Photo Session In Muir Woods, Mill Valley, San Francisco. Photo Bobby Klein, May June 1967

In May 1967, "Elektra Records" organized a lunch in Los Angeles for The Doors.  

On August 27, 1967, The Doors performed two shows at Cheetah in Santa Monica, California. 📷 The band is photographed backstage

Jim Morrison - Photo by Edmund Teske,1969

Jim Morrison, Dorothy Manzarek, Ray's mother Helen Manzarek, and Thor (Jim Manzarek's dog). Palos Verdes, California, 1965. 📷From the archive of Ray Manzarek

1967.06.19-30   The Scene, New York, NY, US. Photos by   Don Paulsen (June 27th)

That was a great summer. I was hanging out at the film school and I was hanging out with friends in Venice. Ray had a house there, so I’d go and watch them rehearse sometimes because we were still hanging around that summer...A few years later, after we became friends, I told Jim about my first impression of him at that first show, and I said, “I thought you were terrible that night”. I remember he gave me a look that seemed to suggest that he didn’t like the word “terrible” [laughs]...

But then I told him he had improved tremendously and he was like a Frank Sinatra crooner who could also sing rock, and I asked him, “What changed?” He just said, “I just kept practicing and I kept practicing, practicing, practicing”. And obviously he had been doing something to improve. If you listen to their first demo and then their first album, there is such a difference and you can hear it. But they rehearsed a lot and they played a lot, too. I guess you can’t really help but improve if there’s the will and the talent, right?"-Frank Lisciandro

1966.08-09 Ray's Beach House Session ©Bill Harvey

1967.09.18, New York. 📷 J. Brodsky

Asbury Park Convention Hall New Jersey, September 2nd 1967. 📷 Gloria Stavers

"Urge to come to terms with the "Outside", by absorbing, interiorizing it. I won't  come out, you must come in to me. Into my womb-garden where I peer out. Where I can construct a universe within the skull, to rival the real.".  (Jim Morrison, from “The Lords: Notes on Vision”)   

 Photo Session in Frankfurt, Germany, September 14th,1968