Stunning Studio Portraits of The Doors Taken by Guy Webster, 08. 1967.
I received an Aztec wall
of vision
& dissolved my room in
sweet derision
Closed my eyes, prepared to god
A gentle wind inform’d me so
And bathed my skin in ether glow
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
Magnifique winter 💙
1967.07.03. Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA. Photo by James Fortune.
Jim Morrison pictured by Oscar Abolafia, August 14, 1967
The first day the band arrived in the studio, Botnick recalls, “they had pretty much the first two albums ready to go. The thought that Paul had was that we were to be invisible – to allow them to capture the magic of The Doors as you went to hear them.” He adds: “They were totally different than anything else I was recording. I was recording the Beach Boys, The Turtles, The Ventures… and The Doors were totally different, it was the beginning of that era of American sixties music.”. 1966.11 First photo session group ©Joel Brodsky
Bobby Klein's first photo shoot of The Doors in Bronson Park, Los Angeles, September 1966
Jim Morrison, Jule 28th-30th, 1967, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA. 📷 Paul Ferrara