Robby Krieger says he hopes his new memoir will “correct a lot of the misinformation” about The Doors

Little, Brown and Company

The DoorsRobby Krieger delivers a candid, in-depth account of his famous band’s history in his new memoir, Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar with The Doors, which was released today.

Krieger tells ABC Audio that one of the main reasons he wrote the book was he wanted to address the inaccuracies and exaggerations included in such popular accounts of The Doors’ story as Danny Sugerman‘s 1980 book No One Here Gets Out Alive and Oliver Stone‘s 1990 film The Doors.

“The most fun part was to correct a lot of the misinformation out there that people really believe, I guess,” the 75-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer says of the project. “I’m trying to set the record straight as much as possible.”

Krieger says he especially hopes his book gives a clearer picture of what late frontman Jim Morrison was really like, noting, “[W]hen they see the movie, they see Jim in this one light, and he just was so much more than [that].”

In addition to delving into all phases of The Doors’ history, Krieger also writes about his childhood, his post-Doors musical career, his struggles with cancer and drug addiction, and the legal battle that drummer John Densmore initiated against him and keyboardist Ray Manzarek over usage of the group’s name.

Robby says he believes that Densmore’s lawsuit was motivated by bitter feelings he had over insulting things Manzarek wrote about him in his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire, and that Ray, in turn, had been upset by John’s portrayal of him in his 1990 book Rider on the Storm.

Krieger says he made sure to show Densmore “all the parts about him” in his new book before it was released, noting that “he was fine with it.”

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