1967.09.18, New York. 📷 J. Brodsky

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

MORE THAN just a good rock group, The Doors represent two things to their millions of followers. Either they project the music-plus-sensuality that is The Doors musical sense combined with Morrison's presence, or they can project the strange drama and rock that comes from Morrison's head.” -Pop Scene Service, April 6, 1968

©  Joel Brodsky, November 1966, New York

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

1967.05.26. Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA.  Photos by Linda Neff (Backstage) / Unidentified (KRLA Beat) 

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

"In the beginning we were creating our music, ourselves, everynight...starting with a few outlines, maybe a few words for a song. Sometimes we worked out in Venice, looking at the surf. We were together a lot and it was good times for all of us. Acid, sun, friends, the ocean, and poetry and music." - Jim Morrison

Bobby Klein: "Jim was irreverent and mischievous. One time we were shooting outside and he suddenly disappeared. He came back with this cheeky smile and I took his picture. Only later, when I got the photos developed, did I realise what he had been doing: he’d hidden behind a tree, got himself aroused and, through his trousers, was pointing his erection right at my camera."

January-February 1967, Venice Beach, California. © Bobby Klein.

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

On February 22, 1967, The Doors' performed at the Valley Music Theater in Woodland Hills, California George Washington's Birthday Bash. This event takes place as a fundraiser & awareness concert for teenagers and the public following the Sunset Strip riots. The doors played first.  🔻February 22, 1967, Woodland Hills, California, photo by Jean Trindl

"First New York opening in a while. The Doors - Fresh from Los Angeles with an underground album of the hour - return. This time, they are worshipped, envied, bandied about like the Real Thing. The word is out or 'in' - 'The Doors will floor you'. So not all the pretty people in New York were present at opening night, but enough to keep a few publicity agencies busy. The four musicians mounted their instruments. The organist lit a stick of incense. Vocalist and writer Jim Morrison closed his eyes to all that Arnel elegance, and the Doors opened up. Morrison twitched and pouted and a cluster of girls gathered to watch every nuance in his lips. Humiliating your audience is an old game in rock 'n' roll, but Morrison pitches spastic love with an insolence you can't ignore. His material - almost all original - is literate, concise, and terrifying. The Doors have the habit of improvising, so a song about being strange which I heard for the first time at Ondine may be a completely different composition by now. Whatever the words, you will discern a deep streak of violent - sometimes Oedipal - sexuality. And since sex is what hard rock is all about, the Doors are a stunning success. You should brave all the go-go gymnastics, bring a select circle of friends for buffer, and make it up to Ondine to find out what the literature of pop is all about. The Doors are mean; and their skin is green." (Richard Goldstein, "Pop Eye," Village Voice, Mar. 25, 1967)

🔻March, 1967, photo shoot inside Ondine NYC, New York, photo by Thomas Monaster.