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

Doors guitarist Krieger riffs melodiously through the discordant and harmonious measures of his life and times with the band in this galloping, episodic debut. He starts with his 1950s youth “in perpetually sunny Southern California,” where he discovered guitar and an abiding love of music. After laying eyes on Chuck Berry’s Gibson ES-335 at a show in 1965, Krieger swapped his acoustic guitar for a Gibson SG Special. In college, he reconnected with his old friend, John Densmore, who was playing drums with the Doors and invited Krieger to audition. While every year in the Doors was a strange one, he writes, 1967 set a whole new bar as the band went from “touring in a van as unproven unknowns... to headlining gigs as number one artists.” Krieger chronicles the notorious ups and downs of the band and its lead singer, Jim Morrison, whose antics onstage and off attracted zealous fans and police looking to make a bust. He also sets the record straight about discrepancies in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film The Doors—for one, “the Doors never did peyote in the desert.” His most insightful moments come in his reflections on songwriting, “a constant reminder that music is infinite.” Krieger’s engrossing stories are sure to be relished by fans. (Oct.)