Ray Manzarek had it all in the 1960s. Then Jim Morrison died. Tony Clayton-Lea asks if there's any point trying to re-form The Doors

Brusque, monosyllabic replies to leading questions, curt queries about whether the interview is being recorded, acidic haranguing and pseudo-mysticism: it's all in a day's promotional duties for Ray Manzarek, the former law student whose life was ineradicably altered when he met Jim Morrison on Venice Beach in 1965. Within a year Morrison and Manzarek had, with Robby Krieger and John Densmore, formed The Doors, possibly the most influential US rock band until Nirvana nabbed their crown.

For a while The Doors had it all, not least in the form of enduring songs such as Light My Fire; The End; Hello, I Love You; and Riders On The Storm. The band rode the psychoactive wave of the 1960s as if to the manner born, experimenting with drugs to creatively document the psychedelic experience.

In Morrison they had a lead singer and front man of such exceptional rock 'n' roll beauty that his propensity for coming across as a man in love with himself and with the sound of his voice was initially overlooked.

It could never last, of course, this mixture of fame, psychedelia and devotion to a Bacchanalian lifestyle: within six years of meeting Manzarek on that sun-kissed beach Morrison was ignominiously found dead in a grubby bathtub in an apartment in Paris.

The Doors died at about the same time, but try telling Manzarek that. With Krieger, and using a couple of backing musicians and, in the place vacated by Morrison, Ian Astbury of The Cult, he formed The Doors of the 21st Century. He has therefore revived, to a certain degree, the concept of The Doors as a live entity. It's as ridiculous a conceit as has ever been dreamt up by a member of a once-famous rock band, akin to Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic reforming Nirvana with another singer who happens to be between engagements.

It comes as no surprise that Manzarek doesn't see it in those terms. The idea came about, he says, following a television special on The Doors in which Manzarek and Krieger performed with a selection of vocalists. Then Harley-Davidson, called to suggest that The Doors reform for the motorbike company's centenary. The response to the gig, recalls Manzarek, was 90 per cent positive. Negative comments about their audacity were pretty much what he expected. "It was the sacredness of Jim, the God-like Jim Morrison," he says. "We can't, it seems, go on without him: it's sacrilege."

Manzarek bleeds a bitter sarcasm that, for all his obvious intelligence, fails the Zen test. He clearly disagrees with the naysayers. "First of all Jim Morrison is dead, and I apologise for not killing myself. I apologise to all the fans that would have liked all four members of The Doors to have died. That would have been perfect, but then that's mythological. That's a fantasy of the invisible rather than the reality of the flesh.

"So we decided to carry on, and Jim would have loved the fact that Ian Astbury is singing his words again. Morrison is a poet, and a poet wants nothing more than for his words to be spoken out to the public in person and in a live setting. Ian Astbury is letting the words of Jim Morrison ring out all over the world one more time."

The burden, mythological or not, of the legacy of The Doors is something Manzarek claims not to feel. Yet he's clearly niggled by the negative response from, he says, a small portion of fans and critics. "I advise those people not to come to the shows. It's simple: don't come to see us. My God, stay in a dark room, play a Doors record and light a candle to Jim.

"Stay in the maudlin, morbid darkness of decaying flesh. Stay there: it's a good place to be. Do not enter in to the light. It kind of goes hand in hand with the Passion, the flagellated and the whipped and the bleeding Christ figure of the Passion. So stay there, in that room. Do not come to the show."

It seems the crux of the criticism is not so much that Doors songs are being performed on stage by a band that features a couple of remaining original members - something quite common these days - but that another singer has been drafted in to emulate the distinctiveness of someone who, for many people, single-handedly shaped the iconographic image of the band.

When Manzarek sees Astbury on stage simulating, emulating or being a facsimile of Morrison, what does he think? I've asked the wrong question, it seems. His answer mingles obvious weariness with clipped dislike. "Let's put it this way: Ian is singing Doors songs, with lyrics by Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger, the person who wrote Love Me Two Times, Light My Fire; Morrison wrote the lyrics to Break On Through and Riders On The Storm. Ian Astbury is singing those songs as Ian Astbury. He does not imitate Jim Morrison: he honours Jim Morrison, he respects Jim Morrison. He brings his own version, his own psyche" - at this, Manzarek spells the word - "his p-s-y-c-h-e, to The Doors. That is very similar to Morrison, because Ian is very into Native American shamanism, Eastern mystical thought, Buddhism, Japanese Zen."

Don't drift off yet, there's more. "Astbury has that dark Celtic Christian side to him. What he is, basically, is a Celtic Christian, out of the Christian mystery school. So was Jim Morrison. Ian shares the same soul that Jim Morrison possessed." Do you genuinely believe that? "Of course."

Manzarek is right when he says that some people can't get beyond Morrison: the cult of the iconic rock star remains strong and occasionally insurmountable. Where he's wrong, in this writer's opinion, is in dismissing the bad responses while embracing the good. But such is the ego-driven artist's lot.

"No, the overwhelming positive reaction is right, and the negative is like a stone in your shoe," he says, clearly unwilling to brook any argument to the contrary. "You can't give the negative reviews credence because you just can't. Folks, Jim Morrison is dead. Would you like to hear Ray and Robby and Ian play Doors songs? That's the choice: either we don't play at all or we go out and play with who is alive and who wants to play.

"We're happy with the audiences. And we are really looking forward to playing Ireland. The Irish audience and The Doors are made for each other. It's a marriage made in heaven."

It's a good marketing pitch, but in what way? "It's like what I said about Ian Astbury and Jim Morrison: the Irish soul innately understands where Doors music comes from. It's there, it's part of the blood, it's part of the genetic make-up of Ireland to understand the mysteries of The Doors."

The Doors of the 21st Century are at the Point, Dublin, on July 12th