Post by darkstar3 on May 31, 2011 12:52:30 GMT
Broadmoor Hotel Ballroom Colorado Springs Colorado October 21 1967
The Doors at the Broadmoor, CC Homecoming 1967
photo from 1968 CC yearbook
The Doors play for The Colorado College homecoming dance.
The Doors at CC Homecoming, 1967
Colorado College Library:
On October 21, 1967, the Doors played at Colorado College's homecoming dance at the Broadmoor Hotel. CC alumnus Tom Reynolds donated his tape of the concert to Tutt Library in 2005. It contains four Doors songs: "Break on Through (to the Other Side)," "People Are Strange," "Back Door Man," and "Light My Fire." It also contains two songs by the Broadway Shell and Muse Band (formerly the Ceeds).
We cannot make copies of the recording, but visitors are welcome to listen to it here in Special Collections.
www.coloradocollege.edu/library/SpecialCollections/new.html
Colorado College Audio Recordings
R100-[ongoing], 1954-present
R285 CC Homecoming Dance, Broadmoor Hotel, October 21, 1967 (The Doors and The Broadway Shell and Muse Band, aka the Ceeds.) Tape and CD.
CC Alumni Recall ’67 Doors Show
By BRIAN NEWSOME THE GAZETTE
Colorado Springs Gazette
July 17, 2005
It was spring of 1967 when Doug Brown was asked to find a band to play for Colorado College’s homecoming dance.
Find new talent on a modest budget, the chairman of the homecoming committee was told.
And did he ever.
Brown, a junior, signed The Doors to perform in an intimate ballroom setting at a time when the band was exploding in popularity nationwide.
In a little-known chapter of rock ’n’ roll history, a few hundred well-dressed CC students took to the dance floor as leatherclad Jim Morrison sang some of his greatest hits.
A CC alumnus recently donated a bootleg recording of the show to the college’s library. News of the donation was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper for academia, prompting a trip down memory lane for alumni.
The band, which was booked before the chart-topping release of “Light My Fire” that propelled it from underground to mainstream, played the CC venue for a fraction of its going rate.
On Sept. 17, The Doors made an infamous appearance on the “The Ed Sullivan Show” in which Morrison ignored Sullivan’s demand to change a line in “Light My Fire” for his television audience. The TV show host didn’t care for the term, “girl we couldn’t get much higher.”
By mid-November, the band was the subject of articles in Time and Newsweek, and a famous photo spread of Morrison appeared in Vogue magazine.
In between came the Oct. 21 performance in a second-floor ballroom of The Broadmoor Hotel.
“It was just an amazing, amazing evening,” said CC alumna Crete Wood, 58, of Carmel, Calif. Now a real estate agent, Wood was a sophomore when the band played. “At the end of it, you just wanted to scream. It was so cool.”
The Doors — singer Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger — embodied the rebellious spirit of the late 1960s.
Morrison was an unabashed drinker and drug user who made a reputation as a hard-living, deep-thinking poet with a propensity for over-the-top theatrics.
Wood remembers the conservatively dressed students — girls in dresses and guys in jackets and ties — “sweating and just jumping around.”
A music major, Wood said that even those students who weren’t familiar with the band seemed to appreciate its talent. “They were so amazing that even if you hadn’t known who these people were . . . you knew you were being exposed to greatness.”
Bill Vieregg of Denver burned his finger on a match while lighting his date’s cigarette at the dance. When he went to a nearby drugstore to buy something to treat it before the show, Morrison was there buying a six-pack of Budweiser.
Vieregg, 56, is a music buff with hundreds of CDs who has a collection of tickets from about 200 concerts he’s attended. He, perhaps more than most, realized how rare an opportunity the ’67 homecoming dance was.
“I thought it was a pretty big deal. Just about everybody I ran around with knew The Doors,” he said. “It’s still hard to believe. I think if I didn’t have that picture in the yearbook, people still wouldn’t believe me.”
By contrast, Diane Benninghoff, an alumna and administrator for CC, didn’t stay for the show. It was smoky and crowded, she said. Benninghoff was more interested in her date, whom she would later marry. “We probably turned to each other at the same time and said, ‘This isn’t much fun.’”
The CC performance, alumni recall, was civil, and the band played a full-length show. Alumni didn’t recall Morrison speaking to the audience or taking requests.
“They were on the stage, they did their thing and they left,” Brown said.
But Brown didn’t get to relish in the show he helped secure.
His girlfriend from home flew to Colorado Springs, where she broke up with him two nights before the dance but went to it with him anyway.
For him, The Doors supplied background music for an evening of crying and arguing.
Brown, now a salesman living near San Francisco, said the Los Angeles foursome was the best band he could buy for $3,000. By fall, Brown said, the going rate for the band was about $50,000.
He found the name and number of an agent on a promotional photo for a different band, and called him.
“I said, ‘What’s the most expensive one I can afford?’” Brown said. When the agent told him about new talent known as The Doors, Brown responded: “I’ve never heard of them, but I’ll take them.”
The picture changed that summer. The Doors were performing in auditoriums and arenas, and they packed some of the hottest nightclubs in cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
Though smaller venues remained on the band’s schedule, a college dance was an anomaly.
When he booked the concert, the band’s agent had insisted on a signed contract to keep the college from backing out, Brown said. By fall, that same agent attempted to cancel, offering substitute bands who would play for longer sets. Brown held his ground.
“Everything he did to protect himself turned out to bite him in the butt,” Brown said.
Brown, who today has “Light My Fire” programmed as his cell phone ring tone, was concerned about selling enough tickets. He resorted to selling some to high school students.
The plan, though against the rules, worked. The committee sold all the tickets and made a slight profit.
ABOUT THE BAND
Jim Morrison - singer
Ray Manzarek - keyboards
Robby Krieger - guitar
John Densmore - drums
The Doors formed in 1965 after singer Jim Morrison sang some of his lyrics to keyboardist Ray Manzarek on a California beach. The pair decided to form a band.
The band’s name came from an Aldous Huxley book on mescaline called “The Doors of Perception,” which referenced a line from a William Blake poem. The band released a string of rock ’n’ roll hits in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Much of The Doors’ fame, however, stems from Morrison, whose theatrical stage presence, poet persona and self-abusive lifestyle have become rock legend. He died in 1971 in Paris.
END.
Rock of Ages
The Doors and the Dead? Hendrix and the Who? What were they doing here?
by Bill Forman
It was a marriage made somewhere other than heaven: The Lizard King and the Homecoming Queen, together for the first and last time at The Broadmoor Hotel. The Doors' somewhat reluctant performance at a Colorado College homecoming dance has become the stuff of local legend, and deservedly so.
The affair took place on Oct. 21, 1967, less than three months after Jim Morrison and Co. climbed to No. 1 on the pop charts with "Light My Fire."
But when Doug Brown booked the show the previous spring, in his capacity as president of the Blue Key Men's Honor Society, he'd never even heard of the Doors. Brown had called an L.A. booking agency after seeing its number printed on a since-forgotten band's promo photo. The agent gave him the names of a few acts that were available the Doors and Quicksilver Messenger Service are the ones he remembers and asked how much money he had to spend.
Brown had $3,000, and was told the Doors would be his best bet. The agent quickly fired off a telegram of confirmation and mailed out a contract in order to make sure the college wouldn't back out of the agreement.
"He probably thought he had some sucker from Kansas, and I felt like I'd just sold my soul," recalls Brown, "because I'd never dealt with that kind of money, ever. And the Doors weren't on anybody's radar."
The summer of '67 changed all that. By September, the band was getting itself banned from the Ed Sullivan Show for singing, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" during network prime time. (The Doors had promised the host that they'd change the forbidden lyric, but Morrison managed to forget.) That same month, the Doors' management began calling, looking to get out of the contract.
Brown, who's now in the financial services industry in California, jokes that, in light of current events, he might have been better off sticking with concert promotion.
"Their rate had gone up to like $50,000 a night, which would be a quarter of a million or so today, and we had the Doors for $3,000 for two hours," says Brown. "We couldn't get The Broadmoor's International Center, so we ended up having it in the main ballroom."
On the night of the show, Brown says, Morrison headed straight to the hotel's convenience shop for a six-pack and fifth of whiskey: "They were not in a good mood, and you could tell they wanted to be someplace else that night. But they stuck to their contract, and they gave a dark and wonderful performance."
Despite the band's phenomenal success, Brown says ticket sales got off to such a slow start that they ended up making the unprecedented (and unsanctioned) decision to sell them to area high school students. The strategy resulted in a packed house. So much so, in fact, that the college's current assistant VP for advancement, Diane Benninghoff, recalls being driven to drink.
"When I got there, my sense was that it had been pretty much crashed by the whole community," says Benninghoff. "And because it was not my custom to be anyplace on time, the place was really just packed. So we stayed for a little while and then we went to the [Broadmoor's] Golden Bee.
"I mean, yeah, it was the Doors and they were a big deal, but you know, let's go drink at the Golden Bee. I don't know. I'm not quite one of those people who says, 'I was at Woodstock' and wasn't. I really was at this dance, but not for very long."
And how did the homecoming queen feel about all this?
"It meant very little to me," recalls Gillian Royes, who's now a journalism professor at University of the Virgin Islands. "Because I was from Jamaica and, to my disappointment, they didn't sound anything like Bob Marley."
The Doors homecoming dance is just one part of a hidden history of Colorado Springs concerts hidden, at least, to those of us who weren't around back then.
www.csindy.com/colorado/rock-of-ages/Content?oid=1346255
The Doors at the Broadmoor, CC Homecoming 1967
photo from 1968 CC yearbook
The Doors play for The Colorado College homecoming dance.
The Doors at CC Homecoming, 1967
Colorado College Library:
On October 21, 1967, the Doors played at Colorado College's homecoming dance at the Broadmoor Hotel. CC alumnus Tom Reynolds donated his tape of the concert to Tutt Library in 2005. It contains four Doors songs: "Break on Through (to the Other Side)," "People Are Strange," "Back Door Man," and "Light My Fire." It also contains two songs by the Broadway Shell and Muse Band (formerly the Ceeds).
We cannot make copies of the recording, but visitors are welcome to listen to it here in Special Collections.
www.coloradocollege.edu/library/SpecialCollections/new.html
Colorado College Audio Recordings
R100-[ongoing], 1954-present
R285 CC Homecoming Dance, Broadmoor Hotel, October 21, 1967 (The Doors and The Broadway Shell and Muse Band, aka the Ceeds.) Tape and CD.
CC Alumni Recall ’67 Doors Show
By BRIAN NEWSOME THE GAZETTE
Colorado Springs Gazette
July 17, 2005
It was spring of 1967 when Doug Brown was asked to find a band to play for Colorado College’s homecoming dance.
Find new talent on a modest budget, the chairman of the homecoming committee was told.
And did he ever.
Brown, a junior, signed The Doors to perform in an intimate ballroom setting at a time when the band was exploding in popularity nationwide.
In a little-known chapter of rock ’n’ roll history, a few hundred well-dressed CC students took to the dance floor as leatherclad Jim Morrison sang some of his greatest hits.
A CC alumnus recently donated a bootleg recording of the show to the college’s library. News of the donation was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper for academia, prompting a trip down memory lane for alumni.
The band, which was booked before the chart-topping release of “Light My Fire” that propelled it from underground to mainstream, played the CC venue for a fraction of its going rate.
On Sept. 17, The Doors made an infamous appearance on the “The Ed Sullivan Show” in which Morrison ignored Sullivan’s demand to change a line in “Light My Fire” for his television audience. The TV show host didn’t care for the term, “girl we couldn’t get much higher.”
By mid-November, the band was the subject of articles in Time and Newsweek, and a famous photo spread of Morrison appeared in Vogue magazine.
In between came the Oct. 21 performance in a second-floor ballroom of The Broadmoor Hotel.
“It was just an amazing, amazing evening,” said CC alumna Crete Wood, 58, of Carmel, Calif. Now a real estate agent, Wood was a sophomore when the band played. “At the end of it, you just wanted to scream. It was so cool.”
The Doors — singer Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger — embodied the rebellious spirit of the late 1960s.
Morrison was an unabashed drinker and drug user who made a reputation as a hard-living, deep-thinking poet with a propensity for over-the-top theatrics.
Wood remembers the conservatively dressed students — girls in dresses and guys in jackets and ties — “sweating and just jumping around.”
A music major, Wood said that even those students who weren’t familiar with the band seemed to appreciate its talent. “They were so amazing that even if you hadn’t known who these people were . . . you knew you were being exposed to greatness.”
Bill Vieregg of Denver burned his finger on a match while lighting his date’s cigarette at the dance. When he went to a nearby drugstore to buy something to treat it before the show, Morrison was there buying a six-pack of Budweiser.
Vieregg, 56, is a music buff with hundreds of CDs who has a collection of tickets from about 200 concerts he’s attended. He, perhaps more than most, realized how rare an opportunity the ’67 homecoming dance was.
“I thought it was a pretty big deal. Just about everybody I ran around with knew The Doors,” he said. “It’s still hard to believe. I think if I didn’t have that picture in the yearbook, people still wouldn’t believe me.”
By contrast, Diane Benninghoff, an alumna and administrator for CC, didn’t stay for the show. It was smoky and crowded, she said. Benninghoff was more interested in her date, whom she would later marry. “We probably turned to each other at the same time and said, ‘This isn’t much fun.’”
The CC performance, alumni recall, was civil, and the band played a full-length show. Alumni didn’t recall Morrison speaking to the audience or taking requests.
“They were on the stage, they did their thing and they left,” Brown said.
But Brown didn’t get to relish in the show he helped secure.
His girlfriend from home flew to Colorado Springs, where she broke up with him two nights before the dance but went to it with him anyway.
For him, The Doors supplied background music for an evening of crying and arguing.
Brown, now a salesman living near San Francisco, said the Los Angeles foursome was the best band he could buy for $3,000. By fall, Brown said, the going rate for the band was about $50,000.
He found the name and number of an agent on a promotional photo for a different band, and called him.
“I said, ‘What’s the most expensive one I can afford?’” Brown said. When the agent told him about new talent known as The Doors, Brown responded: “I’ve never heard of them, but I’ll take them.”
The picture changed that summer. The Doors were performing in auditoriums and arenas, and they packed some of the hottest nightclubs in cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
Though smaller venues remained on the band’s schedule, a college dance was an anomaly.
When he booked the concert, the band’s agent had insisted on a signed contract to keep the college from backing out, Brown said. By fall, that same agent attempted to cancel, offering substitute bands who would play for longer sets. Brown held his ground.
“Everything he did to protect himself turned out to bite him in the butt,” Brown said.
Brown, who today has “Light My Fire” programmed as his cell phone ring tone, was concerned about selling enough tickets. He resorted to selling some to high school students.
The plan, though against the rules, worked. The committee sold all the tickets and made a slight profit.
ABOUT THE BAND
Jim Morrison - singer
Ray Manzarek - keyboards
Robby Krieger - guitar
John Densmore - drums
The Doors formed in 1965 after singer Jim Morrison sang some of his lyrics to keyboardist Ray Manzarek on a California beach. The pair decided to form a band.
The band’s name came from an Aldous Huxley book on mescaline called “The Doors of Perception,” which referenced a line from a William Blake poem. The band released a string of rock ’n’ roll hits in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Much of The Doors’ fame, however, stems from Morrison, whose theatrical stage presence, poet persona and self-abusive lifestyle have become rock legend. He died in 1971 in Paris.
END.
Rock of Ages
The Doors and the Dead? Hendrix and the Who? What were they doing here?
by Bill Forman
It was a marriage made somewhere other than heaven: The Lizard King and the Homecoming Queen, together for the first and last time at The Broadmoor Hotel. The Doors' somewhat reluctant performance at a Colorado College homecoming dance has become the stuff of local legend, and deservedly so.
The affair took place on Oct. 21, 1967, less than three months after Jim Morrison and Co. climbed to No. 1 on the pop charts with "Light My Fire."
But when Doug Brown booked the show the previous spring, in his capacity as president of the Blue Key Men's Honor Society, he'd never even heard of the Doors. Brown had called an L.A. booking agency after seeing its number printed on a since-forgotten band's promo photo. The agent gave him the names of a few acts that were available the Doors and Quicksilver Messenger Service are the ones he remembers and asked how much money he had to spend.
Brown had $3,000, and was told the Doors would be his best bet. The agent quickly fired off a telegram of confirmation and mailed out a contract in order to make sure the college wouldn't back out of the agreement.
"He probably thought he had some sucker from Kansas, and I felt like I'd just sold my soul," recalls Brown, "because I'd never dealt with that kind of money, ever. And the Doors weren't on anybody's radar."
The summer of '67 changed all that. By September, the band was getting itself banned from the Ed Sullivan Show for singing, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" during network prime time. (The Doors had promised the host that they'd change the forbidden lyric, but Morrison managed to forget.) That same month, the Doors' management began calling, looking to get out of the contract.
Brown, who's now in the financial services industry in California, jokes that, in light of current events, he might have been better off sticking with concert promotion.
"Their rate had gone up to like $50,000 a night, which would be a quarter of a million or so today, and we had the Doors for $3,000 for two hours," says Brown. "We couldn't get The Broadmoor's International Center, so we ended up having it in the main ballroom."
On the night of the show, Brown says, Morrison headed straight to the hotel's convenience shop for a six-pack and fifth of whiskey: "They were not in a good mood, and you could tell they wanted to be someplace else that night. But they stuck to their contract, and they gave a dark and wonderful performance."
Despite the band's phenomenal success, Brown says ticket sales got off to such a slow start that they ended up making the unprecedented (and unsanctioned) decision to sell them to area high school students. The strategy resulted in a packed house. So much so, in fact, that the college's current assistant VP for advancement, Diane Benninghoff, recalls being driven to drink.
"When I got there, my sense was that it had been pretty much crashed by the whole community," says Benninghoff. "And because it was not my custom to be anyplace on time, the place was really just packed. So we stayed for a little while and then we went to the [Broadmoor's] Golden Bee.
"I mean, yeah, it was the Doors and they were a big deal, but you know, let's go drink at the Golden Bee. I don't know. I'm not quite one of those people who says, 'I was at Woodstock' and wasn't. I really was at this dance, but not for very long."
And how did the homecoming queen feel about all this?
"It meant very little to me," recalls Gillian Royes, who's now a journalism professor at University of the Virgin Islands. "Because I was from Jamaica and, to my disappointment, they didn't sound anything like Bob Marley."
The Doors homecoming dance is just one part of a hidden history of Colorado Springs concerts hidden, at least, to those of us who weren't around back then.
www.csindy.com/colorado/rock-of-ages/Content?oid=1346255