It’s easy to look at Harrison Ford now – gruff, commanding, mythic – and assume the man was born for the movies. He wasn’t. His career, unlike the hyperspace jumps he’d later take on screen, took the scenic route. And somewhere along that meandering, uncertain path was a brief, psychedelic detour that’s still flying under the radar for far too many people.
Yes, before the iconography, before the box office dominance, before the unforgettable roles carved into the very bedrock of popular culture – Harrison Ford was a roadie. For The Doors.
This wasn’t some half-hearted one-off anecdote dusted off for a talk show. In 1968, Ford joined the crew working on Feast of Friends, a documentary chronicling the band’s life on tour. He wasn’t just moving amps; he was behind a camera, helping shoot footage during a period of pure, unfiltered rock ‘n’ roll excess. Except, in his own words, the experience nearly drove him to the priesthood.
“I worked on a road tour film of The Doors, we went around for about a week and a half,” Ford recalled decades later. “When it was over, I was one step away from joining a Jesuit monastery… I couldn’t keep up with those guys. It was too much.”
The shoot, unsurprisingly, was chaotic. Ford — who had no formal training — was thrown into a crash course in camerawork and shipped off to music festivals to capture usable footage. He even jokes that none of what he shot was in focus. And while some of that footage did make the final cut, it’s clear the process rattled him.
And yet, in a deeply ironic twist of fate, the May 4th Renaissance Faire where Ford practised filming was attended by other Doors members – and just so happens to fall on the date now immortalised as Star Wars Day.
Had Ford given in to his disillusionment right then, the world might never have known Han Solo, or Indiana Jones, or Rick Deckard. It might’ve known a soft-spoken carpenter-turned-roadie who once filmed Jim Morrison through a haze of incense and existential dread.
But he didn’t walk away. He stuck it out. And by doing so, he didn't just observe cultural history – he became it.
