1965-1973Jim MorrisonVocals1965-1971
Ray ManzarekKeyboards1965-1973
Robby KriegerGuitar1965-1973
John DensmoreDrums1965-1973
The Doors' name came from Aldous Huxley's narrative about mescaline, The Doors Of Perception, which got its title from a quote by William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." Huxley took LSD on his deathbed and tripped to his death on November 22, 1963, the same day John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.
Jim Morrison's father, George, was an officer in the US Navy, where he achieved the rank of rear admiral in 1967. In 1963, while a captain, George Morrison was in command of the Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, making him one of the people possibly most responsible for the escalation of the Vietnam War (many credible historians believe there was something extremely shady about the phantom "attack" that occurred that day and justified American escalation). So, the son of one of the men who may have been most responsible for escalating the Vietnam War became, only three years later, one of the leading figures of the counterculture, which was largely based upon anti-Vietnam War sentiment.
They got their first club gig when a bunch of their friends came by to cheer them on at an audition at a club on LA's Sunset Strip called The London Fog. The manager figured they were popular and gave them the gig, but very few people showed up during the band's residency at the venue. One person who did was Ronnie Haran, the booker for a bigger club just down the block, the famed Whisky a Go Go. Haran loved what she heard, and offered The Doors a residency at the Whisky.
The Doors were the house band at the Whiskey a Go Go from late May to late August 1966, playing more than 80 shows at the club. They were fired after an explicit performance of "
The End."
In January 1967, The Doors became the first band to have an album advertised on a billboard. Elektra Records paid $1,500 to promote their self-titled first album on LA's Sunset Strip.
Jim Morrison was in two movies: HWY: An American Pastoral and Feast of Friends. HWY is a 52-minute experimental film shot in 1969 in Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. It rarely has been shown in public, and has never been officially released. Feast of Friends is a documentary that captures The Doors on tour in 1968. The movie was only screened at a number of film festivals before it finally got an official release in 2014 on DVD and Blu-ray.
On December 9, 1967, Jim Morrison was arrested onstage at a Doors concert in New Haven, Connecticut, for "giving an indecent or immoral exhibition." He was backstage with a young woman before the show when an incident took place with Morrison and a police officer.
During the run-in, the singer was maced by the officer. Enraged, Morrison said this when he took the stage: "We started talking and we wanted some privacy and so went into this little [shower stall]. We weren't doing anything. You know, just standing there talking, and then this little man in a little blue suit and a little blue cap came in there. He said, 'Whatcha doin' there?' 'Nothin'.' But he didn't go away, he stood there and then he reached round behind him and brought out this little black can of something. It looked like shaving cream. And then he sprayed it in my eyes. I was blinded for about 30 minutes."
At this point, three policemen came on stage and arrested him. It was the first time a rock star was arrested in the middle of a performance.
The Doors were invited to play Woodstock in 1969, but they declined because they didn't like performing outdoors and they were concerned about the remote location. Keyboard player Ray Manzarek later admitted, "We were stupid and turned it down."
Drummer John Densmore showed up at the festival; you can see him offstage during Joe Cocker's performance in the Woodstock concert film.
On March 1, 1969, a drunk Jim Morrison was arrested at a Doors concert in Miami after allegedly exposing his penis on stage. Charges included lewd and lascivious behavior, profanity, and public drunkenness. The incident caused an uproar, and The Doors had to stop touring because promoters kept canceling their shows. In 1970, Morrison was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail, but he died while the case was being appealed.
In 2010, Florida governor Charlie Crist granted Morrison a pardon after a fan named Dave Diamond wrote to him asking for a review. Crist believed there was no conclusive evidence that Morrison exposed himself. Ray Manzarek explained: "He taunted the audience, 'I'm going to show you! I'm going to show it to you.' Then he took his shirt off, held it in front of him like a bullfighter's cape, wiggled it around as if there was something going on behind it."
On July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison was found dead by his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, in the bathtub of the Paris apartment where they were living at the time. He was 27. Cause of death was listed as "heart failure." Some of the rumors were that the Doors singer overdosed on heroin or that he faked his death. Courson died of a heroin overdose in 1974.
After Jim Morrison's death, the remaining members of The Doors released two poorly selling albums as a trio. Iggy Pop was briefly considered as a potential replacement for Morrison, but keyboardist Ray Manzarek said the band decided that no one could take Jim's place. Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger wound up sharing lead-vocal duties on those final two Doors albums.
Jim Morrison wrote his will in 1969, leaving his entire estate to his long-term partner, Pamela Courson, providing that she survived him by at least 90 days. When Courson died in 1974, her parents inherited Morrison's estate, which led to a lawsuit between Jim's family and Pamela's. An out-of-court settlement eventually was reached, with the two families agreeing to split the singer's estate.
Jim Morrison is buried at the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His headstone reads: "Kata ton daimona eay toy," Greek for "True to his own spirit." Morrison's gravesite is a popular tourist destination. Many other noteworthy people also are interred at Père Lachaise, including writers Honoré de Balzac, Molière, Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde; composers Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin; singer Édith Piaf; and mime Marcel Marceau.
Morrison was 27 years old when he died. Other famous musicians who died at that age: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Robert Johnson, and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones.
In a story he often told, when he was 4 years old, Jim Morrison was with his family when they drove by an auto accident in New Mexico where several Native Americans were dying along the road. In that moment, Morrison claimed, he felt their spirits leap into his soul.
From the early 2000s until Ray Manzarek's death in 2013, he and Robby Krieger toured together in a band that celebrated The Doors' music while changing names multiple times. John Densmore initially declined to take part in the reunion project because of severe tinnitus, which is ringing of the ears. Densmore subsequently sued Manzarek and Krieger when they christened their group The Doors of the 21st Century, insisting that without Jim Morrison, no band should use "The Doors" name. This led to an extended and bitter legal battle.
Spawn creator Todd McFarlane designed a Jim Morrison action figure that he began selling in 2001.
When the group started out, Morrison was very shy. As a result, he often would perform with his back to the audience.
During the 1990s, there was a minor-league hockey team in Jacksonville, Florida, called the Lizard Kings, which was one of Morrison's many nicknames.
The Doors never officially hired a bass player, but used several session bassists on their albums. In concert, keyboardist Ray Manzarek used his left hand to play bass lines on a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass.
Morrison's long-term girlfriend, Pamela Courson, worked in a boutique owned by Ola Hudson, the mother of Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash.
After the breakup of The Doors, Manzarek did a lot of work with Beat poet and author Michael McClure. Their collaborations include the 1993 spoken-word album Love Lion.
In the 1990s, Robby Krieger's son, Waylon, played rhythm guitar in a band called Bloodline, which also featured the sons of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and Allman Brothers bassist Berry Oakley, as well as popular blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa. The group's original lineup also featured Sammy Hagar's son Aaron on lead vocals, but he left Bloodline before they released their sole album in 1994. In recent years, Waylon has served as the lead singer of his dad's solo band.
In 1969, Jim Morrison self-published two books of poetry - The Lords/Notes on Vision and The New Creatures. The following year, the two books were combined into one volume that was officially published under the title The Lords and The New Creatures. Morrison's writings initially were trashed by many critics, and have generally received mixed reviews in the ensuing years.
A movie about the band called The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone, premiered in 1991. Val Kilmer starred as Jim Morrison. Drummer John Densmore made a cameo appearance in the film as a studio engineer.
Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943. He was one of three famous music stars who died within a year of each other at age 27, along with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. December 8 was also the day John Lennon was shot to death in 1980.
There is a real Morrison Hotel, which was featured on the cover of The Doors' 1970 album of the same name. It's in Los Angeles and opened in 1915. You probably wouldn't want to stay there, though, and you likely will never be able to: By December 2024, the building had fallen into disrepair and was only occupied by some homeless people when a fire broke out, seriously damaging its top floor and roof. It's now permanently closed.
Jim Morrison was married to rock journalist Patricia Kennealy in a Wiccan ceremony in 1970, although the legality of the marriage has long been contested. She went on to become a science-fiction writer and legally changed her name to Patricia Kennealy-Morrison. She died on July 21, 2021, at age 75.
Morrison was a pudgy kid in his UCLA years; his weight at that time was about 185 pounds. However, during the forming stages of The Doors, he and Ray Manzarek took to a workout area at Venice Beach; that and not having much money for food at the time meant a strict diet, resulting in the 145-pound figure that can be seen in the famous Joel Brodsky photos. It was only a few short years of self-indulgence with alcohol and drugs, coupled with staying up for days at a time and partying all night, that Jim quickly added the weight back and was much heavier at his time of death.
Early in his career, Glen Campbell opened for The Doors. As
Campbell recalled in the 2008 documentary
The Wrecking Crew, "One of the first big gigs I played was with The Doors. And I got up there and I said, 'Where's the band?' They said, 'We ain't got no band, it's just you and the guitar.' I went out with my guitar and opened for The Doors in Portland and Seattle. And when I got back to town I said, 'Don't book me on no more of those, man.' I said, '[I'd rather] stay here and do sessions. I can make more money and enjoy it [a lot more].' … And I didn't go back out, either, till after the TV show (
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which ran 1969-1972)."
Ray Manzarek passed away on May 20, 2013 at the age of 74. He died at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer.
Even though Jim Morrison attended UCLA film school, he never actually completed his student film. Terry McCartney-Filgate, a Canadian filmmaker who taught Morrison, said that Jim was talented but "undisciplined," which is rather interesting considering the fact that Jim's father was an Admiral in the Navy.
McCartney-Filgate did a
brief interview and spoke about Morrison and Ray Manzarek. He revealed some interesting tidbits about his impressions of the two young film students.
In 1966, The Doors took a corporate gig composing music for a
Ford training video, which earned them $200. The video was found in UCLA's archives in 2002.
Both Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek attended the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Also there at the same time was Oscar-winning movie director Francis Ford Coppola. He later used The Doors' song "The End" in his classic 1979 film Apocalypse Now.
