MAY 23, 1966 – The Doors played their first show

MAY 23, 1966 – The Doors played their first show, debuting at the The Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood, California where they became the house band for several months opening for touring groups like the Byrds, The Turtles, The Seeds, Buffalo Springfield, Them, Love and many others.
The band’s sets were comprised mainly of songs which would appear on their first two albums. Night after night they developed and refined those songs in front of a live audience. “The End” was gradually transformed from a rather transient love song of bittersweet departure into the ominous saga which evokes a descent into the dark night of the soul, and Morrison’s Oedipal verse would get the fired from the gig in August.
In addition to their regular sets, they try out newer songs on the slower nights of Monday – Wednesday. “Latin Bulls**t #2” was an instrumental jazz piece roughly based on a Gil Evans composition. The instrumental served as filler, which they continued to play through the Ondine’s gigs in New York. It later evolved into “Away in India”, featured in a medley often referred to as the “People Get Ready Jam” which they often performed in 1970. Their version of “Summertime” was a waltz instrumental loosely styled after John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things.” These two instrumentals often served to open sets when Jim was late arriving at the club.
Morrison may have been taking acid during The Doors run at the Whisky A Go Go, but he was never arrested for drugs, only public drunkenness. Exposed to a wide-ranging audience, The Doors began to experiment daringly. Allegedly, the experiments often took the form of drug trips, and weekly tales of The Doors’ freaked-out adventures have now become legendary stories so steeped in myth that the truth may never be chronicled. According to one friend of the group, Morrison was so consistently high on acid during this period that he could eat sugar cubes like candy without visible effect. But, inexplicably, the music kept getting better.