My Personal Opinion Of Robby Krieger

The Doors had the great fortune of having a guitarist who was incredibly versatile and unique. His name is Robby Krieger, and he quietly helped changed the music landscape of the late sixties, writing the lyrics for most of "Light My Fire," and all of "Love Me Two Times," two of the biggest Doors hit singles. His guitar work throughout his early Doors career (he still tours with keyboardist Ray Manzarek as The Doors Of The 21st Century) was fresh and diverse. He could play standard bluesy styles, but augmented the blues with countryfied bottleneck slide guitar. This is an old-time method for slide playing which began with all the great Mississippi Delta country bluesmen of the early 20th century. Krieger applied this slick sound to his electric guitar, and a signature sound was born. Listen to "Moonlight Drive," among many others, for a great example of this loopy, strange, but tuneful sound. But he didn't stop there with that technique. On "The End," he played in an Indian classical style, or sort of a raga style of guitar, which sounded perfect for the song and was convincing without the use of a real sitar or electric sitar. In "When The Music's Over," he played a giant, fuzz-drenched solo along the lines of a John Coltrane free-jazz saxophone riff. A lot of his guitar solos were very jazz inflected, with "Light My Fire" probably the song where this style has been heard the most. In "Spanish Caravan" he starts the song with a flourish of flamenco arpeggios and then takes off into the main melody.

Krieger became famous for his guitar playing at a time when big, heavy, blues rock guitar was the chic sound for most guitarists. It was a product of the psychedelic era, when bigger and louder was what rock players gravitated towards. Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Carlos Santana, etc. all played loud and sounded awesome. Yet Krieger had his own stamp on a psychedelic sound, a signature tone and style, in which he was relatively unequaled. He didn't have giant stacks of amplifiers or a bunch of effect pedals to work with, but nevertheless he still was able to sound big and stand out in The Doors' sound. I think of Krieger as the ultimate under-appreciated, underrated, and overlooked guitarist in classic rock. He deserves a lot of credit for forging something new and ignoring what was trendy.