Doors guitarist looks back at Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, band's 60th anniversary

USA Today

23-04-2025

Doors guitarist looks back at Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, band's 60th anniversary
The meeting took place in early 1990 at the office of director Oliver Stone. It was not an auspicious start.
Robby Krieger, guitarist for the legendary '60s band The Doors, had come to meet Val Kilmer, a young actor who had landed the plum if difficult role of Jim Morrison, the band's lead singer, poet and doomed sex symbol who died at 27 in 1971.
"He came up to me and said, 'Hi Robby, I'm Val Kilmer, I got the gig, I'm going to play Jim,'" Krieger recalls, reflecting with fondness on that encounter in light of Kilmer's passing on April 1 at age 65. "I said to him, 'Really?' I mean, he neither looked nor acted anything like Jim. So I said, 'How did you get the job?'"
And that's when Kilmer, then only 30, casually offered to play Krieger a rough video that showed the actor singing. And boy, could he sing, Krieger recalls.
"It turns out, he had formed a Doors tribute band before any of this had happened, maybe when he was in high school or something," says Krieger. "So he plays me this clip and man, it was damn good. He wasn't dressed like Jim of course, but when I saw that, I said 'OK, this guy can do it.' And obviously, that's what Oliver had thought, too."
Krieger is in a reflective mood of late. The seminal Los Angeles rock band, whose jazz-meets-rock-meets-dark-poetry stood in such stark contrast to the bright San Francisco sound of the late '60s, is celebrating 60 years since its 1965 formation.
To mark the occasion, a new book is due out next month whose title is derived from a Doors lyric, "Night Divides the Day: The Doors Anthology." The hardcover is filled with not only photos and memorabilia that chronologically tracks the band's rise and dissolution, but also interviews and commentary from all four members (drummer John Densmore, 80, is alive but stays largely out of the limelight; keyboardist Ray Manzarek died at age 74 in 2013).
Krieger is also busy gigging with his five-piece band (which includes his son Waylon on vocals) playing many of The Doors' big albums each in their entirety at Whiskey a Go Go, the famous Hollywood nightclub where The Doors served as house band in 1966, a year before the release of their eponymous debut album in 1967. They'll perform "L.A. Woman" on April 26, "Strange Days," on May 29, "Waiting for the Sun" on June 28, and "The Soft Parade" on July 26.
Given how long its been since The Doors made their indelible mark, it's no surprise that for some music lovers Stone's 1991 movie "The Doors" was their introduction to the band.
Kilmer can be credited for a lot of that, says Krieger, who says he met with the actor multiple times during filming, as did drummer Densmore (he notes that Manzarek declined to participate).
"Val sang about 90 percent of the stuff you hear in that movie," says Krieger. "He spent quite a bit of time learning those songs. The bass player in my band is Dan Rothchild (son of The Doors' maverick producer Paul Rothchild), and he said Val and his dad would get together every day and practice going over all The Doors songs he had to do so he could sing them just right. He just put so much into it."
So just how close did he come to conjuring up Morrison? Krieger suggests Kilmer was about as close as one could get.
"A lot of people still don't believe that's Val singing," he says. Then he laughs. "But yeah, I guess you could say, I would know."