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THE DOORS AND ARTHUR LEE & LOVE RECORDINGS

Stories from 's former Lead Guitar player Mike Randle
Updated: July 21th 2008

PAUL FERRARA

“FLASH OF EDEN” CAN NOW BE ORDERED AT:
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OR:

http://www.paulferrara.net/

Foreword
By Digby Diehl

The last phrase in this amazing autobiography is: “The right place at the right time.” That old bromide has never described anything more accurately than this book. Paul was born in 1939 – a great year for movies and everything else – in Los Angeles. He grew up a typical California kid with an awareness of the cultural excitement that was building in the fifties and exploded in the sixties. Paul exploded on the scene right along with the zeitgeist.

He got to the Theater Arts Department at UCLA in 1963, a year before I did, and we both instinctively knew it was the place to be. Although we hung out at the Gypsy Wagon scene, where each of us pontificated about our views on Fellini, Truffaut, Godard or Antonioni, he gravitated toward the editing rooms of the Film School, then headed by the legendary Colin Young. Drawn by the charisma and energy of young actors such as Tim McIntire and Paul Winfield, I spent my hours on or around the stages. Both of us, I recall, loved professor Hugh Gray, whose insightful History of Film course opened a lot of young minds to the potential of the medium.

It was at UCLA, of course, that Paul met Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek. He developed a close relationship with both of them that has lasted past Jim’s short life and continues with Ray today. I knew Jim and Ray casually as fellow students but as they became famous, I was held at arm’s length because I became known as an early rock n’ roll critic and journalist. Paul, on the other hand, had and has an intimate relationship with the Doors that is detailed in this book for the first time. He worked with them in many roles, traveled with them, and enjoyed those dizzying “Light My Fire” years of success with them.

For both personal and professional reasons, I found Paul’s descriptions of his experiences with the Doors riveting. There’s plenty of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll here, and it will undoubtedly bring many readers to this book. But as I read on, I became equally fascinated with the rich story of Paul’s own life as an artist, flower child, filmmaker, husband and father – always a Whole Earth kind of guy.

Another old bromide is: “If you can remember the sixties, you didn’t really live through them.” Paul proves that one wrong. He remembers everything about the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties and – well, he has impressive recall of an impressive life. In many ways, through all of the people he has met and all the places he has been, he is a prototypical Child of the Century.

By the time Jim Morrison died in Paris on July 3, 1971, Paul discovered a wonderful escape from the urban angst of Los Angeles on a mountain rancho near Santa Fe in New Mexico. He eventually ends up working again in showbiz, with trips to various cinematic locations where he worked hard and rubbed elbows with famous folk. For example, he tells of traveling to the swamps near New Orleans as key grip for Jim Jarmusch on Down by Law in 1986; he worked lots of CBS TV shows, including Remington Steele and Hill Street Blues; in 1987, he worked on a documentary in St. Louis about Chuck Berry’s sixtieth birthday, with Keith Richards, Linda Ronstadt and Eric Clapton; and working on Barfly, he hung out with Charles Bukowski, Mickey Rourke, and Faye Dunaway. In a nonchalant way, he mentions that he hired Harrison Ford to work for him before Ford was an actor.

That’s why this is such an enjoyable book. You don’t know who you are going to meet on the next page. You have no idea what adventure Paul is heading into next. Maybe that’s it: he writes about his life as though it is a series of adventures. Through the wives, the girlfriends, the drugs, and the decades, he seems to be much the same guy we met at the Gypsy Wagon at UCLA – and life just keeps coming at him like a freight train.

I never asked Paul about the title of his book, although any good Doors fan could tell you that it comes from “Waiting for the Sun” on the Morrison Hotel album. In his lyrics, Jim implies that the first intimations of the rising sun are a “flash of Eden.” After reading this autobiography, I think that Paul uses the same phrase to suggest that each life is an amazing fast track experience, and despite the complexity, the intensity, or even the length of time we have on earth, for each of us, it is just the briefest “flash of Eden.”

(Back of the book)

Some highlights of reviews:

-I pre-ordered when it was first announced. It was one of the best bios I've ever read, no shit. The whole book was great and you don't have to be a Doors fan to enjoy it. -

-This is definitely a must read for anyone, Doors fan or not. It's one of the best bios I've read. No 'fluff' here. Paul tells it like it is, and has had an amazing life. His time with the Doors is well documented but he doesn't get enough credit for being THE Doors official photographer and filmmaker. You'll read about his time spent with the Doors, not to mention being one of Morrison's pals.-

-As a huge Doors fan, I'm aware of his well known photographic and film work for the band and his close relationship with them (mainly with Jim and Ray since the UCLA Days). In the meantime there are lots of details in this book who will delight the fans, details of journeys, partnership, work and so on....-

SO DON'T WAIT ANY LONGER AND ORDER NOW!!!

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