Released in January of 1967 (1/4/67), the Doors’ self-titled debut album predates other monumental titles of the year—The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jefferson Airplane‘s Surrealistic Pillow, Cream‘s Disraeli Gears, and Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?—and effectively helped set the stage for a cultural/societal upheaval at this point in just its nascent stages.

Before the Doors made a record, they developed their signature sound onstage in front of audiences.

"A lot of the songs in the beginning, me or [Robby Krieger] would come in with a basic idea, words and melody," singer Jim Morrison told Rolling Stone in 1969. "But then the whole arrangement and actual generation of the piece would happen night after night, day after day, either in rehearsal or in clubs."

One glance at the cover of The Doors’ debut album and you knew the summer of love was over and the flower children were headed straight for the sanitarium. These Doors, as drummer John Densmore later quipped, were clearly “unhinged.”