Robby Krieger - Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying and Playing Guitar with the Doors

Robby! This is God speaking! And were gonna throw you right out of this universe!

It wasnt God on the phone. It was Jim Morrison. I hung up.

The call came in at some ungodly hour in the fall of 1966. The Doors had recently arrived in New York City to play a monthlong residency at the Ondine Discotheque, to finish the mixing of our debut album, and to make a promotional film for our first single. We were playing five half-hour sets each night, finishing just shy of sunrise. I valued the little sleep I was able to get.

Our lawyer had arranged for us to stay at the Henry Hudson Hotel in midtown Manhattan. On the floor above us the Chambers Brothers had a series of suites, so we often ended up getting stoned with them after coming home from our respective gigs. On our nights off, drummer John Densmore and I explored jazz clubs in the Village. During the daylight hours, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and his girlfriend, Dorothy, ventured out to the museums. Even though the New York crowd hadnt heard our songs before, they seemed to dig us, and the local groupies seemed fascinated by these mysterious aliens from California. I had brief flings with several of them, including Rory Flynn, a six-foot-tall model I knew from back in L.A., who also happened to be Errol Flynns daughter. I found out later that the groupies at Ondines compared notes with one another and bestowed ratings on their conquests. I didnt get much attention from anyone after Rory, so I must not have rated too highly.

We were a young band on our way up. There was plenty of cause for celebration. But as usual, Jim celebrated harder than the rest of us.

The night after my phone call from God, we went to Thanksgiving dinner at our producer Paul Rothchilds house in New Jersey, and Jim celebrated so hard that he was hitting on Pauls wife right at the table. Paul took it in stride, but when he gave us a ride back to the Henry Hudson Hotel, Jim kept grabbing Paul by the hair, causing him to swerve and nearly crash. It took the whole band to drag Jim back to his hotel room. We hoped if we could just get him into bed hed wind down and pass out. Instead, he stripped naked and jumped out the window.

Jim had a particular technique for jumping out of windows. Id seen him do it a few times before. Back then, John and I were sharing a house in Laurel Canyon, and one night, Jim stopped by when we had some girls over. He decided to freak the girls out by breaking into a run and leaping off our balcony. His jump included a well-timed twist that allowed him to grab hold of the ledge, where he would dangle for a while until he got the attention he needed. Then he would pull himself up, to the gasping relief and accelerated heartbeats of any females who had witnessed it.

Our Laurel Canyon house was only two stories tall, though. This time Jim was dangling a dozen floors above the unforgiving concrete and honking traffic of Fifty-Eighth Street. And judging from the gratuitous nudity, he was even drunker than usual, so I didnt have much confidence in his grip.

We raced across the room to pull him back in. If we hadnt been there, he probably wouldnt have been able to rescue himself. Then again, if we hadnt been there, he probably wouldnt have jumped for the shock value in the first place. Once we pulled him back inside, Jim tackled me onto the bed. While John and Ray secured the window, Jim kept me pinned down as he jokingly writhed around, pretending to put the moves on me. Sure, it was the sixties, but I didnt swing quite that far. I shoved him off the bed and watched him cackle with laughter on the floor.

Looking back, I think Jim subconsciously knew that John or Ray would never have put up with his impromptu Greco-Roman seduction act. Jim was always driven to test his limits, and even at his most intoxicated, he was still instinctively aware of exactly what those limits were. That night, he saw me as the band member with the best sense of humor. So I was the limit he decided to test.

Its funny to me now, but it wasnt funny to me at the time. I was twenty years old, the youngest member of the band. I didnt have any authority over these guys, and I didnt have any understanding of how to cope with this level of chaos. I was constantly being placed at the crossroads between rock n roll stardom and scooping our lead singers brains off the pavement.

We stayed in Jims room for another hour or so as he calmed down and passed out. The next day he greeted me as if nothing ever happened. Jim rarely remembered his drunken fits, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. I told him what hed done, and it was like he was hearing a story about someone else. His reply, as usual, was something like Wow, thats terrible or Oh, Im sorry. I didnt realize.

His apologies were so simple, and yet so hypnotic. I still dont know how he got us to forgive him for half the stuff he did. There was something about his sober nature that made you feel bad about holding a grudge. Hanging from a window ledge, wrestling me naked on his hotel bed, all of it after embarrassing us in front of our producer and waking me up in the middle of the night with prank callswhy was I putting up with it? How can a simple apology cover it? Why was I sticking with this band when one of its crucial elements seemed bent on destroying everything?

All I knew was that I could never walk away. We were still playing small clubs, and we were still unknown to most of the world, but I could already see the future. I knew that Jim could be as big a rock star as anyone who had come before him, and I knew the Doors had the potential to become the biggest group in America. Regardless of whatever else might happen along the way, I was all in.