" I am the lizard king, I can do anything"

Jim Morrison and the Doors

The Doors start making music in 1965.
Jim knew Ray Manzarek (keyboards) from UCLA, where they both studied.
Jim read one of his poems, moonlight drive, to him and Ray loved it.
That´s how the band got started. Ray knew two men who could play the guitar,
Robby Krieger and the drums, John Densmore from participating Maharishi Mahesh
meditation-classes.
The name of the band is inspired by the book "The Doors Of Perception",
a book about the drug Mescaline, written by Aldous Huxley.
The Doors regularly performed in bars like Whiskey-a-go-go. This bar also had
performances by The Jefferson Airplane. This way they were discovered and 1967
was the year their first album, The Doors, was released. On this album, among others,
was one of the biggest hits of The Doors: "light my fire".
Jim did not like to perform in front of a crowd at first, so he always sang with his back
turned to te audience. Later on his behaviour became more wild and in the end
Jim was famous for his extrovert and rude behaviour on stage. Jim wanted to provocate,
but the public wasn´t ready for his ideas. Jim had been accused of :

masturbating in public (in Chicago)

piss against an amplifier (in Seattle)

improvising an obsceen poem (in New Haven)
Because of this behaviour, Jim got arrested a few times, and in many places
Doors-performances were forbidden. Also because of this behaviour,
their album-sales went up and up.
In the meanwhile Jim was dealing more and more with the pressure
of being a famous singer.
Jim was drinking a lot, sometimes annoying other bandmembers with his
drinking-behaviour. Jim also wanted to quit The Doors, but that simply wasn´t
possible because of the contract they signed at Elektra. The Doors had to
make one more album: L.A. Woman.
In the meanwhile Jim Morrison had released poetry under his own name
(James Douglas Morrison)in a small amount for friends.
More and more trials in Miami drove Jim to leave America and go to Paris
with his girlfriend Pamela Courson. Jim lived there for about a half year and was found
dead in the bathtub on Juli 3rd 1971. Most likely he died because of a heart-attack.
A few days later Jim was burried at Père Lachaise, a cemetery in Paris.
It was after the funeral friends and family discovered Jim had died.
The Doors had made 7 albums:
the Doors, Strange days, Waiting for the sun, the Soft parade,
Morrison hotel, L.A. Woman and the Doors live in concert.
When Jim was dead, the other bandmembers made two albums,
but they weren´t successfull at all.
In 1978 An American Prayer was released. An album with poems which
Jim had recorded on his birthday, December 7th 1970,
just before he left for Paris.
Robby, John and Ray have put music under the poems.
In 1997, the Doors 4-CD box set has been released, with the best
songs of the Doors and some unreleased songs on it.
In this way, The Doors, and their music will never die
" Death makes angels of us all,
and gives us wings where we had shoulders,
smooth as ravens claws."



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