The Doors

Santa Monica to the Whisky

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek met by chance on a beach in Santa Monica in July 1965. Both had attended UCLA's film school, and Morrison told Manzarek he had been writing songs. He sang the opening lines of Moonlight Drive. John Densmore joined in August, Robby Krieger before the year was out, and the name came from Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, itself drawn from a line by William Blake.

A residency at the London Fog club in the spring of 1966 let them lengthen their songs, and by May they were the house band at the Whisky a Go Go. Elektra's Jac Holzman, who had come to see them on the recommendation of Love's Arthur Lee, signed them in August 1966. On 21 August the Whisky fired them, after Morrison added an explicit retelling of the Oedipus myth to The End.

Two albums in 1967

Recorded in about a month at Sunset Sound with the producer Paul A. Rothchild and the engineer Bruce Botnick, The Doors came out in January 1967. It opens with Break On Through, holds Light My Fire and closes with the nearly twelve-minute The End. The edited single of Light My Fire was the first Elektra release to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Strange Days followed in September, made on an eight-track machine with a Moog synthesizer and musique concrete techniques, and it reached number three.

That month the band played Light My Fire on The Ed Sullivan Show after being asked to change the word higher. Morrison sang it as written, and the band was told it would never appear on the show again.

Hey man. We just did the Sullivan show.

Jim Morrison, reportedly, 1967

Strain and a return to the blues

Waiting for the Sun (1968) is the only Doors album to top the US chart, and it held their second number one single, Hello, I Love You. The band was short of songs. On 1 March 1969, at Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison gave the most controversial performance of the band's career. He was later convicted, sentenced to six months in jail with hard labor and fined $500, stayed free pending an appeal and died before it was resolved. Densmore, Krieger and Manzarek have denied the allegation that he exposed himself.

The Soft Parade (1969) added brass and strings at Rothchild's suggestion and was the most expensive Doors album to that point. Morrison Hotel (1970) went back to blues rock. Krieger said the aim was to have fun after The Soft Parade, which had taken forever. It opens with Roadhouse Blues and reached number four.

L.A. Woman and Paris

The last concert with Morrison was at The Warehouse in New Orleans on 12 December 1970. He smashed the microphone stand into the stage until the platform splintered, and afterwards the other three agreed to stop playing live. Rothchild quit the sessions for L.A. Woman after calling Love Her Madly cocktail music, so the band and Botnick produced it themselves at the Doors' Workshop on Santa Monica Boulevard, with Jerry Scheff on bass. Morrison sang from a bathroom doorway. The album came out on 19 April 1971 and reached number nine. It ends with Riders on the Storm, the last song all four recorded, and its title track is L.A. Woman.

On 11 March 1971 Morrison took a leave of absence and moved to Paris with Pamela Courson. He died there on 3 July 1971 and was buried at Père Lachaise on 7 July.

After Morrison

Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore made Other Voices (1971) and Full Circle (1972) as a trio, and split in 1973 once their Elektra contract had lapsed. An American Prayer (1978) set Morrison's recorded poetry to new music. A live Roadhouse Blues from it was played on album-oriented radio, part of a revival that also took in the use of The End in Apocalypse Now in 1979 and Oliver Stone's film The Doors in 1991.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, when the three played with Eddie Vedder singing. The Library of Congress added the debut album to the National Recording Registry in 2015. Rolling Stone ranked the Doors 41st in its 2004 list of the 100 greatest artists, and Pitchfork's Stuart Berman wrote in 2006 that without Morrison's baritone there would be no Iggy and no Ian Curtis.