December 8 - Jim Morrison

70 years ago: Singer-songwriter Jim Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, near Cape Canaveral, Florida. His family moved often because his father was a U.S. Navy officer. In high school and college he read widely in literature, and in 1965 he graduated from UCLA with a degree in film. The same year, while living on canned beans and LSD in Venice Beach, California, he and fellow UCLA student Ray Manzarek formed the rock band the Doors, which took its name from “The Doors of Perception,” a book by Aldous Huxley on psychedelic drug use, which in turn referred to a line in a William Blake poem. The group’s first eponymous album, “Doors” (January 1967), included the hit single "Light My Fire" as well as "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" and “The End.” Their second album featured the hit "Love Me Two Times" and "People are Strange”; their third album, in 1968, included the song "Hello, I Love You." Morrison's alcoholism and multiple drug addictions fueled bizarre, violent and obscene – though electrifying – concert performances, and also led to his controversial death in Paris in 1971 at age 27.