Ray Manzarek, one of the founding members of The Doors, whose keyboard and organ sounds were as much of a signature sound for the band as was lead singer Jim Morrison’s attitudinal and poetic lead singing, has died at the age of 74 in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer reports Rolling Stone.

The Doors were and remain one of the premier American rock and roll bands to come out of California in the 1960s. Like The Beach Boys, the band is pretty much synonymous with the California lifestyle, but very unlike the Beach Boys, they were like the solarized version of them, expressing musically about darkness, early gothic nightmarish tales of love, political awareness, death and doomy styles that were punctuated by music which was deep rooted in the blues and something else actually, something indescribable at the time. A sound that was all their own, which was created by Morrison’s shamanic lizard king posturing, the jazzy yet tight bottom ended drumming of John Densmore, the buried in the delta swampy fretwork of Robby Krieger, and the horrorshow carnivalesque feel from the hands of Ray Manzarek who flawlessly played his instrument (and sometimes even played the bass parts on the organ as well).