Yahoo Lifestyle The Doors’ John Densmore and Robby Krieger on Their 60th Anniversary, Archival Concert Recordings and the L.A. Fires (EXCLUSIVE)
Before John Densmore exits a conversation about 2025’s celebration of the Doors’ 60th anniversary with alive-and-thriving guitarist Robby Krieger, the drummer jokes about another six-decade-old ensemble. “Maybe Robby and I should join with Paul and Ringo,” Densmore says. “That’d be something. The two Fab Four guys are making great new music like Robby and I. Who knows?”
Rhino/Elektra started 2025 by unveiling the Doors’ iconic Bright Midnight Archives recordings on DSPs (rare concerts existing previously on limited-edition vinyl). Genesis Publishing is prepping its colorful, archival coffee-table tome “Night Divides the Day: The Doors Anthology,” for May release. Krieger and Densmore each realize that the 60-year legacy of the Doors — their innovative, influential partnership with lizard king poet Jim Morrison (who died in 1971) and organist-pianist Ray Manzarek (who passed 2013) — and the continued sales of their Rhino catalog, including new rarity releases, is the headline for this story. But, Densmore is quick to note, “We’re not dead yet. Legacy is odd to discuss when you’re still working. I’m proud of the Doors, and I like looking forward.”
Densmore and Krieger, like McCartney and Starr, make new music a priority, even when that means intertwining the music of the Doors through the lens of fresh material.
“I play Doors stuff live – I’m the only one doing so on an ongoing basis – with my own new compositions,” states Krieger, who’ll begin a monthly residency at West Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go in March, essaying different Doors records with each gig. The guitarist has released jazzy psychedelic solo albums since 1977, and debuted Robby Krieger and the Soul Savages (with his singing son Waylon “capturing the soul of Jim”) and its eponymous album last year. Densmore is readying an electro-acoustic jazz album with Miles Davis keyboardist Adam Holzman (“son of Jac, who signed us to Elektra”), and his self-anointed “alt-hip-hop” project with Public Enemy’s Chuck D, doPE (“Chuck’s graphic has a Doors’ logo’s small ‘de’ and ‘PE’ in capital letters”) titled “No Country for Old Men.”
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Thinking back to first playing in Manzarek’s parents’ garage in Manhattan Beach with Morrison in attendance (“Jim was so fucking shy, he wouldn’t sing”), Densmore brings his past into his present by recalling the nascent Doors’ debut jam. “I asked Ray if he knew Miles’ ‘All Blues,’ which he did, so we played it. Now, that Elektra’s CEO’s son – who idolized Ray – and I are playing ‘All Blues’ on our new album. Pretty cool.”
Then again, the past is the present for the Doors’ fresh fans and new listeners.
“People ask me all the time why teens and millennials are interested in our dinosaur band. Maybe it’s the drums,” says Densmore imitating a rim-shot-and-cymbal-smash. “My roots are in playing jazz, so there’s that swing. The Doors had a genius songwriter who always improvised – he was no musician, so to remember the words, he had to invent incredible melodies – and I knew how to improvise behind him. I respond to melodies, intuitively. I think listeners respond to immediacy. And the songs. I can remember Jim singing ‘Crystal Ship’ for us.” Densmore begins to sing it haunting first phrases, before laughing and stopping. “That’s a complex melody to go with complicated poetry like that. And he just thought all that up on the spot.”
Spotting influence from Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones, Densmore recalls one of Morrison’s impromptu riffs during “When the Music’s Over” (“What have they done to the earth / What have they done to our fair sister”) and the freedom each inspired in the other. “And Ray and I were so connected. He was a marvel as a keyboardist, with me being really fortunate that he had that left hand on the bass – that was the rhythmic mattress for Robby and Jim to do their thing. Without a bassist, the Doors were free.”
Krieger recalls meeting Manzarek at a Los Angeles meditation center at the time of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s arrival in the U.S., a spiritual leader whose words inspired Morrison to write “Take It as It Comes” for the first Doors album. “The meditation and the Indian classical music that often came with that was a great substitution for acid,” says Krieger, stifling a laugh. “The first time I took acid, the real Sandoz acid from Europe, it was amazing, the coolest-ever trip. After that, it all went downhill. You chased the thrill of that first experience and it never quite happened. The meditation worked though, and I convinced Densmore to come with me.” Densmore was already part of Morrison and Manzarek’s Doors in 1965, who recorded a six-track demo in September 1965 at L.A.’s World Pacific Studios. Not long after these sessions, Krieger joined the band. “Jim really liked my bottleneck guitar sound, especially as they’d never heard anyone doing the electric slide. Only Mike Bloomfield was doing that slide thing before me — oddly enough, Bloomfield was the soundtrack to that first acid trip of mine.”
When it came to Krieger’s relationship to writing music with Morrison, the guitarist recalls writing songs such as “Light My Fire” while living at home with his parents in the Pacific Palisades. “Jim stayed over when my folks went on vacation and we wrote a bunch of stuff, including ‘The End,’ that were far more folky at first. The weird stuff didn’t happen until we played at the Whiskey and Jim added words and I brought in the Indian classical chords.” Here, Krieger notes that his parents’ house was one of the many that burned during the January blaze.
“Instead of writing ‘Light My Fire,’ I should’ve written ‘Don’t Light My Fire,’” he says.
It’s nice to hear that Krieger hasn’t lost his sense of humor, dark as it is.
Both Krieger and Densmore believe that the Doors’ debut album from 1967 and their fast, loose last record with Jim Morrison, 1971’s “L.A. Woman,” were their band’s finest recordings. “The sound of ‘L.A. Woman’ was the direction we were heading –— and Jim would’ve been back the next one,” says the guitarist. “Everyone said he hated music and was going to Paris to become a poet, but I knew him. He was ready.”
Drummer Densmore marvels that “somehow, on a four-track machine, in two takes we captured the dynamics and improvisational nature of ‘The End’ and ‘Light My Fire,’ on that first album, though technically they’re a mess. ‘L.A. Woman’? That was our punk album. Fuck the mistakes. Leave ‘em in… Go for the garage blues thing just like when we met. All the in-between albums such as ‘Soft Parade’ with all their horns and strings were great, but they were trying to be ‘Sgt. Pepper.'”
Both men have authored Doors-era books. Krieger penned “Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar with the Doors.” Densmore wrote “Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors.” When it comes to the May publication of “Night Divides the Day” and its due-in-April limited-edition with a 7” of with rare “Hello, I Love You” and “Moonlight Drive” demos (check pre-orders at NightDividesTheDay.com), Densmore in particular is excited. “My head gets filled with helium looking at the book. Reading maestro Gustavo Dudamel waxing on about how we’ll be remembered like Beethoven. Whoa.”
Neither man, however, is happy about the world of DSPs and the free or for-pennies availability of their cherished recorded output.
“It’s a bummer,” says Krieger about the streaming universe. “People can get our tracks and remix them, fuck around with them at their whim. I honestly wish everyone would have left the recordings alone, as they were. For that reason, only, I wish we were back in the 1960s. Music had a greater role then. More fun.”
Densmore gripes about nearly every aspect of streaming.
“Going from LPs with great art, liner notes and 30-minute-or-so programmed storylines to smaller packaged CDs for convenience was one thing,” he says. “Steaming? Holy fuck. You have to go elsewhere to see who played on it, but it’s real portable and good for ecology’s sake. OK. The streaming people, however – each technology allows corporate America a new area of playing catch up with royalties and dragging its feet to help pay artists. Spotify were sued by the Doors and Santana because we were getting paid $0.0003 per stream. Spotify lost. They appealed, lost again and now they’re supposed to pay us a 44% improvement on that royalty number, retroactively. I’m waiting. Where‘s the money? This might sound like sour grapes, and might get me killed, but the boss of Spotify is a trillionaire and still paying out $0.0003 per stream.”
That said, both Densmore and Krieger have been thrilled to see additional studio sessions attached to each new Doors’ catalog re-release and that the Bright Midnight Archives of rare, never-before-released concert recordings are being heard by loving fans and novices alike.
Densmore mentions that Bruce Botnick, the Doors’ long-time engineer and co-producer on “L.A. Woman,” is the guy who curates everything and knows every beat. “Robby and I monitor this stuff and try to keep it tasteful,” says the drummer. “At first, I thought like George Harrison, who once said anything else that comes out from the Beatles catalog after they split is going to need a surgeon general’s warning. Then I thought about all the Coltrane albums that come with countless outtakes and how the fans love hearing the process — so, fine, we’ll air out our underwear.”
All they can hope is that the underwear is clean, according to Densmore.
As for the Bright Midnight archive, the drummer believes that the Doors’ live records are the backdoor into the band’s true genius. “No bass, raw — that the was the skeleton of who were,” he says. “I’d love to see that Winterland San Francisco show come out next. I know some of the drum tracks are missing. I’m the drummer, Botnick is around. Maybe I can plug those holes.”
Krieger lights up with the mention of the 1967 Winterland gig and its prospective live album. “The fun thing about that night was that Chuck Berry opened with Doug Kershaw following him. It was right after we did ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ and that was playing on the monitors because our roadies rigged them up as we went on stage,” says the guitarist. “We were particularly ‘on’ that night because of that… Releasing the stuff from the vaults can be an ordeal, but it can be worth it when it’s material like that.”
With Krieger playing Doors albums throughout 2025 at the Whisky, both the guitarist and the drummer state that they’ll join forces on that West Hollywood club’s stage. “I’ll be playing with Robby,” says Densmore. ‘Dare I say, there’s more to come, maybe something with an all-star group down the line? There are irons in the fire is all.”
Before signing off, it is important to note after the fires that ravaged L.A. that the Doors are the quintessential Los Angeles band: the purveyors of Dionysian blues, soft, sensual psychedelia and Jim Morrison’s poetry of abandon. Los Angeles is the fifth member of the Doors. What Joni Mitchell is to Laurel Canyon, what Jefferson Airplane is to San Francisco, what the Beach Boys are to Hawthorne, the Doors are to “fantastic L.A.,” quoting Morrison’s words from “Peace Frog.”
“The L.A. Woman is hurting, but she will come back,” says Densmore. who continues to live near the Palisades.
Krieger returns to the subject of the blaze by recalling the house he grew up in, now gone with the fire, and the Doors that made his life unique. “We loved L.A.; John and I were born here. Ray and Jim ended up there at UCLA with me. Los Angeles was a perfect place to start a rock band like ours. Like Jim said, ‘The West is the best.’ You can’t go farther west than L.A., unless you count Hawaii. But what would have been the likelihood of getting four weird guys like us together in Hawaii?”
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