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This is Kickass News, I'm Ben Mathes.

That was legendary Grammy-winning drummer John Densmore backing up Jim Morrison on the door's

classic Road House Blues. In his more than 50 years in music, John Densmore has played with and

gotten to know some of the greatest musicians of our time from Janice Joplin and Paul Simon to

Ravi Shankar and Willie Nelson as well as some inspiring non-musicians from the Dalai Lama to

screenwriter Joseph Campbell. He's managed to learn something from many of those interactions,

lessons he writes about in his new book, The Seekers, meetings with remarkable musicians and other

artists. And today John Densmore joins me on the podcast to discuss the many musical influences on

the doors, what he thought the first time he met Jim Morrison and how Morrison's tragic self-destruction

served as a cautionary tale that kept John Densmore straight the rest of his life.

We talk about Oliver Stone's movie The Doors, the tense legal battle between John and his bandmates

over the commercial use of The Doors' songs and how he made peace with The Doors' Ray Man Zarek

just before his death in 2013. John goes into the importance of space and silence in music,

the power of improvisation to take him to a higher place, and the person whose drumming style he

most emulates to this day. Plus his friendship with classical conductor Gustavo Dutamel jamming

with rock and roll wild man Jerry Lee Lewis and smoking weed with Willie, coming up with drummer

...