The Doors reveled in their role as rock's new bad boys when they burst onto the pop music scene in 1966, and two years later, when they helped usher in the nascent era of arena rock with the opening of the Forum in Inglewood. They carried that idea all the way through to the acts they invited to open for them.
"I have to brag a little about us being first to give a tip of the hat to '50s rockers," Doors drummer John Densmore recalled recently. "When we started getting some power, we were trying to get Johnny Cash to open for us — before the TV show," he said, referring to Cash's breakthrough weekly musical variety series, "The Johnny Cash Show," which premiered in 1969.