Episode Details

The Doors combined Jim Morrison's poetry and self-destruction with Ray Manzarek's organ, Robby Krieger's guitar, and John Densmore's jazz drumming to produce music that sounded like a Dionysian ritual set to a rock beat. Morrison drank himself to death at twenty-seven, but the band's real tragedy was that the excess obscured how genuinely innovative the music was.

This episode traces The Doors from Morrison and Manzarek's meeting on Venice Beach through "Light My Fire," the Miami concert arrest, and the self-immolation of one of the most original bands in rock history.

• They were the first band to have a number-one hit without a bass player, using Manzarek's keyboard bass instead
• Morrison was arrested on stage in Miami in 1969 on charges of indecent exposure, an incident that nearly ended the band
• "Light My Fire" reached number one in 1967 and became one of the defining songs of the Summer of Love
• Morrison died in Paris at twenty-seven and was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, where his grave remains one of the most visited in the world