Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 15:40:21 GMT
The Hour of music that rocks my world
60 minutes with Robby Krieger
In the Sixties, many guitarists were seduced by the sophisticated modal playing of jazz icons such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. They figured that, with a little weed and a lot of noodling, they could improvise just as brilliantly as their heroes.
Boy, were they wrong.
The Doors’ Robby Krieger was one of the few who had the chops and musical insight to make it work. “I would hear the Byrds talking about how Coltrane influenced them on [their song] ‘Eight Miles High,’<br>and I’d think, ‘God, they don’t know what they’re talking about,’ ” chuckles Krieger. In contrast, Krieger’s hypnotic, serpentine solo on “Light My Fire” still sounds as fresh and original today as it did three decades ago.
In compiling his 60 Minutes tape, Krieger draws on the blues, rock, jazz and world music sources that he first integrated in the Sixties to create psychedelic music that both rocked and swung. Krieger was also one of the first musicians to try LSD, back in the early Sixties, when it was still legal. “In the old days, people took it for spiritual reasons,” he explains. “I don’t know if kids nowadays know that.”<br>
The problem with acid was that it was only effective for a few hours, and even then, Krieger agrees, not everyone had a great experience. Some musicians became seriously mentally damaged using it. “If you were lucky, you would feel for a few hours that you were tuned into the whole universe, not separate from everything else,” says Krieger. “But if you meditate or do some other spiritual path, you can eventually attain that feeling all the time—without the drugs.”<br>
“I’ll Go Crazy”<br>James Brown
Live at the Apollo (Polydor, 1963)
“The best live album I’ve ever heard. I’ve never been to the Apollo, but with this album I could imagine myself in the audience, and envision the whole show. First, there’s the visual thing—his dancing and stage act—which was incredible. But he also always had the best r&b band and the finest musicians. He’d never settle for less than perfection. Check out the raised 9ths in the guitar parts. His voice was truly amazing. And the way he could scream—I mean, his throat is like the size of his head! If he’d gone into opera, he could have outdone Pavarotti.”<br>
“Me and the Devil Blues”<br>Robert Johnson
The Complete Recordings(Columbia, 1990)
“When most people think of Robert Johnson songs, they probably pick ‘Crossroads’ or ‘Dust My Broom.’ But this was always Jim [Morrison]’s favorite, and mine, too. We played it constantly in the Doors. To me, Robert Johnson was the blues. Even though he was only in his twenties, he sounded like he’d been through 80 years of life and pain and longing. And somehow it all came tumbling out through his guitar and voice.”<br>
“Kinky Reggae”<br>Bob Marley & the Wailers
Catch a Fire (Island, 1973)
“After the Doors broke up in the early Seventies, John Densmore and I went to Jamaica to record the first Butts Band album. Every storefront in Kingston had these giant speakers out front blasting Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley; you have to hear it loud to really appreciate it. The bass is the lead instrument in reggae, and the bass drum is on the two and the four, instead of the one and the three, so it’s kind of backwards from our music. It just moves you in a different way from rock. It’s a really cool feeling.”<br>
“Mr. Tambourine Man”<br>Bob Dylan
Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia, 1965)
“The very first time I took a psychedelic substance—Morning Glory seeds—I went to see Bob Dylan play. I was expecting to see his folk show, with the buckskin jacket, acoustic guitar and harmonica holder. Instead, out comes Dylan in a zoot suit with an electric band. I thought, ‘God damn, this is weird!’ But this song in particular seemed to convey the visionary state you could reach on acid, if you were lucky. It also captured that dazed, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ feeling you had the next morning. Even the music reflected that: Michael Bloomfield gets this incredible guitar sound—almost like bells ringing.”<br>
“Purple Haze”<br>Jimi Hendrix
Are You Experienced?(Experience Hendrix/MCA, 1967)
“The Doors were in New York doing a TV show with [famed New York City deejay] Murray the K, and he brought us up to his office after the shoot and said, ‘Hey, I gotta play something for you guys. Ever heard of Jimi Hendrix?’ ‘Well, no…’ So he put this record on, and I just couldn’t believe it. People call the Doors psychedelic, but this was true psychedelic music. To me, Hendrix was the guy who was able to convey the feeling of the LSD experience in his music, whereas most people who took acid, like the Grateful Dead, played terribly. They may have been having fun, but nobody else got it.”<br>
“Born in Chicago”<br>The Paul Butterfield
Blues BandThe Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra, 1965)
“They were the first white blues band that really broke through in America. I’d been listening to people like B.B. King and Albert King, but Michael Bloomfield took the electric blues to a whole new place. He played fast and slinky, with lots of distortion and total sustain, which was unheard of at the time. Everybody wanted to play like him as soon as they heard him. He was definitely the American Eric Clapton. And funnily enough, this album was produced by Paul Rothschild, who later went on to produce all the Doors albums.”<br>
“One Thousand Miles”<br>Joan Baez
Joan Baez (Vanguard, 1960)
“Before I discovered the blues, I was a real folkie. I went to see Joan Baez when I was in high school—this was around ’61 or ’62—and she had the most perfect voice. People don’t give her credit for her guitar playing, but she was a superb acoustic player. While she sang, she accompanied herself with some amazingly intricate fingerpicking. And she never made a mistake.”<br>
“All Blues”<br>Miles Davis
Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)
“Ray and John and I used to mess around with this all the time during Doors’ rehearsals. Up until this album, jazz had been mainly bebop. That meant a lot of fast soloing over a lot of tricky chord changes. Miles said, ‘Wait a minute, let’s just play over two chords.’ It’s easy to solo over 10 chords and sound interesting. But what can you do over just two? It’s just a minor and major chord. That started the whole trend toward modal playing, which influenced a lot of rock players from the Sixties on.”<br>
“Evening Raga”<br>Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar in London (EMD/Angel, 1999)
“I used to put a version of this on every night before I went to sleep. Ravi played a sitar with resonating strings tuned to a microtonal scale. In Indian classical music, each raga has a different scale associated with it that you improvise over. Some raga scales are associated with a particular time of day, like this one. You have to go to school for years to master this stuff. In fact, both John Densmore and I attended Ravi Shankar’s school here in Los Angeles.”<br>
“Birdland”<br>Weather Report
Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977)
“They were the most advanced group of musicians, yet they never got self-indulgent, like so many other jazz groups. They could capture any audience because they hadn’t forgotten how to write great songs. Most of these guys came out of Miles Davis’<br>electric Bitches Brew period, including keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter
on sax. The only one who didn’t was the bass player, Jaco Pastorius. He was from Mars, I think.”<br>
“My Favorite Things”<br>John Coltrane
My Favorite Things (Atlantic, 1961)
“The chords in ‘Light My Fire’ are based on Coltrane’s version of this song. He just solos over A minor and B minor, which is exactly what we did. Coltrane had played with Miles on Kind of Blue and took the idea of modal soloing over one or two chords farther out than anybody. He was a real pioneer—he just kept evolving, going where no one had ever gone. He could always attain this state of ecstasy when he played. Live, there was so much energy, you couldn’t believe it. He would play for hours. It was indescribable.”<br>Guitar World Magazine
60 minutes with Robby Krieger
In the Sixties, many guitarists were seduced by the sophisticated modal playing of jazz icons such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. They figured that, with a little weed and a lot of noodling, they could improvise just as brilliantly as their heroes.
Boy, were they wrong.
The Doors’ Robby Krieger was one of the few who had the chops and musical insight to make it work. “I would hear the Byrds talking about how Coltrane influenced them on [their song] ‘Eight Miles High,’<br>and I’d think, ‘God, they don’t know what they’re talking about,’ ” chuckles Krieger. In contrast, Krieger’s hypnotic, serpentine solo on “Light My Fire” still sounds as fresh and original today as it did three decades ago.
In compiling his 60 Minutes tape, Krieger draws on the blues, rock, jazz and world music sources that he first integrated in the Sixties to create psychedelic music that both rocked and swung. Krieger was also one of the first musicians to try LSD, back in the early Sixties, when it was still legal. “In the old days, people took it for spiritual reasons,” he explains. “I don’t know if kids nowadays know that.”<br>
The problem with acid was that it was only effective for a few hours, and even then, Krieger agrees, not everyone had a great experience. Some musicians became seriously mentally damaged using it. “If you were lucky, you would feel for a few hours that you were tuned into the whole universe, not separate from everything else,” says Krieger. “But if you meditate or do some other spiritual path, you can eventually attain that feeling all the time—without the drugs.”<br>
“I’ll Go Crazy”<br>James Brown
Live at the Apollo (Polydor, 1963)
“The best live album I’ve ever heard. I’ve never been to the Apollo, but with this album I could imagine myself in the audience, and envision the whole show. First, there’s the visual thing—his dancing and stage act—which was incredible. But he also always had the best r&b band and the finest musicians. He’d never settle for less than perfection. Check out the raised 9ths in the guitar parts. His voice was truly amazing. And the way he could scream—I mean, his throat is like the size of his head! If he’d gone into opera, he could have outdone Pavarotti.”<br>
“Me and the Devil Blues”<br>Robert Johnson
The Complete Recordings(Columbia, 1990)
“When most people think of Robert Johnson songs, they probably pick ‘Crossroads’ or ‘Dust My Broom.’ But this was always Jim [Morrison]’s favorite, and mine, too. We played it constantly in the Doors. To me, Robert Johnson was the blues. Even though he was only in his twenties, he sounded like he’d been through 80 years of life and pain and longing. And somehow it all came tumbling out through his guitar and voice.”<br>
“Kinky Reggae”<br>Bob Marley & the Wailers
Catch a Fire (Island, 1973)
“After the Doors broke up in the early Seventies, John Densmore and I went to Jamaica to record the first Butts Band album. Every storefront in Kingston had these giant speakers out front blasting Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley; you have to hear it loud to really appreciate it. The bass is the lead instrument in reggae, and the bass drum is on the two and the four, instead of the one and the three, so it’s kind of backwards from our music. It just moves you in a different way from rock. It’s a really cool feeling.”<br>
“Mr. Tambourine Man”<br>Bob Dylan
Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia, 1965)
“The very first time I took a psychedelic substance—Morning Glory seeds—I went to see Bob Dylan play. I was expecting to see his folk show, with the buckskin jacket, acoustic guitar and harmonica holder. Instead, out comes Dylan in a zoot suit with an electric band. I thought, ‘God damn, this is weird!’ But this song in particular seemed to convey the visionary state you could reach on acid, if you were lucky. It also captured that dazed, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ feeling you had the next morning. Even the music reflected that: Michael Bloomfield gets this incredible guitar sound—almost like bells ringing.”<br>
“Purple Haze”<br>Jimi Hendrix
Are You Experienced?(Experience Hendrix/MCA, 1967)
“The Doors were in New York doing a TV show with [famed New York City deejay] Murray the K, and he brought us up to his office after the shoot and said, ‘Hey, I gotta play something for you guys. Ever heard of Jimi Hendrix?’ ‘Well, no…’ So he put this record on, and I just couldn’t believe it. People call the Doors psychedelic, but this was true psychedelic music. To me, Hendrix was the guy who was able to convey the feeling of the LSD experience in his music, whereas most people who took acid, like the Grateful Dead, played terribly. They may have been having fun, but nobody else got it.”<br>
“Born in Chicago”<br>The Paul Butterfield
Blues BandThe Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra, 1965)
“They were the first white blues band that really broke through in America. I’d been listening to people like B.B. King and Albert King, but Michael Bloomfield took the electric blues to a whole new place. He played fast and slinky, with lots of distortion and total sustain, which was unheard of at the time. Everybody wanted to play like him as soon as they heard him. He was definitely the American Eric Clapton. And funnily enough, this album was produced by Paul Rothschild, who later went on to produce all the Doors albums.”<br>
“One Thousand Miles”<br>Joan Baez
Joan Baez (Vanguard, 1960)
“Before I discovered the blues, I was a real folkie. I went to see Joan Baez when I was in high school—this was around ’61 or ’62—and she had the most perfect voice. People don’t give her credit for her guitar playing, but she was a superb acoustic player. While she sang, she accompanied herself with some amazingly intricate fingerpicking. And she never made a mistake.”<br>
“All Blues”<br>Miles Davis
Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)
“Ray and John and I used to mess around with this all the time during Doors’ rehearsals. Up until this album, jazz had been mainly bebop. That meant a lot of fast soloing over a lot of tricky chord changes. Miles said, ‘Wait a minute, let’s just play over two chords.’ It’s easy to solo over 10 chords and sound interesting. But what can you do over just two? It’s just a minor and major chord. That started the whole trend toward modal playing, which influenced a lot of rock players from the Sixties on.”<br>
“Evening Raga”<br>Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar in London (EMD/Angel, 1999)
“I used to put a version of this on every night before I went to sleep. Ravi played a sitar with resonating strings tuned to a microtonal scale. In Indian classical music, each raga has a different scale associated with it that you improvise over. Some raga scales are associated with a particular time of day, like this one. You have to go to school for years to master this stuff. In fact, both John Densmore and I attended Ravi Shankar’s school here in Los Angeles.”<br>
“Birdland”<br>Weather Report
Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977)
“They were the most advanced group of musicians, yet they never got self-indulgent, like so many other jazz groups. They could capture any audience because they hadn’t forgotten how to write great songs. Most of these guys came out of Miles Davis’<br>electric Bitches Brew period, including keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter
on sax. The only one who didn’t was the bass player, Jaco Pastorius. He was from Mars, I think.”<br>
“My Favorite Things”<br>John Coltrane
My Favorite Things (Atlantic, 1961)
“The chords in ‘Light My Fire’ are based on Coltrane’s version of this song. He just solos over A minor and B minor, which is exactly what we did. Coltrane had played with Miles on Kind of Blue and took the idea of modal soloing over one or two chords farther out than anybody. He was a real pioneer—he just kept evolving, going where no one had ever gone. He could always attain this state of ecstasy when he played. Live, there was so much energy, you couldn’t believe it. He would play for hours. It was indescribable.”<br>Guitar World Magazine
