At 80 years old, John Densmore still swings harder than most drummers half his age and speaks with the kind of calm fury that comes from having seen America go sideways—twice. “If you’re not on the edge, you’re taking up too much space,” he says early on, somewhere between NPR praise and a detour about Spike Lee’s nickname for Donald Trump.
The Doors are 60 this year. The anniversary is being marked with a series of live archival releases that, much like Densmore’s ride cymbal on “Riders on the Storm,” shimmer with tension. “I’m an accompanist, not a soloist like Ginger Baker,” he says. “I want to enhance whatever’s going on.”
That includes revisiting the chaos of being a trio backing a wild prophet with no bass player. “Ray’s left hand was the bass player,” Densmore explains. “So I had to lock in with half a guy doing two things at once.” Add to that Jim Morrison rhythmically ranting about apocalyptic brides and killing his dad and you’ve got a situation. “I could even have silence,” he says, “but I knew where the groove was. That’s the drummer’s gig.”
Densmore still plays occasionally, recently sitting in with Robbie Krieger at the Whisky a Go-Go for a full-album show. He tackled “The WASP” live for the first time—“the most difficult Doors song rhythmically,” he admits—and got through “Riders on the Storm” with his “80-year-old thumb” barely intact. “You invent a beat and then you can’t play it,” he laughs. “Great.”
But this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. There’s a jazz album in the works with Adam Holzman (son of Elektra founder Jac Holzman), plus an electro-hip-hop project featuring Chuck D. And Densmore still has his eye on the Kennedy Center Honors, if Trump doesn’t kill it off first. “He wants to bring back Fiddler on the Roof. The Doors doing ‘The End’ is quite different from that.”
Speaking of endings: yes, “The End” really was the last song they played with Morrison. Densmore hadn’t considered that until now. “That’s beautiful,” he says, pausing. “Goodbye to Jim.”
And then there’s the mythology—or what how the band has arrived in a “post-myth” era. Teenagers now have no concept of the "Lizard King," but still love The Doors. Densmore lights up. “Post-myth! The music’s still getting them. That’s when you know the song is great.”
As for the post-Jim albums, he doesn’t dismiss them. “We had the musical synchronicity,” he says. “But by the second one, Full Circle, we knew our focal point was gone.” Being in a band, he says, is “polygamy without the sex.”
Still, the poetry lingers. The tension still hums beneath the surface. “That’s homeland security,” he says. “Your mother’s heartbeat. That’s the first drum we all heard.”
And if it sounds like the band is still alive—it’s because in many ways, it is. The Doors live in that pulse, in those outtakes, in the echo of Jim yelling into the void while Densmore fills the silence with thunder.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.
