By Niiloi

Floating through the water, with flowing moss beneath and a majestic waterfall in the background 😌

The Doors 1967.09.09 Village Theatre,New York, NY. 📷Nathan Farb

That was a great summer. I was hanging out at the film school and I was hanging out with friends in Venice. Ray had a house there, so I’d go and watch them rehearse sometimes because we were still hanging around that summer...A few years later, after we became friends, I told Jim about my first impression of him at that first show, and I said, “I thought you were terrible that night”. I remember he gave me a look that seemed to suggest that he didn’t like the word “terrible” [laughs]...

But then I told him he had improved tremendously and he was like a Frank Sinatra crooner who could also sing rock, and I asked him, “What changed?” He just said, “I just kept practicing and I kept practicing, practicing, practicing”. And obviously he had been doing something to improve. If you listen to their first demo and then their first album, there is such a difference and you can hear it. But they rehearsed a lot and they played a lot, too. I guess you can’t really help but improve if there’s the will and the talent, right?"-Frank Lisciandro

1966.08-09 Ray's Beach House Session ©Bill Harvey

The Doors perform at the KTLA SHEBANG show, which took place on February 25, 1967. The Doors are filmed lip synching to a playback of their debut single 'Break On Through'. Band looks very collegiate and the unusual set up places.  Densmore at centre stage on drums between Morrison (stage left) and Manzarek. Krieger stands behind them directly in front of some garden furnishings. The host is Casey Kasem.

“It was our first time doing a TV show and we really had no idea what we were doing. When the director started telling us what to do, we just looked at each other and said, ‘I guess that’s how it is’. We learned later that wasn’t the case, but it was a great initial experience.”(Ray Manzarek)

“This is one of our first TV performances. We were clearly nervous. I mean, Jim won’t even look at the camera or anything. I’m somehow positioned in the front. I’m the ‘lead drummer’. Ridiculous!” (John Densmore)

“We had no say what-so-ever. There was a director telling us exactly what to do, and we did it. We just felt lucky to be there. Shebang was a local TV show, so it wasn’t as big as Dick Clark, but it was great to be on there.”(Robby Krieger)

Jim Morrison, Jule 28th-30th, 1967, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA. 📷 Paul Ferrara

May 20th 1967: Boss City KHJ-TV Los Angeles. 

The band return to Boss City on KJH-TV for a second time and the show now has a 90 minute format due to its popularity. It is not certain but it is believed the band play an album version of Light My Fire. Whether they mime or play live is unknown. It is likely the band did an interview with host Sam Riddle. 

Jim and Thor (Ray's brother's doberman) hunt abalone with Ray, Dorothy and Ray's mother. At that time, Jim was living in Ray and Dorothy's house, where he was given the master bedroom. Photo courtesy of Ray Manzarek, 1965.

KARLA opens the Doors.

The Doors very first appearance on the radio takes place in February of 1967 on KRLA 1110 during a 15 minute news broadcast by Lew Irwin. The subject of this news segment on The Doors is the newly erected Elektra billboard on the Sunset Strip, where Lew Irwin of KRLA is present with a tape recorder on the same day The Doors are photographed by Bobby Klein. A photograph of the band taken by a staff member of Foster & Kleiser, who erected the billboard, shows Lew interviewing the band with microphone in hand. Tape recordings made for KRLA news segments are known to have been continually reused and a copy of this news segment has never been found.  

The first day the band arrived in the studio, Botnick recalls, “they had pretty much the first two albums ready to go. The thought that Paul had was that we were to be invisible – to allow them to capture the magic of The Doors as you went to hear them.” He adds: “They were totally different than anything else I was recording. I was recording the Beach Boys, The Turtles, The Ventures… and The Doors were totally different, it was the beginning of that era of American sixties music.”.   1966.11  First photo session group ©Joel Brodsky

Regardless of his own aptitude, Morrison appreciated his bandmates’ talent and he made a gesture to them that still resonates with Densmore. “He said, ‘Why don’t we just split all the credits,'” he says. “That moment was pivotal. I don’t think any musical organization since the Thirties had done that. It produced 200 percent commitment from each of the four members. Later, when we played a gig and we were big, and we were introduced as ‘Jim Morrison and the Doors,’ he dragged the announcer back out and forced him to call it ‘The Doors.’ He was the star frontman, but behind the scenes, it was totally equal.”

January-February 1967, Venice Beach, California. © Bobby Klein.