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It was a bright, unseasonably warm morning in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 20, 1968. Nowadays, people call it the 4-20, but back then it turned out to be a 4-20 of a completely different kind. Shortly before 10 a.m., two limousines pulled into the driveway of our suburban home. Inside were the members of The Doors, probably the biggest rock in band in North America at the time (although Jimi Hendrix was right up there too). Actually, let's flashback, because the beginning of this story happened a half-year earlier, in the autumn. "After Four," the teen section of the Toronto Telegram newspaper, and a television program of the same name announced a contest, where the winner would spend a day with the Doors, including attending their concert that evening. My youngest brother, Don, who was just 14 years old, was perhaps the biggest Doors fan on Earth. We had to replace both vinyl albums, The Doors and Strange Days, which had been released in January and September of '67, because he'd worn them out. I can't remember, but I'm sure the turntable's stylus was ready for replacement too. Don lived and breathed The Doors. I was 17 years old, and my other brother, Bruce, 15 going on 16. We had to laugh when Don kept telling us that he was destined to win the contest. His mantra was that it was meant to be. I recall saying, "Look, this thing has been advertised in the paper and on TV every week for a month. Do you know how many kids have entered?" Didn't matter to Don. He was absolutely confident that nobody but he could win. Well, damned if we didn't get a call before Christmas that he'd won A Day With The Doors. So, on that April morning, the big day had finally arrived. Don had been at the living-room window waiting patiently, and yelled to the family when the limos turned onto the drive. My mom, dad, brother and I joined him at the window. There's something that must be mentioned too: My father, a World War Two air force vet and really straight business executive, had for the previous year been critical of The Doors and, especially, Jim Morrison. He'd been reading accounts of bad behavior and drug-taking. Dad said that these guys weren't a good role model for us. Of course, we completely ignored any of his misgivings. In one of the limousines were Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore. They shuffled out of the car and stood for a moment stretching their legs, looking up at the house. The door to the other limo opened, and Morrison stepped out unsteadily, catching his foot on the driveway curb, tripping and falling sideways onto the front lawn. The local artist-and-repertoire man (whose name I've long forgotten) from the record company jumped out and helped him up. My mother's eyes were bulging. "Oh, my," she said, shocked. Morrison was wearing skintight leather pants with a kind of lizard print on them. I'd heard rumors from kids at high school that he didn't wear underwear. Whether that was true or not, there was little left to the imagination. As they all came in the front door, it was evident that Morrison had gotten intoxicated during the early flight from New York. You could smell the alcohol on his breath. In the living room, the record-company guy made small talk, and told us they would be taking Don soon, to get downtown, check into their hotel and do an afternoon TV taping for the CBC (Canada's national broadcaster). He gave Don a couple of promotional photos, one with signatures already on it, and his VIP reserved-seat ticket to the show. Then he handed me and Bruce tickets too, third row centre, right next to Don's seat. The vast majority of people paid $4.00 to stand on the floor.   A minute or two later, Morrison was actually gabbing with my dad. Since I played drums, I gravitated to John Densmore and couldn't hear what they were saying. I was a little worried though. At one point, I heard Morrison ask, "Do you have anything to drink?" My dad said that there was a wet bar in our basement recreation room. Everyone drifted downstairs, with Morrison following my father. My mom asked if anyone would like coffee or soft drinks. The other three Doors, without exception, were quiet and polite. I sat at the bar to the left. Morrison took a seat next to me, with Don on the other side of him. My dad stood in front of the fourth stool leaning on the bar. My brother Bruce, the other Doors and the record-company guy were hovering behind us. Morrison pointed to a bottle of 12-year-old Scotch, one that my father had received as a gift at Christmas - and drank very sparingly. He put the bottle on the bar. I grabbed a glass, a tumbler, unfortunately. My dad probably wanted to kill me for not selecting something smaller. Morrison filled it to the brim with Scotch, taking no ice or water. Don left and returned with some sheets of 3 x 5-inch paper and a ballpoint pen. He asked Morrison to sign first, which the singer did on the top of the bar. Then the other Doors crowded in and signed the second sheet. Don asked if the guys would sign the promo photo he'd been given too. Those signatures were also done with the ballpoint pen on the hard surface of the bar top.   In anticipation of this day, my father had bought a few rolls of film for the Kodak Swinger, an early instant camera, like the Polaroid, which produced black-and-white images in a minute or so. Then you had to wipe some kind of foul-smelling goop on the shot to preserve it. Dad also lent Don his 35mm Kodak Brownie camera from the '50s, loaded with film and ready to go. While everyone was talking in the rec room, I took three instant pics: one of them a priceless shot of Morrison standing between my mom and dad (who wasn't smiling at all). I shot another five with the 35mm camera of The Doors and my brothers with them. Tragically, the photos I took were lost years later. I had put them in my Webster's Dictionary to keep them flat and safe. While studying journalism at college, I replaced my old dictionary and, not thinking, tossed it out. So the only images that survived are the dozen of Don's from before the show. By the time my mom brought down a platter of those funny little triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off, the record-company rep was losing it. He kept pleading over and over about getting downtown, checked in and the CBC TV interview at 2:30 p.m. It was already 11:00 a.m., and the worry showed on his frowning face. Jim Morrison paid absolutely no attention. About 45 minutes later, they were all out the door, after Manzarek had encouraged Morrison to get a move on. The three other Doors left in one limo, while Don, Morrison and the record-company A&R man took the other. From this point on, the story is based on what my youngest brother told me happened until he met up with Bruce and me at the concert venue later that night. Instead of following the other limousine directly to the Westbury Hotel on Toronto's main drag, Yonge Street, Morrison asked the driver to stop - against the protests of the record-company rep - at a hip downtown clothing shop called Mister Casual, because he wanted to buy a coat. He and Don went in the store while the car was parked illegally on busy Bloor Street, and Morrison took his time picking out a suede jacket. The Doors had been in Toronto six months earlier, so perhaps he knew Mister Casual from that visit. Note: I cannot verify with 100 per cent accuracy Morrison's exit from the store. It's not detailed completely in my written notes from over 50 years ago. And, since my brother Don died in 2013, I can't ask him. But, I recall his recounting the story this way many times. Those close to me also remember it this way. When he paid for the coat in U.S. cash (Canadians always accept American money!), Morrison asked the salesperson if there was another exit. When told that, through the storeroom, there was a back door, Morrison tipped the guy $20 - a considerable sum back then. With garment bag slung over his shoulder, he and Don went out the backway into the alley, and walked a block over to Yonge. Once there, he went into a tavern. In those days, it was illegal for anyone under 21 years of age to be in a bar, even if accompanied by an adult. So Don waited outside the bar on the street. The only other scenario would be that Morrison and Don returned to the limo from the store and, when it turned off Bloor onto Yonge Street, he asked the driver to stop the car so he could go into a bar for a drink. It seems doubtful that the record-company A&R man would have allowed this to happen without checking in to the hotel. Either way, Morrison ended up drinking more. As I remember Don saying, once Morrison came out of the tavern, he grabbed a cab and they went directly to the CBC studios on Jarvis Street, a few blocks east of Yonge. The result was that Morrison didn't check into his hotel with everyone else. Don got to watch the taping of the interview which, he said, only included Morrison and Manzarek. It was for a current-affairs show called "The Day It Is." That episode of the show wouldn't air until the following month. After the taping, the record-company rep, probably fed up by that time, stayed with the others. Morrison directed the limo driver back to Yonge Street, and told him to wait at the hotel until the trip to the concert venue. Then the pattern was repeated: Morrison would retreat into a bar, with my youngest brother waiting outside. What follows are my impressions of the concert itself. My dad dropped me and my brother Bruce off at the CNE Coliseum. The Canadian National Exhibition, going way back to 1879 and held in the last two weeks of August, was the country's biggest carnival, industrial exposition, car show and so on. The Coliseum, which everyone called the horse palace, was an arena that held about 6,000 people. It was used for the annual winter agricultural fair and other livestock-related events. You could actually smell manure even when a concert was on. I had seen Jimi Hendrix there with my girlfriend about a month before The Doors show. Bruce and I were at the venue at 7:30 p.m., a half-hour before it was to begin. Don wasn't in his seat though. Unfortunately, three opening acts had been tacked on to the show. Two Canadian bands - City Muffin Boys and Influence - played first. The sound was terrible, with a lot of high-level distortion. Impossible to make out the vocals. A big screen at the back of the stage projected abstract psychedelic images, while a distracting light show bounced colours all over the performers. When Boston band Earth Opera came on, the organizers managed to fix the sound somewhat, but it still wasn't good. The crowd was there for The Doors, and entirely indifferent to the acts that performed first. As I recall, they didn't finish until about 9:45 p.m. You could feel the anticipation in the arena as everyone waited for the Doors. And, even after their instruments had been set up and the stage readied, the lights were still dimmed. No action. No youngest brother either. What was going on? The audience was losing patience and yelling for the band to come on. It had been a long evening. Finally, the lights came up and people went crazy. Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore took the stage, and began playing the opening refrain to "Break on Through." Cheering erupted. But the song kept going on and on, with no sign of Morrison. Then Ray Manzarek began to do a jazzy keyboard jam, and Robby Krieger came in with guitar fills. The crowd would have none of it. They started booing loudly and yelling. The other Doors fled the stage. Lights were dimmed again. Another 15 or 20 minutes passed, with the audience growing angrier by the minute. All of a sudden, in the darkness, my brother Don rushed into the seat beside me. "We're finally here," he said. "And he's really bombed!" Then the lights came up, and the four of them took their places on stage, to major applause and cheering. If my memory serves me, they went right into "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)," from the first album. Their second-last song, before "Light My Fire," was "The Unknown Soldier," an unknown song to the audience. It was from the band's third album, Waiting for the Sun, which wouldn't be released until three months later. Jim Morrison projected his shamanic image well, crouched over the microphone, looking dark and mysterious. Despite his drunken state, he nailed all of the songs. The sound system wasn't perfect still, with some distortion on his voice, but it seemed acceptable to the fans there that night. Later, Don would tell me that, after Morrison had emerged from a third bar, they walked a few blocks to the Westbury Hotel, where he finally picked up his coat at the front-lobby desk (he'd asked the limo driver to leave it there) and checked into his room. He didn't bother changing clothes for the performance. Everyone else had long gone to the concert venue. Outside, at the hotel entrance, their driver was still waiting in the car. Backstage at the Coliseum, Don was introduced to Morrison's long-time girlfriend, Pamela Courson, and others whom he couldn't remember. Not wishing to miss the opportunity, he started snapping pictures of The Doors with both cameras, stopping only to wipe the instant shots with preservative. Three of them are somewhat smeared, where he'd been rushing. At one point, he asked John Densmore to take a pic with the Brownie of him standing with Morrison. All four of them were gracious and stopped what they were doing to let him shoot, even though they had to get onstage immediately. Krieger even had his guitar strapped on and ready to plug in once they were out there. Someone had given Morrison a bouquet of flowers, which shows up in Don's shots. Despite Morrison's behavior, leaving a 14-year-old outside bars on a seedy street, Don's admiration for The Doors - and Jim Morrison, in particular - only increased and never wavered. Until he died of cancer, just before his 60th birthday, he never stopped playing the Doors' music. Jim Hickman April 2020 |
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For more information on the show, visit our Toronto 1968 Concert Info page!