‘He Was So Different From Anybody Else’: Robby Krieger Talks About Jim Morrison And The Doors In His New Memoir

Guitar legend Robby Krieger wants to set the record straight about one of the most infamous moments surrounding his former band the Doors: the accusation that singer Jim Morrison exposed himself to the audience at a Doors concert in Miami in March 1969. That alleged gesture prompted criminal charges against Morrison and the cancellation of 15 tour dates for the band. A jury at Morrison's trial the following year found him guilty of indecent exposure and he was sentenced to six months in prison; the singer, who was free on bond, died in Paris in 1971 as he was appealing the verdict. (In 2010, Morrison received a posthumous pardon from the Florida clemency board). 

“It wasn't what they said it was,” Krieger, 75, says today, refuting that Morrison did such a thing at that concert. “He didn't whip it out. In fact, after the show, we were upstairs drinking beer with the cops. Nobody was getting arrested or anything like that. What happened was there were people running for office at the time, and they started making a big deal about it. Finally, he got busted for it. That threw a kink in our whole deal because we couldn't play live. They have this thing called the Hall Managers Association, and they voted to ban the Doors from any of the halls.”

The infamous Miami incident is one of Krieger's many recollections about his incredible if turbulent time in the Doors told with insight and moments of humor in his new memoir, Set the Night on Fire, co-written with Jeff Alulis. Presented in non-chronological order, Set the Night on Fire delves into every aspect of the Los Angeles band's career: their formation in 1965 and breakthrough success beginning with “Light My Fire: and hit albums such as The Doors, Strange Days and Waiting for the Sun; the unusual and wild antics of Morrison leading up to his death at the age 0f 27; and the band’s renewed popularity beginning in the 1980s and carrying through the 1991 Oliver Stone biopic The Doors. Additionally, Krieger writes about life his own before, during, and after Doors, and his eclectic solo career in between Doors reunion projects over the decades.

With the publication of Set the Night on Fire, Krieger—who wrote a number of the Doors' biggest hits like “Light My Fire,” “Love Her Madly,” “Touch Me,” and “Love Me Two Times”—finally joins his other former Doors bandmates John Densmore and the late Ray Manzarek in releasing a memoir. The book, which Krieger started working on about 25 years ago, was an opportunity to set the record straight about many inaccuracies surrounding the band as depicted in stories and Stone’s film. “I just wanted people to know my slant on everything that happened, and after the movie and all these other books that have come out,” Krieger explains. “I was there. I was one of the four people that were really there.”

Krieger not only brought a rock and roll sensibility to the Doors but other elements such as blues, jazz and even flamenco. That could be traced to his early and eclectic musical sensibilities before he found rock and roll as his calling. “I actually became a rock and roll snob at that point. I didn't even think of playing rock and roll until one day I happened to go [to] a blues festival. It had Big Mama Thornton, the Chambers Brothers, and Chuck Berry. He had Johnny Johnson on piano and the same guys he recorded all that great stuff and that just blew me away. The next day I went and traded one of my guitars in for an electric guitar, an SG.”

In Set the Night on Fire, Krieger recalls his first audition for the Doors (he had already known Densmore and Manzarek). Along with Morrison, the first song that they played was  “Moonlight Drive.” “I had heard the song because they made a demo of it when they were in the very early days of the Doors before I was in the band,” says Krieger. “John was in the band at that time. So they had this little demo and it had “Moonlight Drive,” “Hello I Love You” and a couple of other songs. I don't know where I got the idea to do the bottleneck on “Moonlight Drive,” but I hadn't really even thought of it until the day of the audition. I go, “Well, we're not playing “Moonlight Drive” expecting to play it just like the demo,” which I did. And then I said ‘Wait a minute guys, let me try something different on the song.’ So I pulled out the bottleneck, and they went crazy. Right after that song, I was in the band.”

Kriger writes about the early years of the Doors' early gigs in which they became the house band first at the London Fog and then at the Whisky. Their now-classic 1967 self-titled debut album for Elektra yielded the band's now-iconic song “Light My Fire,” written by Krieger. It followed up the band's previous single “Break on Through,” which didn't fare well on the charts and prompted concern the band blew their chance. “Light My Fire,” however, went to number one.

“We knew that “Light My Fire” was our best song,” he says, “because when we would play it like at the Whisky or whatever, people would just go nuts. It was just so much more than any of the other songs. FM radio was just starting at that time. There's this guy, Dave Diamond, who was the DJ [at KBLA]. He would call us all the time and say, ‘You know what? When I play “Light My Fire” people just call in and go crazy. It should be a single. You guys should cut it down because to get on the AM radio.’ It had to be like three minutes. They wouldn't play a long song. We knew “Light My Fire” was capable of going all the way. Finally, we did cut it down and it did get on the AM radios and that was it, man. It just took off.”

The guitarist offers plenty of stories about Jim Morrison as both a friend and musical collaborator, aside from the singer’s heavy drinking and eccentric habits such as jumping out of windows. “He was a great, great guy,” recalls Krieger. “Everybody loved him. That came across on stage even, and I think that's why people were so drawn to him. Now of course, when the other part of Jim, which we called ‘Jimbo.’ When ‘Jimbo’ came around, usually because of too much drinking, he would turn into a total jerk. That was unfortunate. In all other respects, he was so cool. My parents loved him. He had this kind of Southern charm to him, because he grew up in the South and all that. His dad was in the Navy, but they were mostly in Florida during his childhood.”

Prior to the Miami incident, the Doors had already developed a reputation of volatility at their shows thanks to Morrison’s magnetic and unpredictable performances. That sense of danger and chaos was represented at a concert in New Haven, Connecticut, in December 1967, which led to Morrison’s arrest. “Jim happened to piss off the cops who were there,” he recalls. “He was back in the dressing room, he had some gal with him and they were kind of making out in the closet area. And one of the backstage cops saw him and he didn't know he was Jim Morrison. He thought he was just from the audience. ‘Hey, you gotta get out of here.’ And Jim goes, ‘What do you mean? I'm the headliner here.’ Anyway, the guy ends up macing him.

“So naturally, Jim was pissed off about that. He goes on stage and starts berating the cops, and they finally come up on stage and drag his ass off to jail. Luckily, another person who was there was a photographer from Life magazine. And so we got some nice pictures in Life magazine. That kind of worked in our favor. People thought that was cool.”

Krieger goes into detail in the book about the recording of the Doors’ notable songs and albums, including 1969's elaborately produced, if unjustly maligned, The Soft Parade, which contains the Krieger-penned “Touch Me.” “I had to admit having all that orchestra stuff on the songs, it kind of didn't really sound like the Doors very much,” he says. “But what people don't realize is that only half of the album had that stuff on it. There are so many other good songs on there, like “Wild Child,” and there's a lot of good stuff other than the orchestral stuff.”

As for his favorite Doors albums, Krieger says that it would either be the first album or L.A. Woman, the last one to feature Morrison. “L.A. Woman was really fun because we just did it in our little rehearsal place, so it wasn't likely you're under the gun at the studio or spending too much money. It was really kind of relaxed and Jim lived right across the street from where we rehearsed in this crappy motel. (laughs) He never bought a house. He didn't care about money, he really didn't. He was so different from anybody else I ever met. Our producer Paul Rothchild decided not to be involved in this album. He'd just done the Janis one [1971’s Pearl album], and Janis OD’d right after that. I think he was afraid, and rightly so, that the same thing might happen [to Jim].”

Following the recording of L.A. Woman, Morrison had departed for Paris in March 1971. The other members of the Doors assumed their singer was just taking a break. “We fully expected him to come back and continue recording at least,” Krieger says. “So we kept rehearsing and writing songs. Unfortunately, he never came back.”

Krieger candidly writes that when he first heard the news that Morrison died on July 3 of that year from an apparent heart attack, he was at first shocked and then relieved. “I don't know,” he says. “For some reason, it just seemed like what he wanted. I don't know why, but he was so interested in death and what happens when you die. And he couldn't get that out of his head. And when he finally did, to me I thought he would be happy. It sounds weird. I think that's the one thing they got right in the Oliver Stone movie when he died in the tub and had this big smile on his face. I could just picture him doing that.”

Meanwhile in the 1980s, the Doors’ popularity underwent a renaissance due to the appearance of the song “The End” in the film Apocalypse  Now, the release of Greatest Hits, and the book No One Gets Here Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. The spreading of the Doors myths was even further propagated and embellished by Manzaerk himself. “He couldn’t let go,” Krieger says of Manzarek. “It was his whole life, and we all thought that way. I think he kind of overdid it with the myth of ‘Maybe he is still alive.’ But obviously, if Jim was still alive, he would be on stage somewhere. There’s no getting around that because that was his whole deal.”

Krieger is still active as a solo artist and has recently recorded his latest album Rock Vs. Dub. Meanwhile, the Doors' music and brand continue to live on through Rhino's 50th-anniversary reissues of the band's classic albums with Morrison, including the special re-release of L.A. Woman, out on December 3.

“After we broke up, after the two albums without Jim [Other Voices and Full Circle], I figured, ‘Okay, that's it. Nobody's gonna care about the Doors anymore.’ And they sort of didn't for 10 years or so. Then I started seeing these Doors tribute bands popping up. I would go and sit in with some of them, and I was just amazed [by] the audience’s reaction, it was like back in our day. So I realized it's really the songs.

“There's so many great songs that we recorded. A lot of bands back then might have one or two good songs on an album and then the rest would be kind of filler. But we never did that. We always had to be proud of every song that was on our albums, and I think that really comes through in the long run. To me, that will be the reason why people 100 years from now will still dig the Doors.”