Started: July, 1965
City and Country of Origin: Los Angeles, CA
Music Training:
Awards:
Top Recordings: "Light My Fire," "Break on Through (To the Other Side)," "People Are Strange," "Riders on the Storm," " L.A. Woman," " Love Her Madly," "Touch Me"
The Doors Biography: One of the most influential bands of the '60s, The Doors, was comprised of UCLA film students Ray Manzarek, keyboards, and Jim Morrison, vocals, with drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. The group never hired a bass player. They were signed to a recording contract with Elektra Records in 1966 and recorded their first album The Doors in 1967 which included the single "Light My Fire." The recording a combination of rock, blues, classical and Eastern music stands as one of the groundbreaking recordings of the psychedelic era. The effort was so munumental that the group never was able to quite match their original offering. Although these albums contained a wealth of quality material the group will always be measured by its first effort. By their third album the group had exhausted its original reservoir of compositional material. With On The Soft Parade the group experimented with brass elements. The group's focus on the unstable lead singer Jim Morrison proved to be a mistake. In 1969 Morrison was arrested in Miami for indescent exposure. In 1971, after the completion of L.A. Woman Morrison departed for Paris. He died there of an apparent drug overdose. Oliver Sone made a movie in 1991 called The Doors casting Val Kilmer as Morrison.

Music by the Decade:

Sounds of the Fifties

Sounds of the Sixties

Sounds of the Seventies

Sounds of the Eighties

Sounds of the Nineties