The Doors – Absolutely Live

Ray Manzarek playing a Gibson G-101 organ during The Doors' legendary concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. This was Ray's primary touring organ during the band's prime, as he can be seen playing it at nearly every Doors concert from late 1967 and on.

Ray described his switch from a Vox Continental to the Gibson in an interview with Modern Keyboard:

I played a Vox Continental for the first half of the Doors’ career. Until Columbia sold Vox to an Italian company. Vox was an English firm originally. And the Italian Vox Continentals just didn’t hold up. They started falling apart. Even the old ones I used to have to replace every six months. I would break them just by playing too hard. The keys would start to stick and I would fuse everything. So I’d have to throw it out, get a new one. Once every six months wasn’t bad. But once Vox was sold to the Italians, it was like once a month, once every other week.

I said, “Well that’s it. I can’t use these anymore. I’ve got to get something else. What else is there?” There was the Farfisa and there was the Gibson Kalamazoo. Now I would have gotten the Farfisa, except the top was rounded and I couldn’t put the Fender Rhodes bass on it. I needed something with a flat top. And the Gibson Kalamazoo was the only one that had a flat top. So that’s what I used—a Kalamazoo—for the rest of the time. They don’t make those anymore. They were rare and very interesting.

It was the first keyboard to have pitchbender on it—a pedal. So you could actually bend down a half step. And I use that to great effect—if I do say so myself—on “Not to Touch the Earth.” Paul Rothchild played the pedal. I couldn’t move my foot sideways on it to get the right rhythm. So Paul was kneeling down on the floor next to me as I was playing, bending this little thing that stuck up off the volume pedal. Also on “The Unknown Soldier,” I had the sustain and the pitch-bend. I had a piano stop with a sustain on it and then bent the pitch.