100 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.

Which romantic-comedy star played Jim Morrison's longtime girlfriend in the 1991 film The Doors?

Meg Ryan took the part two years after When Harry Met Sally, swapping light comedy for a stormy rock-and-roll romance.

What was stolen from Jim Morrison's grave in 1988 and finally recovered by French police in 2025?

A marble bust by Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin went up in 1981, ten years after the singer's death, and was defaced by vandals before it vanished.

Jerry Scheff, a session player on the Doors' last album with Jim Morrison, was then in which star's stage band?

Elvis Presley had Jerry Scheff in his TCB Band from 1969, and Jim Morrison, a huge fan of the King, was excited to have him on the sessions.

Which British island hosted the 1970 festival where the Doors played in near darkness?

The Isle of Wight set stayed dim because Jim Morrison would not allow movie spotlights on the band. Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and the Who were on the same Saturday bill.

With no autopsy carried out, what did French officials record as the cause of Jim Morrison's death?

Heart failure went on the record, but French law did not require an autopsy, so what really killed the 27-year-old singer is still disputed.

Which rapper features on a Doors remix used as title music for Need for Speed: Underground 2?

Snoop Dogg raps on a remix by producer Fredwreck, built on the last Doors single issued in Jim Morrison's lifetime.

In which 1993 comedy sequel does a dream of Jim Morrison tell the hero to stage a festival?

Wayne's World 2 brings Jim Morrison back near the end to explain that organising the concert was really a lesson in growing up.

Which Beat Generation novel described the life that Jim Morrison was eager to experience for himself?

On the Road, Jack Kerouac's story of cross-country wandering, mattered so much that Ray Manzarek later said the Doors would never have existed without it.

In which Connecticut city was Jim Morrison arrested on stage during a Doors concert in December 1967?

New Haven made Jim Morrison the first rock performer arrested on stage, after he told the crowd a policeman had maced him before the show. The charges were later dropped.

The Aldous Huxley book that gave the Doors their name describes his experience of taking which drug?

Mescaline, taken by Aldous Huxley one day in May 1953, produced the visions he wrote up in The Doors of Perception the following year.

Which actor, then starring as a TV FBI agent, played Ray Manzarek in the 1991 film The Doors?

Kyle MacLachlan was midway through Twin Peaks as Agent Dale Cooper. The real Ray Manzarek refused to talk to the film's lead actor and criticised its portrait of the singer.

Which British rock singer plays Cat, a drinking pal of Jim Morrison, in the 1991 film The Doors?

Billy Idol was meant to have a bigger part, but a 1990 motorcycle crash that nearly cost him a leg cut the role down to a small one.

Which guitarist died at 27 in September 1970, less than a year before Jim Morrison died at the same age?

Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all died at 27 within ten months, though talk of a '27 Club' only took hold after Kurt Cobain's death in 1994.

The trousers Jim Morrison wore on stage and off, now a rock-star stereotype, were made of what?

Leather trousers were, two bandmates said, inspired by Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind, and U2's Bono later borrowed the look for his alter ego the Fly.

Which dubstep producer recorded a track with the three surviving members of the Doors for a 2012 documentary?

Skrillex built 'Breakn' a Sweat' around a 1960s interview clip of Jim Morrison, and the sessions were filmed for the documentary Re:Generation.

Which German philosopher did Jim Morrison discover in his teens, and the Doors' drummer later blame for his death?

Friedrich Nietzsche's vision of a world with no objective order or structure was, the drummer believed, what destroyed his bandmate.

In 1968 Jim Morrison threatened to smash which make of car on TV if it used 'Light My Fire' in an advert?

Buick had offered $75,000, and the other three Doors agreed while he was out of reach in London, although the band's 1965 pact gave every member a veto.

Which 1968 Doors single had Jim Morrison pretend to be shot on stage, and was refused by many radio stations?

The Unknown Soldier was heard as Jim Morrison's reaction to the Vietnam War, and its promotional film is often counted among rock's first music videos.

Which city's Warehouse venue hosted the Doors' last public concert with Jim Morrison, in December 1970?

New Orleans watched Jim Morrison apparently break down on stage that night, less than seven months before his death.

Which song's opening words did Jim Morrison sing to Ray Manzarek in 1965, convincing him to form a band?

Moonlight Drive then sat unreleased for two years: an early studio take was shelved, and it finally appeared on the Doors' second album.

The solo section of the Doors' 'Light My Fire' was a homage to which jazz saxophonist the band admired?

John Coltrane's cover of 'My Favorite Things' moves through the same chord progression that the Doors use for their extended solos.

The drum groove that opens the Doors' first single was borrowed from which Brazilian style, then a craze?

Bossa nova fascinated the Doors' drummer, who mixed it with rock, and Ray Manzarek said his keyboard part was inspired by the album Getz/Gilberto.

Which blues songwriter wrote 'Back Door Man', the Howlin' Wolf song the Doors covered on their debut album?

Willie Dixon wrote it for a 1960 Howlin' Wolf session, one of several songs by the pair that rock musicians later took up.

Which Belfast band, fronted by another singer named Morrison, shared a 1966 Whisky a Go Go bill with the Doors?

Them, with Van Morrison singing, closed the run by jamming a twenty-minute 'Gloria' on stage with the Doors, who had been the opening act all week.

Which punk pioneer found his stage persona after watching the Doors play the University of Michigan in 1967?

Iggy Pop was amazed by Jim Morrison's antics and open antagonism, and a year later his band the Stooges signed to the Doors' own record label.

Which Los Angeles venue hosted the July 1968 Doors concert that became a live album and video in 1987?

The Hollywood Bowl show was played in the Doors' home city, yet the recording sat in the vaults for nearly two decades before its release.

Which star drummer joined Ray Manzarek's 2002 revival of the Doors, then broke his arm falling off a bicycle?

Stewart Copeland of the Police stood in for the original drummer, who stayed away, but after the accident the arrangement ended in mutual lawsuits.

Which Florida governor signed a posthumous pardon for Jim Morrison in 2010, on the singer's birthday?

Charlie Crist and the state clemency board signed it unanimously. Jim Morrison had been free on a $50,000 bond, with his verdict under appeal, when he died.

Which US institution chose the Doors' debut album for its National Recording Registry?

The Library of Congress keeps the registry for recordings it judges culturally, historically or aesthetically significant; this one was taped at Sunset Sound in August and September 1966.

Crispin Glover's cameo in the 1991 film The Doors has him playing which artist?

Andy Warhol wrote in his book Popism that Jim Morrison had modelled his look on Gerard Malanga, a dancer who performed with the Velvet Underground.

Which guitar style did the Doors' fingerpicking guitarist take lessons in during the mid-1960s?

Flamenco was taught to him by the scholar Frank Chin, and he went on playing with his fingers when he moved to electric guitar.

As a small child in the New Mexico desert, Jim Morrison allegedly witnessed a truck crash involving whom?

Native Americans lay injured beside an overturned truck in 1947. Jim Morrison called it the most formative event of his life, though his family recalled it differently.

Which 1967 Doors single is said to be about a sailor's last day with his girlfriend before shipping out to war?

Love Me Two Times was the work of the Doors' guitarist, and radio in one city banned it as too controversial, much to the band's dismay.

Which 1980 biography of Jim Morrison takes its title from a line in the Doors' song 'Five to One'?

No One Here Gets Out Alive reached No. 1 on best-seller lists almost a decade after the singer's death and had sold over five million copies by 1995.

In which European city did Jim Morrison collapse on stage after a drug binge on the Doors' 1968 tour?

Amsterdam came on the Doors' first trip to perform outside North America, and the binge reportedly took in marijuana, hashish and unspecified pills.

Which eleven-minute Doors epic had Jim Morrison record his vocal in a single take after missing the band's session?

When the Music's Over was built up on stage in 1966, and Ray Manzarek said Herbie Hancock's 'Watermelon Man' inspired his organ introduction.

Which 1970 concert album, the Doors' first, was stitched together from many different shows?

Absolutely Live took its producer some 2,000 edits by his own count, sometimes cutting between two cities in mid-song, and Jim Morrison reportedly hated the cover.

Jim Morrison was born in December 1943 in which city on Florida's Atlantic coast?

Melbourne was only the first of many homes: raised in a military family, he spent parts of his childhood in San Diego, Virginia, Texas and New Mexico.

Which future Entourage star played the Doors' drummer in the 1991 film about the band?

Kevin Dillon, a brother of Matt, was tutored for the part by the real drummer, who worked on the film as a consultant.

Jim Morrison's estranged father George retired from the US Navy in 1975 at which rank?

Rear admiral was a rank George Morrison had reached in 1967, the year his son's band released its debut album and broke through.

Which surf-rock band featuring Ray Manzarek and his two brothers did Jim Morrison join before it became the Doors?

Rick & the Ravens took its name partly from guitarist Rick Manzarek, and the first song the new singer performed with the band was 'Louie Louie'.

Which combo organ, a staple of 1960s psychedelic rock, gave Ray Manzarek his signature sound in the Doors?

Vox Continental organs were also played by the Beatles and the Animals, and Ray Manzarek used his on the Doors' early records, including 'Light My Fire'.

Which 1972 album was the last by the three surviving Doors before they disbanded the following year?

Full Circle includes 'The Mosquito', the last Doors single to chart, and stayed the band's final studio album until the trio regrouped in 1978.

The Doors wrote 'L'America' for which counterculture film of 1970, only for its Italian director to reject it?

Zabriskie Point, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, went ahead without it, so the track surfaced a year later on the Doors' last album with Jim Morrison.

Which blues-rock guitar pioneer sat in on the opening track of the Doors' album Morrison Hotel?

Lonnie Mack, signed to the same label, joined on the second day of recording, and only then did the sessions take off.

Which photographer shot the Doors' Morrison Hotel cover without permission while the desk clerk was away?

Henry Diltz caught the band as they jumped behind the window of a real hotel on South Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Which engineer, with the Doors since their first album, took over production of their last record with Jim Morrison?

Bruce Botnick suggested recording in the band's own rehearsal space, where they felt more comfortable, instead of a costly studio.

Which London venue hosted the 1968 Doors shows filmed for the British TV programme The Doors Are Open?

The Roundhouse concert footage was intercut with interviews and news film of protests, French riots and the Vietnam War.

Who answered the Doors' fan mail from the age of 12 and became their manager after Jim Morrison died?

Danny Sugerman was only 17 when he took over from the band's original manager, and he later handled Ray Manzarek's solo career.

Which French Symbolist poet did Jim Morrison thank a translator for bringing into English, in a 1968 fan letter?

Arthur Rimbaud's translator, Duke professor Wallace Fowlie, was surprised by the letter and later wrote a memoir comparing the singer with the French rebel.