Jim Morrison performed an epic Miami concert 50 years ago with The Doors that, might as well, led to his downfall and cemented his legend.

Many of South Florida’s Baby Boomers say they were there to witness the drunken mess and spiraling melee that ensued, even if they weren’t at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove on that fateful first night of March in 1969.

Newspaper advertisement in Miami for The Doors’ Dinner Key concert, February 1969.

The Los Angeles rock band fronted by the Florida native had already achieved legendary status on par with The Beatles and The Beach Boys, though with a style and grit all their own.

The group performed a nine-song set list after weeks of promotion in Miami newspapers and radio to an overflow crowd of 10,000.

The pandemonium was palpable at the venue when the band started their performance three hours later than the scheduled 8 p.m. start time, where Morrison wore a pair of trademark skintight leather slacks that left little to the imagination for the breadth of the man.

Listen to unofficial audio of the entire performance.

Morrison was ostensibly drunk, by all accounts, as he performed some of the band’s hits like “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” “Five to One,” and a failed try at the lead single from their third album released the previous summer, “Touch Me” from “Waiting on the Sun.”

The hour-long set was filled with Morrison’s profanities that he interjected throughout the performance.

After the show, he and the band stayed the night at the Hilton Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami and left for Jamaica the next day. Dade County police issued a warrant for his arrest on March 5 on indecency charges.

He was arrested for indecency by Los Angeles police the following month. He and the band were blacklisted for gigs throughout the U.S. in the months after the Miami performance.

Morrison discusses the incident in Miami while on trial with WTVJ-TV, August 12, 1970. (Wolfson Archive)

Morrison went to trial before a Dade County jury in August 1970 at the Metro Justice Building in Miami’s Civic Center.

He was found guilty a month later.

The mugshot of Morrison taken after his conviction. (Public domain)

The Doors released three more albums after the Dinner Key show and during Morrison’s lifetime, the last (“L.A. Woman”) released in April 1971, three months before his death in July at 27.

Morrison was found unconscious in a bathtub of the Paris apartment he shared with his 24-year-old girlfriend Pamela Courson.

He was issued a posthumous pardon in 2010 by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and the state clemency board for the incident at Dinner Key.

Jim Morrison and his band The Doors are rock greats, and the events of that night define an essential part of that legacy.