Early years
James Douglas Morrison was born on 8 December 1943 in Melbourne, Florida. His father was a United States Navy officer, and the family moved frequently during his childhood. Morrison was a voracious reader, and he later cited writers and thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake as important to him. He studied at Florida State University for a time and then moved to California, where he enrolled in the film programme at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Forming the Doors
According to the usual account, Morrison met fellow film student Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach in the summer of 1965, shortly after graduating, and sang him some lines of a song he had written. Manzarek, a keyboard player, was impressed. They were joined by the guitarist Robby Krieger and the drummer John Densmore, and the group took the name the Doors, from a phrase in William Blake that was also the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception.
The band had no bass player in its usual lineup. Manzarek played bass parts on a keyboard bass while also handling the organ, which gave the group a distinctive sound. They built a following playing clubs on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, including the Whisky a Go Go. They were signed by Elektra Records in 1966, a label better known for folk music.
The debut album and Light My Fire
The group’s first album, The Doors, was released in January 1967. It opened with “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” and also featured “The End”, an extended, dark piece for which Morrison improvised a spoken section. The album is often discussed as part of the Los Angeles rock scene, and the Doors debut album is a good guide to how that scene differed from San Francisco’s: more theatrical, more focused on poetry and shadows than on communal good feeling.
“Light My Fire”, which was mostly written by guitarist Robby Krieger, was edited into a single and released in the spring. It climbed steadily and reached number one on the American singles chart in the summer of 1967. The long organ and guitar solos of the album version were shortened for radio. The record made the band stars almost immediately, and Morrison, with his dark looks and brooding delivery, became a sex symbol, an image he reportedly found uncomfortable.
A second album, Strange Days, followed in the autumn of 1967.
The Ed Sullivan Show
In September 1967 the Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. The producers asked them to change a line in “Light My Fire”, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher”, because of its reference to drugs. Accounts say that Morrison agreed, but then sang the original line on air anyway. The band was reportedly told they would not be invited back. The incident is often cited as an example of the clash between the television establishment and rock music, though the precise details of what was said backstage vary according to who is telling the story.
Controversy and decline
Morrison’s concerts became increasingly unpredictable. He was arrested in New Haven, Connecticut in December 1967 following an incident on stage. The most serious legal trouble arose from a concert in Miami in March 1969, after which he was charged with indecent exposure and other offences. He was convicted at a trial in 1970 on some of the counts and sentenced to a jail term, but he appealed and had not served it at the time of his death. Many venues cancelled the band’s bookings after Miami.
Alcohol use also affected his reliability on stage and in the studio. The band recorded further albums, including Waiting for the Sun (1968), The Soft Parade (1969), Morrison Hotel (1970) and L.A. Woman (1971), the last of which is widely viewed as a return to form and contained “Riders on the Storm” and the title track.
Morrison also published poetry and was interested in film; he made a short film project in his own right and wrote collections of poems. These activities sat beside his stage persona and have drawn the attention of biographers.
Death in Paris
In 1971 Morrison moved to Paris with his partner Pamela Courson, taking a break from the band. He died on 3 July 1971, at the age of 27. He was found in the bathtub of their apartment. No autopsy was carried out, as French authorities did not find evidence of a crime, and the official cause is usually given as heart failure. Because there was no autopsy and few direct witnesses, many theories have circulated over the years, including drug overdose, and some of the claims are unreliable. It is safest to say that the exact circumstances have never been established in full detail.
He was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where his grave remains a place of pilgrimage for fans. His death came less than a year after those of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, which led to the label “27 Club” for artists who died at that age.
Legacy
The Doors continued as a trio for a short time, then broke up. Their records stayed in print, and a renewed wave of interest in the 1980s introduced them to new generations. In 1993 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Morrison’s reputation combines real talent as a lyricist and performer with a legend that has been heavily embroidered, and any account of his life has to try to tell them apart.