The Doors

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Pat H. Broeske

With their mix of music, poetry, theater, and daring, the Doors emerged as America's most darkly innovative, eerily mesmerizing musical group of the 1960s. Founded concurrently with the English invasion, the college-educated, Los Angeles-based group stood apart from the folk-rock movement of Southern California and the peace and flower power bands of San Francisco. In exploring death, doom, fear, and sex, their music reflected the hedonistic side of the era. Writing for the Saturday Evening Post in 1967, Joan Didion called them "the Norman Mailers of the Top 40, missionaries of apocalyptic sex." The group's flamboyant lead singer, Jim Morrison, said, "Think of us as erotic politicians." A seminal rock figure, Morrison's dark good looks and overt sexuality catapulted him to sex symbol status, akin to that of Elvis Presley.

Morrison's provocative stage presence, combined with the group's mournfully textured, blues-rooted music, suggested the musical theater of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and the edginess of the avant-garde troupe, The Living Theater. But the complicated, clearly troubled Morrison could not overcome personal demons, which he sated with drugs and alcohol. By late 1968, his frequently "stoned" demeanor became off-putting, his on-stage rants pretentious. His behavior at a Miami concert in March 1969, and his resulting arrest on charges including indecent exposure, represented not only his downfall but also the Doors' looming disintegration. But if the group's rise and fall was fast and furious, encompassing just four years, their anarchist influence is undeniable. Their hard-driving music bridged the heavy-metal 1970s; their murky, cerebral lyrics spanned the new wave 1980s, and the alternative 1990s, and Jim Morrison remains the undisputed forerunner of the sexy, leather-clad, on-the-edge rock martyr.

The Doors' saga began in the summer of 1965 on the beach at Venice, California, where singer-musician Ray Manzarek ran into his former UCLA classmate, Jim Morrison. After listening to Morrison sing the haunting lyrics to a song he had written called "Moonlight Drive," Manzarek proposed they start a band, and "make a million dollars." Manzarek then approached two other musicians who were studying with him at a Maharishi meditation center. Thus, with Manzarek on piano and organ, songwriter Robbie Krieger on guitar, John Densmore on drums, and Morrison before the microphone, the group was in place. It was Morrison who came up with their moniker, derived from a William Blake passage, which had inspired the title of Aldous Huxley's book about his mescaline experiences, The Doors of Perception. As paraphrased by Morrison: "There are things that are known and things that are unknown, in between [are] the doors."

Working their way through the Los Angeles club scene, the Doors initially performed blues and rock 'n' roll standards, in addition to material written by Morrison. They were playing the London Fog on the Sunset Strip, making five dollars apiece on weeknights, ten dollars apiece weekends, when they were spotted by a female talent booker who was especially struck by the star quality of the lead singer. Hired to work the Strip's popular Whiskey a Go Go, the Doors became the club's unofficial house band, second-billed to groups including the Turtles, Them, and Love. During sets, the group was an anomaly; the four members appeared disparate, as if each were on a plane all his own, but their sound had a synchronicity. And there was no denying the allure of the group's pretty-boy singer.

In his earliest performances, Morrison was so introverted that he performed with his back to the audience. Some nights, his baritone was barely audible. However, his confidence grew with the group's reputation and, certainly, his stage presence was unique. He had languid body movements, tended to throttle the microphone, and often emoted with closed eyes as if in a spectral trance. Also, he could be counted on to be unpredictable. Sometimes he dropped to the floor to sob out his lyrics; other times he danced with abandon as if possessed. One night at the Whiskey in late 1966, he delivered an improvised rendition of his oedipal song, "The End." The eleven-and-a-half minute song climaxed with a young man's screaming threat to kill his father and rape his mother, but Morrison used a word other than "rape," bringing the entire club, including the go-go girls in hanging cages, to a stunned silence. That very night the Doors were fired. They would, however, ultimately have left on their own accord, for they already had a contract with Elektra Records.

Released in January 1967, their debut album The Doors included "Light My Fire," which, at six minutes and 50 seconds, was considered too long for Top 40 airplay. As the group toured nationally, a shorter version began climbing the AM charts; meanwhile, the full-length version became a favorite of FM. Eschewing the matching costumes that were then in vogue among music groups, the Doors also had no official leader, but in interviews, as well as on the stage, it was invariably Morrison who took the spotlight. Shrewdly, the photogenic singer-songwriter exploited his rapport with the camera, as well as his appeal to journalists, who found him sensual, mystical, and eminently quotable. For the erudite rock star was also a poet, who read and quoted the nineteenth-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Moreover, when not waxing metaphysical or apocalyptic, Morrison could be surprisingly playful. When asked how he had prepared for stardom, he once quipped, "I stopped getting haircuts."

In his Elektra Records publicity biography, he claimed to have no family; in fact, he was the son of a Navy rear admiral, and from a family of career militarists. As a performer, Morrison assumed various alter egos. For a while, he called himself the "King of Orgasmic Rock," and as the "Lizard King" he donned tight-fitting snakeskin pants. He also claimed to be possessed by the spirit of a dead Indian, the result of a childhood trip across the desert. He and his family had once passed an overturned truck, which had resulted in fatalities, and Morrison claimed that the spirit of one of the dead Indians somehow entered him. He accessorized that persona by donning a concho belt, leather pants, and dancing in a ritualistic style.

But the role he played to the hilt was that of the rebel. When the Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in September 1967, Morrison defied the famed host's request that a particular line, with possible drug connotations, be deleted from "Light My Fire." Three months later, the singer made headlines when he was arrested on stage in New Haven, Connecticut, on charges including "breach of the peace" and indecent and immoral exhibition. In August 1968 he was again arrested, this time for disorderly conduct on board a flight to Phoenix.

Increasingly, Doors concerts became known for their dangerous atmosphere, as an incorrigible and no-longer-slender Morrison staggered across the stage, taunting the audience, inciting them to riot, screaming at them to "Wake up!" He also clutched at his crotch and tugged threateningly at his pants. The Doors were in a slump when they embarked on a 21-city tour in March 1969 and, following the arrest of the bloated, bearded Morrison in Miami, the rest of the tour was canceled. The group's symbiosis was on the wane when they recorded their blues-oriented collection, L.A. Woman. Afterward, it was a burned-out Morrison who headed for Paris to concentrate on his poetry. He was just 27 when he died on July 3, 1971, reportedly of a heart attack suffered while in the bathtub. Because of Morrison's penchant for substance abuse, and the curious handling of his death and burial by several close friends, questions persist over how he actually died. Since his body was found by his common-law wife, who died in 1974 of a heroin overdose, there have long been allegations that drugs were a factor. Whatever the cause, his death was yet another reminder of the perils of the dark side of rock 'n' roll. It was also the third untimely passing of a rock star in less than a year, following those of heavy metal guitarist Jimi Hendrix and rock-blues queen Janis Joplin, both of whom died of overdoses.