Sixty years after Robby Krieger auditioned to join the Doors, the guitarist still marvels at the legacy of the band and the music he made with singer Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and drummer John Densmore.
“That’s kind of crazy,” Krieger, 79, says on a recent phone call. “I actually didn’t play Doors music for a while after Jim died [in 1971]. Probably 10 years, maybe 15. After Jim was gone, I figured, ‘It’s over.’”
The surviving Doors released a pair of albums as a trio before ending the band in January 1973. Krieger formed his own bands, often playing jazz fusion in addition to rock and roll starting in the ’70s, and continued playing through the decades that followed, even as he noticed a revival of interest in the Doors.
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Robby Krieger of the Doors at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood in Oct. 2024. (Photograph by Don Liebig / ASUCLA)
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Robby Krieger of the Doors at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood in Oct. 2024. (Photograph by Don Liebig / ASUCLA)
“The book came out, Danny Sugarman’s book,” Krieger says of the 1980 Doors biography, “No One Here Gets Out Alive.” “It took a while to make me realize that it’s not over. Like an Oliver Stone movie about the band [“The Doors” in 1991).
“So around the year 2000, Ray and I got back together and started playing the Doors music,” he continues. “Before that, there were tribute bands playing it. That was kind of weird, but it showed us that there was interest still.
Densmore never agreed with Manzarek and Krieger about reforming the Doors, going so far as to sue his two bandmates at one point. Manzarek died in 2013.
Krieger continued to revisit songs from the Doors catalog, which includes such hits as “Light My Fire,” “People Are Strange,” “Hello, I Love You,” and “Riders on the Storm.” And this year, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Doors forming in Los Angeles in 1965, he’s played almost all of it.
Starting in March, Krieger and his band played a monthly residency at the Whisky A Go Go, the West Hollywood club where the Doors first broke out as stars on the Sunset Strip. Each month featured a different Doors album played in full – the self-titled debut followed by “L.A. Woman,” “Strange Days,” “Waiting for the Sun,” and “The Soft Parade” – as well as hits from across the band’s catalog.
On Thursday, Oct. 30, Krieger wraps up the 60th anniversary celebration at the Greek Theatre with hits and a performance of “Morrison Hotel,” the last of the six Doors albums on which Morrison sang.
In addition to his band, which includes his son Waylon Krieger, the night features an all-star lineup that includes Billy Idol and Steve Stevens, Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, John Doe of X, Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex, Steven Adler of Guns N’ Roses and more.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Krieger talked about his early memories with the Doors, why Columbia Records dropped the band before Elektra signed them, what it was like relearning six albums of Doors songs, many of which the band had never played live, and more.
Q: In 1965, you were the last of the four to join. What do you remember about how that happened?
A: I knew John from high school, and we had played some music together a number of times. Even though I was at UCLA, and so were Jim and Ray, I didn’t really know them. They were in that film school, and I was just in the regular stay-out-of-the-Army school. [He laughs}
Q: That’s a good school to be in.
A: It was at the time. So anyway, John, I don’t know how he met Ray exactly, but he did. At that time Ray’s brothers were in the band and Jim would come down and sit in once in a while, because he did like the music even before the Doors.
Ray and Jim didn’t really know me yet, so they were having people try out on guitar, and I think I was the second one. First one was a guy named Billy Wolf who I knew as a guitar player. We had taken flamenco lessons together. I was the second. The first song we played was “Moonlight Drive,” which I used the slide on, and that seemed to nail it down. It was the one song.
Q: Once you were in the band, how long was it before you started that maybe it was going to work out?
A: It was pretty much right away. One thing was that they had a record deal already with Columbia Records, which was pretty cool back in those days. Unfortunately, that kind of fell through. I could tell you how that happened if you want.
Q: Yeah, sure.
A: Billy James was the manager type, and he was the one that got the Columbia deal going. At the time, they would sign a whole bunch of groups, every month pretty much, and they would see if any of them stuck around.
We thought, “Hey man, this is going to happen,” you know. Because we had already got some free stuff. Columbia owned Vox at the time, and Ray had got the Vox organ, which is pretty cool. Got a few amps.
Billy said, “Hey, I’m going in tomorrow to meet the top brass. Hopefully, we’ll nail this down.” So Jim wanted to go. He insisted on coming to the meeting. Which was not a good idea. [He laughs] He took a bunch of acid that day.
After the meeting, Jim was beaming. He was like, “Wow, I (bleepin’) impressed those guys!” [He laughs again] The next day, we were dropped.
Q: Well, it worked out eventually.
A: But that was a big deal, to have a record deal. That’s really why I wanted to join up. And the fact that I knew John. So we really didn’t have a record company until about eight months later, when we were playing at the Whisky and Elektra Records came by and they dug it. They were cool. They were a small company, but they were dedicated.
Q: I want to ask you about the Whisky, because that’s where the reputation of the band really started to take off.
A: The Whisky was really the place to play in those days. Before that, we were playing this place up the street from the Whisky called the London Fog. I don’t know why it was called the London Fog, but the guy there was Jesse James, who liked us.
The first night we played there, we invited all of our college buddies and friends to come down, so it was like 200 people or something, and so we were hired. Of course, the next day nobody came. [He laughs]
But eventually the scout from the Whisky came and saw us, Ronnie Haran and after she saw us a few times, she invited us to play at the Whisky. We got the spot as the house band, and we played there six nights a week, two sets, three, I forget. That was fun. That was really good for us, because you play night after night and you really can work on your songs in front of a crowd and see what turns them on.
Q: Kind of like rock and roll boot camp?
A: Exactly. And the songs, they totally changed by the time the Whisky was over. Luckily, we had gotten the record deal with Elektra, and we did our first album. It was particularly a lot of that we played on stage at the Whisky.
Q: So the Doors would open for the bigger bands or touring bands that came to L.A.?
A: Yeah, that was pretty good about the Whisky. We got to see all these big-time groups that were headliners. The first one was Them, Van Morrison. They did “Gloria” and all that stuff. The last night we played with them, we all got to get on stage together and do “Gloria.” There are pictures of that somewhere. The two Morrisons, Van and Jim.
Q: I’ve read that the Doors got so good so fast that you made it hard for bands to follow you.
A: It wasn’t really like that. We weren’t trying to blow them off the stage or anything. It was more like how we got to see them in person. There were a lot of great bands. Buffalo Springfield, a lot of these bands that were about a year ahead of us. The Byrds.
Q: Was Love ahead of you?
A: They were. In fact, Arthur Lee lived near us in Laurel Canyon, so we were pretty close with them.
Q: For the album shows at the Whisky this year, that’s a lot of songs to know how to play.
A: Tell me about it.
Q: A lot of rehearsing?
A: Yeah, but it was fun. You know, a lot of those songs I hadn’t played in 60 years. I really had forgotten how cool some of the songs were because a lot of them we never really played on stage for some reason. The first songs we had written, Jim and Ray had written, were basically our Whisky set, along with other people’s songs.
Then we started writing other new ones; I started writing some myself, and Jim and I started writing together. That turned out to be when we got ready to do our first album, so we had too many songs. The first two albums were pretty much the songs we played at the Whisky.
Q: Were those first two albums easier to prepare for this year?
A: Not necessarily. I hadn’t even thought of doing some of those deeper cuts in person. I’d never done it. So it was nice to go back. I never realized how great some of those songs are, if I say so myself.
Q: Are there a few examples of ones you’d never played that you sort of rediscovered this year?
A: Well, there’s a couple we’ve just been practicing from “Morrison Hotel.” A couple of songs that I played in drop D tuning. Let’s see, what the hell are they? I’ve got to look at the list, can you hang on?
Q: No problem.
A: OK, I’ll tell you [some of] the set list real quick. “Waiting for the Sun,” that’s one we had never done in person. “You Make Me Real,” I think we did do that song. “Peace Frog.” We did that one. “Indian Summer.” We’d never done that live – maybe we did it at the Whisky? That was the first song we ever recorded.
When we went to Sunset Sound, we’d never recorded in a real studio. And we’d just written “Indian Summer,” so it was like, “OK, let’s try it.” We did it like real, real soft. It was like putting your foot in the water to see how cold. And it just didn’t sound that good to us, so we didn’t use it on the first album. Waited until the fifth album. But that song is so cool. Probably going to use it in the set from now on.
Also “Ship of Fools” and “Land Ho.” Those are the ones in drop D tuning. Those are really cool. I don’t know why I never played them. Probably because I was too lazy to retune my guitar. [He laughs]
Q: At the Greek, you’ve got a lot of guest musicians to sing or sit in with the band. How’d you put that together?
A: A lot of them I have known for a long time or I’d played with before, like Billy Idol. Perry Farrell. [Guitarist] Orianthi, she’s going to sit in. A couple of them I didn’t know. Deryck Whibley [from Sum 41], Greg Gonzalez [from Cigarettes After Sex]. Do you know Fantastic Negrito?
Q: I saw him open for Eric Clapton at the Forum a few years ago. He was cool there.
A: I haven’t met him yet, but I think he’s gonna come and rehearse with us next week.
Q: John Densmore doesn’t play music much anymore, but will he be there in any capacity?
A: He’s got a funeral to go to. His wife’s mother passed away. So he won’t be there unless he can get away. He might get there on the last song or something, hopefully.
Q: After the Greek show? What’s the next year look like?
A: We’re gonna do another thing at the Whisky, probably five or six shows again, and we’re gonna play at the Love Ride next month. They’ve been doing them for years. We did the first one about 40 years ago.
I hope to do something maybe for New Year’s Eve. So we ain’t going anywhere.
