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The Doors

2 guitar songs · Tabs, Lessons & Tone Guide Psychedelic Rock

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Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

The Doors emerged from Los Angeles in 1965 and became one of the most influential late 1960s psychedelic and Blues Rock bands. Robby Krieger was the secret weapon guitarist, blending flamenco fingerpicking, blues slide, jazz phrasing, and psychedelic experimentation into an original style. Without a bass player, Krieger's guitar filled massive sonic space alongside Ray Manzarek's keyboard bass lines, giving him unusual freedom to weave melodic leads and textural fills throughout every song.

Playing Style and Techniques

Krieger's technique is deceptively challenging, favoring fingerpicking without a pick for softer, rounder attack and complex melodic passages with legato feel. He rarely used standard pentatonic licks, instead drawing improvisation from jazz and Indian music. His vibrato was subtle and vocal, bends were precise and melodic rather than aggressive. Songs like Light My Fire showcase modal navigation with jazz fluency, while Roadhouse Blues demonstrates raw slide driven blues chops and improvisational mastery.

Why Guitarists Study The Doors

The Doors provide essential study for learning to fill space in minimal arrangements, developing fingerstyle electric technique, blending genres fluidly, and building improvisational vocabulary beyond standard blues patterns. Krieger's approach demonstrates how to break from pentatonic limitations and develop a truly unique voice. His style combines modal understanding with jazz phrasing and refined technique, making him an invaluable model for guitarists seeking original expression and sonic independence.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Core riffs and rhythm parts range from intermediate difficulty, while faithfully reproducing Krieger's improvisational solos reaches advanced levels. Mastering his solos requires strong knowledge of modes, jazz phrasing, and fingerpicking dexterity. For guitarists wanting to escape pentatonic limitations and develop truly distinctive playing, studying Robby Krieger represents one of the smartest educational choices, offering pathways to sophisticated technique and improvisational fluency.

What Makes The Doors Essential for Guitar Players

  • Robby Krieger primarily played fingerstyle on electric guitar, no pick for most of his career. This gave his tone a warmer, rounder quality and allowed him to execute rapid arpeggiated passages and simultaneous bass-note-and-melody lines that would be nearly impossible with a flatpick. Try playing 'Roadhouse Blues' with your thumb and fingers to hear the difference immediately.
  • Krieger's slide guitar work on songs like 'Roadhouse Blues' uses a bottleneck slide in open tuning with a raw, vocal quality. His slide vibrato is wide and expressive, shaking the note just enough to keep it alive without losing pitch center, a technique that requires serious left-hand control and a light touch.
  • Because The Doors had no bassist, Krieger often played rhythmic chord stabs and fills that locked in with John Densmore's drums while Manzarek handled the bass lines on keyboard. This means learning Doors guitar parts teaches you how to be a rhythm-and-lead hybrid player, essential for any guitarist in a small band.
  • Krieger's soloing draws from Mixolydian, Dorian, and sometimes full melodic minor scales rather than sticking to minor pentatonic. His solo on 'Light My Fire' is a masterclass in modal improvisation, moving through key centers with jazz-influenced chromaticism and fluid legato runs.
  • His use of flamenco-influenced techniques, including rasgueado-style strumming, rapid fingerpicked arpeggios, and nylon-string-inspired phrasing on an electric, set him apart from every other rock guitarist of his era. Learning even basic flamenco right-hand patterns will unlock a deeper understanding of his approach.

Did You Know?

Robby Krieger wrote or co-wrote many of The Doors' biggest hits, including 'Light My Fire,' 'Love Me Two Times,' and 'Touch Me', making him one of the most commercially successful songwriters in rock guitar history, though he rarely gets that credit.

Krieger started on flamenco guitar before switching to electric, which is why his fingerpicking technique sounds so different from other rock guitarists. He never fully abandoned the classical right-hand approach even when playing through cranked amps.

On the original recording of 'Roadhouse Blues,' Krieger used a bottleneck slide made from a glass medicine bottle, a lo-fi approach that contributed to the song's raw, gritty tone. He later switched to metal and ceramic slides but always preferred the unpredictability of glass.

The Doors often recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs, which means the guitar parts you hear on the albums are largely single-take performances. This is why Krieger's playing has such a spontaneous, improvisational feel, because it literally was improvised in many cases.

Krieger's Gibson SG was famously stolen early in the band's career, and he played a variety of guitars throughout The Doors' run, including a rare Gibson SG Custom and various Les Pauls. He was never a one-guitar player, which contributed to the tonal variety across albums.

During live performances of 'Light My Fire,' the solo section would often stretch to 10-15 minutes, with Krieger and Manzarek trading improvisational leads in a jazz-combo format, a format virtually unheard of in rock at the time.

Producer Paul Rothchild encouraged Krieger to use very little effects processing on the early Doors albums, insisting that the natural tone of the guitar through a tube amp was the ideal sound. This 'less is more' philosophy defined The Doors' guitar tone.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

The Doors album cover
The Doors 1967

The debut album is the best starting point for learning Krieger's style. 'Light My Fire' teaches modal soloing over chord changes, 'Break On Through' introduces his punchy rhythmic comping, and 'The End' showcases his atmospheric fingerpicking and Eastern-influenced melodic ideas. The arrangements are sparse enough that every guitar part is clearly audible.

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Morrison Hotel album cover
Morrison Hotel 1970

This is The Doors' most blues-driven album and the home of 'Roadhouse Blues.' Krieger's slide work is front and center, and tracks like 'Peace Frog' feature funky, syncopated rhythm guitar that teaches you to lock in with drums. If you want to learn blues-rock guitar with a Doors twist, this is the album to study.

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Strange Days album cover
Strange Days 1967

The second album pushed Krieger into more experimental territory. 'Strange Days' and 'People Are Strange' feature inventive chord voicings and unusual picking patterns, while 'Moonlight Drive' showcases his slide guitar in a more psychedelic context. Great for guitarists who want to learn how to create atmosphere and texture beyond standard rock vocabulary.

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L.A. Woman album cover
L.A. Woman 1971

Recorded in a stripped-down, almost live setting, this album features some of Krieger's most raw and energetic playing. The title track 'L.A. Woman' is an epic lesson in building a song from a simple blues riff into a soaring climax, and 'Love Her Madly' is a perfect intermediate-level song that teaches clean rhythm guitar dynamics.

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Tone & Gear

Guitar

Robby Krieger is most associated with a 1964 Gibson SG Special with P-90 pickups, which he used on the first two Doors albums. He later played a Gibson SG Standard with humbuckers and occasionally a 1954 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top. On 'Roadhouse Blues' and the Morrison Hotel sessions, he frequently used a Les Paul for its thicker, warmer sustain, perfect for slide work. He also used a Gibson ES-335 on various recordings for its semi-hollow warmth.

Amp

Krieger primarily used Fender Twin Reverb amps throughout The Doors' career, the clean headroom and natural spring reverb gave his fingerpicked lines clarity and shimmer. He'd drive the amp just to the edge of breakup rather than running it fully cranked, keeping the dynamics of his fingerstyle attack intact. In the studio, he occasionally used smaller Fender amps like the Deluxe Reverb for a warmer, more compressed tone on blues tracks.

Pickups

Krieger's early SG Special had single-coil P-90 pickups, hot, gritty, and full of midrange character that cut through Manzarek's organ without being harsh. When he switched to SG Standards and Les Pauls, he used stock PAF-style humbuckers that offered a fatter, smoother tone ideal for his legato phrasing and slide work. The P-90 sound is more prominent on the first two albums, while the humbucker warmth defines Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman.

Effects & Chain

Krieger's setup was remarkably minimal. He used virtually no effects on the early recordings, just guitar straight into the Fender Twin. On later albums, he occasionally employed a Maestro Fuzz-Tone for heavier passages and a Vox wah pedal for expressive lead lines. On 'Roadhouse Blues,' the tone is essentially pure guitar-into-amp with no pedals. His philosophy was to let the fingers, the wood, and the tubes do the work, a reminder that great tone starts with touch, not gear.

Recommended Gear

Gibson Les Paul Standard
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Robby Krieger used this for Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman sessions, where its thick PAF humbuckers and warm sustain provided the perfect foundation for his slide work and legato phrasing.

Gibson Les Paul Custom
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Custom

While not explicitly Krieger's primary choice, the Les Paul Custom shares the warm, fat humbucker character that defined his heavier blues-rock tone on later Doors recordings.

Gibson SG Standard
Guitar

Gibson SG Standard

Krieger switched to this guitar for its smooth humbuckers, offering warmer, fatter tones than his early P-90 SG Special while maintaining clarity against Manzarek's organ.

Gibson ES-335
Guitar

Gibson ES-335

This semi-hollow body gave Krieger a mellow, resonant warmth on various Doors recordings, balancing articulation with vintage character for his fingerpicked lines.

Fender Twin Reverb
Amp

Fender Twin Reverb

Krieger's primary amp throughout The Doors' career, its clean headroom and natural spring reverb provided shimmer and clarity for his fingerstyle attack without forcing distortion.

Fender Deluxe Reverb
Amp

Fender Deluxe Reverb

Used on blues tracks for a warmer, more compressed tone than the Twin, this amp let Krieger achieve darker, moodier textures while maintaining touch sensitivity.

How to Practice The Doors on GuitarZone

Every The Doors song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Roadhouse Blues - Guitar TabPractice Five To One - Guitar Tab