The meeting took place in early 1990 at the office of director Oliver Stone. It was not an auspicious start.

Robby Krieger, guitarist for the legendary ’60s band The Doors, had come to meet Val Kilmer, a young actor who had landed the plum if difficult role of Jim Morrison, the band’s lead singer, poet and doomed sex symbol who died at 27 in 1971.

“He came up to me and said, ‘Hi Robby, I’m Val Kilmer, I got the gig, I’m going to play Jim,'” Krieger recalls, reflecting with fondness on that encounter in light of Kilmer’s passing on April 1 at age 65. “I said to him, ‘Really?’ I mean, he neither looked nor acted anything like Jim. So I said, ‘How did you get the job?'”

And that’s when Kilmer, then only 30, casually offered to play Krieger a rough video that showed the actor singing. And boy, could he sing, Krieger recalls.

“It turns out, he had formed a Doors tribute band before any of this had happened, maybe when he was in high school or something,” says Krieger. “So he plays me this clip and man, it was damn good. He wasn’t dressed like Jim of course, but when I saw that, I said ‘OK, this guy can do it.’ And obviously, that’s what Oliver had thought, too.”