Robby Krieger’s fantastic memoir opens up new doors on the band’s history!
Fans of the Doors and rock ‘n roll history lovers have been waiting decades for Robby Krieger — Doors guitarist and songwriter extraordinaire — to write a memoir of his days and nights in America’s iconic rock band. Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar With the Doors came out in October 2021, but the paperback is set to publish October 25, 2022.
A quick review: FANTASTIC!
Set the Night on Fire, a new memoir by Doors guitarist and songwriter Robby Krieger
Although fans of the Doors certainly enjoyed memoirs from Ray Manzarek and John Densmore, Krieger’s book serves up those heady years in his deeply reflective, authentic style that brings the era to life in an engaging, heartfelt fashion. It is as if Krieger learned lessons from those earlier books and deliberately set out to be entertaining, thoughtful, and honest about the rollercoaster ride the bandmates were on and the lifelong consequences.
“Rather than pushing myths or trying to make himself larger than life, Krieger delivers an honest, authentic perspective of the amazing days and nights of playing in America’s most important band.”
One of the aspects of memoir readers enjoy is the perspective, especially in a celebrity book, of what happened before the rocket ship of fame, notoriety, excess, and decadence took flight. Krieger captured those days perfectly — a struggling band that had pinned its hopes to a singer who hadn’t sung and was too shy to even face his bandmates, let alone a live audience.
Yet, there was something about this skinny kid that the teenage Krieger trusted and was echoed by Ray and John:
“Ray saw something in Jim when Jim first sang a song to him on the sands of Venice Beach, and Ray’s confidence never wavered from then on,” Krieger writes. “John saw something in Jim, enough to convince me to audition for the band. I didn’t see it. Not at first. Not the way Ray and John did. I liked Jim personally.”
If you haven’t read Set the Night on Fire, you’re particularly going to enjoy Robby’s insider perspective on the mysterious Jim Morrison as he developed from that shy kid to the vaunted Lizard King (and the repercussions for him and the band).
Robby remembers:
“He had a gentle nature when he wasn’t screaming at drug dealers or getting in bar fights or nuking record deals. Even my mom found him charming—she saw him as a soft-spoken southern gentleman. He wrote great lyrics, but he wasn’t yet a crooning, leather-clad sex god. All I saw was a shaky-voiced, corduroy-clad introvert.”
Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties by Bob Batchelor
“All I saw was a shaky-voiced, corduroy-clad introvert.”
— Robby Krieger
Trying to uncover the “real” or “authentic” Morrison led me to write Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and Death Days of the Sixties (Hamilcar Publications).
A true cultural history, the book examines the death days of the 1960s for listeners fed up with the happy ditties of the Beatles and mellow vibes of San Francisco hippie bands. In Morrison, fans had a living, breathing representation of the violence and anger raging through the national consciousness. As the band grew more popular, Morrison became wilder and volatile. A poet at heart, the singer drank prodigious amounts of alcohol and searched for ways to “Break On Through” to anarchy and destruction, a new vision of the Sixties as the decade gave way to the dirty Seventies.