He is best known as a member of the rock band The Doors, co-founding the group in 1965 with fellow UCLA Film School graduate Jim Morrison.

[8] Upon graduating from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1956,[9] Manzarek matriculated at DePaul University, where he played piano in his fraternity's jazz band (the Beta Pi Mu Combo), participated in intramural football, served as treasurer of the Speech Club, and organized a charity concert with Sonny Rollins and Dave Brubeck.

Unable to acclimate to the curriculum, he transferred to the Department of Motion Pictures, Television and Radio as a graduate student before dropping out after breaking up with a girlfriend.

[12] Manzarek re-enrolled in UCLA's graduate film program in 1962, receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in cinematography in 1965.

[15] Forty days after finishing film school, thinking they had gone their separate ways, Manzarek and Morrison met by chance on Venice Beach in California.

[16] During this time, Manzarek also met teenage guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore at a Transcendental Meditation lecture and recruited them for the incipient band.

[18] He recorded a rock adaptation of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (1983; co-produced by Philip Glass), briefly played with Iggy Pop, sat in on one track on the eponymous 1987 album Echo & the Bunnymen, backed San Francisco poet Michael McClure's poetry readings and worked on improvisational compositions with poet Michael C.

[29] He also worked extensively with Hearts of Fire screenwriter and former SRC frontman Scott Richardson on a series of spoken word and blues recordings entitled "Tornado Souvenirs".

In 2000, a collaboration poetry album entitled Freshly Dug was released with British singer, poet, actor, and pioneer punk rocker Darryl Read.

[citation needed] On August 4, 2007, Manzarek hosted a program on BBC Radio 2 about the 40th anniversary of the recording of "Light My Fire" and the group's musical and spiritual influences.

They performed several Doors tunes ("People Are Strange", "The Crystal Ship", "Roadhouse Blues" and "Break On Through (To the Other Side)") with Hall providing lead vocals.

[38] On the day of Manzarek's death, Yankovic published a personal video of this studio session which he said had been an "extreme honor" and "one of the absolute high points of my life".

A collaborative album between the two, entitled Translucent Blues, was released in mid-2011; its lyrical content is primarily penned by songwriter/poets Jim Carroll and Michael McClure.

[40] During June through August 2011, Manzarek recorded "Breakn' a Sweat" with DJ Skrillex and his fellow former Doors members Robby Krieger and John Densmore.

[45] Manzarek married fellow UCLA alumna Dorothy Aiko Fujikawa in Los Angeles on December 21, 1967, with Morrison and his longtime companion Pamela Courson attending.

[46] For the last decade of his life, Manzarek and his wife lived in a refurbished farmhouse near Vichy Springs, California, in the Napa Valley.

[47] Manzarek practiced Atenism, an ancient Egyptian religion last observed in the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, after discovering it in Sigmund Freud's book Moses and Monotheism.

"[3] On February 12, 2016, at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, Densmore and Krieger reunited for the first time in 15 years to perform in tribute to Manzarek and benefit Stand Up to Cancer.

The night featured Exene Cervenka and John Doe of the band X, Rami Jaffee of the Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots' Robert DeLeo, Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins, Emily Armstrong of Dead Sara, and Andrew Watt (among others).