They headed into Los Angeles's World Pacific Studios to record a demo in September 1965, cutting the first versions of "Moonlight Drive," "Hello, I Love You," and "Summer's Almost Gone." Not long afterward, the band renamed itself the Doors upon the suggestion of Morrison, and they soon lost Rick and Jim Manzarek, along with Pat Hansen (aka Patty Sullivan), the bassist who played on the World Pacific session. During the course of 1965, Morrison gradually became part of the group, with John Densmore - a drummer for the Psychedelic Rangers who was an acquaintance of Manzarek's - joining the band that summer. The pair hit it off and Manzarek encouraged Morrison to sing with Rick & the Ravens. By happenstance, he met a fellow student by the name of Jim Morrison while they were both on Venice Beach. Ray had been playing with the group since 1961, sticking with it as he enrolled in UCLA's graduate film program. The roots of the Doors lay in Rick & the Ravens, a fratty rock & roll combo comprising Rick and Jim Manzarek, and featuring their brother Ray on keyboards. Underneath their trippy surface, the Doors were veterans of the Los Angeles garage scene, and their affinity for blues and hard rock gave the band a flinty earthiness that served them well throughout their career it's certainly evident on their biggest hit singles, including "Light My Fire," "Love Me Two Times," "Hello, I Love You," "Touch Me," and "Love Her Madly." The blend of muscle and mysticism helped shape the parameters of punk and art-rock - it's difficult to imagine Iggy Pop without the Doors - and ultimately wound up being their biggest lasting influence, eclipsing the Morrison mythos and years of play on classic rock radio. Morrison's heated poetry and hedonism were genuinely new at the time the Doors released their self-titled debut in 1967, as were the droning guitars of Robby Krieger and cascading organ lines of Ray Manzarek, who also played keyboard bass in concert (on record, session musicians often laid down a bass part). "The End" never appeared as a single but its Oedipal melodrama zeroed in on the Doors' appeal back in 1967: the group seemed otherworldly and dangerous, drawing from inspirations not normally heard in rock music. He seemed to loom larger in his afterlife than he did when he roamed the earth, his posthumous popularity cresting in the '80s as the Doors returned to radio airwaves in the wake of their magnum opus "The End" soundtracking pivotal moments in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The group's massive influence on the course of rock music may been overshadowed by decades of lionization of their late lead singer Jim Morrison, whose early death wound up being a pivotal part of their legacy. The Doors mark the moment when the American rock underground of the 1960s came crashing into the mainstream.
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