Picture this. Four of us friends sitting on the grass listening to music at one of the college festivals. There’s a vibe going – some nice booze, cigarettes being smoked, fabulous music by Friends of Shiva. Someone (who shall forever be nameless) staggers up to us, clearly inebriated, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He bends down, makes the action of striking a matchstick and says…..“hey guys, light my fire”……Cue two seconds of horrified silence followed by hysterical laughter, all of us rolling on the grass laughing our heads off. Unfortunately, this is my abiding memory of what is perhaps one of the top-five rock songs ever!

The Doors were an ephemeral comet that flew across the horizon in four short years from 1967-70, delivering some of the biggest songs of all time and then supernovaed spectacularly.  They came together in ’65 when Jim Morrison & Ray Manzarek met by chance on Venice Beach and decided to set up a band, recruiting drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger. This was the mid-60s and being stoned was a natural state of existence, hence no surprise they named themselves after Huxley’s ‘The Doors Of Perception’. They started out playing clubs like London Fog and Whisky A Go Go where they crafted their sound and where Morrison perfected his style of singing under the influence – with profanity laden adlib lyrics, which ultimately led to them being fired in Aug ‘66. To say Jim Morrison – the Lizard King – was a complicated man would be the world’s greatest understatement !

Anyway, they immediately signed to Elektra and set to recording their iconic debut album ‘The Doors’.  But they had only a limited set available and Morrison petulantly told the rest of the band to be useful and write some songs as well. Kriegar came up with ‘Light My Fire’ which became their breakout hit, going all the way to #1. They played this on the first and last appearance on the Ed Sullivan show – the instruction from Ed Sullivan was they were not to sing “girl we couldn’t get much higher” due to references to drugs. Morrison agreed not to. And then sang the line anyway (video)!

The other hit on this album was the opening single – ‘Break On Through’. Fabulous !!

Must add that my first exposure to ‘Light My Fire’ was the 1970 cover by Anand Shankar. I did actually own this vinyl for many years!