AIRPORT

We got to Sunset Sound Recorders a bit late, and we weren't sure what to expect. Would we not be admitted because the session was already in go? What were the Doors like individually and what were their recording dates like? Was the private Jim Morrison different from the public one? Was he real or was the super-earthiness put-on?

Most of what we experienced was unexpected.

As we drove into the parking lot we noticed Morrison standing by the side of a Volkswagen bus. As we got out of the car he sort of shrank away. It certainly seemed to this writer that he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The girl who was with me, however, couldn't resist approaching him. She asked him if they had started recording yet. He answered that, yeahh, they were recording inside now. She then asked him if he wasn't going in too. Morrison said, yeahh, later.

Feeling a bit uneasy, I said something like "see ya inside" and chose to leave it at that as I maneuvered us out of the parking lot. Seconds later, as we walked on the sidewalk along Sunset towards the studio entrance, Morrison placed his chin over the gray brick wall of the parking lot and stared right at us, and yet, not at us. It was an unbelievable trip that would have drugged just about any young girl who would have happened by the sidewalk at that moment.

This is especially true when one considers that at this time the Doors had solidly established themselves as the hottest group in Los Angeles. Just the Saturday before they had stolen the show from a star-studded lineup which top-billed the Jefferson Airplane at Birmingham High School Stadium before an audience that numbered well over the expected sellout of 10,000.

If anyone doubts most of the Birmingham crowd wasn't there for the Doors, it can easily be pointed out that half the audience was gone before the Airplane was in mid-flight. This could be attributed to the fact that, as the last group, the Airplane came on pretty late. Still, the Doors were next to last and the audience waited and shouted for more. Also, a matter of days later, before leaving on an East Coast tour, the Doors sardined about 2,000 persons SRO into the Hullabaloo, while about three more full houses waited outside in an unbelievable line for the second, and last show!

With requests for the long version of "Light My Fire" snowballing into the switchboards of radio stations, the Doors were hot in a blaze of popularity. And, with his chin on a gray brick wall, Jim Morrison gazed out on a not too glamorous portion of Sunset Boulevard.

RUNWAY