http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1309059&secid=1
July 17, 2005
CC alumni recall ’67 Doors show
It was spring of 1967 when Doug Brown was asked to find a
band to play for Colorado College’s homecoming dance.
Find new talent on a modest budget, the chairman of the homecoming committee was
told.
And did he ever.
Brown, a junior, signed The Doors to perform in an intimate ballroom setting at
a time when the band was exploding in popularity nationwide.
In a little-known chapter of rock ’n’ roll history, a few hundred well-dressed
CC students took to the dance floor as leatherclad Jim Morrison sang some of his
greatest hits.
A CC alumnus recently donated a bootleg recording of the show to the college’s
library. News of the donation was published in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, a weekly newspaper for academia, prompting a trip down memory lane
for alumni.
The band, which was booked before the chart-topping release of “Light My Fire”
that propelled it from underground to mainstream, played the CC venue for a
fraction of its going rate.
On Sept. 17, The Doors made an infamous appearance on the “The Ed Sullivan Show”
in which Morrison ignored Sullivan’s demand to change a line in “Light My Fire”
for his television audience. The TV show host didn’t care for the term, “girl we
couldn’t get much higher.”
By mid-November, the band was the subject of articles in Time and Newsweek, and
a famous photo spread of Morrison appeared in Vogue magazine.
In between came the Oct. 21 performance in a second-floor ballroom of The
Broadmoor Hotel.
“It was just an amazing, amazing evening,” said CC alumna Crete Wood, 58, of
Carmel, Calif. Now a real estate agent, Wood was a sophomore when the band
played. “At the end of it, you just wanted to scream. It was so cool.”
The Doors — singer Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore
and guitarist Robby Krieger — embodied the rebellious spirit of the late 1960s.
Morrison was an unabashed drinker and drug user who made a reputation as a
hard-living, deep-thinking poet with a propensity for over-the-top theatrics.
Wood remembers the conservatively dressed students — girls in dresses and guys
in jackets and ties — “sweating and just jumping around.”
A music major, Wood said that even those students who weren’t familiar with the
band seemed to appreciate its talent. “They were so amazing that even if you
hadn’t known who these people were . . . you knew you were being exposed to
greatness.”
Bill Vieregg of Denver burned his finger on a match while lighting his date’s
cigarette at the dance. When he went to a nearby drugstore to buy something to
treat it before the show, Morrison was there buying a six-pack of Budweiser.
Vieregg, 56, is a music buff with hundreds of CDs who has a collection of
tickets from about 200 concerts he’s attended. He, perhaps more than most,
realized how rare an opportunity the ’67 homecoming dance was.
“I thought it was a pretty big deal. Just about everybody I ran around with knew
The Doors,” he said. “It’s still hard to believe. I think if I didn’t have that
picture in the yearbook, people still wouldn’t believe me.”
By contrast, Diane Benninghoff, an alumna and administrator for CC, didn’t stay
for the show. It was smoky and crowded, she said. Benninghoff was more
interested in her date, whom she would later marry. “We probably turned to each
other at the same time and said, ‘This isn’t much fun.’”
The CC performance, alumni recall, was civil, and the band played a full-length
show. Alumni didn’t recall Morrison speaking to the audience or taking requests.
“They were on the stage, they did their thing and they left,” Brown said.
But Brown didn’t get to relish in the show he helped secure.
His girlfriend from home flew to Colorado Springs, where she broke up with him
two nights before the dance but went to it with him anyway.
For him, The Doors supplied background music for an evening of crying and
arguing.
Brown, now a salesman living near San Francisco, said the Los Angeles foursome
was the best band he could buy for $3,000. By fall, Brown said, the going rate
for the band was about $50,000.
He found the name and number of an agent on a promotional photo for a different
band, and called him.
“I said, ‘What’s the most expensive one I can afford?’” Brown said. When the
agent told him about new talent known as The Doors, Brown responded: “I’ve never
heard of them, but I’ll take them.”
The picture changed that summer. The Doors were performing in auditoriums and
arenas, and they packed some of the hottest nightclubs in cities such as New
York and Los Angeles.
Though smaller venues remained on the band’s schedule, a college dance was an
anomaly.
When he booked the concert, the band’s agent had insisted on a signed contract
to keep the college from backing out, Brown said. By fall, that same agent
attempted to cancel, offering substitute bands who would play for longer sets.
Brown held his ground.
“Everything he did to protect himself turned out to bite him in the butt,” Brown
said.
Brown, who today has “Light My Fire” programmed as his cell phone ring tone, was
concerned about selling enough tickets. He resorted to selling some to high
school students.
The plan, though against the rules, worked. The committee sold all the tickets
and made a slight profit.
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or bnewsome@gazette.com
ABOUT THE BAND
Jim Morrison - singer
Ray Manzarek - keyboards
Robby Krieger - guitar
John Densmore - drums
The Doors formed in 1965 after singer Jim Morrison sang some of his lyrics to
keyboardist Ray Manzarek on a California beach. The pair decided to form a band.
The band’s name came from an Aldous Huxley book on mescaline called “The Doors
of Perception,” which referenced a line from a William Blake poem. The band
released a string of rock ’n’ roll hits in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Much of The Doors’ fame, however, stems from Morrison, whose theatrical stage
presence, poet persona and self-abusive lifestyle have become rock legend. He
died in 1971 in Paris.
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