The Doors Trivia
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50 free The Doors trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free The Doors trivia questions with answers. Doors trivia for people who know why the band had no bass player and what Mr. Mojo Risin' spells. These 50 questions cover the whole arc, from Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek meeting on the sand in 1965 to Morrison's death in a Paris bathtub six years later, and the two albums the trio made without him. You will find the origin of the band's name (an Aldous Huxley title borrowed from William Blake), the Whisky a Go Go firing, the Ed Sullivan Show dare, the number-one runs of 'Light My Fire' and 'Hello, I Love You', the Miami arrest, the sessions for Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman, the producer who walked out over 'cocktail music', Oliver Stone's 1991 film and the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reunion with Eddie Vedder on vocals. Difficulty runs from easy (who sang lead?) to hard (which session guitarist played bass on 'Roadhouse Blues'?), and every answer is verified against a documented source. No lyrics are quoted, so nothing here will get you flagged for singing along.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Doors took their name from a Huxley book that itself referenced a line by which poet?
William Blake
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.
Q 02Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of the Doors first met as film students at which university?
UCLA
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.
Q 03Which founder of Elektra Records signed the Doors in 1966 after seeing them at the Whisky a Go Go?
Jac Holzman
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.
Q 04Which Los Angeles band's singer recommended that Elektra's president go and see the Doors?
Love
Arthur Lee's group was already on Elektra; the Doors would soon eclipse them as the label's biggest act.
Q 05Which track on the Doors' debut album comes from a German opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht?
Alabama Song
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.
Q 06Which member of the Doors wrote most of 'Light My Fire', though all four shared the credit?
Robby Krieger
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.
Q 07Which artist's Latin-tinged 1968 cover of the Doors' 'Light My Fire' reached number three in the US?
José Feliciano
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.
Q 08Which word did Ed Sullivan Show executives ask the Doors to drop from 'Light My Fire' in 1967?
Higher
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.
Q 09On stage with the Doors, what did Ray Manzarek use to cover the low end?
A Rhodes Piano Bass, left-handed
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.
Q 10Ray Manzarek of the Doors grew up in a Polish-American family in which Midwestern city?
Chicago
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.
Q 11Which Doors song features one of rock's first Moog synthesizers, played by Jim Morrison?
Strange Days
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.
Q 12Far from their Los Angeles home, the Doors shot their second album's street-performer cover in which city?
New York
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.
Q 13'People Are Strange' came out of a walk Morrison took in which part of the Hollywood Hills?
Laurel Canyon
Q 21The Doors' longtime producer said he quit their last album with Morrison after dismissing which song as 'cocktail music'?
Love Her Madly
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.
Q 22In which Doors song does Jim Morrison chant 'Mr. Mojo Risin'', an anagram of his own name?
L.A. Woman
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.
Q 23Which Doors single was the last to be released in Jim Morrison's lifetime?
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.
Q 14Which 1968 album became the Doors' only number one on the Billboard 200?
Waiting for the Sun
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.
Q 15Ray Davies said the riff of 'Hello, I Love You' borrowed from which Kinks song?
All Day and All of the Night
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.
Q 16Which Doors hit had a more violent working title until Jim Morrison insisted the words be changed?
Touch Me
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.
Q 17A chaotic March 1969 Doors concert in which city led to Jim Morrison's conviction for indecent exposure?
Miami
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.
Q 18Jim Morrison styled himself the king of which creatures, in a poem printed inside a Doors album sleeve?
Lizards
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.
Q 19The Doors album Morrison Hotel names one side after itself and the other after what?
Hard Rock Café
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.
Q 20Which Doors song has the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian on harmonica under a false name?
Roadhouse Blues
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.
Riders on the Storm
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.
Q 24Where in his Paris apartment was Jim Morrison found dead in July 1971?
In the bathtub
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.
Q 25Jim Morrison died exactly two years after whom?
Brian Jones
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'.
Q 26Jim Morrison is buried in which Paris cemetery?
Père Lachaise
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.
Q 27Jim Morrison's father was the US Navy commander on the scene at which Cold War flashpoint?
The Gulf of Tonkin incident
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.
Q 28Jim Morrison's will left everything to which longtime companion?
Pamela Courson
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.
Q 29What was the first album the remaining three Doors released after Morrison's death, in October 1971?
Other Voices
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.
Q 30The 1978 album An American Prayer set new Doors music to what?
Morrison's recorded poetry readings
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.