Don’t know if this will work or will just be a link, but…Q&A with Robbie, preceding his book publication (which I still haven’t settled down to read, dammit…must make time):
It works!
PS He means Oct 12, 2021
Just a part where he talks about Paris Blues (separate to the vid)
“And there’s one song called “Paris Blues.” Somehow we lost the master tape on it, and all we had was this cassette; we all had a cassette, me and Ray and John, and everybody lost theirs, except for Ray. And then Ray said that Pablo, his five-year-old son, was playing with the cassette, just messing around, and he inadvertently messed it up, lost a couple of verses. And it had noise, it was all noisy. So just recently we got a copy of that and we fixed it up really good. So I think that’s one thing that will come out pretty soon. It’s pretty cool, just a simple blues, Jim was making up the words as he went along. It’s pretty neat.”
A gentle man, as well as a gentleman, Mr Krieger. I could hear that the acoustic guitar on ‘Spanish Caravan’ was played without a plectrum (or ‘pick’, as he would have it), but I didn’t know that he never used a plectrum.
I had the great privilege to see him play at London’s tiny Borderline club, just off Tottenham Court Road, over 20 years ago. He could certainly make his Gibson sing.
It was the only time I was in the same room as a member of The Doors. I imagine that not many others on this Forum can match that.
I never imagined that I would see a member of my favourite ever group, which had broken up nearly 30 years earlier. It is a treasured memory. (The Borderline is a tiny club, so it was a pretty intimate affair.)
This may make you more envious still, Stevie, when I tell you that I saw another great guitar hero of mine, Arthur Lee, at the Borderline.
He had just been released from a US penitentiary after an unconscionable length of time, having committed a relatively minor firearms offence, but was banged up under their draconian ‘two strikes policy’ after an earlier similar offence.
Anyway, he and his group played the whole of ‘Forever Changes’, with a few others (‘The Castle’ and ‘Seven And Seven Is’, from recollection) thrown in. This was all by way of a warm up for Arthur Lee’s appearance at Glastonbury a few days later - videos of which are probably still on the net.
I remember speaking to the sound engineer at The Borderline, trying to blag a tape of the show, but to no avail, sadly. Imagine what that might be worth to a bootlegger!
Yes, Stevie, I remember that we had an exchange about the Butts Band not so long ago. I could never take Jess Roden remotely seriously as a stand-in for Jim Morrison.
I don’t have a date for Robbie Krieger’s Borderline show (and there was no question of a programme or even a setlist on a scrap of paper), but it was probably not long before I gave up work (burn-out) at the end of 2000.
The Butts Band were not a stand-in for The Doors…but whattayado if you’re Ray, Robbie or John…still young men (at the time, like us), still talented, still turned on by playing, still more to give…
It’s a quandary I won’t decry them for.
One could say similar about Love…Bryan Maclean leaves…Arthur Lee carries on…some loathe/d Four Sail for example. Not me. Damn fine album.
I agree with you fully about the quandary, but Ray, Robbie and John had form.
They had already severely blotted their collective copybooks with the truly appalling ‘Other Voices’ and ‘Full Circle’, which Elektra released (scarcely believably) as albums by ‘The Doors’! There was surely a proper case for applying the ‘twin strikes’ policy I spoke out against above.
As a diehard fan, needless to say, I bought both. I think that I played them each twice - the second time just because I couldn’t quite believe how bad the first hearing had been.
I think that both albums have been long deleted (thankfully), and I can’t imagine that Elektra comes under much pressure for their rerelease.
Love’s ‘Four Sail’ was nowhere near as bad, compared to what went before, with one cracking track (‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’, if my memory is correct, as I haven’t had a copy in over 20 years). But Love without Bryan Maclean is nowhere nearly as unthinkable, in my opinion, as The Doors without Jim Morrison.
They’re both the least- played albums in my Doors collection, tis true. I can only imagine how SwS or Verdilac would have sounded with Jim at the helm…but I have sympathy with RJR in trying to continue, as described by one of them (sorry, a couple of strong G&T’s in effect here) earlier in the thread. They’re both good songs which have The Doors’ spook. But…The Doors needed all four members to be The Doors.
Well, to round off this chat (which I’ve hugely enjoyed, by the way) on an envious note, may I say that I would love to travel back to the days when I could have a bl**dy large G&T or three. Sadly, I am not allowed to touch alcohol these days, so that ain’t gonna happen - that’s the price of wanting to see my darling granddaughter grow up!
Anyway, we should let others take over to talk of the two wonderful groups on the same little Elektra label.
Wow, thanks Andy! Nice to know…
If you could take a photo and post, that would be great. I won’t be able to go back until next year or even year after.
Cheers Andy. I hadn’t seen the cherub before. The grave is looking ‘pretty neat’.
Is it still fenced off? I assume so as there’s no graffiti apparent on his headstone or the surrounding graves. I’ve always been thankful that when I visited in the early 80s (white bust) the fencing hadn’t yet to be put around it.
