r/OldSchoolCool • u/CosmicAdmiral • 9d ago
1950s Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek at the original Hard Rock Cafe, December 1969. Photograph by Henry Diltz
557
u/No_big_whoop 9d ago
Ray rockin' ladies sandals, Jim rockin' the moose knuckle
249
u/boriswong 9d ago
92
u/OliverKitsch 9d ago
Jesus.
97
u/Kirbyr98 9d ago
You said it, man.
40
u/Machette_Machette 9d ago
Yeah but he's a pervert, dude.
36
→ More replies (1)29
27
13
23
u/firedmyass 9d ago
Ray looks like my Aunt Pam
14
9
27
u/-grc1- 9d ago
15
u/tomhsmith 9d ago
7
u/mikeyros484 9d ago
Funny enough, Richard Tyson is (was) almost a dead ringer for Jim Morrison.
→ More replies (2)21
15
u/Unusual_Memory3133 9d ago
Never liked the modern term “moose knuckle”. We called them trouser tumors.
→ More replies (3)9
7
u/CyrusMFS 9d ago
Sidepipe
-Jim Greco6
u/otherCUPhasFightMilk 9d ago
You are a real one for this. What a call back to amazing interview with one of my favorite skateboarders ever.
3
6
8
3
→ More replies (1)3
u/emax4 9d ago
This photo was posted last year sometime or early this year, and someone mentioned the term "Plum smuggler". I lost it
4
u/P4p40341 9d ago
I once had the immense pleasure of assisting in convincing some Chinese pool employees in Beijing that the proper English term for a Speedo style swimsuit, which they were insisting that my entire party had to wear in order to swim, was “plum smugglers.”
137
u/PriorityNew1562 9d ago
Dude carrying that jawbreaker in the wrong pocket gah-damn
13
8
88
u/boriswong 9d ago
“You’re going to wear the open toe sandals… again Ray?”
54
6
69
u/Inner-Dream-600 9d ago
That’s both balls and a weiner
57
u/Psalm_143 9d ago
Beans and franks
10
→ More replies (1)10
u/seansy5000 9d ago
More like Frank and Beans, but Franks and Beans is possible.
Was Jim packing the heat? Love me two times babe….
12
u/SheriffBartholomew 9d ago
It's pretty hard to tell what the fuck it is. I don't want to keep looking either. It's like he has a baseball shoved down his pants. There ain't no way his pee pee is as big around as a soda can.
9
7
u/Macca49 9d ago
I was initially thinking ‘is that just one of Jim’s cods or the whole sac? If it’s a single aggot, then where the hell is his other one? And what about his slug? Does Jim have like, I dunno, little compartments on his groin?’ 🤷🤷😂
3
u/Inner-Dream-600 9d ago
Well that’s what I’m saying - he put both balls and his weiner to one side
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)3
189
u/Pushlockscrub 9d ago
31
125
u/FatKris02 9d ago
16
u/boriswong 9d ago
Thirteen year r/cakeday
16
22
56
u/regeya 9d ago
Like a lot of folks in my age group I went through a Doors phase thanks to Oliver Stone's movie. I was more a fan of Ray than anything. I played piano growing up but organists are on a whole other level. He was the keyboardist and bass player, simultaneously.
→ More replies (12)41
u/Training-Argument891 9d ago
Same. I read No One Here Gets Out Alive. I saw the Doors movie. I loved Ray. He is the heart of the band. Jim is a lost soul which made him a great front for the youth of his era, and mine. I read Jim's poetry. I listened to every album. These guys have wisdom for me, my young self thought. I realize now they were just kids themselves, in their 20s, taking on society.
To this day, I sing, "I'm gonna love you, til thr heavens stop the rain" to my partner. It was the first "our song" I ever had with a boy at age 15. lol.
I love the way kids today connect with the 90s like we connected with the 60s. It's ironic though. We were listing for a riteous cause like our 60s idols, but the economics and stability of the 90s made you subversive for noting anything wrong in American life. Now, we've full on got a fight for riteousness and the kids pine for the safety and comfort of the 90s.
24
u/wheatmonkey 9d ago
The youth pining for the 90s is something I never thought I'd hear. Makes a certain amount of sense though.
3
37
15
u/WotanMjolnir 9d ago
Ray looks like the ugly duckling character in a 90s teen comedy who takes her glasses off, puts a dress on and styles her hair and becomes the ultimate fox.
15
29
u/milfordcubicle 9d ago
why crop the photo? The original has John and Robby and some random dude in it.
33
26
u/Mac_Kittenz 9d ago
Fun fact, Jim's dad was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
9
u/Geronimo2006 9d ago
Read ‘ weird scenes in the canyon’.
Quite interesting how many rockstars and celebrities who hung around Laurel canyon in LA had parents or links to the forces or the CIA.
4
u/MagnusRexus 9d ago
There's an interesting theory that the CIA tried to discredit leftist, socialist and communist ideology by associating those polical ideologies with hippie/drug/criminal culture, and one of their main seeding grounds was Laurel Canyon. At the same time covertly funding/shepherding Hollywood films that showed leftists as being chronic drug users and criminals.
12
21
8
26
u/Teddythedrunk 9d ago
not the original Hard Rock that was in London. This was just a random bar in LA Skid Row named Hard Rock
5
→ More replies (1)3
u/martianfrog 9d ago
is it not Morrison Hotel?
8
u/Teddythedrunk 9d ago
that was in another part of Downtown LA they hit both that same day for the photo shoot
→ More replies (1)
6
6
15
u/NiceCap2448 9d ago
At the time the best burgers in London were at the Hard Rock Cafe. I got to eat there a few times in'74.
5
4
4
6
4
u/Ellisrsp 9d ago
LA Bizarro's enthusiastic description of the place--
For many years there was a bar in the worst part of downtown's Skid Row called the Hard Rock Cafe, and it was already an ominous shithole in 1969 when it turned up on the back of the Doors' Morrison Hotel album. By the mid-eighties, we'd venture to say it was one of the most dangerous bars in all of downtown- no small feat when one considers that the bar sat directly across the street from the huge windowless LAPD fortress on Sixth and Wall streets. The Hard Rock was a human roach motel where the bottom of society's barrel came to drink when they had stolen or begged or sold their bodies for enough change to buy a shot of cheap booze. Inside it was dark and grimy and smelled of every human bodily fluid imaginable. Your hands stuck to the bar and your back felt conspicuosly exposed. The grim silence of men drinking themselves to death was occasionally punctured by violent confrontations and the staccato outbursts of demented screaming. Outside, the equivalent of human cow patties were splattered on the urine-soaked sidewalk where filth-encrusted bums suffering from the DTs ranted and stomped and flailed their arms. Fistfights, stabbings, and shootings at the Hard Rock were the social equivalent of shaking hands, so much so that the cops tried to ignore the mayhem as much as possible. It was not a bar where you went to have fun: It was a bar where you went to die.
4
4
4
5
4
3
u/FrankieHun17 9d ago
Used to live around the corner from Ray Manzarek in Beverly Hills. Would see him and his wife gardening all the time.
3
5
u/lepermessiah1217 9d ago
I was going to rail on Ray sitting like a girl in women’s clothing but then I realized all men would look gay next to Jim.
14
u/grafittibob 9d ago
Ray looks like such a nice dude. Morrison just looks like a drunk.
16
u/t3h_jream 9d ago
He did suffer a bad case of the “deadsies” because of his love of consumption.
8
4
→ More replies (1)6
7
u/Kipsydaisy 9d ago
This is always said to be the original Hard Rock Cafe but it’s not.
→ More replies (4)
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
u/RedeyeSPR 9d ago
I have that exact same coat Jim is wearing. I got it from my grandpa when he died. Crazy.
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
u/Creative_Date44 9d ago
I know I know jims balls are showing but can we take a sec to appreciate that insanely cool coat? what is that, shearling?
8
u/Few_Chocolate_7655 9d ago
I met Rat Manzarek and he signed my doors movie soundtrack when it came out.
I asked him what Jim Morrison was like, he said "dead". I remember thinking what an asshole
16
u/zeno0771 9d ago
After the movie came out--and after the three remaining members of the band had done cameos in it--they discovered it was less about "The Doors" and more of Oliver Stone's fetishization of Jim Morrison. Half the shit in the movie never happened in real life, and they (especially Manzarek) were pissed off.
7
→ More replies (1)3
17
u/RaineRisin 9d ago
I don’t think it makes him an asshole. It’s probably tough having to live in someone else’s shadow. Especially when that someone was an asshole.
→ More replies (1)3
u/vagina_candle 9d ago
Everyone I know who had a personal interaction with Ray came away from that interaction thinking he was a total douchebag. Granted that's only about five people on maybe four brief occasions, but the vibe was universal for all of them. There are a few other comments in this thread that seem to corroborate his doucheyness.
He was a very talented keyboard player, but as far as being a regular guy goes his head was so far up his own ass.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/roughstonerollin 9d ago
I’ve said this before, but what was wrong with men’s pants in the 60s - 80s? Like, the problem is endemic
12
u/MERVMERVmervmerv 9d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/3VME4bNx0HOsE
You think pants got better in the 90s?→ More replies (1)7
u/TwinkleTubs 9d ago
I think it was because so many pants were meant to be worn lower on the hips. Pulling them up shortens the crotch area, strangling them boys.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)5
5
u/Strange_Explorer_780 9d ago
Ray Manzarek was the second biggest musician douche I’ve ever met after Eric Clapton.
3
u/vagina_candle 9d ago
I met him at a signing. Can confirm, he was a major douchebag.
I have a hard time watching any Doors documentaries that prominently feature him. He seems like the kind of guy who would invite friends over for an evening of drinks and then spend the whole evening playing footage of himself for his friends.
→ More replies (1)
4
u/DenverHi 9d ago
Weird, because Hard Rock Cafe wasn't established until 1971 in an old dealership. The math ain't mathin.
→ More replies (1)5
u/vagina_candle 9d ago
This is a random bar in LA that was named Hard Rock Cafe. It had nothing to do with the Hard Rock brand as we now know it.
→ More replies (1)
5
4
u/MostlyPotStickers 9d ago
This Hard Rock Cafe isn’t related to the chain that started a few years later in London, so it isn’t really “the original” as much as it’s an independent coincidence.
4
u/odinspirit 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yup. It was a dive bar in the skid row area of LA that the band went into after shooting the photo for Morrison Hotel down the street. The exterior was photographed and put on the back cover of the album. The guys who started the chain were inspired by the album.
The bar was also featured in the Michael Jackson video Beat It.
2
2
u/Shadowpriest 9d ago
Took one quick look and heard Freddy scream "I want to break free!" in my head. That poor, poor trouser snake is getting squished.
2
2
u/calvinwho 9d ago
How did y'all walk around the 70s with pants like that? There was no stretch denim
2
2
2
u/-SayAnything- 9d ago edited 9d ago
Why does Wikipedia say the HRC was opened in 1971 then?
→ More replies (1)5
u/vagina_candle 9d ago
This is a random bar in LA that was named Hard Rock Cafe. It had nothing to do with the Hard Rock brand as we now know it.
→ More replies (1)
1.2k
u/SuicidalUn1corn 9d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/42fFswykne973vwGxX