The Doors Detroit May 8, 1970 (55th Anniversary)

“I approached this design as if it is 1970 and I were asked to design a poster for The Doors. How would I have wanted to approach a project for a group like The Doors in that time period? Everything is hand drawn — fonts, frames, and so on. I wanted to lean into the mysticism of The Doors; the imagery feels true to the band, the era, and myself. I was highly impacted by Jim's poem during 'The End' — the frame includes a golden snake weaving through it, a nod to his line, 'The snake was pale gold glazed and shrunken, we were afraid to touch it.' The striped fabric in the background comes from another line, 'The sheets were hot dead prisons,' reimagined as an abstract barred sheet. In the middle is an open door making way to space and time. From the darkness of space a hand reaches through the door — a nod to the mantra 'Come with us. Trust us.' — inviting the viewer into the unknown. Hands grasp one another around the inside of the frame: I read that Jim, toward the end of the show, lay down on the stage as people from the crowd placed their hands on him to encourage him to continue. The hands are also a nod to my favorite song in the set, 'Five to One' — 'they've got the guns but we've got the numbers' — interlocked in solidarity. The top hand holds a clock; the start time reads 8:30 and the other reads 1:00, because this is perhaps the group's longest performance on record. They played an hour over their allotted time and were banned. At the bottom is an abstract version of the Cobo Arena with the city name in it.”