‘London Fog’: The dingy venue in Los Angeles that gave birth to The Doors
Everybody, even the harbinger of hippie rock revolution, Jim Morrison, has to start somewhere. While today, The Doors might occupy a space on the upper echelon of rock and roll heroism, beloved across the globe for their transformative counterculture-era output, they were once a young, inexperienced band taking any gig that they could conceivably get their hands on.
Long before Morrison imbued the archetypal rock and roll frontman role that came to define him, and before The Doors had even released a record, they were forced to contend with being the house band of a dingy, mysterious, and largely forgotten club venue on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.
Already, the Doors aficionados among you might be thinking that ‘dingy’ is a rather harsh way of describing the legendary Whisky a Go Go; it is, after all, one of the most important, long-standing venues in LA’s extensive music history.
While it was at the Whisky that The Doors honed their craft, gaining a litany of invaluable experiences by taking on the ‘house band’ role from Johnny Rivers, before eventually being sacked in the wake of a disastrous LSD-fueled performance some months later. As important as the Whisky a Go Go is within the history of The Doors, though, it was not the first club where Morrison and his band of merry trippers began their rock and roll journey.
Instead, that particular accolade is boasted by the nearby – and long defunct – club, London Fog. Opening its doors in 1965 and boarding them up only a year later, the history of the Fog is far from extensive, but during its tenure, it became a noted hangout for beatniks, hippies, and psychedelic experimenters – thus, its clientele was the perfect audience for the then-inexperienced Doors.
Even still, the band were forced to audition for the club like everybody else, and they employed some degree of trickery to score the gig. Namely, the band invited “everybody” they knew to come and see them, according to Ray Manzarek. “We invited them all down and said, ‘Listen, we’re auditioning at this club on the strip, and we need it, you know. We’ve gotta get a gig, everybody come down,’” he recalled in a 1983 interview.
“Next night it was back to the usual seven people in the place,” he laughed. “Three musicians, a bartender, a go-go girl and maybe two or three customers all night.” It didn’t matter, though, because The Doors were now the official house band of the Fog, earning $10 a night – which, even in 1966 dollars, was a pretty measly wage – but gaining the kind of performing experience that served them well in later years.
After all, those early gigs at London Fog gave Morrison his first real taste of performing in front of a crowd, allowing him to carve out the legendary stage craft that soon became a core part of the band’s appeal, as well as leading to a litany of imitators.
Ultimately, The Doors’ time as the house band of London Fog was relatively short, and before 1966 was up they had been poached by the Whisky a Go-Go, a few doors down from the venue, with the promise of better attended shows and a salary increase to $25. The rest, as they say, is history, but their London Fog period remains perhaps the most important and underrated period in the early history of The Doors.
