Concert Review: The Doors’ Robby Krieger, at BergenPAC, Englewood NJ

The untimely 1971 death of Jim Morrison created a legend of a rock ‘n’ roll poet maudit at the expense of the reality: that he was only one part, albeit an important one, in The Doors, a band containing some of the most talented musicians in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. 

The appearance of one of those musicians, Robby Krieger, at BergenPAC in my hometown, Englewood, NJ, confirmed that many times over. His eponymous band may have taken on its name as a result of a protracted legal dispute over use of the group’s name with former bandmate John Densmore, but in another sense it was entirely appropriate: It simply recognized the technical wizardry that led Rolling Stone to list him among the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. (He is at #76, sandwiched between Willie Nelson and Joni Mitchell.)

For a long time, I did not have even an adequate idea of Krieger’s skill on his instrument. But his sizzling solo on Hall and Oates’ “Kiss on My List,” in this marvelous YouTube clip from Live From Daryl’s House, opened my eyes, so that, when a close relative bought me a ticket to the BergenPAC show as a birthday gift, I was looking forward to it. I was not disappointed.

The show was billed as “Fifty Years of Doors Music,” and this was no case of false advertising. Though Krieger imported some licks from The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and even Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” the focus was squarely on the music he and Morrison, Densmore, and the late keyboardist Ray Manzarek created years ago. Soft-spoken, he offered very short introductions to some of the songs, noting which were favorites of his friends (Morrison’s, “Maggie McGill”; Manzarek’s, the atmospheric “Riders on The Storm”).  

(Krieger also introduced a song he said was appropriate for Donald Trump, “L.A. Woman.” Actually, a few lyrics from other Morrison songs were also relevant for this new political era: “You’ll get yours, I’ll get mine,” “We want the world and we want it now,” and “What have they done to the Earth?”)

Hinting at the content to come, Krieger opened with two songs from the band’s first album, which was released in January 1967: “Break on Through” and “Alabama Song (Whisky Song)”. Then, one after another in the two-hour, intermission-free set, the songs flowed, staples of free-form, top 40, and now classic rock formats: “People Are Strange,” the bluesy “Back Door Man,” “Five to One,” “Moonlight Drive/Horse Latitudes,” “Wild Child,” and “20^th Century Fox.”

Those who witnessed The Doors in concert back when they burst on the rock scene would still have 

found one element missing from the show: danger. Morrison, the Lizard King, was gone. His duties as lead vocalist were taken over by Krieger’s son Waylon. Even with the latter donning dark sunglasses, the performance came off less like the kind of Dionysian performance art that called down the law on Morrison (and, at times, even unnerved his bandmates) than like a father and son playing catch. It didn’t help that, for all his outsized stage gestures, Waylon's voice couldn’t always carry over the loud instrumentation.

As for the rest of the band: While bassist Phil Chen and drummer Ty Dennis were technically proficient, the Doors’ catalogue still depends on the interplay between the guitar and keyboard. Krieger clearly missed Manzarek, and prior to this gig he had chiefly used two musicians as replacements, Nathan Wilmarth (primarily on the West Coast) and Ed Roth (on the East). For this third and last area engagement, however, Steve Molitz of the band Particle filled in admirably.

The audience wasn’t satisfied with merely the first encore, “Soul Kitchen," because Krieger saved the biggest song for last, one that, in effect, closed the circle that began with the opening songs. This time, it was the breakthrough hit from The Doors’ first album, “Light My Fire.” 

Characteristically self-effacing, Krieger did not mention that he had written the band’s biggest song—and its greatest assurance of musical immortality for the 71-year-old guitar master and his three friends a half century ago.

This Day in Rock History (The Doors Break on Through With ‘Light My Fire’)

June 3, 1967—Nearly five months after the debut of their eponymous first LP was released, The Doors began their climb toward commercial success by issuing “Light My Fire.” The group has become such a staple of classic-rock stations in the years since that it’s worth a reminder of just how much it overturned the conventions of rock ‘n’ roll in that tumultuous year.

The magnitude of The Doors’ legend has become so enormous that I don’t see any way to convey it—or even this particular album—in a single blog post. But concentrating on “Light My Fire,” the closing song on the LP’s first side, might focus attention on salient points.

“Light My Fire” wasn’t the band’s first single—that distinction belonged to “Break on Through”—but, by going to #1 on the charts, it made the group impossible to ignore.

Unlike their other tunes, it was not written primarily by frontman Jim Morrison, but by Robby Krieger. “Why do I have to do all the work!?” Morrison pointedly challenged the guitarist, who had never written a song to that point.

The first idea that Krieger had was to write about the elements. Getting stuck after a few verses, he turned back to Morrison, who supplied the most unusual—and, as befitting the singer’s mordant bent—darkest line in the song: "and our love become a funeral pyre." The tune ended up credited to the entire band, though, because contributions were also made by drummer John Densmore (the Latin-flavored groove) and keyboardist Ray Manzarek (the fugue-like opening). 

That opening, worked out rapidly by Manzarek on a Vox Continental organ after the band had laid out a jazz-like, improvisational middle section, might have been inspired by baroque music, but the finished product was certainly a matter of thinking outside the Bachs. (The ironic Manzarek was rather more modest: “It just came out of, you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice.”)

Phil Spector, The Beatles, and The Beach Boys had been employing classical instruments such as violins, the harpsichord and the organ, and The Left Banke became explicitly branded “baroque pop” with their 1966 hit “Walk Away, Renee.” But Manzarek’s use of the organ, in supporting Morrison’s Dionysian lead, was as far removed from the spiritual as pop music could get. In 1967, rock and pop listeners would become even more accustomed to the organ in songs like Vanilla Fudge’s cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The march toward the “progressive rock” era had begun in earnest.

The album version of “Light My Fire” clocked in at seven minutes long. When the band heard about their record company’s plan to release the single at a bit under three minutes—then the ironclad maximum for Top 40 airplay—they were annoyed that the shorter version would eliminate the middle section where they got the chance to display skill to the fullest. But those improvisations would hardly be lost—FM rock stations were about to take off (WNEW-FM, the archetype of that format, would premiere that October), and listeners flocking to the format fanned interest in the song anew.

Three months after the single’s release, The Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Just a few minutes before airtime, a producer relayed Sullivan’s request that they substitute, “Girl, we couldn’t get much better” for “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” lest the latter be interpreted as a drug reference. But on the show, a defiant Morrison not only sang the original lyric, but seemed to emphasize it even more. An incensed Sullivan banned the group from the show from then on. (Not that the band needed it, given its continued success.)

The following year, Jose Feliciano enjoyed a hit with his own very unique interpretation of “Light My Fire.” But for most of the baby boomers coming into their high school and college years, it’s a fair bet that nothing could compare to the original in where it could transport listeners.