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“Wow, It looked cool – especially when you took acid… those horns looked like the devil!” The Doors’ Robby Krieger on his love of the SG, studio accidents, and a challenging move away from his signature fingerstyle
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In January 1983, Guitar World featured Robby Krieger on its cover, wielding a jazz box instead of his usual Gibson SG, and the headline “The greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of.”
Today it’s hard to imagine that the man who helped build some of the greatest blues-meets-acid-meets-psych rock ever created could be thought of as underrated – but back then it was true.
Four decades on there’s nothing but reverence showered upon the 77-year-old rocker, who played alongside Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore in The Doors. Stars like The Cult’s Billy Duffy and Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell have name-checked Krieger, noting his tone, feel, and ability to blend blues and psych into something dark, without ever going full-on metal.
I still love the blues, jazz, reggae, soul, and anything with a guitar. The most important thing is to always sound like me – whatever that means!
Asked about if he ever imagined he’d be named as an influence by such players, Krieger smirks. “No, I never could have. But to be honest, I never thought about it! It’s been cool to have all these bands tell me that The Doors and what I was doing influenced them.
“But there’s no secret to what I do: I keep trying to do something different. And as far as The Doors go, we were lucky to have four people that came together, fit well, and made music that was just different enough to be remembered.”
Krieger is at it again with his latest project, Robby Krieger & the Soul Savages, who release their self-titled debut record on January 19 via Mascot Label Group. Has he changed his approach?
“No, not much,” he says. “I still love the blues. I think, at least in some way, every guitar player does. But the biggest thing for me beyond inspiration – no matter where I get it from – is that I never try and copy anybody.
“I still love the blues, jazz, reggae, soul, and anything with a guitar. The most important thing is to always sound like me – whatever that means!”
How did Robby Krieger & the Soul Savages come into being?
“I built a studio in the Glendale, California, area about five years ago, and I met some musicians who also lived there. There’s one guy called Ed Roth, a great keyboard player who has played with Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics. Ed knew a bass player named Kevin ‘Brandino’ Brandon, whom I’d used on some of my albums in the past, so it made sense.
“We started jamming and it was great.