The Doors - Light My Fire “American Bandstand“ ABC Studios Live, Hollywood. July 22, 1967. Morrison.

The Doors appear on Dick Clark’s American bandstand to perform “The Crystal Ship” and ‘Light My Fire”, which was just peaking on the charts. Although this is another lip-synced performance, it’s hard to tell it’s the same Jim Morrison that moped his way through the Shebang performance. Jim really gets into this one and it’s hard to tell he isn’t really singing. The camera focuses in on Ray’s hands quite a bit, and he plays along with the songs perfectly. Purists will smile at this one since on the studio version of “The Crystal Ship” we hear classical piano and on the show Ray is playing on a Vox Continental. After they perform “The Crystal Ship”, Dick Clark interviews the band. Two memorable quotes come from this interview, the first when Dick Clark asked Ray to classify the type of music The Doors play: Ray: Well, it’s impossible really to put a label on it because of where we are in the music. Being on the inside, you’re only ‘of the music’, and all categories have to come from the outside. So someone else is going to have to say what our music is rather than us, because we ARE our music. The second quote comes from Jim, who when asked by Clark, why so much is happening with the music scene in LA and San Francisco, Jim replies: “The West is the best.” After the interview, the song “Light My Fire” starts up before they are ready and the band rushes back to their instruments. JIM MORRISON Singer for The Doors bio-jim-morrison At the center of The Doors’ mystique is the magnetic presence of singer-poet Jim Morrison, the leather-clad “Lizard King” who brought the riveting power of a shaman to the microphone. Morrison was a film student at UCLA when he met keyboardist Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach in 1965. Upon hearing Morrison’s poetry, Manzarek immediately suggested they form a band; the singer took the group’s name from Aldous Huxley’s infamous psychedelic memoir, “The Doors of Perception.” Constantly challenging censorship and conventional wisdom, Morrison’s lyrics delved into primal issues of sex, violence, freedom and the spirit. He outraged authority figures, braved intimidation and arrest, and followed the road of excess (as one of his muses, the poet William Blake, famously put it) toward the palace of wisdom. Over the course of six extraordinary albums and countless boundary-smashing live performances, he inexorably changed the course of rock music – and died in 1971 at the age of 27. He was buried in Paris, and fans from around the world regularly make pilgrimages to his grave. In 1978, the surviving members of the band – keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore – reunited to record the accompanying music for An American Prayer, a compilation of Morrison’s poetry readings. He remains the very template of the rock frontman, and his singing, poetry and Dionysian demeanor continue to inspire artists and audiences around the world. Birth: December 8th, 1943 #TheDoors #JimMorrison #LightMyFire Original Broadcast, R-Evolution.