Riders on the Storm

"We just played a gig at the Whisky last night, it's happening." Robby Krieger could be calling us from 1966. The days have passed during which Jim Morrison epitomized the very idea of what the rock god could accomplish by mesmerising audiences, strutting the stage and spouting beat poetry which advocated individual personal freedom and an anti-authoritarian rebellion, but the psychedelic enigma of the Lizard King continues to live on.

40 years after the crystal ship first set sail, Krieger tells The Skinny that he just sound checked 'Roadhouse Blues' with Val Kilmer for old time's sake - "he can really do it, y'know? I wish he'd come down more often and sing" – at the legendary venue where it all started. Of course, recruiting any new singer for The Doors must be a bit like asking a mere mortal to channel the powers of Zeus. Nevertheless, Krieger talks of their latest addition – The Cult's adequately shamanic frontman Ian Astbury - as a kindred spirit to his old pal. "They both have similar interests, he reminds me of Jim in many ways. They're both of Scottish descent and Ian is very much into the whole American Indian thing as Jim was."

Although this "new" band features Krieger along with fellow founder member Ray Manzarek, they are presently forbidden from using The Doors' moniker as their own, following an injunction taken out by drummer John Densmore and Morrison's estate. Bringing their show to Scotland this month, as Riders on the Storm (the name Densmore also happened to choose for his autobiographical book on life with Jim), the group have essentially been a touring act thus far, but do they dare extend their ambitions to the studio? "That's the problem with this whole lawsuit stupidity that's going on," Krieger retorts, disappointedly. "Hopefully once that gets taken care of we won't have to call it Riders on the Storm. We're kind of waiting, as far as recording goes, until that's resolved. Hopefully it won't be too long."

What with their recent embittered lawsuits and clear differences of opinion about how their legacy should be continued, how does all this leave relations with their ex-compatriot? Krieger speaks of rock n' roll as though it's The Doors' duty to perform, even without Densmore and their original charasmatic lynchpin. "We know that the fans want to see John play and I wish he would think more of the fans, whether it's personal or not. Look at Mick and Keith, they don't like each other much but they play together every night. Music is music, you don't have to love each other to play music together. The fans buy the records, they pay our bills, we owe them. I think at one point he'll come and play with us."

Not so long ago, Krieger and Densmore were rumoured to be united in their disapproval of the way that Morrison was portrayed as an uncontrollable sociopath in Oliver Stone's acclaimed Doors biopic, despite providing creative assistance on set. Krieger suggests the media made his attitude towards the film sound far worse than it was, although he conceeds that Stone did take something of a domineering approach. "Not that Oliver Stone really listens to anybody, but the one scene in the film that was my idea was the one where we work up 'Light My Fire'. That's the kind of thing I think people would want to see in the movie. I liked it, I thought it was a good rock n' roll movie." And what of Kilmer's portrayal of Jim? "He should have got an academy award for that, man. There were a lot of guys trying to get that part, John Travolta really wanted it bad, he came over to my house with his black leather pants and everything." After a brief and subliminal, yet entirely horrific mental image, The Skinny checks itself and remembers that by "pants" Krieger of course means "trousers."

Travolta and his trusty pants aside, The Doors are set to present a completely re-mastered release of their studio works this month, replete with a host of high quality studio outtakes as part of the 'Perception' box set. Reflecting on their time together as a complete unit, Krieger has few bones to pick with The Doors' back catalogue. But, though he is loathe in admitting it, one album in particular still bothers him slightly. "On the Soft Parade, all those horns and strings that they put on there, I think we could have done without all that. It's not The Doors, it's Jim Morrison with an orchestra. Some day I'll go back and remix those things without all those horns and strings and see what it sounds like. I think the reason we did that was reactionary, because the Beatles had come out with Sergeant Pepper's."

Looking back on their career from their 40th anniversary, Krieger also contemplates whether he's in any better a position to work out what it was that made Jim tick those many moons ago. "I don't know. I wondered whether there was something in his family life that made him the way he was, but then I see his brother and his sister are very normal people, so it must have been something he was born with that was like the devil in him. He just had it in him and it had to come out. You can't figure Jim out; he was a genius, but he was a troubled genius. He was so smart, but he was too smart and he didn't know what to do with it, therefore he had to drown himself with drink and drugs just to feel normal. I wish he could have had more fun in life and not been so damn serious all the time."