Robby Krieger

I don't think there's ever been a band more "ahead of their time" than The Doors.

They were doing things in 1965 that no one else did for years to come, but that bands still do to this day.

Morrison was magic and the true glue, but it wasn't just him. They were visionaries as a group. They were truly great.

Really good Krieger interview by Dean Delray on his Let There Be Talk podcast. From back in Feb of this year.

http://deandelray.libsyn.com/515robby-kriegerguitarist-and-songwriter-of...

 >They were doing things in 1965 that no one else did for years to come, but that bands still do to this day.<

I don't like the Doors, not even a little. 

But I am curious what you are referring to, could you elaborate?

What Lance said.

The Doors was like LSD to me, not that I did some every time I listened to the band, but they worked well together for me, opened up a lot of doors. A huge part of my formative years. Much thanks to the Doors for who I am. Hypnotic magic

They woulda been a great band if they had a bass player.

^ Lonnie Mack on Roadhouse Blues 

They had a real bass player in the studio, but I never got not having one live.

How can you "not like" The Doors? Fuck. Take a long holiday...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv8GW1GaoIc

^How can you "not like" The Doors? ^

Never have, they bore me. I am ambivalent to a whole lot music, but dislike the Doors

That's why I asked lance to elaborate,  want to hear another perspective. 

OK. This IS America.

I actually like their studio work, but they were kinda thin live.

Interview with Jerry Garcia on June 11, 1981 from Conversations with the Dead by Blair Jackson (pages 62-64):

JACKSON: We're doing an issue [of BAM magazine] on the Doors - 

GARCIA: I never liked the Doors. I found them terribly offensive...when we played with them. It was back when [Jim] Morrison was just a pure Mick Jagger copy. That was his whole shot, that he was a Mick Jagger imitation. Not vocally, but his moves, his whole physical appearance were totally stolen from right around Mick Jagger's 1965 tour of the States. He used to move around a lot, before he started to earn a reputation as a poet, which I thought was really undeserved. Rimbaud was great at eighteen, nineteen, and Verlaine. Those guys were great. Fuckin’ Jim Morrison was not great, I'm sorry.

I could never see what it was about the Doors. They had a very brittle sound live, a three piece band with no bass - the organ player [Ray Manzarek] used to do it. That and that kinda raga-rock guitar style was strange. It sounded very brittle and sharp-edged to me, not something I enjoyed listening to.

I kind of appreciated some of the stuff they did later, and I appreciated a certain amount of Morrison's sheer craziness, just because that's always a nice trait in rock and roll. No, I never knew him, but Richard Loren, who works for us, was his agent and had to babysit him through his most drunken scenes and all the times he got busted and all that crap. He's got lots of stories to tell about Morrison.

I was never attracted to their music at all, so I couldn't find anything to like about them. When we played with them, I think I watched the first tune or two, then I went upstairs and fooled around with my guitar. There was nothing there that I wanted to know about. He was so patently an imitation of Mick Jagger that it was offensive. To me, when the Doors played San Francisco they typified Los Angeles coming to San Francisco, which I equated with having the look right, but zero substance. This is way before that hit song, Light My Fire. Probably at that time in their development it was too early for anyone to make a decent judgement of them, but I've always looked for something else in music, and whatever it was, they didn't have it. They didn't have anything of blues, for example, in their sound or feel.

JACKSON: Did you sense the negativity?

GARCIA: No, not really. All I sensed was sham. As far as I was concerned, it was surface and no substance.

Then we played with them after the Light My Fire thing, when they were headliners. We opened for them in Santa Barbara some years later, when they were a little more powerful. Their sound had gotten better - they'd gotten more effectively amplified, so Manzarek's bass lines and stuff like that had a little more throb, but their sound was still thin. It wasn't a successful version of a three piece band, like the Who or Jimi Hendrix, or Cream, or any other guitar power trio type three piece bands. It's an interesting concept, a three piece band that's keyboard, guitar, drums, but it was missing some element I thought was vital. I couldn't say exactly what it was, but it was not satisfying for me to listen to them. When they were the headliners, it was sort of embarrassing for us to open for them, cause we sort of blew them off the stand with just sheer power. What we had with double drums and Phil's bass playing - it got somewhere, and when they played there was an anticlimax feeling to it, even with their hits.

In the part of my life when I was impressionable along that androgynous input, for me the people that were happening were James Dean and Elvis. Early rock and roll - I'm like first generation rock and roll influence. For me, James Dean was a real important figure. He was the romantic fulfillment of that vision.

It's not a surprise that Jerry never liked The Doors.  I'd bet anything that The Doors never liked the Grateful Dead.  Two different planets.

The Doors are a top 5 band for me.  Probably my 1st love.  Dove deep into every studio album and also the Absolutely Live album.    Love it all.

I guess The Doors are kind of like the Grateful Dead (and black licorice) in one way.  You either love it or hate it. 

this is the first song i have any memory of listening to, around age 5-7...it was by leaps and bounds my favorite song until i got a little older and started listening to popular music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taKc8ZrAy6E

that explains quite a bit actually.

many of morrison and manzerek's compositions rival anything garcia and hunter ever wrote imo. the greatful dead enraptured me with their improvisations and incomparable concert experience, but ultimately the doors are much more in line with all the other music i listen to, which aside from bluegrass isnt really "dead adjacent" or similar in any way. 

many of my favorite GD songs are the small handful of bob songs that are more in line with the darkness and anger of doors songs - let it grow and victim for example. garcia does not go down that road, and while he has other qualities that more than make up for it, the dark intensity of songs like victim or LIG, or doors songs, is generally my preference as far as songwriting/composition goes.

honestly i love garcia but his musical advice hasnt ever hit the mark for me - no doors, no hip hop, but your fave shit is django reinhardt? straight trippin, jer bear

the divide between Gd and the doors -

"the music never stopped"

"when the music's over"

^Neither did Zappa...

Clip...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLXVz5fms10

Full episode...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zcstb7jN2pM

Zappa also appeared in Head...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg7PlNk2Vo0

listened along with all the formative usuals floyd, zep and the like but quickly became bored with them. 

Pigpen reportedly told Ray Manzarek to fuck off when he asked if he could play Pig's organ instead of hauling his own up on stage.  "Nobody touches my keys."

Funny hearing Jerry rip on Jim like that.  I knew Jerry dissed the Doors, but man he was harsh in that interview.   The only other musician I know he ripped on like that was Gregg Allman, but that was for being a narc.

I personally don't mind the Doors and like some of their material.  I rarely put on any of their albums these days, but won't switch the channel when they come on the radio.   American Prayer was cool and that Doors biopic with Val Kilmer was entertaining.   But I also picked up not too long ago a CD of a late night jam session in NYC with Jimi Hendrix and a really fucked up Jim Morrison.  Painful.

Frank Zappa didn't care for Jim Morrison either.  He didn't care for his excessive lifestyle, thought his poetry was shallow, and thought he was creepy.  When Frank was just a member of the Mothers Of Invention and they hadn't become Frank Zappa & The Mother's Of Invention yet, he had to tolerate Morrison hanging around their group house.  Many of the other guys in the original MOI were into drugs and that drew Morrison and other sketchy characters into their scene.  Once Frank became the de facto leader of the band, he kicked Morrison and others out of their house, and told the guys in his band that he didn't care what they did on their own time, but when they were working in the studio or playing on stage with him, they were working for him and he expected them to be sober.  

Personally, I've gone through a few heavy Doors phases in my life.  Around the time Francis Ford Coppola used "The End" so effectively in the climactic scene of "Apocalypse Now" was the first big wave of Doors nostalgia.  Danny Sugarman's book "No One Here Gets Out Alive" was a popular read with my peer group.  I grew up in the same Alexandria, Virginia zip code that Morrison finished his high school year's in.  The roadhouse club described in that book as the first place Morrison encountered Blues music had become a strip club by then, the first place most of my friends and I were initiated into that experience.   The surviving Doors had reunited to create the musical background for the "An American Prayer" LP of Jim's poetry.  To a 14 year old kid just getting into smoking weed, drinking and tripping, it sounded good.

I'd heard them a little before this too.  One of my older siblings had bought the "Touch Me" single and the "Soft Parade" album it was on, and as a much younger kid in the early 70's I can remember playing the single over and over,  it was catchy and had a majestic sound to it.  By the time I was hitting my teens though, it was the darker, hypnotic, poetic side of their music that was appealing to the brooding adolescent I was.  Along with The Velvet Underground, the Doors were manifesting a darker side of the Bohemian sub-culture.  Eventually, I'd hear other bands from that era projecting that vibe, like The Seeds, and would come to appreciate that Dylan could get there too ("Ballad Of A Thin Man", "Positively Fourth Street"), but initially it was The Doors and the Velvet Underground who turned me onto the darker, Gothic underbelly of Rock & Roll.  
 

I also remember picking up the live EP "Alive She Cried" when it came out in the early 80's and thinking they sounded great live.  Their soundcheck cover version of Them's "Gloria" got a lot of spins.  Soon after that I got really into the Grateful Dead, and I spent a lot of my time, money and energy on them and the bands I could actually see play live, like Zappa, King Crimson and Talking Heads.  I kept listening to the Doors, the Velvets, Hendrix, Cream, etc. but I was aware that was an exercise of nostalgia.  
 

Eventually Oliver Stone's movie "The Doors" came out and there was another large wave of Doors nostalgia.  I'd gotten my first record store job by then and was really getting into Hard-Bop late-50's and on Jazz, and was becoming more attuned to that element in the Doors sound.  
 

Nowadays, I don't go seeking out the Doors to often, but I usually enjoy them when I hear them.  I go back and forth between "Morrison Hotel" and "L.A. Woman" as my favorite record of theirs.  I have enjoyed hearing the archival live recordings that have come out.  Morrison was one of those artists like Bradley Nowell from Sublime or Keith Richards that was either so fucked up that it was a shitshow, or had everything lined up right and would play a show for the ages.  The Complete Felt Forum set that they released was great.  They had their session bassist, Jerry as Jeff, along for those shows, so maybe that's what they needed to flesh out the thin sound Garcia was so nonplussed by. 

As far as the original thrust of this thread, I have more recently come to appreciate how talented a guitarist Robbie Krieger is.  He played a show in the theater in my building a couple of years ago, and I realized he was on the same talent level as the Eric Clapton's of this world.  I guess Robbie never toured much after the Doors imploded,  because I never saw him before, and don't recall it really being an option.  I suppose he had a steady revenue stream from his cut of the Doors royalties and for his songwriting credits.  He probably could have retired on "Light My Fire" alone.  I always liked his tune "Running Blues" off "The Soft Parade".  More recently, I've relistened to the two albums the surviving Doors released after Morrison's death to fulfill their contract with Elektra Records.  They usually get maligned, but they're actually pretty good listens.  They had good musical chemistry, and it would have been interesting to see what they would have created if they had forged on. 

The session bassist's name is Jerry Scheff.  

Auto-correct and the 5-minute edit window got me.

"How can you "not like" The Doors?"

Easily, thanks.  Pretentious bullshit with an asshole as a front man.

And I'm in good company.  Jerry couldn't stand them and neither could Crosby.

Jerry claimed they ripped off other bands.  

I never dug them either. 

Pretentious bullshit with an asshole as a front man.<<<
 

Kind of like our current POTUS.

I love the music of The Doors and always will. No worries if Jerry, Zappa or anyone else didn't like them, because The Doors are like licorish... ah, never mind. 

Like it or not, they put out some timeless stuff for a band only around in full for less than 6 years.

Many of the other guys in the original MOI were into drugs and that drew Morrison and other sketchy characters into their scene.  Once Frank became the de facto leader of the band, he kicked Morrison and others out of their house, and told the guys in his band that he didn't care what they did on their own time, but when they were working in the studio or playing on stage with him, they were working for him and he expected them to be sober.>>> 

About Lowell George's departure from The Mothers...

In November 1968, George joined Zappa's Mothers of Invention as rhythm guitarist and nominal lead vocalist. During this period, he absorbed Zappa's autocratic leadership style and avant garde-influenced conceptual/procedural-oriented compositional methods.

George later asserted that "he performed no real function in the band" and left the group in May 1969 under nebulous circumstances. George was fired by Zappa for smoking marijuana, while George claimed at a 1975 Little Feat concert that he was fired because he "wrote a song ["Willin'"] about dope."

Meh.

I moved back to L.A. in late summer 1966 and spent some time wandering around the beaches, Sunset Blvd, places where music, art and life were happening. I remember hearing The Doors practicing(?) one day while walking in Venice or Santa Monica, asked someone who they were and was told The Doors. Nothing about their music interested me, then or later, nor did the Morrison stage personality. Visiting Paris in 1978 and 1986 I walked through the Pere Lachaise cemetery and came upon Jim Morrison's grave, easily found by the spray painting leading to and surrounding it. The amount of graffiti spilling onto other people's graves and monuments was overwhelming and I understood the ire of people whose family members were buried around it. I love color and graffiti and freely done art, but it doesn't work for me that other stones and statues were also covered and also vandalized. It was quite a scene. (I love the Pere Lachaise other than that.)

For me The Doors was always music on the edge. It was not pulled out randomly or casually just to rock, it had a deeper possibly darker message and was only pulled out when the intoxicants psychedelics and stimulants were on 10, not 8 or even 9. It was the music you put on when the body and mind were in perfect amped up sync. When the Doors went on, it got serious and nothing else could do.

Definitely not for everybody, but for those who did ride the snake, it was some seriously fun life altering enhancement.

when i was 16 or so i used to take massive doses of dextromethorphan almost every night and trip balls while watching either oliver stone's doors film or requiem for a dream...good times

I always like Robbie playing slide on Wild Child

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjRQxRREIqk

L.A. Woman album is for sure one of my guilty pleasures. I'm not really one for Jim Morrison, but Jerry Scheff is as good a rock bassist as there ever was, and his sound is just indelible on so much important American rock music.

I pounded Robitussin once. 

I always like Robbie playing slide

Better than Bobby ever and/or Garcia at that time

>>>>>Better than Bobby ever 

Pretty low bar.

Bookmarked for later:

Robbie Krieger & Friends

https://youtu.be/1LSO1sMU70g

All instrumental jazz/fusion super funked out. Seems pretty shreddy.

I am a fan. Light mt fire one of my all time favs and specifically his guitar solo is still worthy of a replay every time I hear it

I know of a couple skb shows, for sure, when kimock was using that exact guitar tone throughout (tipitinas nov 2001) and I think he was doing it on purpose.  Kimock so easily can replicate so many of the greats, .e.g.garcia & santana..and robby kreiger is certainly worthy of that. he was partly responsible for helping to kick open the doors of perception In psychedelic rock and rolls early days especially tuning in a more wide mainstream audience in 1966-68 

^tipitina's New Orleans 10/28/01. The other maybe not as much is  10-22-01 star hill amph.

"I'm glad that L.A. Woman was our last album ... It really captured what we were all about. The first record did, too, but L.A. Woman is more loose, it's live – it sounds almost like a rehearsal. It's pure Doors".

– Robby Krieger reflecting on the album during a 2012 interview

^ That is one perfect album. Changeling is da shit

This is the end my friend )they knew about trump(

The fucking Doors,  more fun than a barrel full of juiced up spider monkeys.

The Changeling rare version
https://youtu.be/Uhx2d6KqOQU

This thread is rekindling a memory of driving my car back to the office after a meeting and listening to Fresh Air on NPR, which ended with a snippet to honor the 50th anniversary of "Light My Fire": part of a 1998 interview with Ray Manzarek.  The tale of the building of the song was so engrossing that I had to stay in my car at the work parking lot until the end of the interview.

I thought it was a pretty cool:

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539989187/an-archival-interview-with-ray-...

The entire interview (I think) from 1998:

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539989187/an-archival-interview-with-ray-...

The Rolling Stone Interview: Jim Morrison – Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-rolling-stone-intervie...

Robby has been doing some recent YouTube guitar lessons...

Really fun to watch....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7nKbmMwVs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZbN_0XlEGQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEL1IWw0DgM