In a new interview with The Guardian, THE DOORS guitarist Robby Krieger talked about Jim Morrison, touching on the band’s late frontman’s onstage antics and off-stage personality.
Speaking about the band’s early days, Morrison said: “Jim had never sung before and your singing muscles need time to develop. It didn’t take long but, vocally, Jim became a 95 on a scale of 100 after starting as a 10. His voice became a weapon. Jim was very shy and reserved on stage at first. As we played night after night, he got better and better — and wilder and wilder.
“Most people, when they take acid, get self-conscious and quiet. With Jim, it was the opposite. He would really go for it. I think Jim believed that life could be boring and that a lot of people were just going through the motions, so he would try to freak them out. He would do anything to add to the craziness.”
“Most people would be scared if they contracted a potentially lethal STD but Jim was excited to feel close to all those disease-ridden 19th-century poets and painters he idealized,” Krieger continued. He wanted to let it go untreated so he could experience what it was really like to go insane…
“I think Jim had some real mental issues — manic depression, or whatever and whenever the press would ask about his family, he would say that they were dead. His mom was weird. She was very bossy. But he was fixated on her.”
“When people saw us play, they knew that this wasn’t just a show. There was no difference between Jim on-stage and off,” he added. “I’m pretty sure Iggy Pop doesn’t roll around in glass in between trips to the supermarket and I doubt Hendrix ever set his guitar on fire just to keep warm. The magic of Jim was that he was just Jim.”
