14 Westminster Avenue — The Morrison Apartments, Venice

In the summer of 1965, Jim Morrison was living on the rooftop of a building at 14 Westminster Avenue in Venice, California — sleeping under the open sky, taking acid, barely eating, and writing the songs that would become the Doors' earliest material. He had just graduated from UCLA's film school and had essentially nowhere to go. The rooftop existence was simultaneously bohemian romance and genuine destitution, and the months he spent there — sun-bleached, visionary, unformed — were the chrysalis from which the Lizard King emerged. The beach, the Pacific, the warm nights, and the total absence of structure gave the songs their oceanic, boundary-dissolving quality.

It was on nearby Venice Beach that Morrison encountered Ray Manzarek — a fellow UCLA film school alumnus he already knew casually. Morrison sang him one of the songs he had been writing on the rooftop. Manzarek immediately understood what he was hearing and proposed they form a band. The moment is one of rock mythology's more celebrated origin stories, though exactly how premeditated or accidental it was depends on which account you read. Within months the Doors existed, and within two years they were the most provocative band in America.

The building at 14 Westminster Avenue is now known as the Morrison Apartments — a name applied after the connection to Jim Morrison became part of the neighbourhood's identity. Venice Beach, a short walk away, remains the geographical origin point of the Doors' sound: the Pacific light, the carnival atmosphere of the boardwalk, and the sense of absolute freedom that the ocean's horizon implies are all audible in the band's earliest recordings.