The Doors

• 1. Introduction

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  The Doors formed on a beach in Santa Monica in July 1965 when Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek ran into each other in front of Manzarek's house on Fraser Avenue. They had both attended the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Morrison told Manzarek he had been writing songs. Then he sang the opening of "Moonlight Drive": "Let's swim to the moon, let's climb through the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide." Manzarek heard those words and thought of all the music he could play behind them. He called the lyrics "cool and spooky".

  From that meeting, four musicians built a band that would sell over 100 million records worldwide. They would be dubbed the "Kings of Acid Rock" by Life magazine and become the first American band to accumulate eight consecutive RIAA-certified Gold and Platinum LPs. They would give concerts that ended in riots and arrests, push against every boundary American television and law enforcement tried to set, and then fall apart before the decade turned. What drew these four men together, what drove them to the edge at every turn, and what kept their music alive long after their frontman was buried in Paris, are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Name from Blake

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  On the 2nd of September 1965, five musicians walked into World Pacific Studios in Los Angeles and cut a six-song demo. The band had just taken a name from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, and that book drew its title from a line in William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite." The choice told you everything about what Jim Morrison wanted the band to be.

  Manzarek had been playing with his brothers Rick and Jim in a band called Rick & the Ravens. John Densmore came in through meditation classes he shared with Manzarek and joined in August 1965. Late in 1965, after the Manzarek brothers left, guitarist Robby Krieger rounded out the lineup. Their musical backgrounds covered jazz, rock, blues, and folk. What the four of them made together was none of those things exactly and all of them at once.

  From February to May 1966, the group held a residency at a Los Angeles club called London Fog, appearing on the same bill as "Rhonda Lane Exotic Dancer". Manzarek later said that at the London Fog the band "became this collective entity, this unit of oneness... that is where the magic began to happen." The shows gave Morrison the nerve to perform in front of live audiences and gave the whole group the room to stretch their songs out, including "The End" and "Light My Fire", into the versions that would appear on their first record.

• 3. Elektra and the Whisky

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  On the 10th of August 1966, Elektra Records president Jac Holzman walked into the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles on the recommendation of Love singer Arthur Lee, whose group was already on the Elektra roster. Holzman watched two sets and liked what he saw. Eight days later, on August 18, the Doors signed with Elektra, beginning what would become a long partnership with producer Paul A. Rothchild and sound engineer Bruce Botnick.

  Three nights after signing, on August 21, the Doors were fired from the Whisky. During "The End", Morrison inserted an explicit retelling of the Greek myth of Oedipus, laced with profanity. The house that had given them a stage as its resident band sent them out the door. They had a record deal and nowhere left to play.

  The debut album, recorded around August 1966 at Sunset Sound Studios and released in the first week of January 1967, included the nearly 12-minute "The End". The lead single "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" earned only minor recognition. The band pivoted to "Light My Fire", which became the first single from Elektra Records to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, selling over one million copies. Rolling Stone ranked that debut album 42nd on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time decades later.

• 4. Television and the Sullivan Moment

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  On the 17th of September 1967, the Doors taped a performance of "Light My Fire" for The Ed Sullivan Show. Network executives had asked the band to remove the word "higher" from the lyrics, citing a possible reference to drug use. The group appeared to agree. When the moment came, they sang the word anyway, either because they had never intended to comply or because Morrison forgot to make the change; the band gave conflicting accounts. Ed Sullivan canceled another six planned appearances with the group, and after the show's producer told the band they would never return, Morrison reportedly replied: "Hey man. We just did the Sullivan Show."

  The Doors made their international television debut on the 16th of October 1967, performing a live version of "The End" for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at their Parliament Street Colour Studio in Toronto. The performance was recorded in September and transmitted on the show O'Keefe Centre Presents. It remained unreleased except in bootleg form until 2002, when it appeared on The Doors Soundstage Performances DVD.

  On the 24th of December 1967, the band performed "Light My Fire" and "Moonlight Drive" live for The Jonathan Winters Show. The taping was broadcast two days later. From December 26 to 28, the group played at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, and during one set, in the middle of "Back Door Man", they stopped performing entirely to watch themselves on The Jonathan Winters Show on a television wheeled onto the stage.

• 5. Incident in New Haven

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  On the 9th of December 1967, at New Haven Arena in New Haven, Connecticut, Jim Morrison became the first rock artist to be arrested onstage during a live performance. Before the show, a police officer found Morrison in a backstage bathroom shower stall with a female fan. Unaware of who Morrison was, the officer told them to leave. Morrison said, "Eat it." The policeman raised a can of mace and said, "Last chance." Morrison replied, "Last chance to eat it." What happened immediately after is disputed, but Morrison was maced before he took the stage.

  The main act was delayed for an hour while Morrison recovered. When the band finally performed, Morrison improvised a song about his encounter with the "little man in blue", giving the audience an obscenity-laced account of what had happened backstage. A police lieutenant then approached the stage, and Morrison thrust the microphone against his mouth and said, "Say your thing, man." Police dragged Morrison off the stage, ending the concert.

  Morrison was booked at a local station on charges of inciting a riot, indecency, and public obscenity. Three journalists arrested at the same show, Mike Zwerin, Yvonne Chabrier, and Tim Page, faced charges as well. All charges were dropped several weeks later for lack of evidence.

• 6. Miami and Its Aftermath

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  On the 1st of March 1969, at the Dinner Key Auditorium in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, Florida, the Doors gave what the source calls the most controversial and consequential performance of their career. The auditorium was a converted seaplane hangar. There was no air conditioning. The seats had been removed by the promoter to increase ticket sales. Morrison had been drinking all day and missed connecting flights; the concert started over an hour late.

  Morrison had recently attended a performance by the Living Theatre and was drawn to their antagonistic style of performance art. He taunted the crowd with contradictory messages, alternating declarations of love with shouts calling the audience "a bunch of fuckin' idiots" and "a bunch of slaves", while screaming "What are you gonna do about it?" over and over again. Equipment chief Vince Treanor recalled that someone poured champagne on Morrison, who removed his shirt, then urged the crowd to get naked. Manzarek later described the scene as a mass "religious hallucination".

  On March 5, the Dade County Sheriff's office issued a warrant for Morrison's arrest, alleging that he had exposed himself on stage, shouted obscenities, simulated oral sex on Krieger, and performed drunk. Morrison turned down a plea deal that would have required a free Doors concert in Miami in exchange. He was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail with hard labor and a $500 fine. He remained free pending appeal and died before the case was resolved. On the 9th of December 2010, Florida Governor Charlie Crist announced a posthumous pardon. The three surviving Doors have always denied that Morrison exposed himself that night.

• 7. L.A. Woman and Paris

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  Recorded in Los Angeles in 1971, L.A. Woman was the Doors' sixth studio album with Morrison and would prove to be his last. The sessions featured rhythm guitarist Marc Benno and bassist Jerry Scheff, best known for his work with Elvis Presley's TCB Band. Producer Paul Rothchild quit during rehearsals, calling "Love Her Madly" "cocktail lounge music"; Bruce Botnick took over production alongside the band.

  Despite peaking at only No. 9 on the Billboard chart, L.A. Woman went on to become the band's second bestselling studio album. "Riders on the Storm" was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for its significance to recorded music. The title track contains a moment where Morrison chants "Mr. Mojo Risin" as an anagram of his own name. A short clip filmed during the sessions of the band performing "Crawling King Snake" is believed to be the last known footage of the Doors performing with Morrison.

  On the 11th of March 1971, near the end of the L.A. Woman mixing sessions, Morrison left for Paris with Pamela Courson. He had visited the city the previous summer. On the 3rd of July 1971, Courson found him dead in the bath. No official autopsy was performed, and the cause of death was listed as heart failure. He was buried on July 7 in the Poets' Corner of Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Morrison died at 27, the same age as several other famous rock stars in what would come to be called the 27 Club. In 1974, Pamela Courson also died at 27.

• 8. Revival and Legacy

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  Beginning in the late 1970s, a sustained revival of interest in the Doors brought the band a new generation of listeners. The origin is traced to An American Prayer, released in late 1978, which set new music to spoken-word recordings of Morrison reciting his poetry, captured in 1969 and 1970. A live version of "Roadhouse Blues" on that record received heavy airplay on album-oriented rock stations. Two years later, the album received a Grammy nomination in the Spoken Word category.

  In 1979, "The End" appeared in a pivotal sequence of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The next year, the bestselling Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive was published. The Doors' debut album re-entered the Billboard 200 in September 1980. Elektra reported that sales were stronger than in any year since the band's original releases. A second wave arrived in 1991 after Oliver Stone directed The Doors, starring Val Kilmer as Morrison. Stone built his script from over a hundred interviews with people who had known Morrison. Manzarek later said the film "did real damage to the guy I knew", and Densmore said a third of it was fiction. Despite the band's reservations, the film's soundtrack reached No. 8 on the Billboard album chart.

  According to the RIAA, the Doors have sold 36 million albums in the United States and over 100 million records worldwide. In 1993, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Eddie Vedder filling in on lead vocals for a performance of "Roadhouse Blues", "Break On Through", and "Light My Fire". "Light My Fire" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and "Riders on the Storm" followed in 2010. Rolling Stone ranked them 41st on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2025, as part of their 60th anniversary, Densmore and Krieger joined archival recordings of Morrison and Manzarek for a Playing for Change performance of "Riders on the Storm", released on the 9th of January 2026, continuing a story that started with a chance meeting on a Santa Monica beach six decades earlier.