THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JUNE 6, 1970
Jim Morrison and The Doors played to a full house at the Pacific Coliseum, in what was considered to be one of their best live performances. “Jim Morrison ... is The Doors and if he comes alive he can electrify those around him,” wrote Sun reviewer Jurgen Hesse. “He can be crushingly arrogant, contemptuously bored, and devastatingly snobbish, and on Saturday we saw all three stances combined.” The concert was immortalized two years ago with the release of The Doors Live in Vancouver, 1970, a double CD of the show. At the time of the release, keyboard player Ray Manzarek said the band was “on a creative high,” which meant the songs were longer than usual because everybody was improvising. ( Light My Fire is 17 minutes and 55 seconds long.) He credited the opening act, blues great Albert King, for putting everyone in a great mood. King jammed with The Doors on four blues- rock standards: Little Red Rooster, Money, Rock Me and Who Do You Love. “We played dark and deep and funky,” Manzarek recalled. “Morrison was just transfixed by Albert King’s manual dexterity and adroitness on the guitar, so he was in blues- boy heaven. We were all blues boys, we had all gone to the south side of Chicago, which appeared magically in Vancouver, Canada. And we’re playing the blues, we’re a blues band on the south side of Chicago playing with Albert King.” The Doors also loved playing Vancouver, a counterculture hot spot viewed as a “safety net” by Americans opposed to the Vietnam War.