Jazz is Beat, but blues is blood. Blues is bruised. Blues is booze. Blues is the boomerang. Blues isn't the hangover; it's the hanging. Jim Morrison jokes to John Densmore: "You're drinking with No. 3." Janis. Jimi. Jim. Blues is when the doors close.
This is not a blues city. L.A. is about the concealment of appearance, but the blues is about its unraveling. The blues is the opposite of bullshit. And the psychic unrest of L.A. Woman is prominently placed on the album cover, which drops in April '71. Morrison is shunted off to the side like a dwarf Russian woodcutter or an American werewolf about to ruin Paris. The border is blood red; the faces of the band, choleric yellow.
Photo by Paul Ferrara/copyright DMC
PHOTO COURTESY OF ELEKTRA RECORDS
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"Jim was seduced by the luxury and indulgences of fame," Manzarek says now. Always bespoke and bespectacled, he has a voice as smooth as soy milk. In 1971, he splits time between a two-bedroom near the Whisky and a small penthouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. "The more boorish the behavior, the more Morrison's crew liked it. We confronted him, and he said he was trying to quit drinking. But he was a guy who would say, 'I feel lousy. I need a drink.' Conversely, 'I feel great, I need a drink.' "
Densmore, the wiry, West L.A.–raised jazz devotee, had grown fed up with the erratic live performances of the previous year. A graduate of University High, the sarcastic and quick-witted drummer refused to watch the band's mesmerizing stage show erode into tacky spectacle.
"There's no control in front of thousands of people. In a studio, you can go home. At our last show in New Orleans, [Morrison] was a wreck. In the middle of the set, he sat down on my drum stool. I got up, walked around and sat next to him. 'Jim, gosh, what do you want to play? There's a bunch of people here.' His head was down. I said, 'Oh boy, we're done.' "
Afterward, the band cancels the tour and live show for the foreseeable future. "The elephant in the room was shitting everywhere," Densmore jokes.
The Doors return to the Workshop to find form in the bloated "lounge music." Drained by lawsuits and loose monetary policy, Morrison is broke, borrowing from the band's royalties. They're all still recovering from the credibility bloodbath that was their oversalted Sgt. Pepper, The Soft Parade. Their "comeback," 1970's Morrison Hotel, saw brisk sales and critical acclaim, but recording it was a slog, filled with take after soul-snuffing take. It's also the only Doors record to lack a hit single.
L.A. Woman is a return to basics: the primeval floor, the soft angles of the rehearsal room, the ability to unbuckle their belts and belch. Recording takes six days, mixing another week. Their engineer and co-producer Bruce Botnick, who is just 26, has already co-produced Love's masterpiece Forever Changes, engineered every Doors record and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and co-engineered the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed.
"My contribution was to allow them to feel free. They knew how to do the Doors better than I did," Botnick says today. "It felt like summer vacation after graduation. The Workshop was their sanctuary. For the first time, Jim got involved and took a leadership role. He wasn't drinking heavily during rehearsals and never left early. It was the first time that there hadn't been an authority figure present."
From recording to writing, the approach is rough but relaxed. No set hours. No working at night. No more than three takes, recorded live on 8-track with minimal overdubs. Desks are shoved to the side. Quilts hang from the walls for higher fidelity. Working from the second floor, out of sight, Botnick hooks up a console speaker and tape recorder. For session work, he recruits Elvis Presley's bassist, Jerry Scheff, and rhythm guitarist Marc Benno, who frees Krieger up for kaleidoscopic solos. A disciple of the King, Morrison is thrilled.
Inspired by the warts-and-all emotion of a trumpet error farted out at the start of Miles Davis' Live at Carnegie Hall, Densmore suggests the band submit to its most raw instincts.
"What makes music good isn't perfection, it's the feeling," he says now. "Fuck the errors. Let's be passionate and quick. Back to the garage and blues and our roots."
Morrison sings in the bathroom, his baritone corroding the high ceilings and warped wood. His Southern roots have never seemed more swamp rat: He shifts from vampire Sinatra croon into diseased hobo growl. They cut a John Lee Hooker cover ("Crawling King Snake") for extra poison.
"We never saw ourselves as a blues band. The Rolling Stones wanted to be a blues band and turned rock & roll. We started doing rock and ended up at the blues on L.A. Woman," Krieger says.
Raised in the Pacific Palisades, the guitarist pens the album's Top 10 single "Love Her Madly." "That's what Jim wanted to do. He loved blues, and it got into his psyche more and more. He always said he felt like an old bluesman."
