L.A. Woman is the sixth studio album by the American rock band the Doors, released on April 19, 1971, by Elektra Records. It is the last to feature lead singer Jim Morrison during his lifetime, though he would posthumously appear on the 1978 album An American Prayer. Even more so than its predecessors, the album is heavily influenced by blues. It was recorded without producer Paul A. Rothchild after he quit the band over the perceived lack of quality in their studio performances. Subsequently, the band co-produced the album with longtime sound engineer Bruce Botnick.
"Love Her Madly" was released as a single in March 1971, preceding the album's release, and reached the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Upon release, the album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 and reached number 28 on the UK Albums Chart. The track "Riders on the Storm" also achieved chart success.
Critics including Richie Unterberger and David Quantick have called L.A. Woman one of the Doors' best albums, citing Morrison's vocal performance and the band's stripped-down return to their blues-rock roots.
Background
The Doors had achieved commercial and critical success by 1969, but for much of that year they were blacklisted from radio playlists and their concert bookings dwindled after singer Jim Morrison had been charged with profanity and indecent exposure at a concert in Miami, Florida. Morrison had mentioned leaving the group at the end of 1968, only to be convinced by keyboardist Ray Manzarek to stay on another six months. On September 20, 1970, Morrison was convicted for the Miami incident. In a 1970 interview with Ben Fong-Torres, Morrison said of Miami, "I think subconsciously I was trying to get across in that concert, I was trying to reduce it to absurdity. And it worked too well."
In November 1970, shortly after Morrison's trial ended, the Doors entered Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles to record early versions of the songs "L.A. Woman", "Riders on the Storm" and "Love Her Madly". The new songs were a departure from the heavily orchestrated pieces on the earlier album The Soft Parade, which burdened the group with long, drawn-out recording sessions. The simplified and straightforward style, progressing from Morrison Hotel, was well-received, noted by Jazz & Pop magazine as "a return to the tight fury of early Doors' music". The band conflicted with their record company, Elektra Records, who released the Doors' first compilation album, 13, to have a product for the Christmas market. It was released without the band's input, and featured a large image of a younger Morrison, upsetting him enough to threaten signing with another label. As their contract required one more album, the group were unable to follow through with the threat, so they continued rehearsing the new material.
Record producer Paul A. Rothchild, who worked with the band on their first five albums, attended the early sessions but quit following friction with the band. This included his dissatisfaction with the song "Love Her Madly", which "drove [him] out of the studio." He felt that recording the composition was a step backwards artistically, calling it "cocktail music." Rothchild has denied a popular rumor that claimed he directed the remark toward "Riders on the Storm", explaining that he thought that song and "L.A. Woman" were "excellent in rehearsal". He maintains that his cocktail music comment was said to "make [the group] angry enough to do something good." Rothchild was frustrated that the group was slow in developing new material, especially as the band contained three songwriters. He was unable to persuade Morrison to consistently attend rehearsals. As Bruce Botnick revealed in the book Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre, another issue that led to Rothchild's leaving was the emotional devastation he felt at the death of Janis Joplin, having worked with her on Pearl. Rothchild left before any master takes were complete, recommending that the Doors co-produce L.A. Woman with Botnick, the sound engineer who had worked with Rothchild on the band's previous recordings. The artist Eve Babitz is cited as the woman who inspired the lyrics of the title song.
Recording
The group and Botnick organized a makeshift recording studio at their private rehearsal space, the Doors' Workshop, a two-story building at 8512 Santa Monica Boulevard. They could then record in a more comfortable and relaxed setting while avoiding the expenses of a professional studio. A mixing console previously owned by Elektra was installed upstairs in the Workshop, while studio monitors, microphones, and keyboards were set up downstairs. To compensate for the lack of an isolated vocal booth, Morrison recorded in the bathroom doorway, singing into the same microphone used on the Doors' final tour. According to Botnick, Morrison was easy to work with and spent long hours in the studio with little consumption of alcohol.
For recording, Elvis Presley's bassist Jerry Scheff and rhythm guitarist Marc Benno were brought in to provide additional backing. Densmore characterized Scheff as "an in-the-pocket man" for his steady supportive role, and praised how Scheff "allowed me to communicate rhythmically with Morrison, and he slowed Ray down, when his right hand on the keyboards got too darn fast". By all accounts, Morrison – a huge Presley fan – was excited by Scheff's participation. In addition, Benno was asked to participate as a result of his recent notoriety from working with Leon Russell. The songs were completed in a few takes on a professional-quality 8-track recorder, and the album was finished in six days. Morrison was a blues enthusiast and proclaimed the final recording session as "blues day", recording "Crawling King Snake", "Cars Hiss by My Window", and "L.A. Woman". The album had a raw, live sound with overdubs mostly limited to additional keyboards. Botnick explained, "The overall concept for the recording session was to go back to our early roots and try to get everything live in the studio with as few overdubs as possible". Mixing was completed at Poppi Studios in West Hollywood, by which time Morrison had moved to Paris.
Music The band began recording without much material and needed to compose songs on the spot, either by jamming or talking through ideas. In a 1994 interview, guitarist Robby Krieger stated, "Rothchild was gone, which is one reason why we had so much fun. The warden was gone." Despite its troubled beginnings, L.A. Woman contains some of the Doors' most critically acclaimed songs, as well as some of their most blues-oriented. Lyrically, the album deals with contemporary topics such as love, life in Los Angeles, and complex aspects of the human experience. Manzarek explained the band did not "approach the album with one vision, but after we started working on the songs, we realized that they're talking about L.A. They're about men, women, boys, girls, love, loss, lovers-lost, and lovers-found in Los Angeles". The album, as a whole, demonstrated Morrison's songwriting abilities, combined with his poetic phrasing and enthusiasm for Los Angeles but still a desire to leave the city with his partner, Pamela Courson. Artistically, L.A. Woman saw the band mixing blues and rock, with some elements of psychedelic and jazz rock of their early career.
Songs Side one L.A. Woman opens with the Morrison-penned track "The Changeling", which the Doors wanted to be the album's first single. Taken from one of Morrison's journals written in 1968, Holzman overruled the group's decision in favor of "Love Her Madly" and the non-album B-side "(You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further". Morrison also contributed "Been Down So Long", a song inspired by folk singer Richard Fariña's book Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me and Furry Lewis's tune, "I Will Turn Your Money Green". A conventional blues song reminiscent of Morrison's potential imprisonment from earlier Doors performances, the lyrics showed depression, liberation, and sexuality. Additionally, Morrison wrote the blues number "Cars Hiss by My Window". Unlike most of the other tracks, it was composed in the studio. Manzarek recalled that "Jim said it was about living in Venice [Beach], in a hot room, with a hot girlfriend, and an open window, and a bad time. It could have been about Pamela Courson". Of the remaining self-written material on L.A. Woman, Krieger wrote "Love Her Madly", which echoed his songs of romance and insecurity. He wrote the song, at his house, to alleviate his boredom during Morrison's trial.
L.A. Woman closes its first side with the title track, the lengthiest song on the album. Thought of as Morrison's final goodbye to Los Angeles, it communicated his mixed feelings of passion and disdain for "the city of night". The lyrics feature an anagram for Jim Morrison: "Mr. Mojo Risin. Krieger's electric guitar effect at the introduction impersonates the sound of an accelerated automobile engine.
Side two In addition to "The Changeling", the Doors chose to incorporate three other compositions written before 1971: "L' America", "Crawling King Snake", and "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)". "L'America" was intended for the soundtrack of director Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 counterculture film Zabriskie Point, but ultimately rejected. Manzarek recalled, "Antonioni was interested in using it in Zabriskie Point. So we played it for him, and it was so loud, it pinned him up against the wall. When it was over, he thanked us and fled. So he turned to Pink Floyd, as European filmmakers tend to do when they want rock & roll." Previously titled "Latin America", it was originally written and recorded during the sessions for Morrison Hotel, and the only work during the L.A. Woman sessions with a few drum overdubs. The Doors' arrangement of the traditional "Crawling King Snake" dates back to their early tours, and was sometimes coupled with Morrison's poem "Celebration of the Lizard". "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" is a reworking of Morrison's sample of poetry first appearing on the group's souvenir books in 1968.
L.A. Woman also features "Hyacinth House", with lyrics written by Morrison and music by Manzarek. The song shows Manzarek being influenced by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, during its organ solo. The final track was "Riders on the Storm", a collective effort by the Doors. Based on the arrangement "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and the line "delicate riders of the storm", taken from Hart Crane's poem "Praise for an Urn", the track melded Morrison's hitchhiker imagery from his own poetry projects. The faint, ghostly backdrop heard throughout the song was the last recording of Morrison as a member of the Doors.
Live performances After Morrison recorded poetry at Village Recorders on December 8, 1970, he felt encouraged to play some L.A. Woman material on tour. On December 11, the Doors performed in front of two sold-out audiences at the State Fair Music Hall in Dallas. The band opened the first concert with an extended "Love Her Madly", but struggled on older material as they had not played live since the Isle of Wight FestivaI that August. The set included "The Changeling" and "L.A. Woman" and closed with "When the Music's Over". The concerts were well received, proving the Doors were still a capable live act and leading to an extra performance in Louisiana. Audience recordings from the Doors' performances of "Love Her Madly", "The Changeling", "L.A. Woman", and the Morrison Hotel track "Ship of Fools" were included on the 2003 album Boot Yer Butt: The Doors Bootlegs.