Post by darkstar2 on Aug 2, 2008 19:16:14 GMT
Modern Guitars Magazine
October 26, 2007
By: Matt Baamonde
Robby Krieger Talks about The Doors and an Upcoming Gibson Guitar
Forty years after the Summer of Love and the release of The Doors' self-titled debut album, 61-year-old Doors guitarist Robby Krieger is a busy man. On October 15, 2007, Krieger appeared at the Berklee College of Music's Berklee Performance Center in Boston where he performed a set with Doors tribute band Morrison Crossing comprised of ex-Berklee students, and spoke to the audience and reporters on a variety of topics, past and present. The following night, Krieger took the stage at Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall as part of the Experience Hendrix Tour, an all-star guitar-centric tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Whether the result of a nostalgic fling, the enduring nature of classic rock or the eerie similarity of war-troubled times, there's ample evidence of a resurgent interest in hippie-era mood and music.
A meaningful connection exists between Boston and The Doors. On April 10, 1970, The Boston Arena served as the venue for the band's first stop on their final tour, a performance captured in the recently released 3-CD set The Doors: Live in Boston (WEA/Rhino). Given Berklee's interest in guitar and songwriting education, guitarist Krieger, who penned Doors classics such as "Light My Fire," "Love Her Madly" and "Touch Me" and has a spot on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 100 guitarists of all time, was a good fit for the Boston campus. Krieger's 30-or-so-minute set with Morrison Crossing and candid Q&A session shed light on his current playing style, The Doors' influence on punk and a Robby Krieger Signature SG that's in the works with Gibson Guitar.
The interview below represents questions from a pool of journalists who met with Robby Krieger and his manager after Krieger's public performance and interactive audience session at the Berklee College of Music on October 15, 2007.
Your guitar work seems really jazz based, even your music with the Doors sounds heavily influenced by jazz. Do you think it’s a good foundation for guitarists as a platform for their music?
Robby Krieger: Yes, of course. I think the Doors' music was based on jazz in a way because we improvised a lot. I think you should listen to as much jazz as possible to get ideas for songs.
We know you’re a guitar collector, what are some of your favorite pieces that still inspire you?
RK: I’m not really that big of a collector. I’ve got maybe 20 or 30 guitars. But I only buy ones that I play. I have a '60 Les Paul Sunburst. I’ve got an old '59 Strat that’s pretty neat. I’ve got a [Gibson] Johnny Smith, I’ve got a couple of [Gibson] Barney Kessels. I’ve got a great [Gibson] Wes Montgomery model L7, it’s like an L5 with one pickup, and then that’s really about it as far as collectible guitars.
I feel like this is a question you’ve probably been asked before. A lot of people talk about the Doors as being one of the early originators of punk. It actually did sound like you were punking up one of the songs and I’m trying to remember which one, and if I don’t know if you were consciously trying to do so at all?
RK: What, tonight?
Yea, a little bit…
RK: I don’t think so…
Maybe just live, it comes through more…
RK: “Soul Kitchen,” maybe?
Yeah, I think it was “Soul Kitchen.”
RK: Well, you know, we didn’t know we were doing it. But I think the punks did get a lot from The Doors. Iggy [Pop] of course was very influenced by Jim [Morrison] - the setting and the attitude, the punk attitude that they got from us.
Do you think that was due in part to the L.A. atmosphere?
RK: I don’t think it had anything to do with L.A. especially. I think it was just the energy that was coming out of it was almost a reaction against the flower children type deal. The punks picked up on that, you know?
Were there any reservations either from you or the band about releasing Live in Boston? Just because it was not the tightest performance but it was very energetic.
RK: Well, it took this long, let’s put it that way. It takes quite awhile to realize that the performance sometimes isn’t as important as the whole overall deal and the message. So yeah, it did take a long time.
What advice do you have for young guitarists? Where would you focus their attention?
RK: I would say, go back. Go back further than Van Halen [laughs] 'cause there is a lot of cool stuff to be learned from the guys in the '60s and '50’s and before that even. A lot of the old blues guys...there is some great stuff that you’re missing, you know, if you don’t go back that far.
I don’t want this question to come off offensive at all, but I don’t think it is. Jim Morrison - obviously complicated character. You mentioned how touring with him was a challenge. Sort of a two part: How tired do you get about hearing about Jim all the time as opposed to the music, and how annoying could he be?
RK: [Laughs] Jim was [annoying], you know. People talk about him all the time and sometimes they do overlook the music. But, they would never would have noticed the music if it weren’t for Jim, you know, and they never would have noticed Jim if it weren’t for the music. So, you have to live with both. What was the second part of the question?
Maybe it’s a little loaded the way I asked how annoying he could be. How was it to be with him?
RK: [Laughs] Well, it depends on his state of mind! If he was drunk he could be very annoying. He could be very nasty depending on his mood. And he could be the sweetest guy in the world the next day and then you’d always forgive him. So, it was a love-hate kind of deal with him.
So, there’s a Doors documentary in the works? Could you talk about that a little bit?
RK: Well, we’re getting all the footage we could find together and going through and putting together a documentary to try to tell the Doors' story in film as best we can. We got some real good people working on it. Dick Wolf’s company is producing it. They've won academy awards and stuff, so it should be good.
Krieger's Manager: Dick actually booked the band [when he was] in college. Dick Wolf was a college booker somewhere on the East Coast. What actually happened was the Doors' first album came out in January 1967, and “Light My Fire” [the second single from the album] came out in like May or June. At that time nobody knew who the Doors were. The first single ["Break On Through (To The Other Side"] had failed, had not succeeded. Dick booked the band in his college like in February or March for an appearance in August - by then, the band was the number one band in the world [thanks to the success of "Light My Fire"] and they showed up and did the gig because they agreed on the deal. He [Wolf] never forgot that. He was like a life-long fan.
He’s the “Law & Order” guy? [Dick Wolf is the creator of the television series "Law & Order"]
Krieger's Manager: Yes.
And this will be in theaters, this documentary?
Krieger's Manager: It will be a theatrical release and then a DVD and maybe cable or a special. At the beginning, you know, very beginning of the summer next year. Speaking of documentaries, there’s actually a Robby Krieger biography coming out soon.
RK: I’m writing it, my own autobiography. Maybe somebody else is too, I don’t know.
Can you tell us about the autobiography?
RK: Well, it’s about me. [Laughs] I don’t know what else to tell you.
Do you have a title?
RK: No, I don’t have one yet. But, I’m definitely writing it. Might take awhile. I wanted to wait until everybody had died, but it's taking too long.
You mentioned to learn guitar, to watch bands listen to records, develop your own style, how do you feel about a place like Berklee that is teaching the guitar?
RK: You know, there’s good points and bad points. I hear a lot of people say, "Oh, all the guys that come out of Berklee sound the same," you know, and stuff like that. But, then again, we didn’t have anything like Berklee back in those days so there’s a lot of great people that come out of here too. For some people it's probably the right thing, and others it's not. I think if you’re coming here to try to learn how to write a song, forget it. If you want to come here to learn how to be a bandleader or something a little more technical, then that’s great - an engineer, whatever. But, I don’t think anyone can teach you how to write a song or how to play the guitar.
I’m actually buddies with Greg Parulis and Mike Sims who worked with you on “Boot Yer Butt” and I was just wondering if you had plans for a second volume, you know, compiling audience recordings?
Krieger's Manager: We’re looking at doing an outtakes version. The studio has some rarities and some outtakes and stuff like that. And basically we’re polling the fans and hardcore Doors fans. They know more than we do. [Laughs] We’re looking at some time in ’08. We can’t really peg a release date until I see what the material is.
Are you eyeing any new guitars or new gear lately?
RK: I have a new guitar that Gibson is gonna put out that’s modeled after my guitar, actually an SG. It's gonna be a little different than that one [Krieger points to his current SG - photo below], but it's gonna look like that. Its gonna be my model. Finally. Never had one before! So, it should be cool. I’m always looking for something, but I haven’t found it yet.
Robby Krieger's current Gibson SG on stage at the Berklee Performance Center.
This is kind of an unusual question. I should preface it by saying I wrote a book about the Jewish origins of punk rock called the “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's,” so this is kind of why I’m going in this direction. I heard that you were Jewish, is that true?
RK: Correct. Was that the Jewish origins of punk rock?
Uh-huh.
RK: [Laughs] How’s that?
The New York origins of punk and a lot of people were Jewish. The whole Lenny Bruce formula that doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, if you live in New York, you’re Jewish. You know, it really is kind of true with a lot of people. But you were not raised religiously?
RK: Not really, not religious. So didn’t really affect me that much, I guess. My parents kind of rebelled against the whole orthodox Jew thing because their parents were into it. I guess they both kind of rebelled against it and me and my brother never went to church, maybe once or twice.
What did your father do?
RK: He’s an engineer. Actually, a rocket scientist from Northrop.
I have a specific question about the Norman Mailer Benefit you did with Jim. It was just you and Jim kind of jamming to the blues. I was just wondering what those gigs were like, and if you felt Jim would do more of that if he were to live, just you and him kind of jamming.
RK: I wish we had done more of that. That was the only thing we did like that, unfortunately. I would have liked to have done more. Jim, he liked Norman Mailer stuff to read and Norman Mailer decided to run for governor or mayor, I forget which, of New York so we did this benefit for him. There was a lot of different poets, I think Alan Ginsburg was there. It was a lot of fun.
Was it a good environment for him as a performer?
RK: Yeah, definitely. That was when he was in his prime, you know?
Before the Doors, did you consider yourself a professional musician, where did you see your career going if the Doors never happened?
RK: I didn’t consider myself a professional musician. I was just kind of doing it for fun. And who knows where I would have gone. I would probably would have been flipping burgers at In and Out [California fast food chain].
Do you still do drugs at all?
RK: I try not to. [Laughs] Once a drug addict, always a drug addict.
What was it like going on as the Doors after Jim passed away?
RK: It worked pretty good for about a year. In about two years we did two albums. But then we started going in different directions, the three of us [Krieger, drummer John Densmore and keyboardist Ray Manzarek], and it just started not to work. And then we decided to find a singer because Ray and I were singing, We decided to find a singer so we all moved to England and I think just the stress of being over there and stuff just got us crazy and we split up.
Guys like Les Paul are still playing weekly gigs at 92 years old. So, what’s in your future? What kind of career do you still see coming for you?
RK: I could see that happening. [Laughs] Music seems to be one thing you can still do as you get older without losing it too much. I’ve seen Les Paul and he’s amazing! Maybe not as good as he used to considering his age, but he still plays really good!
www.modernguitars.com/archives/003934.html
October 26, 2007
By: Matt Baamonde
Robby Krieger Talks about The Doors and an Upcoming Gibson Guitar
Forty years after the Summer of Love and the release of The Doors' self-titled debut album, 61-year-old Doors guitarist Robby Krieger is a busy man. On October 15, 2007, Krieger appeared at the Berklee College of Music's Berklee Performance Center in Boston where he performed a set with Doors tribute band Morrison Crossing comprised of ex-Berklee students, and spoke to the audience and reporters on a variety of topics, past and present. The following night, Krieger took the stage at Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall as part of the Experience Hendrix Tour, an all-star guitar-centric tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Whether the result of a nostalgic fling, the enduring nature of classic rock or the eerie similarity of war-troubled times, there's ample evidence of a resurgent interest in hippie-era mood and music.
A meaningful connection exists between Boston and The Doors. On April 10, 1970, The Boston Arena served as the venue for the band's first stop on their final tour, a performance captured in the recently released 3-CD set The Doors: Live in Boston (WEA/Rhino). Given Berklee's interest in guitar and songwriting education, guitarist Krieger, who penned Doors classics such as "Light My Fire," "Love Her Madly" and "Touch Me" and has a spot on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 100 guitarists of all time, was a good fit for the Boston campus. Krieger's 30-or-so-minute set with Morrison Crossing and candid Q&A session shed light on his current playing style, The Doors' influence on punk and a Robby Krieger Signature SG that's in the works with Gibson Guitar.
The interview below represents questions from a pool of journalists who met with Robby Krieger and his manager after Krieger's public performance and interactive audience session at the Berklee College of Music on October 15, 2007.
Your guitar work seems really jazz based, even your music with the Doors sounds heavily influenced by jazz. Do you think it’s a good foundation for guitarists as a platform for their music?
Robby Krieger: Yes, of course. I think the Doors' music was based on jazz in a way because we improvised a lot. I think you should listen to as much jazz as possible to get ideas for songs.
We know you’re a guitar collector, what are some of your favorite pieces that still inspire you?
RK: I’m not really that big of a collector. I’ve got maybe 20 or 30 guitars. But I only buy ones that I play. I have a '60 Les Paul Sunburst. I’ve got an old '59 Strat that’s pretty neat. I’ve got a [Gibson] Johnny Smith, I’ve got a couple of [Gibson] Barney Kessels. I’ve got a great [Gibson] Wes Montgomery model L7, it’s like an L5 with one pickup, and then that’s really about it as far as collectible guitars.
I feel like this is a question you’ve probably been asked before. A lot of people talk about the Doors as being one of the early originators of punk. It actually did sound like you were punking up one of the songs and I’m trying to remember which one, and if I don’t know if you were consciously trying to do so at all?
RK: What, tonight?
Yea, a little bit…
RK: I don’t think so…
Maybe just live, it comes through more…
RK: “Soul Kitchen,” maybe?
Yeah, I think it was “Soul Kitchen.”
RK: Well, you know, we didn’t know we were doing it. But I think the punks did get a lot from The Doors. Iggy [Pop] of course was very influenced by Jim [Morrison] - the setting and the attitude, the punk attitude that they got from us.
Do you think that was due in part to the L.A. atmosphere?
RK: I don’t think it had anything to do with L.A. especially. I think it was just the energy that was coming out of it was almost a reaction against the flower children type deal. The punks picked up on that, you know?
Were there any reservations either from you or the band about releasing Live in Boston? Just because it was not the tightest performance but it was very energetic.
RK: Well, it took this long, let’s put it that way. It takes quite awhile to realize that the performance sometimes isn’t as important as the whole overall deal and the message. So yeah, it did take a long time.
What advice do you have for young guitarists? Where would you focus their attention?
RK: I would say, go back. Go back further than Van Halen [laughs] 'cause there is a lot of cool stuff to be learned from the guys in the '60s and '50’s and before that even. A lot of the old blues guys...there is some great stuff that you’re missing, you know, if you don’t go back that far.
I don’t want this question to come off offensive at all, but I don’t think it is. Jim Morrison - obviously complicated character. You mentioned how touring with him was a challenge. Sort of a two part: How tired do you get about hearing about Jim all the time as opposed to the music, and how annoying could he be?
RK: [Laughs] Jim was [annoying], you know. People talk about him all the time and sometimes they do overlook the music. But, they would never would have noticed the music if it weren’t for Jim, you know, and they never would have noticed Jim if it weren’t for the music. So, you have to live with both. What was the second part of the question?
Maybe it’s a little loaded the way I asked how annoying he could be. How was it to be with him?
RK: [Laughs] Well, it depends on his state of mind! If he was drunk he could be very annoying. He could be very nasty depending on his mood. And he could be the sweetest guy in the world the next day and then you’d always forgive him. So, it was a love-hate kind of deal with him.
So, there’s a Doors documentary in the works? Could you talk about that a little bit?
RK: Well, we’re getting all the footage we could find together and going through and putting together a documentary to try to tell the Doors' story in film as best we can. We got some real good people working on it. Dick Wolf’s company is producing it. They've won academy awards and stuff, so it should be good.
Krieger's Manager: Dick actually booked the band [when he was] in college. Dick Wolf was a college booker somewhere on the East Coast. What actually happened was the Doors' first album came out in January 1967, and “Light My Fire” [the second single from the album] came out in like May or June. At that time nobody knew who the Doors were. The first single ["Break On Through (To The Other Side"] had failed, had not succeeded. Dick booked the band in his college like in February or March for an appearance in August - by then, the band was the number one band in the world [thanks to the success of "Light My Fire"] and they showed up and did the gig because they agreed on the deal. He [Wolf] never forgot that. He was like a life-long fan.
He’s the “Law & Order” guy? [Dick Wolf is the creator of the television series "Law & Order"]
Krieger's Manager: Yes.
And this will be in theaters, this documentary?
Krieger's Manager: It will be a theatrical release and then a DVD and maybe cable or a special. At the beginning, you know, very beginning of the summer next year. Speaking of documentaries, there’s actually a Robby Krieger biography coming out soon.
RK: I’m writing it, my own autobiography. Maybe somebody else is too, I don’t know.
Can you tell us about the autobiography?
RK: Well, it’s about me. [Laughs] I don’t know what else to tell you.
Do you have a title?
RK: No, I don’t have one yet. But, I’m definitely writing it. Might take awhile. I wanted to wait until everybody had died, but it's taking too long.
You mentioned to learn guitar, to watch bands listen to records, develop your own style, how do you feel about a place like Berklee that is teaching the guitar?
RK: You know, there’s good points and bad points. I hear a lot of people say, "Oh, all the guys that come out of Berklee sound the same," you know, and stuff like that. But, then again, we didn’t have anything like Berklee back in those days so there’s a lot of great people that come out of here too. For some people it's probably the right thing, and others it's not. I think if you’re coming here to try to learn how to write a song, forget it. If you want to come here to learn how to be a bandleader or something a little more technical, then that’s great - an engineer, whatever. But, I don’t think anyone can teach you how to write a song or how to play the guitar.
I’m actually buddies with Greg Parulis and Mike Sims who worked with you on “Boot Yer Butt” and I was just wondering if you had plans for a second volume, you know, compiling audience recordings?
Krieger's Manager: We’re looking at doing an outtakes version. The studio has some rarities and some outtakes and stuff like that. And basically we’re polling the fans and hardcore Doors fans. They know more than we do. [Laughs] We’re looking at some time in ’08. We can’t really peg a release date until I see what the material is.
Are you eyeing any new guitars or new gear lately?
RK: I have a new guitar that Gibson is gonna put out that’s modeled after my guitar, actually an SG. It's gonna be a little different than that one [Krieger points to his current SG - photo below], but it's gonna look like that. Its gonna be my model. Finally. Never had one before! So, it should be cool. I’m always looking for something, but I haven’t found it yet.
Robby Krieger's current Gibson SG on stage at the Berklee Performance Center.
This is kind of an unusual question. I should preface it by saying I wrote a book about the Jewish origins of punk rock called the “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's,” so this is kind of why I’m going in this direction. I heard that you were Jewish, is that true?
RK: Correct. Was that the Jewish origins of punk rock?
Uh-huh.
RK: [Laughs] How’s that?
The New York origins of punk and a lot of people were Jewish. The whole Lenny Bruce formula that doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, if you live in New York, you’re Jewish. You know, it really is kind of true with a lot of people. But you were not raised religiously?
RK: Not really, not religious. So didn’t really affect me that much, I guess. My parents kind of rebelled against the whole orthodox Jew thing because their parents were into it. I guess they both kind of rebelled against it and me and my brother never went to church, maybe once or twice.
What did your father do?
RK: He’s an engineer. Actually, a rocket scientist from Northrop.
I have a specific question about the Norman Mailer Benefit you did with Jim. It was just you and Jim kind of jamming to the blues. I was just wondering what those gigs were like, and if you felt Jim would do more of that if he were to live, just you and him kind of jamming.
RK: I wish we had done more of that. That was the only thing we did like that, unfortunately. I would have liked to have done more. Jim, he liked Norman Mailer stuff to read and Norman Mailer decided to run for governor or mayor, I forget which, of New York so we did this benefit for him. There was a lot of different poets, I think Alan Ginsburg was there. It was a lot of fun.
Was it a good environment for him as a performer?
RK: Yeah, definitely. That was when he was in his prime, you know?
Before the Doors, did you consider yourself a professional musician, where did you see your career going if the Doors never happened?
RK: I didn’t consider myself a professional musician. I was just kind of doing it for fun. And who knows where I would have gone. I would probably would have been flipping burgers at In and Out [California fast food chain].
Do you still do drugs at all?
RK: I try not to. [Laughs] Once a drug addict, always a drug addict.
What was it like going on as the Doors after Jim passed away?
RK: It worked pretty good for about a year. In about two years we did two albums. But then we started going in different directions, the three of us [Krieger, drummer John Densmore and keyboardist Ray Manzarek], and it just started not to work. And then we decided to find a singer because Ray and I were singing, We decided to find a singer so we all moved to England and I think just the stress of being over there and stuff just got us crazy and we split up.
Guys like Les Paul are still playing weekly gigs at 92 years old. So, what’s in your future? What kind of career do you still see coming for you?
RK: I could see that happening. [Laughs] Music seems to be one thing you can still do as you get older without losing it too much. I’ve seen Les Paul and he’s amazing! Maybe not as good as he used to considering his age, but he still plays really good!
www.modernguitars.com/archives/003934.html