bohohippybeatnic
Senior Member
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Doors (Official Thread)
- Thread starter METALPRIEST
- Start date
Soot and Stars
I AM SOOT!
I came here to post that I finally got this box set and wanted some opinion on it! I know they have a new box set but I always wanted this even though there have been a number of Doors sets! These will double a handful of Doors purchases I've already made but the look and DVD extras are worth it! The Doors were my first mythical Classic Rock band that I got into! I was a fan of CCR first and a few other sparingly but they were the first band that felt enigmatic and made that music before my time seem just as interesting as my other music choices! Band like Zeppelin and Floyd have still not come close to them in that regard for me! 
The Doors Perception
Upon going through the thread I fixed all the fixable links and edited it too transition smoothly. i encourage everyone to always label what you post or down the road it will have to be chopped or edited. The only current active members this effected was the opening image in the OP by MetalPriest and another irretrievable single image by Nololob. From there I welcome all to enjoy this thorough, archival well made tribute thread to The Doors!
The Doors Perception
Upon going through the thread I fixed all the fixable links and edited it too transition smoothly. i encourage everyone to always label what you post or down the road it will have to be chopped or edited. The only current active members this effected was the opening image in the OP by MetalPriest and another irretrievable single image by Nololob. From there I welcome all to enjoy this thorough, archival well made tribute thread to The Doors!
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
The Doors drummer John Densmore is delighted that unfinished 1968 documentary Feast Of Friends is to be officially released at last – even though he admits: “It’s not a masterpiece.”
And he’s glad that the band’s only UK appearance, at London’s Roundhouse, is included in the package, which goes on sale via Eagle Rock on November 10.
Feast Of Friends was left incomplete after finance was withdrawn as a result of frontman Jim Morrison’s arrest for allegedly exposing himself in Miami – for which he was pardoned in 2010.
Densmore tells MusicRadar: “Not too much more was planned at the time – we didn’t have too far to go on it. The label didn’t step in, though. We were getting a little worried because we were putting a lot of money into this thing. Of course, Ray Manzarek and Jim were like, ‘So what?’ That was their world pretty much. So the project kind of stopped at a point, but what’s there is great – I’m sure glad that we have it.
“What pleases me about this release is that the Roundhouse performance is being included. For years I’ve said that, even though it’s black and white, it’s our best performance on film.”
He believes the documentary shows they were more like the Beatles than the Stones backstage. “It wasn’t crazy; everything was pretty subdued – unless Jim was drinking. Then we’d be worried: ‘Oh, God, is Jim going go over the line, or is he going have just the right balance?’ Of course, all of that chaos and danger kind of made us who we were.”
And despite the dramas of dealing with Morrison when he did go too far, Densmore insists they never considered trying to hold him back. “We knew Jim was magic. There’d be times when we’d be riffing on a groove, and then he’d go off and do some wild poetry or confront the audience. But the whole time we’d lay down a bed of sound and keep that going while he did whatever was on his mind.”
And he’s glad that the band’s only UK appearance, at London’s Roundhouse, is included in the package, which goes on sale via Eagle Rock on November 10.
Feast Of Friends was left incomplete after finance was withdrawn as a result of frontman Jim Morrison’s arrest for allegedly exposing himself in Miami – for which he was pardoned in 2010.
Densmore tells MusicRadar: “Not too much more was planned at the time – we didn’t have too far to go on it. The label didn’t step in, though. We were getting a little worried because we were putting a lot of money into this thing. Of course, Ray Manzarek and Jim were like, ‘So what?’ That was their world pretty much. So the project kind of stopped at a point, but what’s there is great – I’m sure glad that we have it.
“What pleases me about this release is that the Roundhouse performance is being included. For years I’ve said that, even though it’s black and white, it’s our best performance on film.”
He believes the documentary shows they were more like the Beatles than the Stones backstage. “It wasn’t crazy; everything was pretty subdued – unless Jim was drinking. Then we’d be worried: ‘Oh, God, is Jim going go over the line, or is he going have just the right balance?’ Of course, all of that chaos and danger kind of made us who we were.”
And despite the dramas of dealing with Morrison when he did go too far, Densmore insists they never considered trying to hold him back. “We knew Jim was magic. There’d be times when we’d be riffing on a groove, and then he’d go off and do some wild poetry or confront the audience. But the whole time we’d lay down a bed of sound and keep that going while he did whatever was on his mind.”
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
Trailer from the above
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
An interview with Robby Krieger and John Densmore in the latest edition of 'Classic Rock'. Some fascinating stuff in it.
With new DVD Feast Of Friends on the horizon, in a CR exclusive we bring together the two surviving members of The Doors – for the first time in a decade.
The two surviving members of The Doors sit at either end of a leather couch, as far away from each other as possible, a palpable sense of unease separating them. “This doesn’t happen very often, so you must have some pull somewhere,” guitarist Robby Krieger says wryly. Krieger and his former bandmate, drummer John Densmore, have come together in the LA offices of the company that manages The Doors’ estate. They’re surrounded by mementos of their success, which began further along the Sunset Strip at the fabled Whisky A Go Go club back in 1966. Even a year ago, getting the two of them together anywhere other than a courtroom would have been unthinkable. Densmore and his ex-compadres spent much of the past decade embroiled in a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle over the use of The Doors’ name, and he and Krieger only reconciled after the death of keyboardist and founding member Ray Manzarek last year. Even today there’s a whiff of residual tension. Densmore, dressed all in black with his thick grey hair swept into a ponytail, is blunt and domineering; Krieger is frail, quiet and calm, his benevolent manner in stark contrast to Densmore’s more impatient state. The pair are here to talk about their much-anticipated new DVD, Feast Of Friends. Shot in cinéma vérité style, the film chronicles The Doors’ summer tour of 1968. Inter-cutting live footage with candid moments away from the stage, it provides a close-up view of life on the road with the group as they were on their way to becoming one of America’s most influential and revered bands. “We’ve pilfered from it in the past,” says Densmore. “Let’s see the whole damn thing as it was intended.” In the 43 years since the death of the band’s iconic singer, Jim Morrison, reams have been written about The Doors, much of it by Densmore himself. “Don’t believe all this shit I wrote,” he barks when one of his lines is quoted back to him. Now, as he and Krieger come face to face with each other, and with their past, we get to hear the real truth of what it was like to be in The Doors.
Whose idea was it to finally release Feast Of Friends?
Robby: I don’t know. Maybe the fans. We interact a lot online with the fans, and I think they really wanted to see it – the whole thing, rather than just pieces stuck into other films.
Why now?
Robby: Maybe we need the money now.
John: As the late, great Ray Manzarek would say, it’s an alignment of the stars. It’s a cosmic conjunction of planets that made this moment happen.
Was the release of Feast Of Friends in any way prompted by the passing of Ray?
Robby: No, nothing like that.
Did you initially have any reservations about making the film?
Robby: I thought it was kind of a waste of money, actually.
How do you feel now?
Robby: I wish we’d done it more now. I wish we had done all of our tours like that, with a film crew.
Was it painful or joyful watching the footage this time around?
Robby: It was fun because I hadn’t seen it for a long time all together like that. It was very enjoyable.
John: To me it was poignant. Two Doors are gone, and seeing Jim and Ray on the sailboat at the end, it’s very touching. It has the beautiful adagio for strings, and you’re seeing this beautiful sailboat, and Jim, and Ray. It’s powerful.
Will it shed a new light on The Doors?
Robby: I think so. I even said to myself: “Man, when people see this who have already seen [Oliver Stone’s 1991] The Doors movie, and they think that’s how Jim was, that he was a total idiot, and now they’ll see him as a real person... how brilliant he is, a real person.” Talking to the priest and stuff like that. I know that always bothered Ray a lot, the fact the movie... As good as The Doors movie was – I thought it was a great rock’n’roll movie – the script was just so stupid.
John: Wait a minute. It’s really good but it’s stupid? Which is it?
Robby: As a rock’n’roll movie, it’s good. I think it’s one of the best rock’n’roll movies out there.
John: Oliver chose to do the tortured artist, and he showed a lot of the torture.
Robby: He showed a lot of the drunk, none of the guy who was a real person.
John: The only thing that bothered me is it didn’t have enough of the sixties for me.
Robby: It didn’t have enough of the guitar player for me.
The two of you were involved in a long and bitter legal battle. What brought about the reconciliation?
John: Time. Passing of Ray.
Robby: All of the above. We still hate each other.
John: There was a screening of another documentary, Mr Mojo Risin’: The Story Of LA Woman at the [Los Angeles] County Museum. They wanted a Q&A, and we did our blah, blah, and it was really cool that we played music for ten minutes – just the guitar and hand drums. We hadn’t played these songs in a long time. It was sweet, man. For me, in four bars I was back. It was the old days.
Did you remain in contact in the years of the dispute?
John: Not too much.
Robby: Just in court [laughs].
Is there a sadness that you didn’t reconcile when Ray was around?
John: I was very thankful that he picked up the phone when I called him after I heard he was really getting sick. We didn’t talk about any of the struggles, we just talked about his health problems. But it was healing, that’s for sure.
With new DVD Feast Of Friends on the horizon, in a CR exclusive we bring together the two surviving members of The Doors – for the first time in a decade.
The two surviving members of The Doors sit at either end of a leather couch, as far away from each other as possible, a palpable sense of unease separating them. “This doesn’t happen very often, so you must have some pull somewhere,” guitarist Robby Krieger says wryly. Krieger and his former bandmate, drummer John Densmore, have come together in the LA offices of the company that manages The Doors’ estate. They’re surrounded by mementos of their success, which began further along the Sunset Strip at the fabled Whisky A Go Go club back in 1966. Even a year ago, getting the two of them together anywhere other than a courtroom would have been unthinkable. Densmore and his ex-compadres spent much of the past decade embroiled in a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle over the use of The Doors’ name, and he and Krieger only reconciled after the death of keyboardist and founding member Ray Manzarek last year. Even today there’s a whiff of residual tension. Densmore, dressed all in black with his thick grey hair swept into a ponytail, is blunt and domineering; Krieger is frail, quiet and calm, his benevolent manner in stark contrast to Densmore’s more impatient state. The pair are here to talk about their much-anticipated new DVD, Feast Of Friends. Shot in cinéma vérité style, the film chronicles The Doors’ summer tour of 1968. Inter-cutting live footage with candid moments away from the stage, it provides a close-up view of life on the road with the group as they were on their way to becoming one of America’s most influential and revered bands. “We’ve pilfered from it in the past,” says Densmore. “Let’s see the whole damn thing as it was intended.” In the 43 years since the death of the band’s iconic singer, Jim Morrison, reams have been written about The Doors, much of it by Densmore himself. “Don’t believe all this shit I wrote,” he barks when one of his lines is quoted back to him. Now, as he and Krieger come face to face with each other, and with their past, we get to hear the real truth of what it was like to be in The Doors.
Whose idea was it to finally release Feast Of Friends?
Robby: I don’t know. Maybe the fans. We interact a lot online with the fans, and I think they really wanted to see it – the whole thing, rather than just pieces stuck into other films.
Why now?
Robby: Maybe we need the money now.
John: As the late, great Ray Manzarek would say, it’s an alignment of the stars. It’s a cosmic conjunction of planets that made this moment happen.
Was the release of Feast Of Friends in any way prompted by the passing of Ray?
Robby: No, nothing like that.
Did you initially have any reservations about making the film?
Robby: I thought it was kind of a waste of money, actually.
How do you feel now?
Robby: I wish we’d done it more now. I wish we had done all of our tours like that, with a film crew.
Was it painful or joyful watching the footage this time around?
Robby: It was fun because I hadn’t seen it for a long time all together like that. It was very enjoyable.
John: To me it was poignant. Two Doors are gone, and seeing Jim and Ray on the sailboat at the end, it’s very touching. It has the beautiful adagio for strings, and you’re seeing this beautiful sailboat, and Jim, and Ray. It’s powerful.
Will it shed a new light on The Doors?
Robby: I think so. I even said to myself: “Man, when people see this who have already seen [Oliver Stone’s 1991] The Doors movie, and they think that’s how Jim was, that he was a total idiot, and now they’ll see him as a real person... how brilliant he is, a real person.” Talking to the priest and stuff like that. I know that always bothered Ray a lot, the fact the movie... As good as The Doors movie was – I thought it was a great rock’n’roll movie – the script was just so stupid.
John: Wait a minute. It’s really good but it’s stupid? Which is it?
Robby: As a rock’n’roll movie, it’s good. I think it’s one of the best rock’n’roll movies out there.
John: Oliver chose to do the tortured artist, and he showed a lot of the torture.
Robby: He showed a lot of the drunk, none of the guy who was a real person.
John: The only thing that bothered me is it didn’t have enough of the sixties for me.
Robby: It didn’t have enough of the guitar player for me.
The two of you were involved in a long and bitter legal battle. What brought about the reconciliation?
John: Time. Passing of Ray.
Robby: All of the above. We still hate each other.
John: There was a screening of another documentary, Mr Mojo Risin’: The Story Of LA Woman at the [Los Angeles] County Museum. They wanted a Q&A, and we did our blah, blah, and it was really cool that we played music for ten minutes – just the guitar and hand drums. We hadn’t played these songs in a long time. It was sweet, man. For me, in four bars I was back. It was the old days.
Did you remain in contact in the years of the dispute?
John: Not too much.
Robby: Just in court [laughs].
Is there a sadness that you didn’t reconcile when Ray was around?
John: I was very thankful that he picked up the phone when I called him after I heard he was really getting sick. We didn’t talk about any of the struggles, we just talked about his health problems. But it was healing, that’s for sure.
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
Next year marks The Doors’ fiftieth anniversary. How do you feel about the band’s legacy?
John: It’s all about the drumming, really. Not the guitar playing. Think about it. If you’ve got a band with a shitty drummer, you’re ****ed; if you’ve got a band with a shitty guitar player, you can skate by [laughs and effects a rim shot]. That was a joke.
Robby: No. It’s just another number. Fifty-one is just as good.
Are you happy to have the band’s legacy intact, or would you have preferred to have carried on and become something like the Rolling Stones?
Robby: Obviously we wish that Jim and Ray were still here and we could still play if we wanted to. The fact is we didn’t have a choice. A lot of bands play too long. But you just never know. Unless it would have happened you can’t say whether it would be good or bad.
John: Yes and no. Jim’s twenty-seven forever. Everyone always says: “Well, if Jim was around today would he be in AA, clean and sober, dude?” I always said: “Nah. He was a kamikaze drunk.”
John, in your book Riders On The Storm you wrote: “I had no idea it was going to be that dark of a band.” Were you surprised by the direction the band took?
John: Jim’s self-destruction was hard. It wasn’t fun. I knew we were making magic, and there was a crazy guy in the band. No one could stop him. Not every artist is self-destructive and creative. In his case it came in the same package, so it wasn’t easy.
Do you consider The Doors a dark band?
Robby: In some ways, but not always. Jim could be really funny sometimes. Probably the dark outweighed the light. I don’t think that was on purpose, that’s just the way it came out.
Robby, you said that the first day you got together you thought you were as good as the Rolling Stones.
Robby: It just felt like: “This works, man. This is a band that could go all the way.” I had been in different band situations before that – not very many – but this was just a cut above everything.
The original band were only together for a little over five years, yet you’ve found yourselves spending the next forty-five years talking about them. Has it been frustrating to reflect on it rather than live it?
Robby: Yes. It would have been better to live it.
John: It’s been downhill ever since you wrote that ****ing Light My Fire.
Is it hard to have your lives defined by something you did so long ago?
Robby: It’s a good problem to have.
Are you both at peace with the idea of being known as John Densmore of The Doors and Robby Krieger of The Doors? Is that something you wrestled with?
Robby: I fought against it for a while. I had all my solo albums, and I never wanted to play Doors songs for a long time. Then I’d start seeing all these Doors tribute bands. Then one day I went and sat in with Wild Child and they were having so much fun. I’m going: “How come they get to have all the fun?” So I started doing more Doors stuff in my band.
Is that the same for you, John?
John: I’m coming back around, yeah. In Riders On The Storm I wrote that ‘of The Doors’ is permanently etched on my forehead. And I’ve come to terms with that. I remember Ray saying to both of us: “It’s better to have been in The Doors than not.”
What is your happiest memory of The Doors?
John: The early days, when we’re making the transition from the Whisky to small concert halls and I’m sensing: “Goddamn, we are going to make a living at this. The train’s leaving the station. It’s going to happen.” The mass adulation of Madison Square Garden is great, but sensing that we’re going to have a career playing music... ****, man, that’s the ultimate.
Robby: Maybe hearing Light My Fire go to number one on the radio. We were just sitting around the table listening to the Top Ten countdown, and when Stevie Wonder came up at number two we knew we were number one. That was pretty cool.
Do you have any regrets?
Robby: We could have tried harder to keep Jim from killing himself. But in those days that wasn’t cool. You didn’t intervene with somebody’s drug problem.
John: We tried. We tried to have a meeting, and he didn’t show up.
Robby: He did, remember? He came to my dad’s house that day and we talked, and he quit drinking for about a week. We did a couple of things like that. He definitely knew that we weren’t cool with it. But he couldn’t control himself, basically. He was on a runaway train, and the only way to get off is jump off, and you’re going too fast. That’s how I always thought of it. My dad tried to convince him to go and see a shrink.
John: He went for one session and put the guy on the whole time [laughs].
Robby: The problem was he was probably smarter than any psychiatrist.
John: It’s all about the drumming, really. Not the guitar playing. Think about it. If you’ve got a band with a shitty drummer, you’re ****ed; if you’ve got a band with a shitty guitar player, you can skate by [laughs and effects a rim shot]. That was a joke.
Robby: No. It’s just another number. Fifty-one is just as good.
Are you happy to have the band’s legacy intact, or would you have preferred to have carried on and become something like the Rolling Stones?
Robby: Obviously we wish that Jim and Ray were still here and we could still play if we wanted to. The fact is we didn’t have a choice. A lot of bands play too long. But you just never know. Unless it would have happened you can’t say whether it would be good or bad.
John: Yes and no. Jim’s twenty-seven forever. Everyone always says: “Well, if Jim was around today would he be in AA, clean and sober, dude?” I always said: “Nah. He was a kamikaze drunk.”
John, in your book Riders On The Storm you wrote: “I had no idea it was going to be that dark of a band.” Were you surprised by the direction the band took?
John: Jim’s self-destruction was hard. It wasn’t fun. I knew we were making magic, and there was a crazy guy in the band. No one could stop him. Not every artist is self-destructive and creative. In his case it came in the same package, so it wasn’t easy.
Do you consider The Doors a dark band?
Robby: In some ways, but not always. Jim could be really funny sometimes. Probably the dark outweighed the light. I don’t think that was on purpose, that’s just the way it came out.
Robby, you said that the first day you got together you thought you were as good as the Rolling Stones.
Robby: It just felt like: “This works, man. This is a band that could go all the way.” I had been in different band situations before that – not very many – but this was just a cut above everything.
The original band were only together for a little over five years, yet you’ve found yourselves spending the next forty-five years talking about them. Has it been frustrating to reflect on it rather than live it?
Robby: Yes. It would have been better to live it.
John: It’s been downhill ever since you wrote that ****ing Light My Fire.
Is it hard to have your lives defined by something you did so long ago?
Robby: It’s a good problem to have.
Are you both at peace with the idea of being known as John Densmore of The Doors and Robby Krieger of The Doors? Is that something you wrestled with?
Robby: I fought against it for a while. I had all my solo albums, and I never wanted to play Doors songs for a long time. Then I’d start seeing all these Doors tribute bands. Then one day I went and sat in with Wild Child and they were having so much fun. I’m going: “How come they get to have all the fun?” So I started doing more Doors stuff in my band.
Is that the same for you, John?
John: I’m coming back around, yeah. In Riders On The Storm I wrote that ‘of The Doors’ is permanently etched on my forehead. And I’ve come to terms with that. I remember Ray saying to both of us: “It’s better to have been in The Doors than not.”
What is your happiest memory of The Doors?
John: The early days, when we’re making the transition from the Whisky to small concert halls and I’m sensing: “Goddamn, we are going to make a living at this. The train’s leaving the station. It’s going to happen.” The mass adulation of Madison Square Garden is great, but sensing that we’re going to have a career playing music... ****, man, that’s the ultimate.
Robby: Maybe hearing Light My Fire go to number one on the radio. We were just sitting around the table listening to the Top Ten countdown, and when Stevie Wonder came up at number two we knew we were number one. That was pretty cool.
Do you have any regrets?
Robby: We could have tried harder to keep Jim from killing himself. But in those days that wasn’t cool. You didn’t intervene with somebody’s drug problem.
John: We tried. We tried to have a meeting, and he didn’t show up.
Robby: He did, remember? He came to my dad’s house that day and we talked, and he quit drinking for about a week. We did a couple of things like that. He definitely knew that we weren’t cool with it. But he couldn’t control himself, basically. He was on a runaway train, and the only way to get off is jump off, and you’re going too fast. That’s how I always thought of it. My dad tried to convince him to go and see a shrink.
John: He went for one session and put the guy on the whole time [laughs].
Robby: The problem was he was probably smarter than any psychiatrist.
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
After Jim’s death you carried on, recording two more albums. How tough a decision was it to keep going?
Robby: It was very tough.
John: It wasn’t tough at all.
Robby: I mean, you knew it was not going to be easy because our front guy had gone, but what else could we do? We didn’t want to replace Jim, because how could you do that? And to just go on ourselves without any frontman was not something we wanted to do. But we liked playing together.
John: That’s what I was going to say. It wasn’t tough. We didn’t want to give up what the trio had musically developed together. We just read each other’s lives, musically.
At one point, John, you said: “The Doors without Jim is like the Stones without Mick. That’s ludicrous.” Yet the three of you decided to carry on together without Jim. How were you able to reconcile that?
John: We had a very lucrative deal for five albums after Jim died, and we only did two, so I think we realised we’re missing the guy in the leather. Without Jim it was falling apart. He was the glue.
Robby: Well, we actually went to England. We all moved over to England after the second album, to try and find a singer.
John: Don’t tell the truth.
Robby: We were all over in England, and it was kind of stressful because of the horrible place we’re living in. They’d turn the electricity off at night. Then John and I said: “We think the band should go in a hard rock direction.” Ray wanted to go more jazz, so that was it for him.
Was it difficult to adapt to life after The Doors?
Robby: When you’re in The Doors, life is not very realistic – limos and all that stuff. So when it was over, you say: “What am I going to do the rest of the time?” It becomes a problem. Not musically. I had various bands that I was doing, and we knew that none of them would ever be as big as The Doors, but you can’t stop playing music.
John: [To Robby] Do you get recognised much, like when you’re just at the market or something?
Robby: I average once a day.
John: It’s sort of increased because of the web and all that shit.
Robby: Before, it wasn’t so much because you’d gotten older and people don’t recognise you.
John: They know what we look like now. I’m not crazy about it interfering with my private life.
Robby: You have to blend in more, John. See, you gotta stop wearing those shoes. [Densmore is wearing black Vans customised with neon piping.]
Is it a nice experience to be recognised?
Robby: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Like the one guy that came up to me. I was at a stop sign, and he came running up to the car and said: “Hey, you Robby Krieger?” “Yes.” “You and I have to take acid and die together!”
John: When my kid’s in school he gets: “Is your dad...?” And I said: “If you’re hassled a lot about it, just say: “No, he’s not my dad!” And they’ll go: “Okay,” and walk away.
John, it’s fair to say you had an uneasy relationship with Jim. How would you describe it?
John: Love-hate. I loved him for his creativity, hated him for his self-destruction. But, as Robby says, in retrospect, with time, he couldn’t help it. It’s more love now.
He had a profound impact on you too, Robby. In one article you stated: “Dealing with Jim kind of changed me, too.” How did it change you?
Robby: It would change anybody. He was the most influential person in my life, except for my parents. That’s how he was. I think people sensed that, even in the audience.
John, you talked of being intimidated by Jim. What was intimidating about him?
John: He was really well read, and I wasn’t. Musically he didn’t know what I knew, but I didn’t know what he knew as far as reading and literature. Now I am slightly caught up. I keep getting blown away by his poetry and lyrics.
Do you think he was trying to be intimidating?
John: No!
Robby: Oh yeah!
John: No. Yeah! He would manipulate people.
Robby: He would take acid, and he would always find the guy who was taking it for the first time and he’d try and freak the guy out; he’d turn the lights on and off real fast or something like that. He liked to be in control. He liked manipulating buttons.
John: He liked pushing boundaries. Testing people.
Jim would frequently quote the William Blake line: ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’. Was he was trying to live by these words?
Robby: Yeah, he did try to. One time when he contracted syphilis, and he heard that if you get syphilis you go crazy, he said: “I’m not going to go to the doctor. I’m going to see if I really get crazy [laughs]” He lasted about a week before he went to the doctor.
When Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died, given Jim’s excesses did you think perhaps he would be next?
Robby: Yes, especially when he said that.
John: He intimated that you’re drinking with number three.
Robby, you once said: “It would have been so great if we’d just had a guy like Sting, a normal guy who’s extremely talented too. Someone who didn’t have to be on the verge of life and death every second of his life.”
Robby: I did say that. It would have been. Not Sting himself, maybe. But, hey, it would have been great if Jim hadn’t had the demons and could still write that stuff. Maybe that’s impossible, I don’t know.
John: In his case, no. The weight of the demons was on us too.
Robby: It was very tough.
John: It wasn’t tough at all.
Robby: I mean, you knew it was not going to be easy because our front guy had gone, but what else could we do? We didn’t want to replace Jim, because how could you do that? And to just go on ourselves without any frontman was not something we wanted to do. But we liked playing together.
John: That’s what I was going to say. It wasn’t tough. We didn’t want to give up what the trio had musically developed together. We just read each other’s lives, musically.
At one point, John, you said: “The Doors without Jim is like the Stones without Mick. That’s ludicrous.” Yet the three of you decided to carry on together without Jim. How were you able to reconcile that?
John: We had a very lucrative deal for five albums after Jim died, and we only did two, so I think we realised we’re missing the guy in the leather. Without Jim it was falling apart. He was the glue.
Robby: Well, we actually went to England. We all moved over to England after the second album, to try and find a singer.
John: Don’t tell the truth.
Robby: We were all over in England, and it was kind of stressful because of the horrible place we’re living in. They’d turn the electricity off at night. Then John and I said: “We think the band should go in a hard rock direction.” Ray wanted to go more jazz, so that was it for him.
Was it difficult to adapt to life after The Doors?
Robby: When you’re in The Doors, life is not very realistic – limos and all that stuff. So when it was over, you say: “What am I going to do the rest of the time?” It becomes a problem. Not musically. I had various bands that I was doing, and we knew that none of them would ever be as big as The Doors, but you can’t stop playing music.
John: [To Robby] Do you get recognised much, like when you’re just at the market or something?
Robby: I average once a day.
John: It’s sort of increased because of the web and all that shit.
Robby: Before, it wasn’t so much because you’d gotten older and people don’t recognise you.
John: They know what we look like now. I’m not crazy about it interfering with my private life.
Robby: You have to blend in more, John. See, you gotta stop wearing those shoes. [Densmore is wearing black Vans customised with neon piping.]
Is it a nice experience to be recognised?
Robby: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Like the one guy that came up to me. I was at a stop sign, and he came running up to the car and said: “Hey, you Robby Krieger?” “Yes.” “You and I have to take acid and die together!”
John: When my kid’s in school he gets: “Is your dad...?” And I said: “If you’re hassled a lot about it, just say: “No, he’s not my dad!” And they’ll go: “Okay,” and walk away.
John, it’s fair to say you had an uneasy relationship with Jim. How would you describe it?
John: Love-hate. I loved him for his creativity, hated him for his self-destruction. But, as Robby says, in retrospect, with time, he couldn’t help it. It’s more love now.
He had a profound impact on you too, Robby. In one article you stated: “Dealing with Jim kind of changed me, too.” How did it change you?
Robby: It would change anybody. He was the most influential person in my life, except for my parents. That’s how he was. I think people sensed that, even in the audience.
John, you talked of being intimidated by Jim. What was intimidating about him?
John: He was really well read, and I wasn’t. Musically he didn’t know what I knew, but I didn’t know what he knew as far as reading and literature. Now I am slightly caught up. I keep getting blown away by his poetry and lyrics.
Do you think he was trying to be intimidating?
John: No!
Robby: Oh yeah!
John: No. Yeah! He would manipulate people.
Robby: He would take acid, and he would always find the guy who was taking it for the first time and he’d try and freak the guy out; he’d turn the lights on and off real fast or something like that. He liked to be in control. He liked manipulating buttons.
John: He liked pushing boundaries. Testing people.
Jim would frequently quote the William Blake line: ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’. Was he was trying to live by these words?
Robby: Yeah, he did try to. One time when he contracted syphilis, and he heard that if you get syphilis you go crazy, he said: “I’m not going to go to the doctor. I’m going to see if I really get crazy [laughs]” He lasted about a week before he went to the doctor.
When Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died, given Jim’s excesses did you think perhaps he would be next?
Robby: Yes, especially when he said that.
John: He intimated that you’re drinking with number three.
Robby, you once said: “It would have been so great if we’d just had a guy like Sting, a normal guy who’s extremely talented too. Someone who didn’t have to be on the verge of life and death every second of his life.”
Robby: I did say that. It would have been. Not Sting himself, maybe. But, hey, it would have been great if Jim hadn’t had the demons and could still write that stuff. Maybe that’s impossible, I don’t know.
John: In his case, no. The weight of the demons was on us too.
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
In your book, John, you wrote: “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be relaxed and fun being in a famous rock’n’roll band.” It appears that you weren’t able to enjoy your success.
John: It was just, phew, man! I used to go to the Whisky and hear Love, and I’d think: “I’m ****ing better than that drummer. Why am I not in that band? Why am in this band with this crazy guy?” I don’t feel that way at all now. I also thought I could have played in The Byrds easy, with one hand. But apparently this band has gravitas, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.
John, during the recording of the Waiting For The Sun album, you were getting headaches and stress-related rashes.
John: I had a ****ing rash for a couple of years. No stress [laughs]. That’s the weight of the demons, the elephant in the room, and nobody’s acknowledging it. I think they say that in AA. There’s elephant shit everywhere, but that’s our meal ticket. Keep it quiet. I was sick, but I was psychologically sick too. Like: “What’s going to happen to Jim? Oh ****!”
Robby, your relationship with Jim seemed rather less strained. Why do you think that was?
Robby: I don’t know. It just didn’t bother me as much as it did John, maybe. To me, it was: “Okay, this is how it’s supposed to be in a rock’n’roll band.”
When did things start to change with Jim?
Robby: As soon as we got big. Billy James, who was the guy that signed us to Columbia Records, told us: “If that guy ever gets power, look out!” [Laughs] That’s when Jim got power, when the Whisky started happening, and people started sucking up to him. There was no filter.
What was life like on the road with The Doors?
Robby: It was usually a constant worry about where Jim was. I don’t know why we worried, he always showed up for the gig. He’d just take off with anybody and take whatever drugs they had. There was a time in Amsterdam, somebody gave him a block of hashish and he just swallowed it and ended up in the hospital. That was the gig he missed.
Did you feel that the New Haven incident, in which the policeman sprayed Mace at Morrison backstage prior to the show, marked the beginning of the end?
John: I didn’t know it was the beginning of the end, but it was pretty scary. The cop pushed his buttons and he pushed them back.
Were you fearful that it might all suddenly just end?
Robby: I wasn’t. I thought: “This is pretty cool, man, the cops up on stage.”
John: Dragging him off stage and kicking the shit out of him, that was cool?
Robby: Well, I didn’t know they were going to beat the shit out of him. The audience never forgot it. It made the movie.
At one point you wanted to stop doing live shows. Why was that?
John: Jim’s alcoholism. There wasn’t any control when we played live. What was so tragic for me was we were really good live and I didn’t want to see that eroded. If he was loaded in the studio we could go home. There weren’t ten thousand people watching.
John, you were the last member of The Doors to speak with Jim, when he called you from Paris and talked about coming back to work with the band again. Given your strained relationship, were you happy for him to remain in Paris?
John: Like I said, I loved him for his creativity and I miss those words and melodies. I was also extremely worried about his health. He sounded kind of ****ed up on the phone. I was trying to see if he was loaded. A little bit.
But you would have welcomed him coming back?
John: If he had cleaned up. I love the French, but unfortunately they drink wine for breakfast.
The band’s fortunes were waning somewhat at the time of Jim’s death. Did you feel that things were beginning to fall apart?
Robby: Pretty much, yeah. That wasn’t the best time. We couldn’t really play anywhere because there was a thing called the Hall Owners Association and they had banned us pretty much from playing any of the good places.
What was your initial reaction when you got the news of Jim’s death?
Robby: I didn’t believe it at first. There were always rumours of Jim’s death. So we didn’t really believe it. We sent our manager, Bill Siddons, over to Paris to see what had happened. Then he came back and said it was all true. “Well, did you see the body?” “No.” They buried him, like, the day after. No autopsy, no nothing. We had no doubt that he had died, though.
Was there ever a sense of guilt?
John: I don’t feel guilty now, because I just did what I could then. But I’m not the same person I was then. You know this question: “Would you do it differently?” It’s like: “Yes. Hopefully I would learn from what I went through.” And: “No, because I’m proud of what we’ve done.” So yes and no to that.
Has there been a point when you’ve felt guilty, Robby?
Robby: No, not really. Because in a way Jim got what he wanted. He really was interested in death. Not that he wanted to die, but he was so curious about it. I think he really didn’t plan to live very long. I really didn’t feel bad for him. Not at all. He was not a happy camper, especially in the last days. The whole trial thing going on and all that. Everybody says: “Well, he got fat on purpose and he was trying to stop being a rock star.” I don’t think that’s true. I think he just got fat. I don’t think he liked it that much. I think he was fat and unhappy.
Why did you decide to re-form The Doors in 2002?
John: Oh ****. That’s a whole can of worms. I have another three-hundred-page diatribe on that.
Robby: Like I said, I had been doing more Doors songs in my band, and I called Ray one day and said: “Hey, we haven’t played this stuff for thirty years. Want to try it again?” Actually, we got together to do this VH1 Storytellers [in 2000], and we had different singers, and John played on that. That went very well so we decided this might work.
John: First I said: “Robby, why don’t we don’t go on tour with a bunch of singers so we don’t fall into the trap of one guy.” Which you said was a great idea, but too expensive. True. Then I got this ringing in my ears around that time – tinnitus. I couldn’t go.
Now, as you reflect back over nearly fifty years as a member of The Doors, with all the highs and lows that it’s entailed, was it all worth it?
John: Worth the struggle? Yes. Apparently. People seemed to like what we did. And Robby got a bunch of money, which is what he’s interested in.
Robby: Yes. Never a doubt.
John: It was just, phew, man! I used to go to the Whisky and hear Love, and I’d think: “I’m ****ing better than that drummer. Why am I not in that band? Why am in this band with this crazy guy?” I don’t feel that way at all now. I also thought I could have played in The Byrds easy, with one hand. But apparently this band has gravitas, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.
John, during the recording of the Waiting For The Sun album, you were getting headaches and stress-related rashes.
John: I had a ****ing rash for a couple of years. No stress [laughs]. That’s the weight of the demons, the elephant in the room, and nobody’s acknowledging it. I think they say that in AA. There’s elephant shit everywhere, but that’s our meal ticket. Keep it quiet. I was sick, but I was psychologically sick too. Like: “What’s going to happen to Jim? Oh ****!”
Robby, your relationship with Jim seemed rather less strained. Why do you think that was?
Robby: I don’t know. It just didn’t bother me as much as it did John, maybe. To me, it was: “Okay, this is how it’s supposed to be in a rock’n’roll band.”
When did things start to change with Jim?
Robby: As soon as we got big. Billy James, who was the guy that signed us to Columbia Records, told us: “If that guy ever gets power, look out!” [Laughs] That’s when Jim got power, when the Whisky started happening, and people started sucking up to him. There was no filter.
What was life like on the road with The Doors?
Robby: It was usually a constant worry about where Jim was. I don’t know why we worried, he always showed up for the gig. He’d just take off with anybody and take whatever drugs they had. There was a time in Amsterdam, somebody gave him a block of hashish and he just swallowed it and ended up in the hospital. That was the gig he missed.
Did you feel that the New Haven incident, in which the policeman sprayed Mace at Morrison backstage prior to the show, marked the beginning of the end?
John: I didn’t know it was the beginning of the end, but it was pretty scary. The cop pushed his buttons and he pushed them back.
Were you fearful that it might all suddenly just end?
Robby: I wasn’t. I thought: “This is pretty cool, man, the cops up on stage.”
John: Dragging him off stage and kicking the shit out of him, that was cool?
Robby: Well, I didn’t know they were going to beat the shit out of him. The audience never forgot it. It made the movie.
At one point you wanted to stop doing live shows. Why was that?
John: Jim’s alcoholism. There wasn’t any control when we played live. What was so tragic for me was we were really good live and I didn’t want to see that eroded. If he was loaded in the studio we could go home. There weren’t ten thousand people watching.
John, you were the last member of The Doors to speak with Jim, when he called you from Paris and talked about coming back to work with the band again. Given your strained relationship, were you happy for him to remain in Paris?
John: Like I said, I loved him for his creativity and I miss those words and melodies. I was also extremely worried about his health. He sounded kind of ****ed up on the phone. I was trying to see if he was loaded. A little bit.
But you would have welcomed him coming back?
John: If he had cleaned up. I love the French, but unfortunately they drink wine for breakfast.
The band’s fortunes were waning somewhat at the time of Jim’s death. Did you feel that things were beginning to fall apart?
Robby: Pretty much, yeah. That wasn’t the best time. We couldn’t really play anywhere because there was a thing called the Hall Owners Association and they had banned us pretty much from playing any of the good places.
What was your initial reaction when you got the news of Jim’s death?
Robby: I didn’t believe it at first. There were always rumours of Jim’s death. So we didn’t really believe it. We sent our manager, Bill Siddons, over to Paris to see what had happened. Then he came back and said it was all true. “Well, did you see the body?” “No.” They buried him, like, the day after. No autopsy, no nothing. We had no doubt that he had died, though.
Was there ever a sense of guilt?
John: I don’t feel guilty now, because I just did what I could then. But I’m not the same person I was then. You know this question: “Would you do it differently?” It’s like: “Yes. Hopefully I would learn from what I went through.” And: “No, because I’m proud of what we’ve done.” So yes and no to that.
Has there been a point when you’ve felt guilty, Robby?
Robby: No, not really. Because in a way Jim got what he wanted. He really was interested in death. Not that he wanted to die, but he was so curious about it. I think he really didn’t plan to live very long. I really didn’t feel bad for him. Not at all. He was not a happy camper, especially in the last days. The whole trial thing going on and all that. Everybody says: “Well, he got fat on purpose and he was trying to stop being a rock star.” I don’t think that’s true. I think he just got fat. I don’t think he liked it that much. I think he was fat and unhappy.
Why did you decide to re-form The Doors in 2002?
John: Oh ****. That’s a whole can of worms. I have another three-hundred-page diatribe on that.
Robby: Like I said, I had been doing more Doors songs in my band, and I called Ray one day and said: “Hey, we haven’t played this stuff for thirty years. Want to try it again?” Actually, we got together to do this VH1 Storytellers [in 2000], and we had different singers, and John played on that. That went very well so we decided this might work.
John: First I said: “Robby, why don’t we don’t go on tour with a bunch of singers so we don’t fall into the trap of one guy.” Which you said was a great idea, but too expensive. True. Then I got this ringing in my ears around that time – tinnitus. I couldn’t go.
Now, as you reflect back over nearly fifty years as a member of The Doors, with all the highs and lows that it’s entailed, was it all worth it?
John: Worth the struggle? Yes. Apparently. People seemed to like what we did. And Robby got a bunch of money, which is what he’s interested in.
Robby: Yes. Never a doubt.
Johnny-Too-Good
Senior Member
44 Years Since Jim's Final Performance With The Doors
Jim Morrison was already in a headlong downward spiral by the time he performed his final show with the Doors. Mired in a losing battle with alcohol, the troubled singer had multiple legal woes hanging over his head when he took the stage at the Warehouse in New Orleans on Dec. 12, 1970. The disastrous performance would bring the group to a screeching halt and prove sadly prophetic for the doomed singer, who had only months to live.
The once-svelte Morrison had carved out a unique niche with his hyper-sexualized stage persona and leather pants, but by 1970 his severe drinking problem had turned him into a sad caricature of his former self — an overweight, bloated alcoholic with a scruffy-looking beard, whose performances sometimes degenerated into wrenching self-parody.
Morrison’s burgeoning problems with alcohol also made him wildly unpredictable as a performer; he was arrested onstage at a gig in New Haven in December 1967, and charged with exposing himself at a concert in Miami on March 1, 1969, causing many venues to ban the Doors outright. The group retreated to the studio to record what would become ‘L.A. Woman,’ and at the New Orleans gig — one of only two scheduled — they debuted several of those new songs, as well as performing their existing hits.
But midway through the set, Morrison began to forget the words to songs, and then tried to compensate by launching into a long, rambling joke that fell flat. The singer was reportedly hanging on to the mic stand for support as the group launched into ‘Light My Fire,’ and during the solos he went and sat down on the drum riser, failing to get up to sing the last verse. Drummer John Densmore finally nudged the recalcitrant singer with his foot, whereupon Morrison went over to the mic stand and repeatedly smashed it into the stage until it splintered, then threw down the mic and abruptly walked off stage, ending the show early.
The other band members had a meeting at which they agreed that the New Orleans show should be their live swan song, since Morrison’s unpredictability — as well as the charges from Miami — made further touring impractical. Morrison participated in the recording sessions for ‘L.A. Woman,’ then went to Paris in March while the rest of the band finished up the mixing sessions. Released in April, the album was a huge hit, spawning such lasting classics as the title song, ‘Love Her Madly’ and ‘Riders on the Storm.’
Sadly, it would also be the group’s final recording with Morrison; the singer was found dead in his bathtub in Paris on July 3, 1971.
Jim Morrison was already in a headlong downward spiral by the time he performed his final show with the Doors. Mired in a losing battle with alcohol, the troubled singer had multiple legal woes hanging over his head when he took the stage at the Warehouse in New Orleans on Dec. 12, 1970. The disastrous performance would bring the group to a screeching halt and prove sadly prophetic for the doomed singer, who had only months to live.
The once-svelte Morrison had carved out a unique niche with his hyper-sexualized stage persona and leather pants, but by 1970 his severe drinking problem had turned him into a sad caricature of his former self — an overweight, bloated alcoholic with a scruffy-looking beard, whose performances sometimes degenerated into wrenching self-parody.
Morrison’s burgeoning problems with alcohol also made him wildly unpredictable as a performer; he was arrested onstage at a gig in New Haven in December 1967, and charged with exposing himself at a concert in Miami on March 1, 1969, causing many venues to ban the Doors outright. The group retreated to the studio to record what would become ‘L.A. Woman,’ and at the New Orleans gig — one of only two scheduled — they debuted several of those new songs, as well as performing their existing hits.
But midway through the set, Morrison began to forget the words to songs, and then tried to compensate by launching into a long, rambling joke that fell flat. The singer was reportedly hanging on to the mic stand for support as the group launched into ‘Light My Fire,’ and during the solos he went and sat down on the drum riser, failing to get up to sing the last verse. Drummer John Densmore finally nudged the recalcitrant singer with his foot, whereupon Morrison went over to the mic stand and repeatedly smashed it into the stage until it splintered, then threw down the mic and abruptly walked off stage, ending the show early.
The other band members had a meeting at which they agreed that the New Orleans show should be their live swan song, since Morrison’s unpredictability — as well as the charges from Miami — made further touring impractical. Morrison participated in the recording sessions for ‘L.A. Woman,’ then went to Paris in March while the rest of the band finished up the mixing sessions. Released in April, the album was a huge hit, spawning such lasting classics as the title song, ‘Love Her Madly’ and ‘Riders on the Storm.’
Sadly, it would also be the group’s final recording with Morrison; the singer was found dead in his bathtub in Paris on July 3, 1971.
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