This is an article by City News Service:
Musician Ray Manzarek, whose chance meeting with Jim Morrison at Venice Beach led to the formation of The Doors, died Monday from complications of bile duct cancer. He was 74.
The keyboard player died at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany, surrounded by his wife Dorothy and brothers Rick and James. He is also survived by son Pablo, daughter-in-law Sharmin and the couple's three children.
Manzarek and The Doors played regularly on the Sunset Strip, and played a key role in the legendary status attained by nightclubs such as the Whiskey a Go Go.
The Whiskey and the Roxy put up honorary messages on their marquis Monday after Manzarek's death was announced, according to TMZ.com. The Whiskey plans to pay tribute to the versatile keyboard player for the rest of the week.
Manzarek was "really the driving force behind (The Doors) to make it all happen," former band manager Bill Siddons told City News Service. "He was the guy behind the curtain that made things happen."
The Chicago native, who moved to Los Angeles to study cinematography at UCLA, had met Morrison on the Westwood campus while the future Doors frontman was briefly a student there. After Manzarek graduated in 1965, the two met again by chance at Venice Beach, where Morrison showed him a rough version of "Moonlight Drive," a song Manzarek liked so much that the two decided to start a band.
Manzarek later met guitar player Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore at a lecture on transcendental meditation, and their addition rounded out the psychedelic rock band, which quickly climbed the charts largely because of Morrison's wild stage persona.
Krieger, who had toured with Manzarek since 2002, said in a statement posted on The Doors' Facebook page that he was "deeply saddened" to learn of his friend's death.
"I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade," Krieger said. "Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him."
Siddons, who managed the band for five or six years, said Manzarek had a strong vision of what The Doors should be and was nearly impossible to sway in some regards.
"He had the focus. He had the vision, and I respected him," Siddons said. "While everybody focused on Jim Morrison—and let's face it, how could you not—it was Ray who discovered him, as well as putting Robby and John in the band."
Because the band lacked a bass player, Manzarek usually played the bass lines on his Fender Rhodes piano. Manzarek, who also met his wife at UCLA, was the oldest in the band and occasionally sang, as well.
Hits such as "Light My Fire" featured his keyboard playing.
Morrison's antics led to his arrest on stage in New Haven, CT, in 1967, followed by an arrest for indecent exposure in Miami in 1969 and the band's slow dissolution.
Morrison died in Paris in 1971 at age 27.
Manzarek attempted to hold the band together, becoming the lead singer, but it fell apart and he turned to working with other bands, producing and filmmaking, then touring with Krieger.
The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where flowers were placed Monday afternoon.
Funeral arrangements were pending. The family asked that donations in Manzarek's memory be made to www.standup2cancer.org.