Doors’ ‘L.A. Woman’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know
The Doors had crammed several lifetimes into just five years as band, and by late 1970, the psychic toll of Jim Morrison‘s addiction and legal hassles threatened to overwhelm the group. Any attempts at making an album under these conditions should have met with unmitigated disaster, but on L.A. Woman – the final Doors LP released during Morrison’s lifetime – the band succeeded almost in spite of themselves. Self-produced and recorded in their private rehearsal space, the album was a homecoming in both a musical and spiritual sense. “Our last record turned out like our first album: raw and simple,” drummer John Densmore reflected in his autobiography. “It was as if we had come full circle. Once again we were a garage band, which is where rock & roll started.”
Morrison left on an extended trip to Paris as the final mixes were being prepared, hoping to rediscover his muse in the City of Light. He would never return: The singer died there in July 1971. As his final recorded work with the Doors turns 45, here are some surprising facts about the creation of L.A. Woman.
The Doors’ longtime producer quit the sessions, dismissing the songs as “cocktail music.”
L. A. Woman got off to an inauspicious start in November 1970, when the band played their new material for producer Paul Rothchild. They possessed only a handful of semi-complete tunes, and Rothchild was less than impressed. He dismissed “Riders on the Storm” as “cocktail music,” but reserved particular scorn for “Love Her Madly,” which he cited as the song that drove him out of the studio. “The material was bad, the attitude was bad, the performance was bad,” he said in the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive. “After three days of listening I said, ‘That’s it!’ on the talk-back and cancelled the session.”
They convened for an emergency meeting at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and Rothchild laid his cards on the table. “I said, ‘Look, I think it sucks. I don’t think the world wants to hear it. It’s the first time I’ve ever been bored in a recording studio in my life. I want to go to sleep.'” With that, the so-called “Fifth Door,” who had produced the band since their debut, walked out. Once the shock had worn off, the Doors turned to engineer Bruce Botnick, whose credits included all of their previous albums, as well as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed. With his help, the reinvigorated band vowed to coproduce their new album. Gone were the days of Rothchild’s studio strictness, where it was normal to record 30 takes or spend hours on perfecting a drum sound. “Rothchild was gone, which is one reason why we had so much fun,” Robbie Krieger told Guitar World in 1994. “The warden was gone.”
Jim Morrison recorded his vocal parts in a bathroom.
Eschewing the high tech luxury of Sunset Sound, the Doors decided to record in their unassuming “workshop” at 8512 Santa Monica Boulevard. “It was the room we had rehearsed in forever,” recalled John Densmore in the documentary Mr. Mojo Risin. “Our music was seeped into the walls. We were very comfortable. It was home.” Like a fraternity common room, the cramped space was littered with empty beer bottles, dog-eared magazines, an endless tangle of cables and assorted instruments – plus a jukebox and pinball machine. “It was tight,” says Botnick, who was ensconced in the upstairs office behind a portable mixing board. “It was like sardines.”
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