Latest news with #NightDividestheDay:TheDoorsAnthology
USA Today
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
The Doors' Robby Krieger on new 'Anthology,' band lore and Jim Morrison: 'I trusted him'
The Doors' Robby Krieger on new 'Anthology,' band lore and Jim Morrison: 'I trusted him' If you joined a band when you were 19, would you still be talking about it 60 years later? Most people would not. But this is Robby Krieger we're talking about, guitarist for the groundbreaking Los Angeles band The Doors. So you better believe that at 79, he remains chock full of epic memories of the five years his quartet ruled the airwaves and rocked the culture. "I think the combination of the poetry (of lead singer Jim Morrison) and the music was so different than anything else at the time, before, or maybe even now," says Krieger, who cowrote "Light My Fire," arguably the band's most iconic song. "So many people come up to me at say, 'You changed my life.'" Those people will delight in "Night Divides the Day: The Doors Anthology" (out now from Genesis Publications, $75), a beefy new book that chronologically recounts the Doors' rise and too-soon end after Morrison's 1971 death in Paris at age 27. The hardcover tome is filled with archival photos of the band and its memorabilia, along with quotes from current musicians ranging from Slash to Van Morrison as well as the group's other members: drummer John Densmore, 80, and keyboardist Ray Manzarek (who died in 2013 at age 74). Call it a literary time machine. One spread is a black and white photo of the band in early 1967, standing in front of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. The musicians are riding high just days after the release of their hit-packed eponymous debut album. Morrison, a magnetic if troubled front man, holds a massive stick while the rest smile at some joke. Nearby, the caption features part of a review of the band's show at the famous Fillmore Auditorium, where they played on a bill with the Young Rascals ("Good Lovin'"). The reviewer makes plain that The Doors were from a planet unfamiliar to that city's flower child set. "The Doors are a weird group," it reads. "They start off without much and gradually get into something which is not exactly the Frisco sound but some kind of Eastern-oriented improvisation." The Doors magic mix? Blues, flamenco, jazz and a wild-eyed poet For Krieger, the band made its indelible mark precisely because of its wildly different personnel. Densmore was a jazz drummer, Manzarek was steeped in Chicago blues, Morrison was a poet with a compelling set of pipes, and Krieger was a flamenco guitarist. What could have added up to a sonic mess became solid gold, with songs such as "The End" (featured prominently in the movie "Apocalypse Now"), "Break On Through," and "Love Me Two Times" among their many classics. The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. "It was kind of meant to be," says Krieger, who with his current band has been playing many of The Doors' albums in their entirety at Whiskey A Go Go, the famous LA haunt where the group was the house band in the mid-'60s. "It has to be that. We were all so different, but that's why it worked." The Doors indeed were an accidental miracle. Manzarek and Morrison were fellow film school students at the University of California at Los Angeles, where Krieger was an undergraduate. Densmore was a local drummer going to school a few towns away, who was brought into a group started by Manzarek that also featured his brothers. "Then Ray's brothers quit, so they needed a guitarist and John, who I knew, brought me in to rehearse with them and that was it," says Krieger, who says he played that haunting slide intro to the future hit, "Moonlight Drive," at that first gathering of the foursome. He laughs. "Jim loved that slide. He wanted me to put it on every single song. I said thanks, but no." Morrison and Manzarek were big book fiends and conjured the band's name from a line in a William Blake poem: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite." The Doors' heavy first album was a serious departure from the Summer of Love sounds pinging across the airwaves in 1967. Many of the songs had dark overtones, which reflected Morrison's cerebral if haunted nature. None more so than "The End," with its violent Oedipal theme. Morrison would seem to go into a trance during live renditions of the tune. Krieger says the singer was a live wire literally from the band's formation. "Jim was something else, man, although remember in the '60s it wasn't that crazy to be crazy," he says with a laugh. If Jim Morrison had swapped acid for meditation, one wonders 'what might have been,' says Robby Krieger The guitarist says that Morrison was on acid when they recorded "The End," and after the session was over he snuck back into the studio and doused a non-existent flames he saw with a fire extinguisher. "Jim could ruin a show, for sure, but one thing he never was was late," Krieger says. "He loved to create art, that's what he was about." Where all four members had certainly dabbled in the various drugs of the day, Krieger says everyone except for Morrison quickly looked for an alternative mind-expansion outlet. "We were into the Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi, spiritual guru to the Beatles), and he came to Los Angeles and we got Jim to go. He looked at (the Maharishi) from about 10 feet away and just shakes his head and says, 'No, he doesn't got it.' And walked away," he says. "I often wonder what might have been if he'd felt otherwise and given up acid and started meditating like we were doing." Morrison, the rebellious son of a Navy admiral, had model-ready Dionysian looks, so much so that in 1981, a decade after Morrison's somewhat mysterious passing, Rolling Stone put him on the cover with the famous headline, "Jim Morrison: He's Hot, He's Sexy and He's Dead." He was also a handful, says Krieger. "He'd be on acid with a bunch of people, and start turning the lights on and off really fast, just to see what would happen. Mostly we just rolled with it. I trusted Jim, but there were times I worried he might go too far." "Night Divides the Day," which takes its name from a lyric in "Break On Through," spends a good many pages on Morrison's most famous trespass: a 1969 gig in Miami during which Morrison, annoyed with the crowd, was arrested for indecent exposure for allegedly taking his pants down. Fiction, says Krieger. "It was close, sure, and he would have done it had Ray not said to our equipment manager, 'Don't let him take his pants down!' But no, didn't happen," he says. But the damage in essence was done. Morrison was convicted in 1970 of indecent exposure and profanity and awaiting sentencing when he decamped to Paris with his longtime girlfriend, Pamela Courson. The stress of it all caused Morrison to gain weight and continue to abuse substances; his death was ruled as heart failure even though no autopsy was performed. Morrison is buried is Paris' fabled Père Lachaise Cemetery, where his headstone remains perpetually covered with mementos from fans. Of the culture's enduring fascination with Morrison and the music he and his bandmates created, Krieger seems as impressed as anyone. "Ten years ago we had the 50th anniversary of the band getting going, and I was going wow, 50 years and we're still being talked about," he says. "Now it's 60. It just keeps going and going. It's just crazy."
USA Today
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Doors guitarist looks back at Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, band's 60th anniversary
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."
