. ' Released: July 1, 2007. ' Released: 2008. ' Released: 2008 The Altar and the Door is the third by American band, released on August 28, 2007 on and. Produced by Mark A.

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• 12 String Songs

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Miller, the album was inspired by 's experience looking at the pages of his youth ministry students. The album's main theme is the difference between how Christians feel in church and the compromises they make outside of it. Its musical tone, which Hall says is different and more progressive, incorporates more of a sound than their previous, more polished studio efforts. The Altar and the Door received positive to mixed reviews from critics upon its release. Particular praise was given to the lyrics and the album's overall concept, but some critics felt the album's sound was mediocre and uninventive. The album received the award for Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year at the.

It sold 129,000 copies in its first week, a record for a Christian album with no secular media support, enabling a debut at number one on the chart and number two on the and charts, only blocked on the latter charts by the. It later topped the chart in 2010. The 18th best-selling Christian album of the 2000s, The Altar and the Door has sold 1.2 million copies and has been by the (RIAA).

The from The Altar and the Door, ', was one of the most successful Christian singles of the 2000s, spending a total of 19 weeks atop the Billboard chart and peaking at twenty-five on the chart. While not as successful as 'East to West', follow-up singles ' and ' were both top five hits on the Christian Songs chart. Contents.

Background and recording The main ideas for The Altar and the Door were inspired roughly eighteen months before the album's release. Lead vocalist and his co-youth pastor were encouraged by one of their students to look. According to Hall, “It wasn’t any major surprise, but we did see a lot of kids who had two worlds going on.

MySpace can be Spring Break for the brain, this place you can go and not think anyone’s ever going to find out. Kids would be listed as Christians and then show their porn star name or what kind of kisser they are.

They were just presenting so many contradictions on one page. The temptation was to just get upset and think that’s terrible.

But MySpace isn’t really a big problem – it’s just revealing what the problem is'. He noted that this situation isn't unique to teenagers and that while at church 'we Christians want to serve God' but when 'we get out there in the world. It’s just different. We want to be accepted; we want friends. The compromises start coming in small little increments until you’re just kind of out there. Church becomes more of a guilt activator than a place to go to be with the Lord.

It’s a nasty place to live, and we all live there'. Hall says that 'When we’re at the altar, everything’s clear, and it all makes perfect sense, and we know how to live. We know what’s right and what’s wrong. The struggle is getting this life at the altar out the door. That’s the problem; we’re finding ourselves somewhere in the middle'.

Hall elaborated in a separate interview that 'Somewhere between the altar and the door, it all leaks out and I'm out here wondering what to do, rationalising things instead of living the life that's in me. So the struggle that we have as believers is trying to get those truths (that are) in our heads and highlighted in our Bibles out to our hands and feet. The songs are all the things that happen in the middle of that'.

Although Hall says that he 'always thinks lyrics first', he felt that 'Once we Casting Crowns got into the recording I knew we were in for something different, a more progressive approach to the music. These songs sounded different in my head; they've been a big challenge for us as a band. And the music definitely sets the tone for the whole project'. The Altar and the Door was produced by Mark A. Most of the and all of the for the album was done by Sam Hewitt at Zoo Studio in and My Refuge Studio in; additional recording was done by Michael Hewitt and Dale Oliver at those same locations. The on The Altar and the Door were arranged by Bernie Herms and recorded by Bill Whittington and Steve Beers at The Sound Kitchen in Franklin, Tennessee.

The album was by Richard Dodd. Composition. A 26-second audio sample of the second verse of 'Slow Fade', a ballad.

Problems playing these files? Musically, The Altar and the Door has more influence from as compared to the group's earlier efforts, which had influences from and. The album's sound has been characterized as 'flatter, rougher ' than the band's previous, more polished efforts. The album mixes up-tempo, guitar driven songs with 'anthemic, arms in the air tracks'. 'What This World Needs' demonstrates influences from rock music while the title track is driven by guitar.

Tracks such as 'The Word is Alive' and 'Somewhere in the Middle', the latter driven by, have a 'huge', anthemic sound. On the album include ' and 'I Know You're There'. Lyrically, The Altar and the Door deals with Christian themes. 'Slow Fade' deals with how moments of compromise and mistakes can lead to a 'downward spiritual spiral'; it urges listeners to make the right choices. ' is about forgiveness and the skepticism with which humans accept it.

'What This World Needs' calls the Christian church out for making Jesus' message confusing by adding things to it; it also looks at the current state of society. 'Prayer for a Friend' is a 'simple' song of intercession. Critical reception and accolades Professional ratings Review scores Source Rating (positive) Jesus Freak Hideout The Altar and the Door received positive to mixed reviews upon its release. Jared Johnson of gave it four-and-a-half out of five stars, saying it has a 'slightly greater dose of rock' and ' gave fans no reason to be disappointed on Alter sic'. Deborah Evans-Price of gave it four out of five stars, commenting that 'With this new set, Mark Hall and his companions again deliver songs that are musically engaging and lyrically insightful. Few acts more eloquently capture the complexities of being a Christian in today’s tumultuous world, but these fine folks continue to help light the path for the rest of us'. Jones of gave it four out of five spins, opining that 'There’s a reason why Casting Crowns is one of the best Christian bands out today, and that reason is evident when you listen to The Altar and The Door.

After three albums, lead singer/songwriter Mark Hall still knows how to speak for those who cannot. The Altar and The Door leaves plenty of room for the sinners and the saints to come closer to Jesus'.

Mark Lawrence of gave the album nine out of ten squares, saying 'Traditionally album number three is a defining point in a band's legacy: some bands self implode and produce an album high on production sheen but low on song quality. Other bands though go on to produce their masterpiece.

The Altar and the Door leans closer to the masterpiece than the flop but leaves you with a sense that they have even greater things to come. The Altar And The Door' is clearly a Casting Crowns album in sound, content and style but this is far from being a negative thing and will appeal to both existing fans as well as draw in new ones'. Gave it two-and-a-half out of four stars, commenting that 'Casting Crowns concern themselves with the space between the title’s two fixtures – that is, between intention and action, between doing good and getting in the way, or, as one song puts it, between “the God we want and the God who is.” That’s a space worth exploring, and the band’s motives may be the best, but their anthems are as predictable as a televangelist’s tears: start soft, build big, then cue the strings'. Andree Farias of gave the album a two-and-a-half out of five stars, Farias praised Mark Hall's lyrical style and the album's lyrical concept and themes, but he criticized the music as being 'meandering melodies and an all-too-solemn disposition' and said 'core fans will undoubtedly support this album, but those expecting the vitality and radio-friendliness of the band's previous releases will find it a relatively challenging listening experience'. Justin Mabee of Jesus Freak Hideout gave it two-and-a-half out of five stars, calling the lyrical content 'slightly better than the band's previous works' but deriding the music as 'more of the same'. At the, The Altar and the Door received the award for Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year.

It was nominated for at the. ' received the awards for and Pop/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year at the 39th GMA Dove Awards and was nominated for and at the 50th Grammy Awards; it was also nominated for Best Gospel Performance at the.

Release and sales The Altar and the Door was released on August 28, 2007. It sold 129,000 copies in its first week, debuting at number two on the, behind only the. It also debuted atop the chart and at number two on the Billboard chart. It was the band's largest sales week and highest charting album to date, easily beating 2005's which debuted at number nine and sold 71,000 copies in its first week. It was also the largest number of first-week sales achieved by a Christian artist without support from secular media, with roughly 70% of its first-week sales coming from Christian stores. In its second week, The Altar and the Door sold 41,000 copies. It topped the Billboard Christian Albums chart for 12 non-consecutive weeks from 2007–2008.

As a result of the album being offered as a discount at, The Altar and the Door topped the Billboard chart in 2010; it spent a total of five non-consecutive weeks atop that chart. It has been by the (RIAA), signifying shipments of more than 1 million copies.

As of March 2014, the album has sold 1.2 million copies. In the United States, The Altar and the Door ranked as the 144th best-selling album and the fourth best-selling Christian album of 2007. It was the 95th best-selling album and best-selling Christian album of 2008 and the 25th best-selling Christian album of 2009. The Altar and the Door was the 18th best-selling Christian album of the 2000s decade and has sold over 1,000,000 copies in the United States. Singles Three singles were released from The Altar and the Door. ' peaked at number one on the chart and spent nineteen weeks at the top spo, tied for the second-longest run at the number one spot in the history of the chart. It also peaked at number twenty-five on the Billboard chart and ranked at number six on the decade-end Christian Songs chart.

The album's second single ', peaked at number two on the Christian Songs chart and at number one on the Soft AC/INSPO chart. ', the album's final single, peaked at number five on the Christian Songs chart. Track listing No. Title Writer(s) Length 1. 'What This World Needs', 4:41 2. ' Mark Hall, Bernie Herms, 4:46 3.

' Mark Hall 4:38 4. ' Mark Hall, Bernie Herms 4:26 5. 'The Word is Alive' Mark Hall, 5:21 6. 'The Altar and the Door' Mark Hall 4:42 7. 'Somewhere in the Middle' Mark Hall 5:05 8. 'I Know You're There' Jeff Chandler 3:49 9. 'Prayer for a Friend' Mark Hall 2:50 10.

'All Because of Jesus' ( cover) 11:09 iTunes bonus tracks No. Title Length 11. 'White Dove Fly High (Bonus Track)' 3:48 12. ' (Bonus Track)' 3:16 Personnel Credits adapted from the album liner notes. Casting Crowns.

–. –, electric guitar.

–, background vocals. –, background vocals. – Vocals. –. – Additional musicians. Jim Gray –.

Stephen Lamb –. John Catchings –. Anthony Lamarchina – Cello. Carole Rabinowitz – Cello.

Monisa Angell –. Chris Farrell – Viola. Jim Grosjean – Viola.

Gary Vanosdale – Viola. David Angell –. Janet Darnall – Violin. Conni Ellisor – Violin. Gary Gordetzky – Violin. Stefan Petrescu – Violin. Pam Sixfin – Violin.

Alan Umstead – Violin. Cathy Umstead – Violin. Mary Kathryn Vanosdale – Violin. Karen Wunkelmann – Violin Production.

Mark A. Miller –. Terry Hemmings –.

Jason McArthur –. Sam Hewitt –,. Michael Hewitt – Recording. Dale Oliver – Recording. Richard Dodd –.

Bernie Herms –. Bill Whittington – Recording. Steve Beers – Recording Chart positions. Album Weekly Charts (2007) Peak position 2 1 Billboard 2 Charts (2010) Peak position Billboard 1 Year-end Charts (2007) Position Billboard 200 144 Billboard Christian Albums 4 Chart (2008) Position Billboard 200 95 Billboard Christian Albums 1 Chart (2009) Position Billboard Christian Albums 25 Decade-end Chart (2000s) Position Billboard Christian Albums 18 Singles Singles Year Song Peak chart positions 2007 ' 125 1 2008 ' — 2 ' — 5 Certifications Certifications Country Units shipped Platinum 1,000,000 References Notes. July 1, 2007.

Retrieved June 15, 2012. ^ Hefner, April (September 2007).

30 (3): 26–29. Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ Cummings, Tony (October 9, 2007). Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ The Altar and the Door (Media notes). Casting Crowns.

^ Johnson, Jared. Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ Farias, Andree (September 13, 2007).

Archived from on September 13, 2007. Retrieved January 17, 2013.

^ Lawrence, Mark (August 7, 2007). Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ Price, Deborah Evans (September 1, 2007). 119 (35): 55. Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ Price, Deborah Evans (August 2007).

(PDF).: 39–40. Retrieved June 17, 2012. ^ Mabee, Justin (August 23, 2007). Jesus Freak Hideout. Retrieved June 17, 2012.

^ Jones, Jennifer E. Retrieved June 17, 2012.

^ Mansfield, Brian (August 28, 2007).: D.4. Retrieved June 17, 2008. ^ Gerome, John (April 24, 2008). Retrieved June 17, 2012. December 6, 2007.

Retrieved June 30, 2012. December 3, 2008. Retrieved June 30, 2012. ^ Caulfield, Keith (September 5, 2007). Retrieved June 18, 2012.

Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. September 6, 2007. Retrieved June 18, 2012. Mayfield, Geoff (September 15, 2007). 119 (37): 109.

Retrieved June 17, 2012. Hasty, Katie (September 12, 2007). Retrieved June 18, 2012.

Chart dates for The Altar and the Door on the Christian Albums chart:. September 15:.

Retrieved June 17, 2012. September 22:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. September 29:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. October 6:.

Retrieved June 18, 2012. October 20:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. October 27:. Retrieved June 18, 2012.

November 3:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. November 17:. Retrieved June 18, 2012.

Album Door

November 24:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. December 1:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. December 29:. Retrieved June 18, 2012.

April 5:. Retrieved June 18, 2012. Caulfield, Keith; Pietroluongo, Silvio (September 2, 2010). Retrieved June 18, 2012. Chart dates for The Altar and the Door on the Catalog Albums chart:. September 11:. Retrieved June 17, 2012.

September 18:. Retrieved June 17, 2012. September 25:. Retrieved June 17, 2012. October 9:. Retrieved June 17, 2012. October 16:.

Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Note: User must input the artist name to attain the cited data. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Price, Deborah Evans (March 3, 2014).

Retrieved March 4, 2014. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012.

Retrieved June 17, 2012. Wildsmith, Steve (November 11, 2011). The Daily Times. Blount County Publishers LLC. Retrieved June 18, 2012. Trust, Gary (April 23, 2010).

Retrieved June 18, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved 13 October 2011. Retrieved June 18, 2012. Jessen, Wade. Archived from on April 15, 2008.

Retrieved June 18, 2005. Retrieved June 18, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2012. Preceded by by by by by by September 15, 2007 – October 13, 2007 October 20, 2007 – November 10, 2007 November 17, 2007 – December 8, 2007 December 29, 2007 – January 5, 2008 April 5, 2008 – April 12, 2008 Succeeded by Remedy by David Crowder Band This Moment by Steven Curtis Chapman All That Is Within Me by MercyMe The Fight of My Life by Kirk Franklin by Preceded by by Opus Collection: Remember by Billboard number one album September 11, 2010 – October 2, 2010 October 9, 2010 – October 23, 2010 Succeeded by Opus Collection: Remember by John Lennon by John Lennon and.

If you wanted to craft the perfect rock debut, the most obvious route wouldn't be to meld Bavarian oompah with Willie Dixon's Chicago blues, Bach minuets with John Coltrane charts, 12th-century Celtic myths with ancient Greek tragedy, topped off with plenty of existential angst and a healthy dose of psychedelics. But even with influences touching on all of the above, the ' 1967 self-titled debut would soon make the band immortal, thanks to songs like 'Break on Through (to the Other Side),' 'The End' and the immortal 'Light My Fire.' With new 'London Fog 1966' box set out, Robby Krieger and John Densmore look back Fresh from their gig as the house band at the Sunset Strip's Whisky a Go Go – where they were fired for performing a profanity-laced riff on Oedipus Rex during 'The End' – poet/vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore spent a week at Sunset Sound Recorders documenting the act that had vaulted them to the top of the Los Angeles scene in less than a year. 'The first album is basically the Doors live,' Manzarek says in the documentary Classic Albums: The Doors. 'There are very few overdubs. It's 'The Doors: Live from the Whisky a Go Go'.

12 String Songs

Except in a recording studio.' The Doors captured for eternity the raw, vital, hypnotic excitement of four fearless artists. In honor of the album's 50th anniversary, here are 10 little-known facts about the record's conception and reception.

'Light My Fire' was the first song Robby Krieger ever wrote. The Doors' guitarist may have had the greatest beginner's luck in rock history. Having never completed a song, the 20-year-old composed 'Light My Fire,' the Number One smash that continues to evoke the Summer of Love's sensual heat.

'That was the first one I wrote, because up until then Jim had been writing the songs,' he told Reverb in 2016. 'But we realized we didn't have enough originals, so Jim said, 'Why don't you write some? Why do I have to do all the work!?' So I said, 'OK, what should I write about?' And he goes, 'Write about something universal.

Write about something that will last, not just about today.' So I decided I'd write about either earth, air, fire or water.' Citing 'Play With Fire' as one of his favorite Rolling Stones songs, he settled on fire. Krieger labored over the song for several days, determined to conjure up something more than a standard rock progression. 'Up until then the Doors were doing three-chord type songs that were pretty simple, like 'I Looked at You' or 'End of the Night.'

' he told Clash Music. 'I wanted to write something more adventurous. I decided I was going to put every chord I knew into this song – and I did! There's about 14 different chords in there.' For a melody, he looked to 'Hey Joe,' then a recent hit for Los Angeles band the Leaves.

With a verse and chorus under his belt, he brought the work-in-progress before his bandmates. The song had a folk-rock flair in this early state, leading some in the group to derisively compare it to a Sonny and Cher number. But Morrison saw its potential and offered to contribute some extra lyrics. 'Jim came up with the second verse about the funeral pyre,' Kreiger remembered in Classic Albums. 'I said, 'Jim, why is it always about death? Why do you always have to do that?' And he said, 'No man, it'll be perfect.

You'll have the love part of it and then you'll have that death part of it.' And he was right.' In the early spring of 1966, the Doors' were dropped from a preliminary Columbia Records contract with little warning – and little to show for it. Lacking representation and struggling financially, the band took an unglamorous gig at Parthenon Pictures providing incidental music for a Ford Motor Company customer service training film titled Love Thy Customer. The Doors piled into a cramped screening room at Los Angeles' Rampart Studios, where they viewed the 25-minute clip on a small monitor.

They composed a soundtrack largely on the spot, jamming live as the scenes flickered past. Fragments of what later became 'I Looked at You,' 'Build Me a Woman,' and 'The Soft Parade' can be heard in the finished product. Though they played only instrumental passages, Morrison is said to have contributed percussion and additional sound effects. The day of work earned them $200. 'If it hadn't been for Butterfield going electric, I probably wouldn't have gone into rock & roll,' Robby Krieger recently admitted on his website.

The Doors guitarist spent his early years emulating flamenco masters like Mario Escudero, Carlos Montoya, and Sabicas before moving into the blues. From there he discovered the raw Chicago sound of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, bolstered by the searing twin guitars of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. Their work would have a marked influence on his playing style, particularly on the track 'Break on Through (to the Other Side).' When the Doors began arranging the Morrison composition, Krieger found a familiar line falling out of his guitar. 'I got the idea for the riff from the Paul Butterfield song 'Shake Your Money-Maker,' which was one of my favorites,' he says in Classic Albums. 'We just changed the beat around.' The Butterfield version of the song – first recorded by Elmore James in 1961 – was a track off their self-titled 1965 debut, produced by future Doors collaborator Paul Rothchild.

'Moonlight Drive' is the quintessential Doors song: bluesy, nocturnal and dripping with doomed romanticism. The bewitching combination provided the spark that led to the band's creation in July 1965, when Morrison and Manzarek, former classmates at UCLA's film school, bumped into each other on the sands of Venice Beach. The friends hadn't seen each other since graduating that spring, and it was a welcome reunion. 'I said, 'Well, what have you been up to?'

' Manzarek told NPR's Fresh Air in 1998. 'And he said, 'Well, I've been living up on Dennis Jacobs' rooftop, consuming a bit of LSD and writing songs.' ' After some convincing, he persuaded the shy Morrison to sing him one.

'He sat down on the beach, dug his hands into the sand, and the sand started streaming out in little rivulets. He kind of closed his eyes, and began to sing in a Chet Baker, haunted whisper kind of voice. He began to sing 'Moonlight Drive,' and when I heard that first stanza – 'Let's swim to the moon, let's climb through the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide' – I thought 'Ooh, spooky and cool, man.' ' At that moment, they decided to start a rock band. The song featured prominently in the nascent Doors' early sets, and was even included on a demo recorded that September at Trans World Pacific Studios. Krieger had yet to join the band – Manzarek's brothers Jim and Rick handled guitar and harmonica parts. When the four Doors finally came together, rehearsing at a friend's garage behind a Santa Monica bus depot, 'Moonlight Drive' was the first number they played.

'I knew instantly we had found 'it,' that indefinable, transcendent something that Kerouac refers to,' Manzarek told Gibson.com in 2011. 'We all looked at each other and went, 'Man, what have we just done?

Are we allowed to do that on this planet?' 'Moonlight Drive.'

At that point, everybody knew. We all just sort of nodded our heads and that was it. That was the birth of the Doors. Right there.' When the band convened in Sunset Sound studios to record the The Doors in August 1966, 'Moonlight Drive' seemed like an appropriate starting point.

'When we went to record the first album, the first one we did was 'Moonlight Drive,' Krieger told People in 2016. But inhibited by the unfamiliar studio setting, they were unable to recapture the magic of their first rehearsal. 'It just sounded too mysterious and kind of dark. So we rearranged it for the second album 1967's Strange Days and made it a little more wild.' The original version, which Krieger dubs 'the very first recording we ever did as the Doors,' was shelved and lost for a time, before surfacing on a box set in 1997. 'The End' was the Doors' showstopper, an extended tour de force that blurred the lines between music and theater. The piece was especially exhausting for Morrison, who delivered a lengthy mid-song poem inspired by the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex.

Performing 'The End' before a live audience was enough of a challenge, but summoning the energy in a sterile recording studio took considerable effort on the part of the band, producer Paul Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick. 'The lights had been dimmed and the candles were burning right next to Jim, whose back was to the control room,' Rothchild remembers in Stephen Davis' Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend. 'The only other illumination came from the lights on the VU meters. The studio was very dark.' To further set the mood, Morrison apparently took a tab of LSD.

At first the hallucinogen had an overall positive effect on the performance, but during the playback it became apparent that Morrison was, by Krieger's estimation, 'too high to continue the session.' Three of the Doors decided to continue work the following day. Morrison had a different idea.

'He trashed the studio after we did 'The End,' Krieger told author Mick Houghton. 'Jim was on a lot of acid, and when we finished recording, he didn't want to go home.

The rest of us left, but he snuck back into the studio and got pissed off that there was no one else around, so he sprayed the place down with a foaming fire extinguisher.' Botnick elaborates on the episode in Mick Wall's Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre. 'Jim had gone across the street to the Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic Church, and he had an epiphany over there. He came back to the studio and the gate was locked. He climbed over the gate, got in, but he couldn't get into the control room. That was locked.

But the studio was open and the red lights were on.' The red-hued work lights seemingly registered as a fire in Morrison's psychedelicized brain. 'He thought it was on fire, so he grabbed a fire extinguisher and knocked over the ashtrays that were full of sand and tried to put out the fire.' Manzarek recalled the story slightly differently.

In his memoir, Light My Fire, he claims that Morrison began ranting about a fire while being driven home from the studio by his girlfriend, Pamela Courson. He was so persistent that Courson reluctantly returned to the studio, and Morrison immediately bounded over the fence. 'He took the fire extinguisher and hosed the whole place down,' Manzarek told Houghton.

'Not in the control room, thank God, just in the area where the band was. Just blasted the whole place man, just to cool it down.' Much of the band's equipment was ruined, including a full sized harpsichord.

The following day, a single boot, belonging to Morrison, was found among the destruction. 'The studio people just absolutely freaked,' says Manzarek.

'Paul Rothchild said, 'Uh, don't worry, don't worry, Elektra will pay for it. No reason to call the police.' He knew right away who did it, you know. We all knew right away what had happened.'

The only one who claimed ignorance was, predictably, Morrison himself. Come on, really?' Densmore recalls him saying over breakfast the next day. Elektra head Jac Holzman immediately cut a very large check to studio owner Tutti Camarata. 'I rushed over and said, 'I agree, it's out of control. I'll pay for the damages,' he told Mojo. The incident was smoothed over, but Krieger felt the moment marked a turning point in Morrison's psyche.

'I thought Jim felt, 'Well, I got away with that, I can get away with anything.' The Doors used a secret bass player in the studio – Wrecking Crew session legend and future Bread member Larry Knetchel. Instead of a bassist, the Doors famously relied on Ray Manzarek's left hand to hold down the low end with a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass keyboard. The role originally fell to him out of necessity when the band first began to coalesce.

'We auditioned quite a few bass players,' he recalled in the Classic Albums documentary. 'We auditioned one bass player and we sounded like the Rolling Stones. Then we auditioned another bass player and we sounded like the Animals.' Unwilling to come across as imitators – or, worse yet, traditional – the Doors simply did without. 'Adding a bass made us sound like every other rock & roll band,' Densmore wrote in his memoir, Riders on the Storm.

'We were determined to do almost anything to sound different.' The absence of a bassist became a crucial element of the Doors live sound, but Rothchild felt that the recordings needed a stronger bass attack than the occasionally 'mushy' Rhodes could provide. He quietly hired Larry Knechtel, of the ubiquitous gang of Los Angeles session players known as the Wrecking Crew, to thicken the sound. Knechtel had already appeared on hits by the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley and the Byrds by the time he was booked to overdub bass lines on six of the record's 11 tracks, including 'Light My Fire' and the swaggering 'Soul Kitchen.' Knechtel's work on The Doors went uncredited at the time, and it was years before the extent of his contributions were known. Some criticized the band for seemingly airbrushing the player out of the Doors' story, but Densmore clarifed the decision in a 2015 Facebook post. 'Larry Knechtel wasn't credited because he duplicated Ray's left hand bass lines exactly.

He didn't record with us on the tracks, he overdubbed later. This was a time before Moog synthesizers, and Rothchild felt (correctly) that Ray's lines needed more sonic punch from a string plucked in addition to a keyboard.' Knechtel would not play on any future Doors sessions, but he did reportedly record bass on Jose Feliciano's flamenco version of 'Light My Fire,' which became a Number Three hit in the United States in 1968. To promote the album, Elektra Records purchased the first 'rock billboard' in history. Sessions for The Doors were complete by the end of the summer, but Holzman decided to hold the album's release until the following January to avoid the crush of albums earmarked for the Christmas market. If the band were disappointed by the delay, they were soothed by Holzman's ingenious promotional scheme: a massive billboard looming over the Sunset Strip. The medium had traditionally been used to push films, food, cigarettes and a host of other products, and this was the first time a rock band would appear on one.