Within an electrifying few years during the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll was transformed from a brash diversion of antsy teenagers into a serious genre that threatened to rival the traditional fine arts. Instrumental in this swift development was a Los Angeles band, the Doors, whose charismatic but tormented and self-destructive lead singer, Jim Morrison, attained cultlike status after his mysterious death at age 27 in Paris in 1971, only four years after the release of their first album.
