The Doors

Doors frontman Jim Morrison saw his dad run over and kill an elderly American Indian, so Jim set out on  his own road to self-destruction. A night out for Jim just wasn't complete without drugs, booze, more booze, some more drugs and a violent encounter with one of his many lovers. One night, suspecting his muse Pamela Courson was cheating on him, he locked her in a wardrobe and set fire to it!

On September 19 1968 a drugged and drunken Jim Morrison was taken to hospital after collapsing on the stage of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, having stumbled into the middle of a live set by Jefferson Airplane.

Morrison's consumption of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs was legendary, but the incident suggested he might no longer be in control of his intake. His collapse in Amsterdam came after a day of heavy drinking, and sources close to the band revealed he swallowed a sizeable block of hashish given to him by a fan immediately before the show. The Doors' year had started well. Their second album Strange Days went gold in January and, in early February, Universal offered the band $500,000 to star in a feature film. Plans were also announced for an ABC-TV special, a 'humor book' by the group, and a book of Morrison's poetry and lyrics.

Their artistic and commercial success was at risk from Morrison's personal failures. Life magazine writer Fred Powledge noted in April that the 24-year-old Morrison "appears in public and on his records to be moody, temperamental, enchanted in the mind and extremely stoned".

On May 10, Morrison courted disaster when he incited a Chicago audience to riot. After performing Five To One, a song about violent youth insurrection, Morrison took the group into When The Music's Over, a lengthy dramatic piece climaxing in a scream of "We want the world and we want it now". The crowd screamed it back, louder. 

Raising them to fever pitch, Morrison virtually led the crowd to a riot which was only subdued by baton-swinging police reinforcements. Challenged about his position, he retorted; "It's all done tongue in cheek. I don't think people realize it's not meant to be taken seriously. When you play the bad guy in a western, that's not you. It's supposed to be ironic". Ironic or not, the kids bought what was on offer in bucket-loads. Waiting For The Sun was soon certified as the band's third consecutive gold LP.

But while Morrison sang "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything", the gap between what the Lizard King believed he could do and what he could actually handle became manifest more and more frequently . . .

A bloated and puffy Morrison was arrested on March 1 1969 for exposing himself during a concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami. In November he was arrested again on charges of assaulting an Air Hostess while on a flight from LA to Phoenix. The groups career would never recover.