The guitarist Robbie Krieger tried to avoid imitating: “I wanted to be different”
It’s impossible for any artist not to draw from their influences at least a little. No matter how original you aim to be, there are always going to be those few licks that creep in, sounding similar to songs in your record collection. Some musicians have made it their calling card to wear their favourite acts proudly on their sleeves. While the trend in the 1960s was to emulate guitar legends, Robby Krieger knew that The Doors needed more than just old blues tropes to steer them in the right direction.
But if anyone wanted to be considered a guitar hero at the time, they needed to have at least a few blues-infused licks in their library. Jimi Hendrix didn’t become a legend just because of his extraordinary image, and half of the reason why he was able to transcend musical boundaries was by relying on those old bluesy songs in his back catalogue, like ‘Red House’ or the modern take on blues on ‘Purple Haze’.
Even when artists like Bob Dylan were making their turn towards rock music, Mike Bloomfield was the one steering him in the right direction. The main focus of a song like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ is Dylan’s immortal words, but across the rest of Highway 61 Revisited, Bloomfield is absolutely wailing from his core right alongside the folk legend.
Krieger initially couldn’t get enough of that kind of playing, initially wanting to work with producer Paul Rothchild because of his association with Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield Blues Band. But considering how he played guitar, Krieger couldn’t really play the same kind of amazing bends that Bloomfield had become known for.
Since he played fingerstyle most of the time, Krieger said he consciously tried to avoid any of Bloomfield’s tendencies, telling Classic Albums, “Everybody was trying to copy Mike Bloomfield, so I wanted to be different. And that’s why I end up doing all of those crazy slide things and anything really to get away from blues.”
Although it’s still easy to qualify the Doors as a blues act based on songs like ‘Love Me Two Times’ or ‘Break On Through’, some of the greatest moments come when Krieger fires up his slide guitar. Years before George Harrison started primarily playing slide, Krieger’s sound felt less like a human voice and worked like a ghost trying to make contact with the material world once again.
Not everything is in tune all the time, but that adds to the eeriness of every track. A song like ‘LA Woman’ uses Krieger’s slide almost like a sound effects creator would use foley instruments, and when making ‘End of the Night,’ hearing Krieger’s slide guitar is the perfect counterpart to Jim Morrison’s lyrics about people born on the dark side of life.
The core of Krieger’s sound still relied on the blues, but using a slide brought him out of Bloomfield’s shadow and into unchartered territory. It certainly sounded strange, but that opened up the door for legions of musicians who wanted to make their music sound a little bit more eclectic than the rest of the Flower Power generation.
