![]() The duo already had an impressive track record, with their credits including Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s first two albums. Holzman and co really knew their business and, in producer Paul A Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick, they’d already lined up the ideal team to help bring The Doors’ debut album to fruition. I probably had three quarters of their releases in my collection, so it was pretty cool to be on Elektra.” “After months of playing nightly sets, we were able to go”Īs it turned out, Elektra wasn’t just hip. “They were kind of our heroes in LA,” Krieger told Goldmine, who figured that, if Elektra were “good enough for Love, they’re good enough for us. One of the label’s newest signings, Arthur Lee’s Love, also helped steer The Doors towards Holzman’s company. It was just a very hip, small folk label, and we could actually talk directly to the president. “And Judy Collins was covering then-unknown Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. “It was a small boutique label that had a bunch of artists that we respected, such as Paul Butterfield,” John Densmore told US publication Goldmine in 2017. The hip Elektra imprint, co-founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt, eventually won out, attracting the band thanks in part to its roster. The only question left unanswered was which record label they would sign with. Certainly, the first half of 1966 was pivotal for the band’s development: by the time they were wowing audiences on a nightly basis at the Whisky, they had a killer set of songs and were fronted by a vocalist exuding star quality. It’s been well documented that this initial, dues-paying season of gigs – followed by a more high-profile residency at LA’s famous Whisky A Go Go – effectively set The Doors on the road to the superstar status they attained 12 months later. Even then, they were still unknown outside of their immediate circle when they embarked on their famous residency at Los Angeles’ London Fog nightclub in the spring of that year. In their embryonic form, the band began after keyboardist Ray Manzarek first met novice vocalist (and UCLA film-school dropout) Jim Morrison in 1965, but The Doors’ classic line-up – with Manzarek and Morrison joined by guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore – didn’t coalesce until the start of 1966. While it arrived sounding fully-formed and fabulous, The Doors’ debut album didn’t materialise out of nowhere. ![]() ![]() Listen to The Doors’ self-titled debut album here. Standing tall among the best debut albums of all time, it remains a touchstone of late-60s rock. It wasn’t the first album (and it certainly wouldn’t be the last) to be greeted with such fulsome praise, but, over half a century later, The Doors still stacks up to the hyperbole. When The Doors’ self-titled debut album first arrived, at the start of 1967, US publication Crawdaddy described it as “an album of magnitude” before suggesting that the record was “as good as anything in rock”. ![]()
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