{"id":10306,"date":"2026-04-17T14:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T14:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/from-la-misfits-to-no-1-by-summer-how-the-doors-and-jim-morrison-ignited-america-in-1967-154189\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T14:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T14:46:11","slug":"from-la-misfits-to-no-1-by-summer-how-the-doors-and-jim-morrison-ignited-america-in-1967-154189","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/from-la-misfits-to-no-1-by-summer-how-the-doors-and-jim-morrison-ignited-america-in-1967-154189\/","title":{"rendered":"From LA misfits to No 1 by summer: how The Doors and Jim Morrison ignited America in 1967"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

When The Doors flew north to play their first San Francisco dates in January 1967, they were completely unknown there. Jim Morrison’s reputation as an unpredictable frontman had spread around the LA club scene throughout ’66 (he often performed on LSD), but then again, the Los Angeles Times had written of “a hungry-looking quartet with an interesting, original sound but… possibly the worst stage appearance of any rock’n’roll group in captivity”. Jazz-based and self-consciously collegiate, The Doors were few people’s tip-for-success in ’67.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

When The Doors flew north to play their first San Francisco dates in January 1967, they were completely unknown there. Jim Morrison\u2019s reputation as an unpredictable frontman had spread around the LA club scene throughout \u201966 (he often performed on LSD), but then again, the Los Angeles Times had written of \u201ca hungry-looking quartet with an interesting, original sound but\u2026 possibly the worst stage appearance of any rock\u2019n\u2019roll group in captivity\u201d. Jazz-based and self-consciously collegiate, The Doors were few people\u2019s tip-for-success in \u201967.<\/p>\n

So it was all the more audacious when, just before they left LA in January, a bullish Elektra Records launched the debut album (The Doors<\/em>), and its lead-off single, \u201cBreak On Through (To The Other Side)\u201d, with a giant billboard ad on Sunset Strip. It read: \u201cBreak On Through With An Elektrifying Album\u201d. The single \u2013 an urgent bossa nova \u2013 was different and catchy, and bore an abstract Morrison lyric that hinted at a revolutionary idea: breaking free from the shackles of society, from your schooling, your parents, the Vietnam War, America\u2019s entire Judaeo-Christian capitalist structure. To Ronald Reagan, sworn in as the new governor of California on January 5, it would have been tantamount to high treason.<\/p>\n

America and Morrison were not yet on a formal collision course \u2013 Morrison\u2019s first arrest would come at the end of the year \u2013 but their ideological motivations made conflict inevitable sooner or later. Morrison, in a performance of \u201cThe End\u201d in August \u201966, had improvised some of the most shocking words ever heard in a rock venue (\u201cFather, I want to kill you\u2026 Mother, I want to fuck you!\u201d), and been fired from the Whisky A Go Go on the spot. Ronald Reagan, in a famous 1964 fund-raising speech for Republican Party Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, had declared: \u201cThe Founding Fathers knew a government can\u2019t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a ti<\/sup>me for choos<\/sup>ing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, by 1967, it was certainly a time for choosing. On January 14, The Doors attended the \u201cHuman Be-In\u201d, a free concert held at the city\u2019s Golden Gate Park. A spontaneous assembly of counterculture humanity, it was the first event of its kind in the country. \u201cA stage was set up in the middle of the polo field,\u201d recalls keyboard player Ray Manzarek, \u201cand approximately 30,000 hippies showed up. We couldn\u2019t believe our eyes. The new tribe of Americans had gathered \u2013 longhairs, dopeheads, LSD-takers \u2013 and it was magnificent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Doors\u2019 modern-day image as dark existentialists who looked down their noses at, or even opposed, the hippy movement, is not accurate at all. Manzarek lists the alternatives as they appeared at the time: \u201cLove or death. Peace or war. New Christians against old. The stoners against the squares. From the establishment\u2019s perspective, it was a battle to the death as to which direction America would go in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

It was a battle that would soon involve The Doors directly. In the meantime, however, after playing bottom-of-the-bill to The Grateful Dead and Junior Wells at the Fillmore, the band returned to LA to find that their Sunset Strip billboard hadn\u2019t worked its magic, and \u201cBreak On Through\u2026\u201d had disappointingly failed to make the Top 100.<\/p>\n

The origins of The Doors were cinematic even before Oliver Stone made them literally so. Consider: singer and keyboard player, both recent UCLA film school graduates, meet in Venice Beach one day by chance. Keyboard player is stunned by beautiful lyrics recited by singer; says \u201clet\u2019s form a band\u201d. Keyboard player happens to meet guitarist and drummer on a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi meditation course, where each has gone in search of psychic serenity after months of experimentation with LSD. All four Doors (as they would become) bring personal influences and tastes to the table: jazz, flamenco, Brecht Weill, Rachmaninov, the cinema, poetry, Latin rhythms, the blues. There is no bassist, an inspired (but controversial) touch.<\/p>\n

All of the band\u2019s keynote darkness and psychological depth come from Morrison; guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore agree The Doors would have been a very different band without him. Morrison writes in surreal form, or in impossibly romantic language \u2013 as on \u201cThe End\u201d, where, after first \u201cputting black crepe over the end of a relationship\u201d (Manzarek), Jim embarks on a heaven-and-hell odyssey culminating in his notorious Oedipal episode. In offstage moments Morrison, the son of an admiral from Florida, is extremely intelligent, \u201cfunny-as-all-get-out\u201d (Manzarek), and \u201creally friggin\u2019 shy\u201d (Densmore), but prone to spur-of-the-moment acts of madness when he\u2019s drunk or on drugs.<\/p>\n

He and The Doors learn their stagecraft at clubs such as the London Fog and the Whisky, where \u201cThe End\u201d grows from three minutes to almost indefinite. They work on things like dynamics, drama and repetition. Manzarek: \u201cJim had that haunted, Chet Baker voice, and was singing those songs of great tragedy and loss, but you could also ignore him and get into the throbbing bassline of my left hand [playing a Fender Rhodes piano bass]. The music was hypnotic and asked you to surrender. Surrender control. Surrender your conscious mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

But prior to signing with Elektra in August 1966, The Doors spent a luckless six months on Columbia (no recordings, no releases) and were rejected by several other labels in LA. \u201cThey were considered lightweights, because they didn\u2019t have a bassist, so there wasn\u2019t a driving, forceful groove,\u201d says John Echols, who played lead guitar in Elektra\u2019s folk-rockers, Love. \u201cIt was like a theatrical group, like a play, or a throwback to the Beatniks and coffee-house bands. We\u2019d let them do shows with us because we liked them as people, but I never thought they would achieve success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Densmore: \u201cIt took a while for people to get onto us, because we were so weird. I remember one or two audiences watching us with their jaws hanging open.\u201d Krieger: \u201cI thought The Doors would last a year at the most. Then we\u2019d all just go on to other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSelf-destruction and creativity don\u2019t always come in the same package. picasso lived to be 90. but in jim\u2019s case, he was destined to have a short, quick life\u201d \u2013 John densmore<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tipped off by Love\u2019s Arthur Lee, Jac Holzman of Elektra saw The Doors four times at the Whisky before becoming convinced they had merit. \u201cFinally, the fourth evening, I heard them,\u201d Holzman recalled in his book, Follow The Music<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\u201cJim generated an enormous tension with his performance, like a black hole, sucking the energy of the room into himself\u2026 They weren\u2019t consistent, and they needed some fine tuning before they would be ready to record, but this was no ordinary rock\u2019n\u2019roll band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Botnick, engineer on the first five Doors albums (and co-producer of the sixth, LA Woman<\/em>), met them for the first time when they began work on their debut LP at Sunset Sound Recording Studios in August\/September \u201966. \u201cMorrison was shy,\u201d Botnick remembers. \u201cHe was surprised that people thought he had a good voice. I put him in the vocal booth, where I had a Neumann U 47 [microphone] set up. Morrison froze, then started to giggle. He said: \u2018That\u2019s the same mic that Frank Sinatra sings into.\u2019 I said: \u2018Absolutely.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrison\u2019s initial reticence as a frontman (he had sung with his back to the audience at early gigs) had been superseded by a remarkable, highly sexual, arrogant transformation. He was not yet the Lizard King, but, as Holzman had seen on that fourth night, he was not far away. Densmore: \u201cIt was exciting, scary. Everyone \u2013 the band, the audience \u2013 was wondering: \u2018What the fuck is the wild man going to do tonight?’\u201d At one gig in Long Beach, New York, in June \u201967, Morrison drank 15 shots of bourbon before taking the stage. Shortly before he passed out, he tried to take all his clothes off. The next night, he was too hungover to perform. That same weekend, on the other side of America, a celebrated pop festival took place in Monterey. The Doors were not yet widely known, and hadn\u2019t been invited to play.<\/p>\n

Military-Staccato at times, bottleneck bluesy at others, and exotically strange whatever they did, The Doors were \u201cthe Modern Jazz Quartet of rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u201d, in Manzarek\u2019s words. A new two-disc Rhino release, Live At The Matrix, documents their impressively diverse repertoire (Gershwin\u2019s \u201cSummertime\u201d, blues standards \u201cI\u2019m A King Bee\u201d and \u201cCrawling King Snake\u201d, as well as their own originals) as they played a near-deserted San Francisco club in March 1967. A feature of their set every night was the lengthy \u201cLight My Fire\u201d, a stunning tour de force written mostly by Robbie Krieger, with one verse (\u201cThe time to hesitate is through\u2026\u201d) by Morrison.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all knew \u2018Light My Fire\u2019 was our best song,\u201d says Krieger. \u201cThe only problem was that it was six-and-a-half-minutes long when we recorded it.\u201d In fact, it was closer to seven. It needed to be. The solos by Manzarek and Krieger were both sublime, taking listeners on a mazy, heady jazz-rock journey perfectly in keeping with Morrison\u2019s sensuous vocals at the song\u2019s beginning and end. There were constant requests to Elektra and The Doors from radio DJs (in particular Dave Diamond of KBLA in Burbank) to release \u201cLight My Fire\u201d as a three-minute single, so that it could be played on commercial radio.<\/p>\n

In 1967, seven-minute tracks were not permissible on AM stations (and FM rock radio wasn\u2019t yet established), so The Doors reluctantly agreed to an edit. Producer Paul Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick came up with a version that excised the two solos, cutting the song down to 2\u201952\u201d. The Doors were appalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cRothchild took the intestines out of it!\u201d exclaims Densmore with a chuckle. Manzarek told Elektra it was so horrible he never wanted to hear it again. \u201cBruce and Paul were imagining hearing it through the ears of a young kid in Minnesota who didn\u2019t even know there was a long version,\u201d Manzarek acknowledges now. \u201cAnd my God, it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

By June, there were 448,000 American troops in Vietnam. To avoid being among them, at least two members of The Doors had claimed to be homosexuals at their draft board inductions a couple of years earlier. \u201cYou know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar\u2026\u201d These were now the words coming out of every radio, every jukebox in the Summer of Love. By the end of July, The Doors \u2013 that odd, studious-looking, theatrical art-jazz-blues band with a crazy singer and no bassist \u2013 had the No 1 single in America.<\/p>\n

Apart from the incident where he\u2019d taken acid before singing \u201cThe End\u201d, and another where he\u2019d set off a firehose in the studio, Morrison had been a model of courteous behaviour during the making of the first album. The follow-up, Strange Days<\/em>, recorded in the summer of \u201967, was where he began to be a problem. While he looked and sounded fabulous on The Ed Sullivan Show in September, the truth was that he was becoming an alcoholic. He had started to miss recording sessions, or roll up too inebriated to sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw him indulging too much, but I thought he\u2019d snap out of it,\u201d admits Manzarek. \u201cI thought he would eventually say, \u2018Enough drinking, let\u2019s get back to work.\u2019 I thought, OK, he\u2019s going on these drunken benders \u2013 but this is rock\u2019n\u2019roll, who said it was gonna be easy? He\u2019s Brendan Behan, he\u2019s an Irish poet. And he\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cSelf-destruction and creativity don\u2019t always come in the same package. Picasso lived to be 90,\u201d notes Densmore. \u201cBut in Jim\u2019s case, he was destined to have a short, quick life.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a busy itinerary in October and November (they were now playing to thousands, often two sets a night), The Doors arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 9, the day after Morrison turned 24. The previous night\u2019s show in Troy, New York (birthplace of the 19th-century meatpacker Samuel Wilson, aka \u201cUncle Sam\u201d), had gone badly and Morrison was in a depressed, volatile frame of mind. Backstage at the New Haven Arena, he was interrupted by a policeman while groping an 18-year-old local college student in a shower cubicle. When told to vacate the area, he refused and was promptly maced in the eyes. \u201cThe guy wouldn\u2019t have known who Jim was,\u201d points out Manzarek. \u201cHe probably would\u2019ve recognised Fabian, you know, or maybe Frankie Avalon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrison walked onstage in a vicious mood. Densmore remembers there being \u201ca row of cops all along the front of the stage. We were becoming big. The authorities were taking a look at us.\u201d When they played \u201cBack Door Man\u201d, Morrison extemporised new lyrics that taunted the police and encouraged the audience to attack them. The lights were turned on and Morrison was arrested. The crowd, many of them incensed, went on to destroy the hall. \u201cWe were on the establishment\u2019s list,\u201d reasons Manzarek. \u201cThe same list that Jane Fonda was on. The captain of police in New Haven, I remember he was standing to one side of Jim, and he said, \u2018You have gone too far, young man.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The first rock singer to be arrested onstage, Morrison was charged with breach of the peace, resisting arrest \u201cand immoral or indecent exhibition\u201d. (In January 1968, these charges were unexpectedly withdrawn. Later that month, Morrison was assaulted by security guards outside a Las Vegas nightclub, and then arrested by police for \u201cvagrancy and public drunkenness\u201d. Again, these charges were soon dropped. In May, he invited a riot at the 4,000-capacity Chicago Coliseum, reportedly because he wanted to see what it would look like.)<\/p>\n

It was a time for choosing, and Morrison, the admiral\u2019s son who\u2019d coldly told the world that his perfectly healthy father was dead, had now chosen. Alcohol was to be his companion, and civil disobedience his response to all authority. For the other three band-members, the die was cast.<\/p>\n

Densmore: \u201cJim was smart, so he was mindful of public image. On the other hand, it wasn\u2019t a \u2018show\u2019. He wasn\u2019t faking being dangerous. We never knew what the fuck he was going to do half the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were amazed sometimes that he was still alive,\u201d says Bruce Botnick. \u201cBut he never talked about dying. Jim was so well-read, you could have a conversation with him on almost any subject. And if he didn\u2019t know about it, he\u2019d go and get books and read up on it. He was that kind of person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrison lived another three years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post From LA misfits to No 1 by summer: how The Doors and Jim Morrison ignited America in 1967<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When The Doors flew north to play their first San Francisco dates in January 1967, they were completely unknown there. Jim Morrison’s reputation as an unpredictable frontman had spread around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-the-doors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}