The Doors - L.A. Woman: The Workshop Sessions

If the chief complaint against L.A. Woman was its lazy interpretation, then the rehearsals leading up to that recording session can only be described as a feast of stoned immaculate friends.

The Workshop Sessions find The Doors in a particularly amiable mood, in a recording that was never intended on seeing the light of day. I suppose, in that respect, we can't complain too much about how sloppy John Densmore's drumming is, or how Robby Krieger plays with such half-assed concentration that he completely stops playing in some areas. Even Jimbo remained seating during some of these takes, which may or may not be indicative of whatever role he might have been pondering at this point in the Doors career.

To be honest, The Workshop Sessions sound more like an opportunity for session bassist Jerry Scheff to learn the material-and most of the evidence presented here demonstrates that the tunes don't present him with any trouble whatsoever.

Even Ray Manzarek is in fine form, dutifully making sure the songs remain on a start/stop schedule and staying close to the patterns that everyone is by now familiar with from the final product of L.A. Woman.

The Workshop Sessions may signal that there is very little left in the band's archives to milk their posthumous output, but its quality is enough to capture the curiosity of their loyal fans-and for them, this release will be warmly received.

Firstly, the sound quality is tremendous. Those flubs and studio banter are crisp and full of fidelity. You're a fly on the wall to their inner sanctum-and there were enough of those moments for me to appreciate this release.

The only other item that will sway Doors fans is the unreleased track "She Smells So Nice/Rock Me" which is not so much a lost song as a pretty simple blues jam who's only claim to fame is the ad-libbing that Morrison does at the end, marking the first appearance of the "Mr. Mojo Risin'" line into the rock and roll lexicon.

It's more of a spontaneous utterance rather than a "Eureka!" epiphany, and the fact that it comes well after the jam has run its course signals that "She Smells So Nice/Rock Me" was included with this release solely on the novelty of capturing one of the most well-known lines in rock history rather than providing us with a lost gem.

The Workshop Sessions qualifies as being both the cash-grab that cynics will label it as while being an indispensable recording for serious Doors fans who would have purchased any bit of material laid in front of them. With the packaging and source material as good as it is on this release, The Workshop Sessions makes it a worthy issue but hardly one that will appeal to anyone beyond the already devoted.

The Doors - L.A. Woman

To the Doors faithful, L.A. Woman was a continuation of the band's peak moments, a picture of the white bread blues the would carry the band through the 70's, with short bursts of jazzy blends and the peaceful, easy feelings that would saturate the scene for the rest of the decade.

Of course, the Doors faithful could also be incredibly wrong, and the mantra "take it easy" could also be seen as "spoiled laziness" among other observers, and The Doors certainly had a track record of taking the path of least resistance.

The reality of L.A. Woman is somewhere in the middle. There are moments of true brilliance, mostly contained within the epic sprawl of "Riders On The Storm" and the title track, both lengthy offerings in the band's penchant for drawn out dramas. The difference being that both of the tracks that ended up closing out sides one and two on the original release sounded nothing like their track record of over-seriousness, where charming film school boys could get away with a few moments of poetry recall and pouty snapshots.

For L.A. Woman, those boys were fat and fuzzy, wallowing in the notion of new directions and the new found grittiness that the Sunset Strip had gone from seedy to scary ("Motel, money, murder, madness").

By the time they called up L.A. notable Bruce Botnick, who took over after original Doors producer stood firm in his belief that "Love Her Madly" was a piece of shit. Botnick simply documents the band, so the hints of new directions and the reliance on the band's continual assertions that they are perfectly capable of playing the blues are found throughout L.A. Woman.

The fact remains that The Doors weren't the best interpreters of the blues, but at least Morrison's transition into middle-age (from a physiological standpoint) makes such blurts like "Well I've been down so goddamn long" sound halfway legitimate.

I say "halfway" because Jimbo is the weakest link throughout L.A. Woman. He farts around the same four or five notes throughout the entire record and his delivery is as lazy as its ever been.

If you get the sense that Morrison wanted to be somewhere else, then you'd be pretty spot on. While the rest of the band were busy plotting their ways to remain relevant in  the new decade, Jim was thinking about a new life in Paris, where he would be able to focus on his poetry without the distractions of being in a rock and roll band.

The argument could be made that L.A. Woman is less about being required listening and more about being the last recorded documents of Jim Morrison. As an admitted fan, I can't subsribe to that cynicism because the record also contains some of his best work as a lyricist.

Those aforementioned long players are classic rock radio royalty, but there's a few under appreciated gems like "The Changeling," "Cars Pass By My Window," and "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" finally gets a proper release for its "stoned, immaculate" imagery.

Morrison even works up a bit of mysterious foreshadowing with "Hyacinth House." He revisits a bit of Greek mythology just like he did with "The End," (even quoting from the song itself, at one point) and in the very first line of the track, Jim visualizes his final resting spot ("I see the bathroom is clear") and gives fans a clear link to where he wants to go next.

Unfortunately, that next step would lead him to leaving this world entirely, and it's not exactly clear if The Doors would have continued on with additional success in the 70's had Morrison lived, or if Jim would have found an audience receptive to his poetic proclamations.

What is clear was how L.A. Woman became linked to greatness on the sheer fact that it followed tragedy.

While it is a fine Doors release, it is nowhere near the heights of  their debut or even the band's first attempt at defining lazy SoCal blues with Morrison Hotel. It may not have been the album that made Morrison's passing more tragic, it certainly contains enough moments to warrant appropriate mourning-particularly among the remaining band members  who were willing to risk tainting their legacy with a pair of records after his departure.

By Hatchet, Axe and Saw

I stayed up too late the other night to watch the Rush documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage again. I think I mentioned the awesomeness of this film before, but in case you haven’t seen it, check VH1 Classic’s schedule every now and then as it’s on constant rotation there.

For as many times as I’ve seen it, I should probably go out and get an actual copy for myself. But like cd’s, I’ve slowed down my physical purchases with dvds, mainly because it doesn’t make much sense to overload our suburban abode with a bunch of physical media that will all one day be available digitally and then store in some other digital cloud that never needs dusting.

There’s one moment in the movie where Billy Corgan speaks to the band’s importance to him while growing up. At one point, Corgan describes asking his mother to come into his room so that he can play a Rush song to her.

The song-which I’ve forgotten now and am too lazy to look up at the moment-resonates within him, and he finds the theme to the song so important that he wants her to hear it.
I’m sure how she interpreted it was different than his intention. I know this because I’ve lost count at trying to turn on my parents to some personal song only to see them fail to understand the significance to what the song means to me.

And I’m certain that my own kids will try to do the same and I’m sure that I too will fail to find the significance in how they relate to it.

But I won’t stop in trying, and I will never begin to simply discount what kind of impact a song may have on them. I’m interested in the emotional connection that songs have in people and that’s the reason why today I continue to obsess over such things.
There are songs in which we like because they sound good and there are songs that we like because they complete an emotional synapse, keeping it fresh for as long as we are able to retrieve that memory.

At one point, when I began to notice my parent’s immediate reaction towards a piece of music that they didn’t appreciate, I simply stopped trying to get them to identify with a band or a song.

For my mom, it was during my Doors phase. I was playing Waiting For The Sun and she told me to “turn off this crap” when “My Wild Love” was playing.
My dad actually stood up for me on that one.

But he had difficulties too, and that became all too apparent when he and I along with my girlfriend at the time went out of town shopping. On the way home, I played Raising Hell but Run-DMC after purchasing the cassette. I thought that maybe the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration of “Walk This Way” would get him to better appreciate rap as an art form.

It didn’t work.

My father had also purchased a cassette that day, John Fogerty’s Centerfield.
Guess which tape my girlfriend and I had to endure the rest of the way home?

To this day, I can’t stand that album-mainly for that piece of shit song “I Saw It On TV,” the one where Forgerty goes through a completely nostalgic list of Baby Boomer events- ala “We Didn’t Start The Fire”- to which my father would give bits of commentary over the historical imagery.

There was one time when I was either in middle school or just starting my freshman year of high school that my father knocked on my bedroom door and wanted to ask me a music related question.

Let me just say now that at this moment, I felt on top of the world. My father was coming to me for a musical question, thereby acknowledging that I was somewhat of an “expert” on the subject.

I was more than happy to oblige.

“Do you listen to the band Rush?” he asked.

Duh!

What music-loving 8th grade boy didn’t listen to Rush!

“What’s the name of the song that they do that is about racism?”

Of course, the song he was referring to was “The Trees” and I immediately went to my copy of Exit…Stage Left to give him a sample.

He went on to explain that the subject of racism was being discussed in his American history class and that a couple of students had brought up the song.

“Can you make me a copy of it?” he asked.

I probably had the thing done in a few hours-including a bunch of other Rush tracks in case dad became enchanted with the Canadian power trio.

After all, he was a big fan of Cream.



A week later, I couldn’t resist.

“What did you think of that Rush song I taped for you?” I asked him.
“I haven’t listened to it yet.” He admitted after a quick pause to reflect on the question. “I think it’s still in my briefcase somewhere.”

It became clear that there was no real intention of him actually listening to it and that it probably wouldn’t enter his curriculum either.

He’d become too attached to the familiar, resistant to anything new-particularly to anything discovered by a teenager.

My commitment today is to at least listen to what my kids present to me. It’s a microscope to what they may be feeling inside, and as we should already know-teenagers aren’t the most open of specimens when it comes to matters of the heart.

The Doors - When You're Strange

It’s true, there comes a point in every rock fan’s life where you discover The Doors and become absorbed in the myth of Jim Morrison. For me, it was right around the time of Rolling Stones’ cover feature on Morrison-you know, the one with “He’s hot, he’s sexy, and he’s dead”-which just happened to coincide with my first reading of the biography No One Here Gets Out Alive.

When I say “first reading,” it’s because I read that book religiously, resuming the story with every purchase of their small catalog.

I tolerated everything that appeared in print under the guise of “poetry,” mainly because I didn’t know any better.

I bought the American Prayer album, an embarrassing addition to The Doors catalog almost on par with Full Circle and the other album The Doors’ recorded after Morrison died. Let me be clear, however, and confess that I thought Jim’s words at the time were great, but the surviving Doors members sounded like a shell of their former self, devoid of danger and sounding like a bunch of middle age men cashing in on their frontman’s corpse.

Which they were.

My Lizard King spell ended with the book of Morrison’s poetry Wilderness, a posthumous compilation of his work that I found to be weak, particularly when compared to the Beat stuff that I had discovered around the same time.

I now feel that the Doors debut album is rightfully considered as a classic, deserving to be in any rock fan’s collection. Beyond that, though, is a matter of preference. I still rank Morrison Hotel pretty high and half of Strange Days and L.A. Woman. The rest is nowhere near the high of their debut and can only really be appreciated when you’re in full Jim worship.

I can’t dispute the band’s importance in my upbringing, and I’ve had to remind myself of their spotty history during moments of re-releases and rarities. I don’t think you can find a better live Doors document than Absolutely Live, can you? And if you can, I don’t think it would be very revelatory to me.

Which is what I felt about the new Doors documentary When You’re Strange; would there be anything new to be learned from it?

The answer was “No,” but what surprised me even more was how little the documentary was able to add to someone’s Doors knowledge, particularly after they’ve read No One Here Gets Out Alive.

The film is narrated by Johnny Depp in some utterly embarrassing prose that was no doubt written by someone hired to regurgitate the myth.

One of the most frustrating things for me was how the director would use footage from an era of the band that was obviously not from the time of discussion. I like my documentaries about musicians to follow linear timeframes, and I like the footage to be from the same period as the discussion.

Still, the inclusion of Morrison’s short film HWY is awesome as I’ve always been curious about it. They use some of the footage to suggest the obligatory “He’s alive!” myth, which is somewhat annoying-but to be able to finally see the footage of Jim in his beard, tearing around in his Ford Cobra Mustang is pretty great.

Speaking of annoying, Ray Manzerek has very minimal opportunity to let his piehole ruin the proceedings with another tale of how Jim was a shaman and what a great poet he was.

Of course, no documentary is going to dispute it if you happen to believe that Jim was a shaman, a poet, or the reincarnation of some Dionysian god. If you can stomach all of the story building and dippy praise, When You’re Strange isn’t a bad place to start when considering the Doors’ place in rock history.

After a few views and after a few more plays of their catalog, you’ll begin to notice the cracks in the impeccable façade that the band and their managers have created over the years.

The funny thing is, the documentary hints that Jim noticed those cracks too. And as much as he tried to dismantle the myth that he himself tried to create, he discovered that it was much harder to do-particularly when everyone around you is working overtime to build it back up or to enable your every whim.

And in that regard, When You’re Strange makes sure The Doors’ exaggerated relevance beyond the music they created is still in tact for another generation of young mope seekers.

The Doors - The Doors

The Doors’ debut album is the musical equivalent of The Catcher In The Rye. Every boy falls in love with it, but the appeal is short lived; you just can’t relate to Catcher at thirty or forty the same way you do when you’re a teenager.
At the same time, that first spin of The Doors, like that first read of Catcher, is a remarkable passage. The drama, the mystique, everything about it works perfectly during those years, and only the advance of cynicism with each passing year diminishes it. By the age of twenty-one, I viewed The Doors as a caricature of overblown importance, led by a drunken buffoon who’s success created a bubble big enough for him to not hear the laughter whenever it was suggested that he was a poet.
Make no mistake: Jim Morrison was not a poet. Instead, he was the perfect frontman for a Southern California who, collectively and without knowing it, started a few sub-genres in the process of recording their debut album.
They would never scale to the same heights and, to be honest, the resulting album is great enough that they wouldn’t need to. The Doors stands as one of the greatest debuts in rock music, and its importance is enough that every subsequent album they released stood comfortably in its wake. Some of those, to be completely honest, were bad enough (Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade) that they could have provide an end to their overall significance.
“Break On Through (To The Other Side)” starts off one of the best sequenced side one ever, with equal parts of hunger and mythmaking. The first hint at traditional blues begins with “Soul Kitchen,” but by the third song (“The Crystal Ship”), they’re finding shadows in reverb and exploring areas never ventured to in rock music.
“20th Century Fox” makes it clear that the band is perfectly able to mirror the commercial structure needed to make a pop song, while “Alabama Song” provides a complete left turn to the four songs that proceeded it.
The listeners is forced to sit through five, non-hit songs before letting the money shot of their number one single makes an appearance. And, it’s the full length version, surprising those who were brought up on the "Light My Fire" that didn’t feature the classical-tinged organ solo or Robby Krieger guitar part.
Side two is almost as good, started with the album’s second cover, “Back Door Man,” perhaps the whitest version of the Willie Dixon song ever recorded, but it may be the most convincing version too. The way Morrison’s voice cracks during the “You may eat your dinner/You may eat your pork and beans” part completely sells his credibility while the yelp after he screams “Imma back door man!” hints that these SoCal film school dropouts may have unknowingly just recorded a song that surpasses the original.
“I Looked At You” probably made a great set closer back in the club days, while “The End” makes an obvious case for obligatory encore song.
With equal parts Oedipus Rex and Sunset Strip jive, “The End” spans eleven minutes of drama so effectively that you believe all that shit about dead Indians scattered on dawn’s highway, bleeding.
At the very least, you believe that Jim fucked his Mom once.
But seriously: you don’t need another album other than The Doors’ first album, but boy, you do need it. It may go unread for years like that copy of Catcher In The Rye, but it needs to be there, like a beacon to anyone glancing through your “D” section, letting them know that, you too, went through that obligatory Doors phase.
And, unlike Jim Morrison, you survived it.

This Door Is Closed

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