Rarely seen Doors photos by Henry Diltz

  Prologue

  Strange Days have found us
  Strange Days have tracked us down
  They're going to destroy
  Our casual joys
  We shall go on playing
  or find a new town
  © 1967, Nipper Music

 Much has been written about The Doors' history . their beginnings at UCLA, their apprenticeship on the L.A. Club scene, their success with a string of hit singles, their fall from grace in Miami, and their strange demise because of Jim Morrison's death.

  Rather than recounting the basic history, California Song magazine has chosen, instead to illuminate certain specific events in their career and, to provide a cross-section of thoughts about Morrison and The Doors. Some of what follows has been excerpted from newspapers and magazines. Also included are reflections once documented from Jerry Garcia, Marty Balin, Billy James, Bill Graham and Paul Rothchild.

"REALM OF THE ANCIENTS"...
Jim Morrison, April 1968, Eye Magazine

 The more civilized we get on the surface the more the other forces make their plan. We appeal to the same human needs as classical tragedy and early Southern blues. Think of it as a seance in an environment that has become hostile to life, cold, restrictive. People feel they are dying in a bad landscape. People gather together in a séance in order to invoke, palliate and drive away the dead. Through chanting singing, dancing and music, they try to kill an illness, to bring harmony back into the world.

  Sometimes I like to look at the history of rock and roll, like the origin of Greek drama, which started out on a threshing floor at the crucial seasons and was originally a band of worshippers, dancing and singing. Then, one day. At first it was pure song and movement. As cities developed, more people became dedicated to making money but they had to keep contact with nature somehow, so they had the actors do it for them. I think rock serves the same function and may become a kind of theater.

"THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY"...
Billy James, former Columbia Records A&R man

 This is the saga of how The Doors originally signed with Columbia records. Billy James had worked for the company for years and in late 1965 was given a position in a new department called Talent Acquisition & Development, which gave him the power to sign and produce bands.

  One day late in '65 I came back from lunch and there were four guys waiting for me. It was them. It was The Doors. They had a quality that attracted them to me immediately. I guess they appealed to the snob in me because they were UCLA graduates and I though, great, here are some intellectual types getting involved with rock and roll. They played me an acetate of several songs they'd recorded. "Moonlight Drive" was on there, and a few others as well. I don't think "Light My Fire" was on the original acetate.

  The music was so raw, so basic, so simplistic, so unlike anything I was familiar with. It intrigued me that they could combine this sort of music with such interesting lyrics. As they sat there with me, they seemed very friendly. They exuded this air of confidence. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing.

  So we signed a deal. Since my background up to that point had been more in publicity than in producing, I felt I wouldn't be able to bring out this very elusive power they had in that studio. So I approached the other Columbia staff producers. Larry Marks, who is now a Vice-President at Warner Bros. Pictures. Bruce Johnston, who's in the Beach Boys now. Terry Melcher and Alan Stanton who was Columbia head of A&R. Well because of their schedule and prior commitments none of them felt they could get involved with the band.

  The deal we had signed was a five and a half year deal, with the half-year being the initial term, which Columbia was obligated to produce and release a single from the band. We wrote that into the contract because I didn't want them to just languish on the label and have nothing happen for a long time. At the end of five months, nothing had been recorded and John Densmore (The Doors drummer) finally called me and asked if they could be released from their contract. I said, "O.K., there's obviously nothing happening here." An A&R administrator prepared a release for them and Columbia officially lost The Doors.

  I wasn't too surprised at this. I had brought The Mothers of Invention to Columbia and they didn't sign them. I'd brought them The Jefferson Airplane . same thing. Lenny Bruce . same thing. I was getting frustrated there when one day, Jac Holzman, who was President of Elektra Records called me to ask if I would head up the label's new West Coast offices. About three weeks before I left Columbia, and before I'd told anyone there about my decision to leave, I got a call from Ray Manzarek saying he wanted to meet with me at my house. That night, he showed me the contract that Elektra had offered The Doors. I told him I didn't want to comment on the contract because, as I explained in confidence, I was about to go to Elektra myself. We had a good relationship and Ray liked that I would be at Elektra too, if the group signed with them. Of course, that is eventually what happened, and we remained pretty good friends for years.

"THE L.A./S.F. WAR"
*HIPPIE VERSION ...
Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

 The Dead and The Doors played together several times in 1967 and '68. It was not a match made in heaven.

  I never liked The Doors. I found them terribly offensive. When we played with them it was back in the days when Morrison was just a pure Mick Jagger cop. That was his whole shot! Not vocally, but his moves were stolen from Jagger, circa '69 tour. He used to move a lot before he earned the reputation as a poet, which I thought he never deserved. Rimbaud was great at 18. Verdaine was great. But, I'm sorry Jim Morrison was not great.

  Also, the sound of The Doors music was so brittle. It's weird to have a three-piece without a bass, and that raga-rock guitar is real breakable, sharp-edged. It was not something I enjoyed listening to then. I kind of appreciated some of the stuff they did later and I sort of appreciated Morrison's sheer craziness, which is always a nice trait in rock and roll.

  When we played with them, I'd usually hear the first tune or two and then go off and play my guitar. There just wasn't anything I wanted to know about. To me, when The Doors played in San Francisco, they typified L.A. coming to San Francisco. They had the right 'look' but zero substance.

"A CLOSE SCRAPE FOR UNCLE BILL"...
Bill Graham, promoter

 From late '66 through 1970, the Doors played often at facilities run by Bill Graham, including the original Fillmore, the Carousel Ballroom, the Fillmore East, Winterland and other venues.

  For the most part, the Doors were very easy to work with. They kept to themselves, usually, but they were always very polite, very cordial. The only serious moment we ever had came in late 1967 at the original Fillmore. I was in the back of the facility watching the Doors, when Jim started swinging the microphone like a lasso making the swirl larger and larger each time he swung it around. It started with 3 or 4 yards of cord but it kept getting bigger until eventually the swirl went beyond the edge of the stage and over the front of the crowd. I was afraid he was going to hit somebody with the damn thing, so I started to work my way through the crowd, pushing my way to the front. I thought that if Jimmy saw me he would stop.

  Well, when I got maybe 15 or 20 feet from the stage, the microphone did finally hit someone. There were a couple of thousand people there that night and I always thought that one of the miracles in rock and roll that I went through was that it was my head that it had hit. It really knocked me pretty hard. So after the set I went upstairs and said to Jim, "Thank God it was me that it hit. We could have had quite a law suit over that one." Jim apologized profusely. He seemed genuinely sorry.

  A couple of months later when the Doors came to San Francisco, the group presented me with this big gift box. I opened it up and inside was a construction helmet on which they'd painted "The Morrison Special." I'm sorry to say that a couple of weeks later it was stolen from my office. That would have been a memento I would treasure.

"GROWING PAINS"...
Jim Morrison, from Jerry Hopkins' Rolling Stone interview, July '69.

 I just remembered that some of the best musical trips we ever took were in clubs. Concerts are great, but it gets into a crowd phenomenon that really hasn't much to do with music. In a club there's a different atmosphere. They can see you sweat and you can see them. And there's much less bullshit. In a concert situation you can't really lose. You get that many people together and it doesn't matter so much what you do. In a club you have to turn people on musically. If it doesn't cut it, everyone knows it.

  It's almost impossible (to bomb in a concert) because the sheer excitement of the event, the mass of people mingling together, generates a kind of electricity, and it has to do with music. It's exciting, but it's not music. It's raw hysteria.

"HOLLAND, '68"...
Marty Balin, former Jefferson Airplane vocalist

 The Airplane and the Doors played many shows together in the late 60's and toured Europe together in 1968.

  I remember we were playing one night in Amsterdam, which was one of the wildest cities in Europe then. The Doors and the Airplane were almost equal in popularity at the time, so we'd alternate night to night with who would go on first and who would close the shoe. On this night, we went on first. We were dynamite! The crowd was going totally crazy! Jim was sitting on the edge of the stage watching us play. He had been drinking a lot that day, I think we'd gone out together that afternoon, and just before the show, somebody had given him a big ball of hash. Instead of keeping it to smoke it, he just popped the whole thing in his mouth and swallowed it! He was very high.

  All of a sudden, Jim stumbled onto the stage and started dancing in front of me. He had his arms over his head and was spinning in circles like a Flamenco dancer. I'm singing and he's dancing, and we were circling each other, wrapping the microphone cord around us. We were tying ourselves up going around and around and we unraveled at a perfect place in the song. The crowd went nuts. Just as we were finishing the song, Jim looked at me real funny and then, CRASH, he dropped to the floor. I finished the song leaning over him. He was totally out. He wasn't moving.

  He didn't even make the show that night he was so out of it. The amazing thing is that the Doors went on anyway. Manzarek sang all the songs and sounded exactly like Morrison. I couldn't believe it. If you were blind you wouldn't have known Morrison wasn't up there.

"NO ONE LIKES A "STOOL PIGEON"...

  Shortly after the infamous Miami show at which Morrison allegedly exposed himself, an FBI informant filed this report, which appeared for some strange reason, in a larger report on racial violence in Florida. It was obtained, along with other interesting documents about Morrison, by Rich Linnell of the Doors organization using the Freedom of Information Act.

  "On March 1969, Agent ??????? reported that Jim Morrison, a rock and roll singer, appeared at the Dinner Key auditorium, Miami, Florida. Morrison, a white male, age 25, born in Cocoa Beach, Florida and who once attended Florida State University, reportedly pulled all stops in an effort to provoke chaos in the little crowd. Morrison's program lasted one hour, during which time he sang one song and for the remainder he grunted, gyrated and gestured along with inflammatory remarks. He screamed obscenities and exposed himself, which resulted with a number of the people on stage being hit and slugged and thrown to the floor. There were 31 off-duty Miami Police Officers, hired by the sponsors, who observed most of the disturbance but failed to make any arrests as to do so might possibly incite a riot."

  Agent ??????? advised he is conducting an investigation and warrants will be obtained for Morrison's arrest on misdemeanor charges. In addition, the matter will be discussed with the Florida's State's Attorney's Office to determine if Morrison can be charged with a felony.

"QUESTION AUTHORITY"...
Jim Morrison, July 1969

 It's never gotten out of control actually. It's pretty playful, really. We have fun, the kids have fun, and the cops have fun. It's kind of a weird triangle. Sometimes I'll extend myself and work people up a bit but usually we're out there to make good music and that's it. Each time it's different. There are varying degrees of fever in the auditorium waiting for you. So you go out on stage and you're met with this rush of energy potential. You never know what it's going to be.

  You have to look at the police/law situation logically. If there were no cops there, would anybody try to get on stage? Because what are they going to do when they get there? When they get on stage they're very peaceful. They're not going to do anything. The only incentive to charge the stage is because there's a barrier. If there was no barrier, there'd be no incentive. That's the whole thing. I firmly believe that. No incentive, no charge. Action-Reaction - you see cops today walking around with their guns and uniforms and the cop is setting himself up like the toughest man on the block and everyone's curious if you challenged him. What's he going to do? I think it's a good thing because it gives the kids a chance to question authority.

  "A ROYAL MEETING"...
Paul Rothchild, Doors producer

 In 1970, Rothchild, who had produced every Doors album, found himself working with both Janis Joplin and the Doors on separate album projects. "I thought 'Here's the King and Queen of rock and roll', he remembers. "They should meet". Here's what happened!

  There was a party at John Davidson's house one afternoon. He was out of town and a girl that had been living at his house thought she'd throw a little Sunday afternoon bash out at Hidden Hills which had a big pool, a bar - a real cowboy's dream. So John Cook, Janis and I went out there and met up with Jim and Bobby Neuwirth, who besides being a brilliant songwriter and musician, was a paid Jim Morrison baby sitter for a while. We called him Jim's "road shrink". He was chosen because he could out-insane Jim any time. Jim was very impressed with that.

  So there we are and everyone showed up sober. Jim and Janis are getting along great. Jim is fascinated by this remarkable girl and of course, Jim was also a fascinating guy and good looking. Well, after Janis Joplin's great love of singing was that Janis Joplin also loved to fuck. That was her single greatest pastime. She saw this hunk of meat (Jim) and said, " I want that". Jim would get drunk most days and this one was no exception. And most of the time he'd get rude, obnoxious and violent. He'd turn into a cretin. Just a disgusting drunk and Janis, who was a charming drunk, was really put off by him.

  Well, the more Janis rejected him, the more Jim loved it. This was his kind of match. Janis finally said to me, "Let's get the fuck outta' here," and we went to the band station wagon, which she always drove by the way. Jim came staggering over. He reached into the car and started to say something and Janis told him basically to "fuck off." She wasn't interested any more. Jim wasn't going to take "No" for an answer, and he reached into the car and grabbed Janis by the hair. Well, she picked up a bottle she had, an unopened fifth of Southern Comfort that she had in the car, reached out of the car and clocked him upside the head with it. He was out cold.

  The next day, I saw Jim at rehearsal and he said to me, "What a great woman! She's terrific! Can I have her telephone number?" He was in love. Physical confrontation was his thing. He loved violence. I had to say, "Jim, Janis doesn't think it would be a good idea for you two to get together again." Jim Morrison was crushed!!!