By Ralph Greco, Jr.
The fall of 2021 is alive with new and reissued releases from The Doors. The newly remastered and remixed The Doors: Live at the Bowl ’68 Special Edition made the local cinemas for a night, guitarist Robby Krieger’s long-awaited memoir, Set The Night On Fire: Living, Dying, And Playing Guitar With The Doors hit the bookstands, and a 50th Anniversary deluxe edition of L.A. Woman is scheduled to arrive just in time for the holidays.
Live At The Bowl ’68 captures the infamous concert held in the Doors’ hometown on July 8, 1968. Most Doors fans and even casual rock fans have likely bits and pieces on YouTube. The new version sounds and looks better than ever and makes evident what a well-oiled machine guitarist Krieger, drummer John Densmore, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and enigmatic frontman Jim Morrison were at this stage in their career. As Krieger makes plain when writing about this concert in his book, Morrison was at his most lucid and restrained on this July night.
The songs you’ll see the band perform include opener, “When the Music’s Over,” a roiling “Back Door Man,” that sees Morrison at his sexiest of the night, What follows is “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat),” a rather rushed “Hello, I Love You” and “Light My Fire,” a brilliant “Horse Latitudes,” and Krieger killing it on “Spanish Caravan.” The scary on-the-edge moments of “The End,” which ends the 80-minute show, make it obvious as to why this band continues to stay popular.
There have been countless books written about the Doors — from 1980s notorious Jim Morrison and the Doors biography No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman to personal memoirs from Manzarek and Densmore. To hear the skinny from Krieger in Set The Night On Fire: Living, Dying, And Playing Guitar With The Doors, and told so honestly, is a real treat. The guitarist who wrote “Light My Fire” does a great job with co-author Jeff Alulis, giving us ripe and randy details of iconic moments.
Digging deep into the complex personality of Morrison and the other Doors (guys who were just as complex in their own ways), the reader learns more about the inner workings of this American band than ever before. The one section where Krieger puts false rumors and hearsay to bed is enjoyable as he knocks down fiction with facts in a step-by-step dissemination of the tales that have built up around Morrison and company.
We also get a good lesson on how Krieger came to build the unique guitar style he has, which has always set him aside from most other guitarists, making him truly one of the greats. You make think you have read them all, but Set The Night On Fire: Living, Dying, And Playing Guitar With The Doors certainly offers up a lot of info on the Doors many fans will discover.
It should noted that in Live At The Bowl ’68 there’s a 20-minute segment where Densmore and Krieger play and record “L.A. Woman” and “Riders On The Storm” at the same place where the Doors rehearsed and recorded. It plays nicely into the 50th Anniversary of L.A. Woman and the forthcoming deluxe edition.
This expansion of L.A Woman features more than two hours of studio outtakes, including the original demo of “Riders On The Storm” recorded at Sunset Sound studios. The original album is lovingly remastered by original Doors’ engineer and the album’s co-producer Bruce Botnick.
From the screen to recorded music to a good read, 2021 proves once again that the Doors are always going to be with us.
