The Doors were one of the few bands in an era of guitar heroes where there was minimal focus on the guy playing lead.That's not to suggest Kreiger couldn't play, just that he didn't quite fit the standard mould.
Which helped focus attention on Morrison.
With the sound dominated by Manzarek's keyboard work with Kreiger's guitar adding light and shade (rather than the other way around) they couldn't take the standard route employed to fill out long sets when you didn't have an extensive repertoire. Extended guitar solos filled that role in most bands, but The Doors ended up with a number of extended performance pieces they worked up early in the piece. The End and When the Music's Over were the two that made it onto the first two albums, and the extended Celebration of the Lizard was a third.
Fairly early in the piece they'd landed a gig at the London Fog, playing to a largely empty room, which meant they had time to build up those extended pieces. Things might have been different with a crowded dance floor demanding rhythmic action, but it gave them an opportunity to get up and run with Manzarek's keyboard improvisations. Morrison's leather suited lizard persona spouting semi-poetic lyrics were a different kettle of fish to the guitar pyrotechnics the way most of their contemporaries were employing.
All that came in handy once they landed a residency at the more Whisky a Go Go, where they opened for the likes of including Van Morrison's Them. That gig lasted until 21 August 1966 when an explicit profanity-laden version of the Oedipus story in The End saw them get the bullet. Luckily, back on the 10th they'd been sighted by Elektra Records president Jac Holzman, who'd been put onto them by Love's Arthur Lee.
The band signed to Elektra on the 18th, and the end of the Whiskey gig left them free to record. A week in Sunset Sound Recording Studios (August 24 to 31) produced the self-titled debut LP that appeared in stores in January 1967.