50 Fun Facts About The Doors

The Doors took their name from a Huxley book that itself referenced a line by which poet?

William Blake wrote that if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite. Aldous Huxley took the phrase as the title of his 1954 book about taking mescaline.

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of the Doors first met as film students at which university?

UCLA's film school introduced them, but the band began weeks after they left it: meeting by chance on a beach in 1965, Morrison shared songs he had been writing and Manzarek wanted to form a group.

Which founder of Elektra Records signed the Doors in 1966 after seeing them at the Whisky a Go Go?

Jac Holzman had started Elektra in his college dorm room in 1950 as a small folk label. He went to see the Doors on a tip from a singer already on his roster, then signed them within days.

Which Los Angeles band's singer recommended that Elektra's president go and see the Doors?

Arthur Lee's group was already on Elektra; the Doors would soon eclipse them as the label's biggest act.

Which track on the Doors' debut album comes from a German opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht?

Alabama Song comes from Mahagonny, an opera about a city of vice, where it is sung on the way to the next whisky bar. Ray Manzarek brought the number to the band in their club days.

Which member of the Doors wrote most of 'Light My Fire', though all four shared the credit?

Robby Krieger wrote it overnight, the first song he ever finished, after Morrison asked the others to help with material. Told to pick something universal, he chose fire from the four elements.

Which artist's Latin-tinged 1968 cover of the Doors' 'Light My Fire' reached number three in the US?

José Feliciano's slow acoustic version won him two Grammys, including Best New Artist. That October he gave the national anthem the same treatment at the World Series and caused an uproar.

Which word did Ed Sullivan Show executives ask the Doors to drop from 'Light My Fire' in 1967?

Higher sounded like a drug reference to the network. Morrison agreed to change the line, sang it live on air anyway, and the Doors were never booked on the show again.

On stage with the Doors, what did Ray Manzarek use to cover the low end?

A Rhodes Piano Bass, left-handed, stood in for the bass guitarist the band never had: he played bass lines with one hand and organ melodies with the other. Studio albums used session players.

Ray Manzarek of the Doors grew up in a Polish-American family in which Midwestern city?

Chicago was home until his twenties: he grew up on the South Side and took an economics degree there. Only then did he head to Los Angeles to study film, which is how he met Jim Morrison.

Which Doors song features one of rock's first Moog synthesizers, played by Jim Morrison?

Strange Days runs Morrison's own voice through the Moog: the engineers fed his vocal into it, so that pressing keys on the keyboard bent and filtered the sound as he sang.

Far from their Los Angeles home, the Doors shot their second album's street-performer cover in which city?

New York's Sniffen Court, a Manhattan mews, was the set. Real street performers proved hard to find, so the photographer's assistant juggled and a passing cab driver was paid $5 to hold a trumpet.

'People Are Strange' came out of a walk Morrison took in which part of the Hollywood Hills?

Laurel Canyon changed his mood: Morrison turned up at a bandmate's house deeply depressed, went walking in the hills, and came back euphoric with the song's first lines.

Which 1968 album became the Doors' only number one on the Billboard 200?

Waiting for the Sun sold on the back of 'Hello, I Love You', a song from the band's 1965 demo that they had passed over twice and revived only when they ran short of new material.

Ray Davies said the riff of 'Hello, I Love You' borrowed from which Kinks song?

All Day and All of the Night has a strikingly similar riff. The Doors denied copying it and said the beat came from a Cream song, but Davies later said he ended up with a share of the royalties.

Which Doors hit had a more violent working title until Jim Morrison insisted the words be changed?

Touch Me began as 'Hit Me', with the line 'C'mon, hit me, I'm not afraid', which its writer has tied to a game of blackjack. Morrison feared a rowdy crowd would take the words as an invitation.

A chaotic March 1969 Doors concert in which city led to Jim Morrison's conviction for indecent exposure?

Miami issued warrants days after the show and a jury convicted him the next year. He died with his appeal still pending, and Florida granted him a posthumous pardon in 2010.

Jim Morrison styled himself the king of which creatures, in a poem printed inside a Doors album sleeve?

Lizards: he became the Lizard King in a long poem the Doors tried to record as one side of their third album. The sessions failed, so its words were printed inside the sleeve instead.

The Doors album Morrison Hotel names one side after itself and the other after what?

Hard Rock Café was a skid-row bar near the real Morrison Hotel. The hotel's clerk refused a photo shoot, so the band dashed in and posed in the window the moment he left his desk.

Which Doors song has the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian on harmonica under a false name?

Roadhouse Blues credits him as one 'G. Puglese', and its bass came from another guest out of position: guitar veteran Lonnie Mack put down his own instrument to play it.

The Doors' longtime producer said he quit their last album with Morrison after dismissing which song as 'cocktail music'?

Love Her Madly is the song he named, saying it drove him out of the studio, though a bandmate remembers a different target. The band finished the album without him and the single became its biggest hit.

In which Doors song does Jim Morrison chant 'Mr. Mojo Risin'', an anagram of his own name?

L.A. Woman owes its slow middle section to the phrase: Morrison wrote it on a board and shuffled the letters for his bandmates, which gave the drummer the idea of dropping the tempo and building it back up.

Which Doors single was the last to be released in Jim Morrison's lifetime?

Riders on the Storm came out weeks before he died in July 1971. Its ghostly echo is Morrison himself, whispering the words beneath his own lead vocal, with rain and thunder added in the mix.

Where in his Paris apartment was Jim Morrison found dead in July 1971?

In the bathtub, where his girlfriend said she found him. The death was put down to heart failure, but no autopsy was carried out, which is why rival accounts of that night have never gone away.

Jim Morrison died exactly two years after whom?

Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool on July 3, 1969, two years to the day before Morrison died. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died at 27 in between, a cluster that later gave rise to the '27 Club'.

Jim Morrison is buried in which Paris cemetery?

Père Lachaise lost the marble bust on his grave in 1988, when it vanished seven years after being placed there. Paris police found it by chance in 2025 while investigating something else.

Jim Morrison's father was the US Navy commander on the scene at which Cold War flashpoint?

The Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, used to justify escalating the war in Vietnam, unfolded under his father's command. A year later the son formed a band that became a voice of the counterculture.

Jim Morrison's will left everything to which longtime companion?

Pamela Courson inherited his estate in 1974, after years of legal challenges, and died of a heroin overdose that same spring. A court then ruled the two had been married under common law.

What was the first album the remaining three Doors released after Morrison's death, in October 1971?

Other Voices was made without a new singer: the keyboardist and the guitarist split the lead vocals between them. The trio had begun the songs while Morrison was in Paris, expecting him back.

The 1978 album An American Prayer set new Doors music to what?

Morrison's recorded poetry readings came from solo sessions in 1969 and 1970. Set to music by his three bandmates seven years after his death, they went platinum and fed a revival of interest in him.

When the Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, who sang lead at the ceremony?

Eddie Vedder, newly famous with Pearl Jam, stood in for Morrison as the three surviving Doors reunited on stage to play three of their songs, 'Light My Fire' among them.

Who played Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors?

Val Kilmer looked so like the singer that his casting was widely praised, but the band's keyboardist refused to help him prepare and was outraged by the finished film.

The Doors' drummer vetoed a $15 million offer to use one of their songs in ads for which company?

Cadillac wanted the song to sell its SUVs. He held to a line Morrison had drawn years earlier, when the singer came home to find the others had agreed to let Buick use 'Light My Fire' and was furious.

Which Doors track has its guitarist reworking a classical melody?

Spanish Caravan opens with a finger-picked flamenco figure, then turns a melody from 'Asturias', by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, into its main riff.

A remixed version of 'The End' opens which 1979 film?

Apocalypse Now arrived in the middle of a Morrison revival: the first biography of the singer followed a year later, and the band's debut album climbed back into the charts.

Which actor narrates When You're Strange, the 2009 documentary about the Doors?

Johnny Depp's narration runs over archive footage of the band. Ray Manzarek, who had disliked Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic, welcomed it as the true story of the Doors and 'the anti-Oliver Stone'.

Which song, the Doors' first single, stalled outside the Hot 100?

Break On Through peaked at number 126, yet it became the band's calling card: it opens their debut album and stayed a fixture of their concerts for years.

Which 1987 vampire film features a cover of the Doors' 'People Are Strange' by Echo & the Bunnymen?

The Lost Boys got its cover with a Door's blessing: Ray Manzarek produced the recording, and the single took the twenty-year-old song into the British top 30.

Which Doors member did Ray Manzarek recruit first, in August 1965, after they met at a meditation class?

John Densmore signed up that summer, months before the last member arrived. Decades later he took his old bandmates to court to stop them touring under the Doors' name.

In November 1969 Morrison was charged after harassing staff on a flight to Phoenix to see which band?

The Rolling Stones played without him: US marshals arrested Morrison and his travelling companion as they stepped off the plane. He was already awaiting trial over a concert of his own that year.

Which producer made the Doors' first five albums and later Janis Joplin's Pearl?

Paul A. Rothchild shaped every Doors record up to 1970, then walked out early in the sessions for the sixth, leaving the band to finish it with their engineer.

The Doors were fired from the Whisky a Go Go in 1966 after Morrison retold which Greek myth on stage?

Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, burst into 'The End' that night, and the club sacked its house band at once. Elektra had signed the Doors only days earlier.

Which major label signed the Doors first, then let them go without releasing a record?

Columbia left the band idle for months, and when the Doors learned they were on its drop list they asked to be released. A smaller label then signed them and had a number one single within a year.

Which singer fronted 'The Doors of the 21st Century' with Manzarek and Krieger from 2002?

Ian Astbury of the Cult took Morrison's place, but the name did not last: the band's drummer and the Morrison estate sued, and the group ended up touring as Manzarek–Krieger.

At which small Sunset Strip club did the Doors hold a residency in early 1966, before the Whisky a Go Go?

London Fog drew little more than a few sailors and drunks, by the keyboardist's account, but months of playing to a near-empty room gave the band time to stretch its songs and Morrison the nerve to face a crowd.

Which 1969 Doors album was the band's only one to feature brass and string arrangements?

The Soft Parade added horns and strings at the producer's urging. It nearly went unmade: Morrison had told the band he wanted to quit and was talked into staying long enough to finish it.

Which 1969 festival did the Doors turn down, a decision their guitarist said the band came to regret?

Woodstock looked to the band like a second-class repeat of the Monterey Pop festival held two years earlier, their guitarist later explained.

The Doors' 'Hello, I Love You' was inspired by a girl Jim Morrison spotted on which California beach?

Venice Beach supplied the girl. The song then sat unused for three years after a 1965 demo, until the band ran short of material for their third album.

Before heading to Los Angeles to study film, Jim Morrison was a student at which Florida university?

Florida State University was his second stop. He had started at a junior college in St. Petersburg, where he first tried performing by reciting poetry at a local coffeehouse.

The Doors' debut album peaked at number two in 1967, kept from the top by which Beatles record?

Sgt. Pepper held the top spot all that summer, and the Doors' album, out since January, only climbed the chart once a shortened 'Light My Fire' became a number one single.