In the musician’s new memoir, he aims to tell the true, uncensored story of one of the greatest bands of all time while dispelling some long-running myths
This year marks half a century since the storied
Singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison, met his untimely death. Or at least that’s what most reasonable people believe happened. Due to a combination of denial, wishful thinking and some eagerly promoted conspiracy theories, however, some people actually believe that Morrison still lives. According to the Doors’ guitarist, Robbie Krieger, that’s just one of many outrageous myths, misconceptions or outright lies that have clung to the band’s story. “To me, what happened to the Doors was pretty damn cool just the way it was,” Krieger told the Guardian from his home in
Los Angeles. “This wasn’t a story that needed to be hyped.”
In order to represent his version of setting the record straight, then, Krieger has just published a memoir, Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying and Playing Guitar with the Doors. It’s a doorstop-thick attempt to retell an oft-told tale, this time informed by a desire to suck the hot air out of the more inflated earlier versions, aided by a hilariously flip tone that makes this late-arriving history perhaps the most reliable, and certainly the most entertaining, of all. The witty prose, fashioned by co-author Jeff Alulis, stands in marked contrast to the bitter tone of the two memoirs penned by the band’s drummer, John Densmore – the second of which focused on his protracted lawsuit against the two other surviving members of the band – as well as the pedantic, and at times pretentious, tone of the published reminiscences of keyboardist Ray Manzarek.