The Doors in Miami

Posted on April 21, 2010 - Filed Under Music

March 1, 1969 was a very hot day in the history of rock and roll. This was in Miami, and the events on that night only serve to make another reason to visit the city, and spend time in the lovely hotels , and follow some of the traces of the past to the present. It’s a lively city, with a number of enormously passionate musicians and artists, and this was just another moment in that peculiar and complex story.

Some people might remember that this was the night that the Doors gave one of their most exciting performances of their entire career. It wasn’t very spectacular musically, although truth be told, a lot of their live work hasn’t been particularly deft or complicated. It was always more interesting because of the performative elements of the group, and the front man was one of the performative icons the world has known.

Jim Morrison wasn’t arrested that night, interestingly enough, and the charges weren’t to come until after they’d left. By the time the show started, he was already well into a wild state of intoxication, and ready to incite a riot. So it seemed. That he wasn’t able to, even though he yelled provocative things at the crowd all night long, may be a testament to the coolness that can sometimes come over Miami audiences, who were no doubt more interested in watching what he would do next rather than try to start a revolution in an auditorium.

Known to Doors aficionados as the Miami Incident , the incident lasted for a couple hours, where he did use a lot of profanity, egged the audience on, and was even allegedly engaging in acts of indecent exposure.

This was a key moment in music and also in performance in general. There’s something very old about the idea of a romantic figure doing things that are against the grain. Lord Byron certainly had his moments, and Dorothy Parker spent her short life honing her ability to shock. The icons use the tools and art forms available at the time, and somehow manage to turn entertainment into art, and there are ripples around the world producing revolutions in thought that even the artists themselves could not have imagined.

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