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Latest Posts by jimmorrison-blues - Page 2
1967.06.19-30 The Scene, New York, NY, US. Photos by Don Paulsen (June 27th)
Photo Session in Muir Woods, Mill Valley, San Francisco. Photo Bobby Klein, May June 1967
Amy and Ozzy by Ross Halfin
1967.05.29. Grover Cleveland High School, Reseda, CA. Photo by Don Johnson
1967.05.26. Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA. Photos by Linda Neff (Backstage) / Unidentified (KRLA Beat)
In May 1967, "Elektra Records" organized a lunch in Los Angeles for The Doors.
Van Nuys CA. Birmingham High School Stadium. May 20th 1967 © Joe Klein.
🔻The Doors join the bill for a fundraiser for the local High School. This concert is notable as it is the bands first major outdoor concert with more than 15,000 attending. A third of the crowd leaves after The Doors set. They are 2nd billing to Jefferson Airplane but that will be turned on it's head once Light My Fire, released the previous month, takes off and hits #1.
May 16-21, 1967, Whisky A Go-Go, West Hollywood, California. Photographs by Henry Diltz.
___________________________________________. "In The Mirror" – The Doors during a public photo shoot "Elektra Records", New York City, NY. March 1967 - © Joel Brodsky
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.
Games Fortune photographed The Doors performing on May 7, 1967 at the Valley Music Theater, Woodland Hills, California.
"The word was out on the street that everyone had to see this lead singer because there had never been anything like him . . . with the unnatural grace of someone out of control . . . He looked like a Greek god gone wrong, with masses of dark brown coals and a face that sweet dreams are made of . . . It was really mind-boggling.There was no modern sexy American icon at that time and he instantly became that for me and all the girls I knew and we never missed them. I saw The Doors play a hundred times." - Pamela Des Barres, author of "I'm With The band "
April 21,22,23, 1967 The Doors performed at the Kaleidoscope at Ciro's, West Hollywood, CA
Kim Fowley Remembers the Doors
“I first saw them at Ciro's in 1966 - I think I'd first heard about them from Billy James. I got to Ciro's before the Doors' set began, and the musicians were up on stage setting up. A heckler started yelling at the band: 'You guys are horrible. You can't play. You're crap. You can't drink, you can't think, you can't fight, you can't fuck.' He was in dirty clothes and looked dangerous. The band looked nervous and started playing - and this guy hopped up on stage and started singing. It was Morrison, who'd been heckling his own band. That was one of the best things I'd ever seen in a club. No introduction - just the singer yelling at the band and then the music. I thought, 'My God, these guys are going to be interesting to watch.'
"Cheetah, Santa Monica, California, April 9, 1967. © Chuck Boyd
"Everybody was waiting for us. 'Break On Through' was out and people were turning onto the album. It was our first really large crowd. Over two thousand."-Robbie Krieger.
The Doors appear for two shows with The Jefferson Airplane playing to their largest crowd to date of over 2,000. This new Cheetah patterned itself after the one in NYC and just opened on March 21st sporting a 7,000 sq. ft. dance floor surrounded by stainless steel walls. Riding the upward swing of success their new album is producing, The Doors, for the first time, top billing over the biggest bands from rival San Francisco. Jim is highly delighted tonight and falls off the stage in a wild rage, some 8 feet, for the first time during a performance. This is obviously a big night for the band.
March 1967: Clay Cole's Diskotek WPIX-TV New York City
During their stint at Ondine in March 1967, The Doors would appear on a local New York television show called Clay Cole’s Discotek where they lip synced a performance of Break On Through. This one hour teenage dance program with various performers is shown on Saturdays at 6:00pm on WPIX Channel 11. The Doors return for their second appearance on June 24 where they most likely perform Light My Fire. Linda Eastman who would marry a Beatle was present and took some interesting photos.
Linda McCartney Remembers Jim Morrison
“I first photographed The Doors at a small New York club, close to the 59th Street Bridge, called Ondine’s, which was a favorite place for out of town bands to come and play residencies. It was the winter of 1966 and I was down there with some friends to see a Los Angeles band that Elektra Records had recently signed. I had my camera with me and started taking pictures of them as they played. No one in New York had heard of The Doors. They had never performed outside of Los Angeles and hadn’t released any records. Because they were unknown and the club was so intimate I had the unique opportunity of being able to get up really close as they played. It wasn’t Jim Morrison’s looks that struck me first about him. It was the poetry of his songs and the way he would get completely lost in the music. He had this habit of cupping his hand behind his ear so the he could hear his vocals the way the traditional folk singers did. I thought the whole band was great; Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore were all very creative musicans. They returned to Ondine’s in March 1967 by which time their debut album The Doors and their first single “Break On Through” had been released, and they were getting national attention. In May they played their last residency in New York – three weeks at Steve Paul’s Scene Club.
"First New York opening in a while. The Doors - Fresh from Los Angeles with an underground album of the hour - return. This time, they are worshipped, envied, bandied about like the Real Thing. The word is out or 'in' - 'The Doors will floor you'. So not all the pretty people in New York were present at opening night, but enough to keep a few publicity agencies busy. The four musicians mounted their instruments. The organist lit a stick of incense. Vocalist and writer Jim Morrison closed his eyes to all that Arnel elegance, and the Doors opened up. Morrison twitched and pouted and a cluster of girls gathered to watch every nuance in his lips. Humiliating your audience is an old game in rock 'n' roll, but Morrison pitches spastic love with an insolence you can't ignore. His material - almost all original - is literate, concise, and terrifying. The Doors have the habit of improvising, so a song about being strange which I heard for the first time at Ondine may be a completely different composition by now. Whatever the words, you will discern a deep streak of violent - sometimes Oedipal - sexuality. And since sex is what hard rock is all about, the Doors are a stunning success. You should brave all the go-go gymnastics, bring a select circle of friends for buffer, and make it up to Ondine to find out what the literature of pop is all about. The Doors are mean; and their skin is green." (Richard Goldstein, "Pop Eye," Village Voice, Mar. 25, 1967)
🔻March, 1967, photo shoot inside Ondine NYC, New York, photo by Thomas Monaster.
On March 3 and 4, 1967, The Doors performed at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It's their first time performing at this concert hall, but they'll be back in April.
📌I don't know the photographer. If anyone has information, please share it.
The Endless quest a vigil
of watchtowers and fortresses
against the sea and time.
Have they won? Perhaps.
They still stand and in
their silent rooms still wander
the souls of the dead,
who keep their watch on the living.
Soon enough we shall join them.
Soon enough we shall walk
the walls of time. We shall
miss nothing
except each other.
(Jim Morrison, THE VILLAGE TAPES, WILDERNESS)
🔻January-February 1967, Bronson Caves, Los Angeles, California. Photographer Bobby Klein
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 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)
On February 22, 1967, The Doors' performed at the Valley Music Theater in Woodland Hills, California George Washington's Birthday Bash. This event takes place as a fundraiser & awareness concert for teenagers and the public following the Sunset Strip riots. The doors played first. 🔻February 22, 1967, Woodland Hills, California, photo by Jean Trindl
The Doors appear on television for the very first time on KHJ-TV's Boss City in February of 1967. Hosted by DJ Sam Riddle, this episode was broadcast on February 18th at 6:00pm. During the month of February 1967, Break On Through is The Doors first single release and is most likely the song performed. Interviews with the performing groups are known to have taken place with the host and likely followed the performance. For years, it was presumed that The Doors performance on SHEBANG was their first-ever appearance on tv, however a newly confirmed performance date for that show has at last revealed that this performance on Boss City was in fact The Doors very first. At the present date, no surviving copies of The Doors performances on Boss City have surfaced, however two photographs taken by Jasper Dailey during this filming are known.
The Doors at Boss City on February 18, 1967, photographs by Jasper Daly.
Bobby Klein's first photo shoot of The Doors in Bronson Park, Los Angeles, September 1966
The Doors shot an early morning photo session with Bobby Klein atop a billboard on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California. Photo Credit: Bobby Klein © January 1967.
The first Doors album – simply titled The Doors – took just five days to make. Yet it took five months for Elektra to finally release it. Jim and Ray had pushed at that point for the album to be released immediately, in time for Christmas. But Jac, the wise old label head, knew better and talked them into allowing Elektra to hold back its release until the new year. Jim threw a tantrum and again needed to be talked down.Jac painted Jim a picture of the kind of campaign Elektra would build around the album when it was finally released in January 1967: “I said: ‘We’ll have more time to prepare for you and I’ll release no other album that month, which means you’ve got Elektra working a hundred per cent on your album for the first month. And by the way, I have this idea about putting a billboard up on Sunset Strip…’ Well, that caught Jim. He loved that idea. He said: ‘Where’d you come up with that?’”
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.
