In the spring of 1968 I was studying at Berklee School of Music in Boston and going back to Connecticut on weekends to rehearse and play out on the club circuit with Pulse.

I lived on upper Commonwealth Avenue, not far from the dorm I had lived in when I was at Boston University, with two female roommates: Julie and Betty. They had a small two-room apartment. When you entered there was a living room to the right, a bedroom to the left and a small kitchen and bath in the center of the apartment.

Although Love Me Two Times by The Doors was a song I liked and that Pulse had covered in some of its early gigs in the beginning of 1968, I was not really a Doors fan. Our singer, Carl Donnell (Augusto) was though and he convinced us to put the interesting take on a blues shuffle tune in our set.

Carl recently told me how Peter Neri and I came to him with a Cream album and turned him on to the English blues-rock group, but was disheartened when he brought the first Doors album to a rehersal and we were pretty much indifferent to it. That raised a laugh.

I’ve come to appreciate The Doors much more in recent years. But it all started back on Commonwealth Avenue as Julie and Betty started indoctrinating me. The small KLH stereo the girls had — those systems were ubiquitous in Boston at the time — had a rotation that consisted mainly of the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album, Child Is Father To The Man, Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and the second Doors album, Strange Days. I mean that album was playing almost non-stop in the apartment. So, I became very acquainted with The Doors.

A few weeks after Pulse had played at Back Bay, opening for John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonful, Betty bought tickets to a March 17 Doors concert and told me I was going. She literally dragged me to the concert hall that night. The seats weren’t great but the proscenium theatre was beautiful and possessed excellent acoustics, even for rock ‘n roll. We were high up, dead center in the balcony.

The opening act was Linda Ronstandt and the Stone Poneys, who were well known in Boston because of their hit Different Drum, which was seemingly on the radio constantly. She and her band were quite good and received an excellent reaction, especially when they played their single.

Then The Doors. The opening of the concert is something I will never forget. It made one of the single biggest impressions on me regarding the start of a concert and Morrison’s showmanship, which was quirky, unconventional, even radical.

The band came on stage and Morrison took up a position in back of John Densmore’s drum kit, almost directly in back of Densmore, who was on a riser. Keyboard player Ray Manzarek started the opening phrase of When The Music’s Over with Morrison still hiding. While Manzarek vamped, Morrison lingered as they approached his cue. Even I knew when he was supposed to come in with the vocal and I figured he’d never make it to the mic.

At the last possible moment, Morrison dashed from the drum riser, reached the mic and screamed his trademark Ye-a-a-a-a-h into it. Then the most remarkable thing. He simply fell sideways to his left straight down on to the stage floor with microphone and stand in hand without breaking his fall, almost like a tree being cut down. I swear I believed he’d never get up. But he did and the concert was on.

I was impressed at how good they sounded.  For me, much better than on record. One thing that made me resistant to The Doors was the absence of a bass player, since I was a bass player, and Krieger’s playing didn’t impress me as much as the British players such as Clapton, Beck and Page, among others.

But they all acquitted themselves very well and I had to admit I was glad I went and never looked at The Doors in the same way again.

I remember most of the songs they played that night but not the order: the song we covered, Love Me Two Times, Break On Through, their big hit from the previous year Light My Fire and the closer The End.

I received a little help in this department a few years ago. I connected with a much younger Doors enthusiast on the internet who lived up in Boston. When I told him I had been to the March, ’68 concert, he stunned me by saying he had a recording of the concert. This has happened to me a few times over the years, sometimes with much rarer performances. Of course I was thrilled when he said he would send me a disc.

I couldn’t wait to hear it. The sound is a bit rough but not bad for late ’60s standards, obviously some type of hand-held cassette recorder was used from the audience. But everything is there from the opening strains of When The Music’s Over to the Sha poem wrapped inside of The End. Quite incredible really.