The Doors opened at the Fillmore Auditorium, taking over the second half of BG-75 from the Yardbirds, with the James Cotton Blues Band and Richie Havens staying on beneath them.

The timing could hardly be sharper. "Light My Fire" reached number one in the United States during this week. The Doors had been a Los Angeles club band eighteen months earlier, house band at the Whisky until they were fired; they arrived at the Fillmore as the biggest new American group of the year, and Morrison's stage presence had already acquired the reputation that would follow him. San Francisco was famously ambivalent about the Doors — an LA band, theatrical where the local ethic was communal — and this run is where that argument got its first proper hearing in the room that mattered.