Early Doors: the band pose for the cover of their debut LP, 1967
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THE inner journey may have been infinite, muses guitarist Robby Krieger, but for The Doors the real action took place on atight, two-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard. “The London Fog, the Whisky, Sunset Sound, the Workshop…” he reels off names like a spell; an incantation, you might say, to the shapeshifting music conjured up in these places, usually under cover of darkness.
Krieger is well placed to understand how deeply the songs of The Doors are steeped in the nocturnal magic of LA. Krieger and John Densmore were the only LA natives in the band, and Krieger grew up in Pacific Palisades, afew miles along the seafront from the band’s early Venice Beach rehearsal space. He wrote the talismanic “Light My Fire” at his parents’ home, while he and Morrison also collaborated there on “Strange Days”, “Waiting For The Sun” and an embryonic version of “The End”.