Video: 45 years ago today The Doors got banned from The Ed Sullivan Show

By Josh Morrissey on September 17, 2012@joshmorrissey

On September 17th, 1967 Jim Morrison and The Doors went on The Ed Sullivan show to play their hit Light My Fire. The catch was the producers wanted them to change a line of their song. From CNN:

Sullivan didn’t want the word “higher” sung on the show. The demand was passed down through one of the show’s producers, who met the group in the dressing room. Manzarek remembers the band publicly agreeing like choirboys.

” ‘Yes, sir,’ we told him,” he recalls. “‘Whatever you say, sir. We’ll change.’ [The producer] looked at Jim and said, ‘You’re the poet. Think of something else — ‘wire,’ ‘flyer.’ “

Well as you can see in the video at 1:50 The Doors sang the line just as they always did. Ed Sullivan was so mad he wouldn’t even shake their hands.

When the Doors got backstage, they learned they wouldn’t be back — ever. “The producer said, ‘You promised,’ and we said, ‘We were so nervous, we’re just boys, we’ve done it a thousand times, it just came out.’ He looked at Morrison and said, ‘Mr. Sullivan liked you boys. He wanted you on six more times. … You’ll never do the Sullivan show again.’ ”

To which Morrison retorted with glee, “We just did the Sullivan show.”