LA Woman: Closing The Doors’ First Era With An All-American Classic

Even more ominously, the band’s long-term producer, Paul A Rothchild, was singularly unimpressed by their new songs. Having attended a shaky rehearsal with the group, Rothchild left feeling jaded and disillusioned, and passed on helming the LA Woman sessions. In retrospect, this proved to be a blessing in disguise, leading The Doors to make several decisions which impacted significantly on how the album turned out.

“There were no drugs, no women, no sycophants”

Firstly, the band promoted engineer Bruce Botnick (who did like the new songs) to co-producer. Botnick brought some much-needed enthusiasm to the session, and he also helped soup-up LA Woman’s overall sound by suggesting The Doors enlist rhythm guitarist Marc Benno and Elvis Presley bassist Jerry Scheff for the sessions. In addition, to help everyone relax, Botnick and the band’s manager, Bill Siddons, also suggested the group record the album in the rehearsal room of their Los Angeles office building, The Doors Workshop, on the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevards.

Accordingly, a clubhouse atmosphere prevailed, with Siddons noting that “it was a place where they could come and go with zero pressure”. Not only that, but the informal setting brought out the best in everyone involved, including Morrison, who defied his mercurial reputation and became a model of professionalism during the sessions.

“There were no drugs, no women, no sycophants,” Bruce Botnick told Uncut in 2013. “Jim still liked to drink, and there was plenty of beer around, but he wasn’t drunk. He was extremely creative and he really led the sessions. And since he was staying at the Alta Cienega Motel right across the street, he was usually at The Workshop before we were.”

“He really rose to the occasion”

In several contemporary interviews, Morrison enthused about LA Woman’s blues-based content, yet while the album does include earthy blues workouts such as Been Down So Long and the deceptively chilling Cars Hiss By My Window, the tracklist featured an eclectic spread of material, from the sinewy, attention-grabbing rock’n’roll of The Changeling to the dreamy Hyacinth House and guitarist Robby Krieger’s infectiously poppy Love Her Madly.

The album’s twin peaks, however, were its two epic, seven-minute workouts. Kick-started by Scheff’s driving bassline and featuring a superb ensemble performance, the album’s vivid title track reflected Morrison’s quixotic feelings of passion and disdain for Los Angeles (“Motel, money, murder, madness/Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness”) and included the myth-making refrain “Mr Mojo Risin’” – an anagram of “Morrison”.

By comparison, the shimmering, jazz-inflected Riders On The Storm was loosely based on the arrangement for Stan Jones’ cowboy country song (Ghost) Riders In The Sky, but The Doors turned it into a thing of elusive, haunting beauty, with Morrison’s brooding lyric (“There’s a killer on the road/His brain is squirming like a toad”) reputedly inspired by 50s mass murderer Billy Cook.

Drummer John Densmore recalled that Morrison “sang most of his vocals in one or two takes, he really rose to the occasion”, and the LA Woman sessions simply cooked. With the whole thing done and dusted in little over a week, the band were confident they’d made a record built to last. They were even more thrilled when Elektra label boss Jac Holzman added his stamp of approval.

“It’s alive, it’s free, it’s young and it’s wild”

“Jac gave the ultimate analysis of the record,” Bill Siddons told Uncut. “He said Riders On The Storm will be one of the biggest progressive radio tracks of the year, and LA Woman will become a standard, but the hit is Love Her Madly. El Supremo predicted everything that would happen with the record.”

Holzman was, indeed, spot on. Released in March 1971, the glorious Love Her Madly charted at No.11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and racked up airplay from coast to coast, giving The Doors their biggest hit since 1969’s Touch Me. The album then followed in April, selling half a million US copies in under six months, even without a tour to support it. Where The Doors might have gone had Jim Morrison returned safely from his Paris sojourn remains an eternal “what if?”, but with hindsight, topping a record as potent as LA Woman would have taken some doing.

“LA Woman is still my favourite of all our releases,” Ray Manzarek revealed in a 1997 Mojo interview. “To me, it represents a drive across the great American South West. Driving on the freeways and highways through the desert – Arizona or New Mexico – or driving up the coast of California on Highway 1, from LA to San Francisco. It’s alive, it’s free, it’s young and it’s wild.”

Find out where The Doors’ first record ranks in our run-down of the best debut albums of all time.