reaking on through: (l to r) John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
Few albums have started life quite so inauspiciously as Morrison Hotel, the fifth long player by seminal LA four-piece, The Doors. As the band prepared to enter the studio in November 1969, they were still smarting from the critical pounding that had greeted their previous album The Soft Parade, an experimental work that encompassed orchestral arrangements, took nine months to record and racked up a whopping $86,000 (equal to $587,563 today) in costs. The album was derided by critics and the band’s core underground music scene fans, who viewed it as an opportunistic stab at the pop market.