RAY Manzarek is fizzing with excitement at the prospect of his first Glasgow gig.

The keyboard legend, who hits the SECC with The Doors 21st Century on July 13 with original Doors guitarist Robby Krieger and Cult frontman Ian Astbury on vocals, is a massive fan of our most famous architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

"I can't wait to see his work, I've always been in love with Mackintosh and the whole Glasgow arts scene, it's marvellous stuff," he says with infectious enthusiasm.

"And of course the Scots are such a great and rowdy audience. We've never played there before! We never really got to tour the UK at all, so this tour will be our first time in Glasgow."

Founding Doors members Krieger and Manzarek played their first gig together for three decades in 2002. They then enlisted Astbury - who has worn his admiration of the cult Californian band on his sleeve throughout his career.

For Manzarek and Krieger, the experience of revisiting their history was "great fun."

"Robby and I hadn't played Light My Fire or Love Me Two Times and Break On Through To The Other Side in 25 years," says Manzarek. "Playing together again was a great deal of fun. It's so great to revisit the songs and put the energy into them one more time."

Since his death in Paris in 1971 at the age of 27, the legend of Doors frontman Jim Morrison has grown and grown.

So for Astbury - who turned down the chance to play the Lizard King in Oliver Stone's Doors movie - it must have been difficult to take on the job, particularly when outraged Morrison devotees claimed nobody could fill their hero's Cuban-heeled boots.

Surprisingly, Astbury agrees with them.

"I'm under no illusion that I'm replacing Jim Morrison," says Astbury. "I'm not 'stepping into his shoes'. Jim's shoes are unfillable.

"I'm not trying to portray some wishy-washy, theatrical version of Morrison. It just so happens that my voice is baritone, it's in a similar register, and we may have some similar physical characteristics.

"But I'm not there to emulate Jim. I'm purely there to be of service to Ray and Robby."

Manzarek has nothing but praise for his new vocalist.

"Ian is doing a bang-on job, I'm very impressed with his voice and he is a great interpreter of Morrison's songs," he says, placing the emphasis on "interpreter".

Chuckling mildly, Manzarek admits that he was well aware of Astbury's musical heritage before offering him the gig.

An American Indian-obsessed punk with Southern Death Cult, Astbury then metamorphosised into an uncannily Jim Morrison-esque figure after Death Cult became The Cult.

"He's a gutsy individual," say Manzarek of his new bandmate. "It was difficult for him at first, of course. There were people saying 'You're not Morrison!' Well he's not 'doing' Morrison, he's doing Astbury singing Jim's words!"

Manzarek maintains that the vast majority of Doors fans are delighted to be able to hear the songs played by their creators one last time.

"I would say that 95% of the fans, the real hardcore fans, love it. Five per cent say 'How dare you continue without Jim?'

"I wonder whether or not those are Doors fans. I tend to doubt it. I think those are fans of Jim Morrison's leather pants!

"The Doors were always a band, and Jim would be the first to admit that."

Along with Krieger, Manzarek has been working on new songs which he refers to as "a batch of new Doors songs".Although they aren't ready for public consumption yet - Manzarek maintains that they will be released later this year or early next year.

"We used different American poets to write the lyrics - Michael McClure, a noted Beat poet; Jim Carroll, writer of The Basketball Diaries; John Doe from the band X; the late Warren Zevon; and I have two stanzas. Robby's also writing lyrics, and Ian too.

"We have always loved poetry," explains Manzarek. "The legacy of The Doors will be the marriage of poetry and music, that's what we always tried to do."

Manzarek, who formed The Doors with Morrison in California in 1965, is the first to pay homage to his college friend and bandmate. He and Krieger visit Morrison's grave at Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris regularly on the anniversary of his death.

"We played Paris last year on December 9, the day after Jim's birthday, and it was amazing. The French fans went crazy!" he enthuses.

After "an appropriate 30-year mourning period," he feels that he and Krieger are entitled to recoup their musical legacy with this tour.

And he believes that in the current global political climate, the messages in The Doors' songs are as poignant and necessary today as they were almost 40 years ago.

"Ironically, we are living in America in crisis, just like in the 60s," says Manzarek. "We are involved in an unjust and unnatural war, and The Doors have come back in a way to say 'No! Stop!'

"There is another way to live and we are going to offer that alternative way of life to you. A life of excitement and passion and music and, quite frankly, getting high and making love - not war! That's who we are: we want to make love, not war."

He continues: "We were on stage a couple of weeks ago playing The Unknown Soldier and I thought: 'My God, here it is all these years later, we are in the 21st century and we are still singing 'Wait until the war is over / And we are both a little older'."

"What a tragedy that is. Robby and I are both a little older and here we are again. The same horror that we experienced with the Vietnam War, we are now experiencing with a new generation in Iraq.

"If you had said to me in 1968 we are going to be in the Middle East fighting, I'd have said no, this is going to end very soon, we are going to enter a new age of passion and energy and love. But it hasn't happened. The fascist, dark forces are winning right now.

"But they won't win in the end," he says enthusiastically, carried away on a torrent of peace and love. "The lovers will win, not the killers. Make love, not war!"