The origins of The Doors lie in a chance meeting between acquaintances and fellow UCLA film school alumni Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California in July 1965. Morrison told Manzarek he had been writing songs (Morrison said “I was taking notes at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert going on in my head”) and, with Manzarek’s encouragement, sang “Moonlight Drive”.

Keyboardist Manzarek was in a band called Rick & the Ravens with his brothers Rick and Jim Manzarek, while drummer John Densmore was playing with The Psychedelic Rangers, and knew Manzarek from meditation classes. In August, Densmore joined the group and, along with members of The Ravens and bass player Pat Sullivan (later credited using her married name Patricia Hansen in the 1997 box CD release), recorded a six-song demo in September 1965. This has since then circulated widely as a bootleg recording. That month the group recruited guitarist Robby Krieger, and the final lineup ? Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore ? was complete. The band took their name from a line in William Blake’s poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.

By 1966, the group was playing the LA club London Fog and soon graduated to the prestigious Whisky a Go Go, where they were the house band, supporting acts including Van Morrison’s group Them. On their last night together the two bands joined up for “In the Midnight Hour” and a twenty-minute jam session of Them’s “Gloria”. Prior to graduating to Whisky a Go Go, Morrison went to many record labels trying to land a deal. He did score one but it did not pan out. On August 10, they were spotted by Elektra Records president Jac Holzman who was present at the recommendation of Love singer Arthur Lee, whose group was on Elektra. After Holzman and producer Paul A. Rothchild saw two sets of the band playing at the Whisky a Go Go, they signed them to the Elektra Records label on August 18?the start of a long and successful partnership with Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick. Later that month, the club fired the band after a profanity-filled performance of “The End”.