Set the Night on Fire by Robby Krieger

Author:Robby Krieger [Krieger, Robby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

When we got back to L.A., we took the finished album to Elektra, but our longtime champion Jac Holzman had retired, and the label had been acquired by Warner Communications and merged with Asylum Records. The new label was being run by some guy named David Geffen. My first impression of David was that he was full of himself. He wanted us to rerecord the entire album with Tom Dowd, the in-house producer at Atlantic Records who had revolutionized eight-track recording and had worked with everyone on Atlantic’s luminary jazz roster—including Coltrane. In retrospect, we should’ve done it just for the honor of working with Tom and bugging him for Coltrane stories, but when David suggested it at the meeting, I took it as an insult. We had worked our asses off recording the album in first-rate studios, and we had done it with Bruce, who wasn’t exactly a novice. I felt like David cared less about the album and more about trying to throw his weight around. Without realizing it, a sour expression crept across my face, and David noticed.

He said, “Well, you have as much enthusiasm as a half-dead worm.”

He wasn’t wrong. I said, “You’re right. We fucking worked hard on this thing and there’s no reason to redo it.”

That was pretty much the end of our dealings with David Geffen. And it was the birth of my new nickname. When Phil Chen heard the story of what had happened, he permanently dubbed me the Worm. (My son later became Little Wormy, or if my son and I are together, we’re the Worm and the Sperm.)

Bruce Botnick had some connections at a new, eclectic label called Blue Thumb Records, which welcomed the Butts Band with open arms. Bill Siddons signed on as our manager and set us up with our debut gig at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip and a quick tour of major cities around the U.S. He also got us a residency at Max’s Kansas City in New York, where we opened for the nightly headliners, just as the Doors had in the Whisky days. Then we flew back to the UK, where we opened for the Kinks at the London Palladium and appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test. We drew curious Doors fans who wanted to see what Robby and John were up to, and overall we got a warm response, even though we had to endure the occasional yell of “Play ‘Light My Fire’!” But it was all on a very small scale, and upon our return to L.A., we suffered a drought of live shows. After a couple of months of sitting around and doing nothing while our album sales languished, the British half of the band got frustrated, quit, and moved back home.

We essentially formed an entirely new Butts Band, with John and me as the only original members. Siddons recommended a singer he had been managing, Mike Stull (who, aside from being a great vocalist, had also been the voice of the Wax Phantom in an episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You!).

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