John Densmore

We all know the music of The Doors. Formed in 1965, the band including Jim Morrison (vocals), Ray Manzarek (keyboards), Robby Krieger (guitar), and John Densmore (drums) became one of the most influential, important, and controversial rock bands of all time. We're familiar with the albums, the earth-shaking live shows, the movies, and the legends. But perhaps we should listen more closely. Tucked behind the rock ethos was a beast of freedom, a beat that was born not from the standard blues progression, but from something deeper, something different.

"I wrote an obituary for Elvin Jones [drummer for John Coltrane] who died a year ago," says John Densmore, "and the way he accompanied Coltrane is what I tried to do with Morrison. I just got something from the freedom and the improvisation and the jazz. It's in me, and it's how I do it." If you allow yourself to listen with a more developed ear, if you shed the adolescent bond that many form with The Doors, you begin to hear this jazz influence. You start to feel the depth of what Densmore was doing in this band. "If you listen to 'Break On Through,'" Densmore explains, "it's a bossa nova, which when we were in the garage writing songs, 'Girl From Ipanema' was coming up, all this bossa nova stuff, so I did the same beat but made it stiff for rock & roll. And I've always been into jazz. I mean I was a snob until The Beatles came along. They were cool, but before them, [with disgust] rock & roll?"

Tribaljazz

As he speaks of his storied past, one is quickly struck by the passion Densmore exudes as attention shifts to the present. It's not that he doesn't show pride and joy in what has been done, but like any true artist, it's what's coming next that fuels his fire. After Morrison's untimely death in 1971, Densmore began to explore the rhythms of reggae before they ever drifted from the islands to America and Europe. Still searching, Densmore found an outlet in theater music with Tim Robbins's The Actor's Gang. Working around L.A. at the time, he realized that another side was starting to come out: writing. Since then, he's penned articles for magazines like The Nation, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone. He's written the critically acclaimed autobiography Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The Doors and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Yet after all this, with a family, fame, fortune, and more, at 60 years of age, he is far from done. We now find John Densmore breaking through to his other side.

John Densmore with The Doors

"I always thought I'd make a more jazz-oriented album someday, and God, 30 years later I'm finally putting my sticks where my mouth has been, even before The Doors." What Densmore is referring to is his exciting new project Tribaljazz. Spawned from an impromptu collaboration with saxophonist, flautist, and fellow parent Art Ellis after an evening that found the two playing music at a benefit for their children's grammar school music program, Tribaljazz now includes Densmore, Ellis, and five other musicians from across the globe, each a star in their own right. There's bassist Osama Affifi from Egypt, percussionist Christina Berio - daughter to Luciano Berio, Italy's most famous composer short of Puccini, two African drummers, Aziz Faye from Senegal (who makes his own drums), and Marcel Adjibi (who also does French spoken word on the band's debut), and then there's Quinn Johnson. Densmore elaborates, "Quinn Johnson is this monster piano player. He's 30. I'm really looking forward to playing with jambands because the people like improvisation, but I'm equally not afraid to play on the bill with Herbie Hancock at the Monterey Jazz Festival because Quinn Johnson is scary. He's in that league in my opinion."

With the more than competent team in place, Densmore explains the music of Tribaljazz. "It's a synthesis of modern jazz a la Miles Davis and John Coltrane and master African drummers. And so we find ourselves when we play live going through the audience, playing our way up to the stage, like a tribal ritual. We get everybody going before we even get to the stage. And now we're doing that when we leave, so it's kind of a ritualistic sort of drum fest. One of the Senegalese drummers is a master African dancer as well, so he starts doing that too and folks start imitating him and we end up kind of with a Grateful Dead séance."

But I think what we do affects 'over there' and vice versa. The spirits 'over there' can guide us, and likewise. Tibetans say, in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, that when someone passes, for the first 30 days they can't get to where they are supposed to go unless we think of them for 30 days. Then, if that's done, they're with us as an ally the rest of our lives. That's sweet, I love that. So with all that in mind, shit man, Jim [Morrison] blew up over that first commercial we were thinking of doing. So I try to honor that. -John Densmore on the use of The Doors' music in comercials

Jim Morrison by Rei Lagarto

As we continue to discuss the music of Tribaljazz, the idea of a philosophy surfaces more than once, but it's not in some new-age mumbo-jumbo manner. His thoughts are grounded in a unifying belief that can be found in all forms of music stretching back to the first drum beats. "The idea is that the heartbeat is the first instrument that we all hear in our mother's womb. And then we have our own little rhythm, so you already got polyrhythm like Coltrane's drummer Elvin Jones - my idol - and I guess we all supposedly came from the Olduvai Gorge in Africa. And what makes people dance is, whether it's a duet or a 40-piece orchestra, all those musicians are always trying to sound like one musician, which is trying to get back to that heartbeat, and the tighter a band is, the closer we are to where we were in our mother's womb. It makes us feel good, and we want to dance and we're warm and happy."

Tribaljazz

It's this sense of connection, whether it be with one's heartbeat, with an audience, or with another musician, that drives Densmore's passion for music. As he recounts a lifetime of magical moments, he quickly recalls a small, personal affair that happened less than a year ago. "I played for this famous Yogi a few weeks ago and met Madonna's backup singer Donna Delori. She chants these Hindu chants and we did this little thing for this guru, and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is it.' And it was small, like 50 people. So when that dance between whosever on stage and whosever in the audience is really going well, whether it's a tango or a waltz or free-form Grateful Dead, it's better than drugs."

The Doors

One may be inclined to think that a founding member of one of the world's most famous and influential bands would thrive on being a star, or perhaps the object of fans' obsession, but not Densmore. He is truly a down-to-earth individual who simply loves music. As he tells us, "With The Doors, the most exciting thing was, I would say, second bill in a small hall. We're in clubs working our butts off, and we get a record deal and then we're playing small concerts. 'Wow, this thing is gonna happen!' I mean it's great to play Madison Square Garden and be worshiped, but all this work and then you realize, 'Oh shit, it might go!' That's really exciting." Perhaps it's this pure love of music (not all the bullshit that comes with it) and the desire to push something small and personal into the world at large that has allowed Densmore to remain so vital, so creative, and so pertinent. Where many of his contemporaries dropped out of the music scene due to a variety of ailments from drug abuse to losing touch with their musical roots, Densmore is once again embarking on an exciting and relevant project. Although it does happen, it's rare to find an artist from the sixties still creating new music as opposed to just clinging to their name while driving their legacy into the ground.

John Densmore

While Tribaljazz holds loose elements from The Doors' music, it is immediately clear upon hitting play on the new CD that, as the name suggests, this music starts with jazz. There's an ease and a flow to Densmore's drums as Art Ellis's flute dances atop the beat and Quinn Johnson's remarkable piano cascades across the melody. Densmore could have easily put his famous name into the band's handle and immediately drawn attention to the fact that this is the drummer from The Doors and perhaps raised more eyebrows, but he's not interested in such shallow actions. Over the course of our conversation from his Los Angeles home, I was struck time and time again by his humility, and his genuine, advanced world view. "I was in Ravi Shankar's School of Indian Music in the sixties studying tabla, and I was meditating with Maharishi and all that stuff, and it exposed me to the East and to all the philosophies of the East - Buddhism and all that stuff. So it's in me, I'm a polytheist, a patchwork cosmology, because the organized religions of today are pretty much finished. I mean, who goes to church? They go to concerts. So that's how it comes through. All that stuff is in me, and I love improvising and seeing people move to what we're doing. I always think of a concert, no matter how many people are on stage, really it's two people dancing together: the people on stage and the people in the audience."

I'm a polytheist, a patchwork cosmology, because the organized religions of today are pretty much finished. I mean, who goes to church? They go to concerts. So that's how it comes through. All that stuff is in me, and I love improvising and seeing people move to what we're doing. I always think of a concert, no matter how many people are on stage, really it's two people dancing together: the people on stage and the people in the audience. -John Densmore

From someone else, such lofty ideas as "patchwork cosmology," "Buddhism," and music as religion could come across as hokey, forced, or even some type of publicity stunt, but not from Densmore. After spending time with the music of Tribaljazz, it seems clear that - as he said before - John is putting his sticks where his mouth is. Tribaljazz moves with the influence of the band members who come from around the world. The music is mature and likely couldn't come from younger musicians. It leans heavily on Latin jazz inflections while also utilizing African percussive movements and French spoken word. With two members from Africa, one from Egypt, one from Italy, and two from the States, this is truly "world music." To further drive home the idea that Densmore is utilizing his past to push his music into the future, he has tapped both an old actress friend, Alfre Woodward, and one of today's contemporary stars, Michael Franti of Spearhead, to be special guests on his Tribaljazz debut. On "The First Time (I heard Coltrane)," Woodward does a beatnik-inspired spoken word exercise over the music, and on "Violet Love," Franti utilizes his hip-hop influence to create one of the more memorable tracks on the album. About Franti, Densmore says, "We kind of identify with each other politically as bleeding-heart liberals." It's all these parts - Densmore's history with The Doors, his love of jazz, his ability to find the right players from across the globe, his desire to remain connected to the past while searching for the future - not to mention a plethora of God-given talent, which makes Tribaljazz the beautiful collection that it is.

John Densmore

After spending time discussing life, music, and spirituality with John, the expansive, mind-altering rock of The Doors doesn't seem so far from the jazz-inspired music of his new band. As Densmore explains, "As I said in my autobiography Riders On The Storm, 'The Doors' is permanently etched on my forehead. I just follow my intuition." As he elaborates on his intuition, the connection between his old band and his new one becomes even clearer. "What I found myself really enjoying [in The Doors] was that there wasn't a bass player live, so there was a lot of room so I could percussively comment on Jim's improvised poetry or whatever. In 'When The Music's Over,' when he was saying, 'What have they done to the Earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her, stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, and tied her with fences and dragged her down.' Well, I stopped the beat and just sort of added percussive grunts of what he was saying. It's really out there, but I don't know, and then I crashed back in on the groove later. So it was pretty free." Free indeed. And in fact, more rooted in jazz than rock. Just as John was doing when he created some of the most memorable rock & roll songs to ever grace the world, he was following his intuition - the same intuition and inspiration that he chases today.

As our conversation drew to a close, John's excitement for the future and for his band Tribaljazz was more than apparent. He spoke of the next album, of touring with his wildly talented ensemble, and he even dipped back, relating what he currently does to what he's always been doing: "I thought I was playing rock concerts until I read Joseph Campbell's work, and I realized I was participating in Dionysian festival rights." And while the audience may have changed and the context of his sound has evolved, Densmore is still participating in this age-old Dionysian exploration of God, wine, dancing, and celebration.

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