If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.' This quote from   poet William Blake, via Aldous Huxley, was an inspiration to Jim Morrison (b. James Douglas Morrison, 8
  December 1943, Melbourne, Florida, USA, d. 3 July 1971, Paris, France), a student of theatre arts at the   University of California and an aspiring musician. His dream of a rock band entitled 'the Doors' was fulfilled
  in 1965, when he sang a rudimentary composition, 'Moonlight Drive', to fellow scholar Ray Manzarek (b.   Raymond Daniel Manzarek, 12 February 1939, Chicago, Illinois, USA; keyboards). Impressed, he invited   Morrison to join his campus R&B band, Rick And The Ravens, which also included the organist's two   brothers. Ray then recruited drummer John Densmore (b. 1 December 1944, Santa Monica, California,   USA), and the reshaped outfit recorded six Morrison songs at the famed World Pacific studios. The
  session featured several compositions that the band subsequently re-recorded, including 'Summer's Almost   Gone' and 'End Of The Night'. Manzarek's brothers disliked the new material and later dropped out. They
  were replaced by Robbie Krieger (b. Robert Alan Krieger, 8 January 1946, Los Angeles, California, USA),   an inventive guitarist, whom Densmore met at a meditation centre. Morrison was now established as the   vocalist and the quartet began rehearsing in earnest.

    The Doors' first residency was at the London Fog on Sunset Strip, but they later found favour at the   prestigious Whisky-A-Go-Go. They were, however, fired from the latter establishment, following a   performance of 'The End', Morrison's chilling, oedipal composition. Improvised and partly spoken over a   raga/rock framework, it proved too controversial for timid club owners, but the band's standing within the   music fraternity grew. Local rivals Love, already signed to Elektra Records, recommended the Doors to   the label's managing director, Jac Holzman who, despite initial caution, signed them in July 1966. The   Doors, released the following year, unveiled many contrasting influences. Manzarek's thin sounding organ   (he also performed the part of bassist with the aid of a separate bass keyboard) recalled the garage-band   style omnipresent several months earlier, but Krieger's liquid guitar playing and Densmore's imaginative   drumming were already clearly evident. Morrison's striking, dramatic voice added power to the exceptional   compositions, which included the pulsating 'Break On Through' and an 11-minute version of 'The End'.
 
    Cover versions of material, including Willie Dixon 's 'Back Door Man' and Bertolt Brecht / Kurt Weill 's   'Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)', exemplified the band's disparate influences. The best-known track,   however, was 'Light My Fire', which, when trimmed down from its original seven minutes, became a number   1 single in the USA. Its fiery imagery combined eroticism with death, and the song has since become a   standard. Its success created new problems and the Doors, perceived by some as underground heroes,   were tarred as teenybop fodder by others. This dichotomy weighed heavily on Morrison who wished to be
  accepted as a serious artist. A second album, Strange Days, showcased 'When The Music's Over',   another extended piece destined to become a tour de force within the band's canon. The quartet enjoyed   further chart success when 'People Are Strange' broached the US Top 20, but it was 1968 before they   secured another number 1 single with the infectious 'Hello I Love You'. The song was also the band's first   major UK hit, although some of this lustre was lost following legal action by Ray Davies of the Kinks, who   claimed infringement of his own composition, 'All Day And All Of The Night'. The action coincided with the   Doors' first European tour. A major television documentary, The Doors Are Open, was devoted to the visit   and centred on their powerful performance at London's Chalk Farm Roundhouse.

    The band showcased   several tracks from their third collection, Waiting For The Sun, including the declamatory 'Five To One',   and a fierce protest song, 'The Unknown Soldier', for which they also completed an uncompromising   promotional film. However, the follow-up album, The Soft Parade, on which a horn section masked several   unremarkable songs, was a major disappointment, although the tongue-in-cheek 'Touch Me' became a US   Top 3 single and 'Wishful Sinful' was a Top 50 hit.

  Continued commercial success exacted further pressure on Morrison, whose frustration with his role as a   pop idol grew more pronounced. His anti-authoritarian persona combined with a brazen sexuality and
  notorious alcohol and narcotics consumption to create a character bedevilled by doubt and cynicism. His   confrontations with middle America reached an apogee on 1 March 1969 when, following a concert at   Miami's Dinner Key auditorium, the singer was indicted for indecent exposure, public intoxication and  profane, lewd and lascivious conduct. Although Morrison was later acquitted of all but the minor charges,
  the incident clouded the band's career when live dates for the next few months were cancelled.
 
    Paradoxically, this furore re-awoke the Doors' creativity. Morrison Hotel, a tough R&B-based collection,  matched the best of their early releases and featured seminal performances in 'Roadhouse Blues' and 'You
  Make Me Real'. Absolutely Live, an in-concert set edited from a variety of sources, gave the impression of   a single performance and exhibited the band's power and authority. However, Morrison, whose poetry had
  been published in two volumes, The Lords and The New Creatures, now drew greater pleasure from this   more personal art form. Having completed sessions at the band's workshop for a new album, the last owed  to Elektra, the singer escaped to Paris where he hoped to follow a literary career and abandon music   altogether. Tragically, years of hedonistic excess had taken its toll and on 3 July 1971, Jim Morrison was
  found dead in his bathtub, his passing recorded officially as a heart attack. He was buried in Paris' Père  Lachaise cemetry in the esteemed company of Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and Honore de Balzac.

  L.A. Woman, his final recording with the Doors, is one of the band's finest achievements. It was also their   first album recorded without producer Paul A. Rothchild, with engineer Bruce Botnick tackling
  co-production duties. The album's simple intimacy resulted in some superb performances, including 'Riders   On The Storm', whose haunting imagery and stealthy accompaniment created a timeless classic. The
  survivors continued to work as the Doors, but while Other Voices showed some promise, Full Circle was   severely flawed and the band soon dissolved. Densmore and Krieger formed the Butts Band, with whom
  they recorded two albums before splitting to pursue different paths. Manzarek undertook several projects as   either artist, producer or manager, but the spectre of the Doors refused to die. Interest in the band
  flourished throughout the decade and in 1978 the remaining trio supplied newly recorded music to a series  of poetry recitations, which Morrison had taped during the LA Woman sessions. The resultant album, An
  American Prayer, was a major success and prompted such archive excursions as Alive, She Cried, a  compendium of several concert performances and Live At The Hollywood Bowl. The evocative use of 'The
  End' in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam war movie, Apocalypse Now, also generated renewed interest  in the Door's legacy, and indeed, it is on those first recordings that the Doors' considerable reputation, and
  influence, rest.

    Since then their catalogue has never been out of print, and future generations of rock fans  will almost certainly use them as a major role model. Director Oliver Stone's 1991 movie biography The  Doors, starring Val Kilmer, helped confirm Morrison as one of the 60s' great cultural icons.