It was one in which the three participants involved – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison – seem, with the benefit of cruel hindsight, to have been brought together by fate. Located at 301 West 46th Street, The Scene was New York City’s hippest club-sized venue of the era. From 12 June to 2 July 1967 The Doors had played two sets a night there, supported each evening by the eccentric Tiny Tim. This New York residency had proved a triumph for the Los Angeles group, cementing in New York the status newly achieved by their first US number one single, ‘Light My Fire’. This in turn would drive The Doors, their eponymously titled first album released in January that year, to the number two slot – one place beneath the Beatles’ epochal Sgt Pepper – on the US album charts that September, establishing their eminence as the first nationally successful propagators of what quickly had become known as acid rock. The Doors had repeated their residency at The Scene from 1 to 5 October, promotion for Strange Days, their second album, which was released that month.
