from Rolling Stone Special Collectors Issue December 11, 2003

"500 Greatest Albums of All Time"

The December 11, 2003 Special Collectors Issue issue of Rolling Stone listed their results of "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" which included The Doors at #42, L. A. Woman at #362, and Strange Days at #407.   Numerous musical celebrities were selected to identify their personal favorites.  On page 131 is an inset box with Ray Manzarek discussing "My Number One" as follows:

RAY MANZAREK:  My Number One

KIND OF BLUE  #12    by Miles Davis

Right before I moved to California, in 1960, I used to listen to a radio station in Chicago that played jazz at night, and that's when I heard KIND OF BLUE.  Miles playing those minimalist melodies and Bill Evans on piano -- God, it's like Zen music.  It shows how good those cats were.  They recorded it in two days, but they'd been preparing all their lives for that moment.  And it was the first time that a mysterioso quality had been brought to jazz.  I locked onto that immediately;  Doors music comes from this emotion.  "Riders On The Storm" is very much like "So What":  same dark mood but with a cool, swinging quality.  The modulations on this album are like a small orgasm.  It's transcendental.  Music is a divine act in which we most closely approach God -- outside the LSD experience, in which you realize that you and God are one.  But making music is such a spiritual act, because it's totally ephemeral.  Thank God for recording devices;  otherwise, we'd never be talking about this incredible moment that those gentlemen had in that studio.

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