With their mix of music, poetry, theater, and daring, the Doors emerged as America's most darkly innovative, eerily mesmerizing musical group of the 1960s. Founded concurrently with the English invasion, the college-educated, Los Angeles-based group stood apart from the folk-rock movement of Southern California and the peace and flower power bands of San Francisco. In exploring death, doom, fear, and sex, their music reflected the hedonistic side of the era. Writing for the Saturday Evening Post in 1967, Joan Didion called them "the Norman Mailers of the Top 40, missionaries of apocalyptic sex." The group's flamboyant lead singer, Jim Morrison, said, "Think of us as erotic politicians." A seminal rock figure, Morrison's dark good looks and overt sexuality catapulted him to sex symbol status, akin to that of Elvis Presley.

Morrison's provocative stage presence, combined with the group's mournfully textured, blues-rooted music, suggested the musical theater of Kurt...