“Van and Jim Had Startlingly Similar Personalities: Quiet and Introverted One Minute, Loud the Next": The Doors' Robby Krieger
- by Jess Murray
AS HE RELEASES HIS FIRST EVER BOOK, 'SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE', ROBBY KRIEGER REFLECTS ON THE DOORS’ METEORIC CAREER, THE COUNTERCULTURE OF THE 1960S, AND HIS SURPRISING FONDNESS FOR GOLF AND HEROIN.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but thankfully when it comes to The Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Calling via-Zoom from his sun-drenched Californian home, Krieger explains why it’s taken so long to tell his story.
“I started writing this thing around 25 years ago,” he says. “One thing led to another and I never got around to finishing it, until the pandemic hit.”
Originally planned as a film about The Doors, Krieger wanted to focus on the early days of the band in contrast to Oliver Stone’s 1991 film The Doors.
“That movie was based mostly around when The Doors got big and Jim went crazy and all that stuff,” he notes, “so this was gonna be the early days, when I was in school and how the band started. That never got off the ground, but I did meet this guy called Jeff Alulis, who ended up being my co-writer.”
