1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 213. The Doors – L.A. Woman (1971)

 

When I saw this one come up I thought that Jim Morisson’s 27-Club clock must be running out by now, and yes, it turns out that this album was released 2 months before his death. His voice on this album has a slight phlegmy rasp to it, much like Billie Holiday’s on her last album after drink and drugs had ravaged her body, makes me wonder if the same effect hadn’t happened with Morisson. But although his smooth tones of earlier are no longer present, the new voice does at least suit the material on this album. 

Which, it has to be said, features a lot of frankly by-the-numbers blues (Been Down So Long, Cars Hiss By My Window, Crawling King Snake) that are pretty much the kind of jamming blues where you select a key and a tempo and away you go, although there’s some nice slide guitar work on Been Down So Long from, I guess, Robby Krieger. 

L’America is a kind of psychedelic march, mad stuff that I think would be a grower due to it’s sheer wrongness and originality, while the opening track The Changeling is a great bit of funk/soul. Ray Manzarek carries many of the tracks on Side Two with quite a bit of jazz influence. 

For me I think the stand-out tracks are the two that are the most well-known; LA Woman and Riders On The Storm. LA Woman is a like a “traditional” Doors track, a long meandering jam-like bit of fusion rock, with its break down in the middle to Morisson chanting “Mr Mojo Risin’” (an anagram of his name) as it builds up speed again. Riders On The Storm, on the other hand, is a very laid back piece held together by Manzarek’s electric piano, with its existentialist lyrics that “into this world we’re thrown” coupled with a kind of road song aesthetic and overlaid rainstorm sound effects. I was kind of glad to learn that Ghost Riders In The Sky was an inspiration because, although the two songs are about very different things, there’s still a haunting supernatural feel to The Doors’ song, and it’s perhaps somewhat fitting that something mysterious and ethereal should be the last song Morisson recorded.