Another prominent act from the heyday of psychedelia that Bowie had a lot of love for was The Doors. Once, when speaking to Raised on Radio, he even named his favourite track by the Jim Morrison-led band as ‘Love Street’ from 1968’s third album, Waiting for the Sun. "I remember seeing him once at, I think it was the Roundhouse when they came to London the first time”.
Whilst Jim Morrison was reportedly a big fan of Bowie’s work, he passed away in 1971, so there’s no tangible evidence to back up the claim. However, The Doors keyboard maestro, Ray Manzarek, did make his thoughts on Bowie known. Speaking to Rolling Stone for a special interview in 1995, Manzarek effused about Bowie and named two music videos that represented the British artist at the “peak of his form”. Whilst The Doors man gets his timeline mixed up, the songs in question are ‘Fashion’ from 1980’s Scary Monsters and ‘China Girl’ from 1983’s Let’s Dance.
Before presenting the music video for ‘Fashion’, Manzarek explained: “One of my favourite David Bowie music videos. Back in the ’70s, it was a real treat the next David Bowie video. You never knew what he was going to do, or was it in the mid-’80s? I don’t know; somewhere in there, who knows. By the time you get to be my age, those decades begin to blur together.”
He continued: “Whether it was the late ’70s or early ’80s, I’m not exactly sure, but there were a series of videos that were coming out by David Bowie, and each of them was more inventive than the one before. I would say that he was like the reigning king of video. One after the other, they were all excellently put together.”
Discussing what makes the songs themselves so great, he said: “‘China Girl’ obviously is one of those and ‘Fashion’ is one in which David Bowie has the great line which I never understood: ‘They can’t do it here, so they do it over there. Beep, beep, fashion’ and that great bass line that is sort of funky. I love that kind of bass line. So I think this is David Bowie at the peak of his form.”
“I don’t think that the Thin White Duke has ever equalled this,” Manzarek added. “Although evidently, he is getting ready to go out with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. Whether he is going out actually with Nine Inch Nails or with just Trent, we don’t know. But it will be interesting to see what David Bowie comes up with this time around now that he is a mature gentleman and he married a woman, which is a good thing to marry, the beautiful model Iman. She is just fantastic; what a great person she is”.
