverage! I demand it!” (NB: That may be a paraphrase.) Thanks to Ray Manzarek, there’s plenty of exciting news to mark the 41st anniversary of the band’s debut album.

Tired of the VH1 Classic reruns of Oliver Stone’s take on the Doors story? Ray Manzarek is working on a solution to that problem, pal!

“We have plans for a big Doors documentary film in the works,” Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek tells Billboard.com. “I saw the first cut of it yesterday, and it’s looking real good. But that won’t be out ’til another six months.”

Although Manzarek is keeping a tight lip at the moment on specifics about the documentary, he did confirm that it would feature a large amount of rare footage. “Absolutely — that’s the whole point of it. Never before seen! This is the anti-Oliver Stone [referring to Stone’s 1991 film, ‘The Doors’]. This will be the true story of the Doors.”

If all that realism is a little too difficult to take, how about an approximation of the band’s former glories (such as they were)?

Manzarek is getting ready to hit the road for a European tour in July as part of Riders On The Storm, a group that also features ex-Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger (and former Fuel singer Brett Scallions).

At the rate this Riders On The Storm thing is going, Bo Bice will be the lead singer next time around. However, Manzarek’s multimedia assault continues.

And lastly, Manzarek is working on several movie scripts. “I’ve got four scripts. So what, who doesn’t have four scripts,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve got a film script based on ‘L.A. Woman,’ and another one in which three UCLA film school guys go to the desert to take peyote with the Native Americans at the Native American Church.”

“And they run into the people from the Native American Church — the peyote church,” he continues. “And all the sh*t that happens to them, you can imagine. Out in the desert, rednecks, psychic visions and reincarnation visions. Raymond White Eagle Daniels is the old wise man running the peyote ceremony. And that will of course never be made into a film, because it’s about peyote [laughs]. It’s a journey into manhood.”

Sounds delightful. Rednecks, peyote, and reincarnation… what more could anyone ask for? Maybe a guest appearance by the guy from Fuel.

Manzarek Eyes Doors Documentary, Other Projects [Billboard]