Robby Krieger Talks New Album ‘The Ritual Begins At Sundown,’ Looks Back At The Doors As ‘Morrison Hotel’ Turns 50

On his latest studio album The Ritual Begins at Sundown, Doors guitarist Robby Krieger puts forth a batch of 10 new instrumental songs, including a Frank Zappa cover (“Chunga’s Revenge”) and a re-worked Doors deep cut (“Yes, the River Knows”).

The collection (now available via The Players Club, a division of Mascot Label Group) brings the guitarist full circle, revisiting the jazz influences that drove some of his earliest solo work, teaming him once again with longtime producer Arthur Barrow and musicians like trumpet player and multi-instrumentalist Sal Marquez, who performed on his debut solo release in 1977.

It’s a project over which Frank Zappa looms large. Barrow and Marquez both spent time alongside the legendarily experimental artist as did performers like Jock Ellis (trombone) and Tommy Mars (keyboards), who both play on the guitarist’s first solo effort in nearly ten years.

Despite the inability to tour, Krieger, 74, has stayed busy, teaming with Art For a Cause to sell prints of his paintings for charity, while remaining hard at work on music in his California studio.

“So, unfortunately, we can’t go out and play the songs. But I hope someday we will be able to,” said Krieger this month over the phone, referencing the coronavirus pandemic. “One thing I can still do is record. I have this studio down in Glendale. So I’ve got another couple of albums in the can ready to go.”

Only 18 when he joined The Doors, Krieger was a relative newcomer to the electric guitar, honing his style in a band which lacked both rhythm and bass guitarists, nevertheless penning legendary cuts like “Light my Fire,” “Love me Two Times,” “Touch Me” and “Love Her Madly” for the legendary group.

I spoke with Robby Krieger about his ninth solo album The Ritual Begins at Sundown, the influence of jazz and improv on the songs he wrote for The Doors, hitting the road with Jim Morrison and the 50th anniversary of Morrison Hotel. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length, follows below.

I read that it took you about five years to coordinate schedules and get all of this put together? Was the new album mostly recorded live?

ROBBY KRIEGER: No. We recorded some of it live at my buddy Arthur Barrow’s studio. But then we decided just to go out and play. And then the songs kind of changed as we did a bunch of gigs. And then I bought a studio around that time - that was like four or five years ago. So we redid them at my studio. 

You’ve collaborated with Arthur quite a bit over the years. What’s that musical relationship between the two of you like at this point?

RK: I don’t know. For some reason, we just click musically.

He’s a big Doors fan for one thing. And he knows every one of our songs. So he always tries to sneak in a little in everything we do. Sometimes you wouldn’t notice it. But he’s really good at that. And I’m a Zappa fan - especially around the time Arthur was in the band.

We just work really well together as far as our writing goes.

This album brings your solo career full circle a bit, working with Sal Marquez again like you did following The Doors. How did this project kind of come together initially?

RK: Right, he was on my first solo album. We did a bunch of recording together after that for different people. Then I hadn’t really seen him for years. I heard he got sick or something so I called him and we started getting back together again a couple of years ago and started doing stuff again.

He’s really been great to me. Because he took a lot of us younger people - musicians, rock kind of guys - and taught them jazz. He’s one of those teacher kind of guys - like a mentor. He’s a really cool guy.

Frank Zappa sort of seems to loom large over this project - in your take on “Chunga’s Revenge” as well as in working with Arthur and the musicians that you did. Did Frank’s spirit kind of inform this record a bit?

RK: I would say so.

You know, when I first met Frank, he was in The Mothers of Invention. And I thought it was kind of a silly group. I wasn’t really impressed. But then, as years went by, he started really getting into the music - getting with people like George Duke and Ruth Underwood and all of these great musicians. 

He actually wanted to produce the first Doors album. He used to come to The Whiskey when we’d play. And we said, “Well, it would be nice but…” But we had decided on Paul Rothchild. Because he was actually one of my favorite producers.

I loved the stuff he had done with Paul Butterfield Blues Band and guys like Koerner, Ray & Glover. They were back in the early 60s when I was in high school. And I used to get all these records that Paul Rothchild had produced. And so I was always wondering, “Who is this guy?” Then, when we got signed to Elektra, they said, “Well, you’re going to be working with Paul Rothchild.” And I went, “You know what? That’s amazing.”

So that worked out pretty good.

What’s it like taking a Doors song like “Yes, the River Knows” from your past and putting a whole new spin on it for The Ritual Begins at Sundown?

RK: Well, what happened is when [Doors keyboardist] Ray Manzarek passed away, I was listening to some of The Doors stuff one day. And I noticed “Yes, the River Knows.” It’s one that I wrote. And, to me, Ray’s piano part on that is one of the best things he’d ever done. People think about “Riders on the Storm” or “Light My Fire” but nobody really realizes - and I don’t know why - what an amazing piano part he did on that.

So, what we did was we transcribed it exactly. And Tommy Mars played it exactly. And we threw some other stuff in there to make it more modern I guess. But the piano part is exactly the same as Ray played it.

So that was pretty cool.

I know that you began discovering jazz with John Densmore in Los Angeles clubs prior to The Doors. What was that discovery process like for you?

RK: It was pretty cool. John was in the jazz band at high school. And I knew this other guy who was also in the band. He was the bass player. So the three of us would go out to Shelly’s Manne-Hole and some of the jazz clubs around town.

And I didn’t really understand the music hardly even at that time - except for Wes Montgomery of course. Loved him. But we would see Roland Kirk, Miles Davis. And these guys were way above my understanding of music. Because, at that time, I was doing flamenco and folk music. Stuff like that. But it was pretty cool.

And then there was this other guy - Grant Johnson. He was a piano player. And his mom was a viola player for the L.A. Philharmonic. So she used to have all of these musicians come to her house and they would jam. And so we would get to see some of that.

And that kind of introduced me to jazz.

You said that you didn’t necessarily get jazz right away. Was there a eureka moment that kind of sticks out where it really hit you, where you really started to understand it better?

RK: Good question… I think when I really started to understand it was with Sal Marquez. He taught me the different modes and jazz chords and stuff. I really didn’t have a clue before that.

It was in your solo work following The Doors that you really began to explore jazz in depth but, certainly, I think you can hear that influence in some of the music you wrote for The Doors as well. Did the spirit of jazz or the idea of improv start seeping into the music you were writing for the group?

RK: Oh yeah. For sure. I mean, even in “Light My Fire,” the solos are done over like A minor to B minor chords. Which were similar to Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” So even though I didn’t really play jazz that much over it… I was trying to do Indian music scales over that. Which is similar to jazz I guess.

You were famously new to the guitar when you joined The Doors and were making a concerted effort not to copy someone like Chuck Berry - as that’s what everyone else was doing at the time. How would you say you started developing your own style early on while operating within a group that didn’t have a rhythm guitarist or a bass player?

RK: Well, that’s probably it. What you just said. Because I hadn’t really played in any other bands - except for a couple of recordings here and there. But I think playing with those guys - and with Ray doing the piano bass - it really molded the way I had to play.

So I think my style - had I not been put in that situation with The Doors - it probably would’ve ended up totally different.

It’s pretty amazing to look at how that Doors run with Jim encompasses six albums in just five years. Obviously, nobody works at a clip like that anymore. There’s a musical growth there in just five years that most bands don’t achieve over decades. That was also happening right as The Beatles were making some of their biggest strides. How important was it at that time to continually push things forward quickly with each new album?

RK: It’s not something that we did on purpose.

In those days, there was no big tours going out. There was no tour buses. There was nothing like that. It was fly here, fly there. And having to shepherd Jim Morrison around in that fashion was not easy!

And then, after the Miami thing happened, we couldn’t play anywhere. Because they banned us! There was this thing called the Hall Managers Association or something. And we couldn’t play anywhere - any of the big halls anyway.

So, we said, “Well, alright. Let’s just go in the studio and record.” It worked out well for us I think.

Morrison Hotel turned 50 a few months ago. I saw that there’s the Morrison Hotel comic coming in October. The band was really heading on that album in a bit different, less produced, bluesier direction - which continued on L.A. Woman. What was it like for you guys heading in that direction at that point?

RK: It was fun. That was a lot of fun. Because we’d just done The Soft Parade album with all of the orchestral stuff and we were just ready to get back to something more like we were used to doing.

So Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman were really fun albums to do. 

Even this far along, I’ve heard you continually stress the importance of progressing as a guitar player. How do you go about that?

RK: Just by playing with different people. I just get tired of playing the same old stuff. Even when I do the Doors stuff, I don’t try to recreate my solos exactly, even though all of the guys that work for me - my roadies, guitar techs and drum techs - they’re all guys who are in Doors tribute bands and they’re constantly going, “Hey! You didn’t play that part. You didn’t do ‘Light My Fire’ right.” So, it’s pretty funny.

But, back in the day, we would never play a song the same twice. It was always different. That was the fun of it.

You posted on your website advocating for a benefit for the The Baked Potato jazz club in L.A. That’s one of the things that scares me as a music fan most during the pandemic - what the future might hold for small, independent venues like that. How important is it to keep that in mind here with a full return to live performance off the table indefinitely?

RK: Well, I hope we do. In fact, The Baked Potato is the last gig I did in March before all of this happened.

It was kind of crazy. Just before that, I was on one of those rock and roll cruise things in Miami. And as soon as we got on the boat, we turned on the TV and they’re talking about how there’s this tour boat in Japan and the people can’t get off of it because of COVID-19. We went down to some of those islands in the Caribbean and they wouldn’t let us off the boat. We were scared that when we got back they would quarantine us. But they didn’t.

Then, the next week, I had this gig at The Baked Potato. And that was kind of scary. Because you know how small that place is. People are right there in your face.

But we did it. And didn’t die.