THE DOORS

Sixty years on sinceTHE DOORSformed in Los Angeles, John Densmore and Robby Krieger celebrate 10 of their greatest songs – freeway-haunting jams and psychedelic epics, raunchy blues, pop departures and more that remind them of good times and bad. “We were proud to break that three-minute barrier,” they tell Peter Watts

That’ll be the debut: (l–r) Manzarek, Morrison, Krieger and Densmore in front of the Sunset Boulevard billboard for their self-titled first album, 1967

Photo by BOBBY KLEIN

A S John Densmore scrutinises the list of Doors songs Uncut has asked him to talk about to mark the band’s 60th anniversary, the drummer smiles at the variety of music they produced in such a short time. “The Doors were an American melting pot,” he says. “Ray Manzarek had blues and classical, Robby Krieger was flamenco, I brought the jazz; then we had Jim’s literary and cinematic approach. We made a delicious gumbo from all these diverse ingredients.”

Their music is indeed a rich stew, from baroque pop to heavy rock and epic psychodramas like “The End” and “When The Music’s Over”. The band recorded six albums on Jac Holzman’s Elektra label during a tumultuous period that ended with Morrison’s death in July 1971. We are speaking just days after another loss in The Doors’ extended family: Val Kilmer, who gave such a memorable performance as Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic. “Val really did an amazing job,” says Robby Krieger. “He did 90 per cent of the vocals himself. It was like he became Jim Morrison that whole time – I was calling him Jim. He was such a cool guy.”

Krieger and Densmore are both still located in LA, where the band was formed in 1965 by Morrison and fellow UCLA film student Ray Manzarek. Both have been hit by the recent LA fires, with Densmore still waiting to return to his home – “my drum kit and gold records are all safe” – and Krieger having lost the house in the Palisades where he wrote the band’s first No 1 hit, “Light My Fire”.

The irony of the song title has not escaped him, but it hasn’t stopped Krieger from celebrating the band’s 60th birthday with a series of concerts at the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Strip, where The Doors were the house band from May to August 1966. “We did the whole first album in order the other night,” he says. “They filmed it. I’m doing all the albums, one each month.”

Densmore is due to join Krieger at the Whisky to play LA Woman. Beyond that, he continues to hold close the legacy of The Doors and their inner circle. Among the three albums he’s working on, one has been recorded with Adam Holzman – son of Elektra Records founder Jac – who learned to play keyboards after watching Manzarek in the studio. Holzman went on to play with Miles Davis and he and Densmore have covered a series of songs by both Miles and The Doors.

What would Morrison make of his bandmates’ ongoing creativity? “It’s hard to imagine what he’d have been like, had he lived,” says Krieger. “Maybe he’d have mellowed, become like the older Val Kilmer. Ray once joked that Jim wasn’t really dead and that idea never went away. Because if there was anybody who could have pulled off a trick like that, it was Jim.”

Enter sand, man: The rehearsal room on Venice Beach, California, 1966

BOBBY KLEIN/JAMPOL

“We were proud to break that three-minute barrier…”

LIGHT MY FIRE

(THE DOORS, 1967) The first song written by Krieger, “Light My Fire” stayed at No 1 in the US for three weeks and introduced America to the sound of The Doors.