In a new interview with Guitar Player, The Doors’ Robby Krieger talked about the making of ‘Light My Fire.’ The guitarist admitted that the song almost didn’t exist, but thanks to Jim Morrison, it’s a classic today.
It started when the band wanted to stand out in L.A. clubs, and they didn’t want to do it by only playing covers. “At one point, he said, ‘Guys, we need more originals. Why don’t you try writing some?’ So I said, ‘Okay. What should I write about?’ And he said, ‘Just write something timeless. Something that won’t go out of style next year,’” Krieger recalled his late bandmate’s words.
“So I thought, What’s timeless? Earth, air, fire, water. I couldn’t go wrong with any of them. I picked fire because I liked the Stones song ‘Play with Fire.’” Since many young bands played simple three-chord songs, Krieger thought using more chords would make the Doors stand out. “So I decided that I was going to write a song with a lot of chords. Nobody was doing that in rock and roll at the time.”
“I wanted to be different. It probably took me a couple of days or so before I showed what I had to the guys in the band. They really liked it, so we started playing it,” he added.
‘Light My Fire’ was the first song Krieger wrote for the band.
In 2017, the song celebrated its 50th anniversary. In the same year, it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
Krieger told ABC News in 2017 that the band always knew ‘Light My Fire’ was a hit because people would go crazy whenever they played it. However, The Doors was hesitant at first to release it as a single because the original version was seven minutes long.
“People were telling us, ‘Oh, you gotta cut that instrumental part [in the middle of the song] out,’” he recalled. “But we didn’t want to because that was our favorite part.”
It was DJ Dave Diamond from Los Angeles who convinced the band to release ‘Light My Fire’ as a single. He told them his listeners loved the full version when he played it on his station.
‘Light My Fire’ spent three weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and sold more than 927,000 copies in the U.S. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.