5 Big Mistakes The Doors Has Made In Their Career

The Doors’ impact on popular culture and music is undeniable. They became the representative of America’s underdog acts when they rose to prominence in the sixties, bringing with them an eclectic mix of folk, jazz, and blues backgrounds that would be tied together with masterful poetry that would catapult the band into superstardom. But The Doors didn’t come with their own flaws, some of which actually cost them greatly.

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Faking Their “Live Appearance”

On August 25, 1967, The Doors were scheduled to make their first American TV appearance. Fans were disappointed when they saw the band performing “Light My Fire” on a beach along a playback track, which was not well-received and forgotten shortly after.

Censorship Blunders

On a September 1967 appearance at the Ed Sullivan Show, network executives asked the band to remove the word lyric “higher” from “Light My Fire”. The Doors seemed to agree but performed the song in its original form – either because they never really intended to comply or Jim Morrison was too nervous to remember the instruction. It was too late as the lyric was sung out on national television, prompting Ed Sullivan himself to cancel six remaining shows of the band. The program’s producer told them that they would never play in the show again, to which Morrison responded with: “Hey man. We just did the Sullivan Show.”

Onstage Arrest

Prior to a New Haven concert in December 1967, Morrison was making out with a fan backstage shower stall when a police officer chanced upon them. The officer didn’t know that Morrison was The Doors’ frontman, so he told the two to leave. Morrison was uncooperative and taunted the officer, which went on until he and the woman were both sprayed with mace. This delayed the band’s schedule by a while as Morrison waited to recover. When he went on stage, Morrison made an impromptu song about the said event, complete with vulgar imagery. This taunted the police officers surrounding the stage and ended with him being dragged off it, starting a riot as the crowd grew restless.

Morrison’s Stage Antics

On a March 1969 show at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison arrived almost an hour late as he missed connecting flights due to excessive drinking. It didn’t help that an audience of 12,000 people were crammed in a 7,000-head capacity space, and Morrison was making a scene by taunting the crowd with messages of love and hate, which he took from an experimental theater group. During the second song of the night, things began to take on an entirely weird form, with manager Bill Siddons saying, “The gig was a bizarre, circus-like thing, there was this guy carrying a sheep and the wildest people that I’d ever seen.” Equipment chief Vince Treanor shared: “The gig was a bizarre, circus-like thing, there was this guy carrying a sheep and the wildest people that I’d ever seen.”

Needless to say, a warrant of arrest for Morrison was released, which ended in a six-month conviction with hard labor and a fine of $500. He remained free, however, pending an appeal of the matter, and died before a resolution was reached.

Experimental Sounds

The Soft Parade was a result of The Doors wanting to go a bit more experimental with their sound, which didn’t sit right with music critics. Individual writing credits were also being considered for the first time since Morrison was becoming more and more problematic and uncooperative. This made recording sessions a pain to be in and studio costs were piling up. Luckily, the album became a hit success with the fans.