From the book The Doors Examined by Jim Cherry

The Doors formed after Jim Morrison reportedly "bumped" into Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach.

But did Jim bump into Ray in the first part of July? Probably not.

Throughout the years Ray has enjoyed telling the story of how he bumped into Jim on the beach. I think if it was on, or around, the 4th of July, it's a detail Ray would have found irresistible and therefore included in the story. So it was probably a week or so later. The Doors History website reports the date as July 8th.

However, the real question of the story is, did Jim really accidentally "bump" into Ray on the beach? July is the beginning and end of The Doors story. A beginning and end that are both surrounded in the fog of myth.

Most Doors fans know the story of Ray and Jim's meeting on Venice Beach. It is the origin story of The Doors that has reached mythological proportions (Morrison himself even calling it a "tale" in his interview with Salli Stevenson), a predestined meeting arranged by the gods.

Ray was meditating on Venice Beach in early July 1965. He had graduated from UCLA film school in late May or June of that year, and Morrison had left a little earlier after his student film was vilified by students and teachers alike. Morrison told friends he was going to New York.

As Manzarek was meditating, Jim Morrison walked up the beach from the surf. Morrison looked like Adonis after having lost some weight.

In the Oliver Stone movie The Doors, Stone has Jim approaching Ray out of the sun, a halo of light surrounding him, a very Apollonian image for Jim Morrison.

Ray asks what he's been doing and Morrison says he's been living up on Dennis Jakob's (Jim's UCLA roommate) roof, writing songs. Ray encourages him to sing one, and Jim sings Moonlight Drive.

Ray tells him they should start a rock band and make a million dollars.

But did it happen exactly that way? Was the meeting on the beach chance? I don't think so.

I think Jim Morrison had some pretty clear intentions to try to start a rock band and Jim Morrison knew Ray was in a band. He and other film school friends had gone to see Manzarek's band Rick and The Ravens at The Turkey Joint West. Jim had even "performed" with the band as mentioned previously. Jim also told Dennis Jakob, half-seriously, half-jokingly, that they should start a band called “The Doors: Open and Closed”. Clearly, starting a band was on Morrison's mind.

When Manzarek filmed his student film Induction Morrison appeared in a party scene that was filmed at Manzarek's beach house. 

Jim Morrison knew not only where Ray lived, but the general area of the beach where Ray might hang out.

How many times that July had Jim Morrison walked by and passed that part of the beach, hoping Ray would be there?

Jim Morrison (Rolling Stone (Interview 1969):

I was living in this abandoned office building, sleeping on the roof. And all of a sudden I threw away most of my notebooks that I’d been keeping since high school and these songs just kept coming to me. It was a beautiful hot summer and I just started hearing songs. This kind of mystic concert that I heard… I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist, maybe write plays. I never went to concerts – one or two at most. I saw a few things on TV, but I’d never been part of it all. But I heard in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and singing and an audience – a large audience. Those first five or six songs I wrote, was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head. And once I had written the songs, I had to sing them.

Read more about The Doors by Jim Cherry in The Doors Examined