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Last November, the backlash to the backlash began with the publication of Greil Marcus' The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years. The book is a rebuttal of decades of derision: The éminence grise of rock criticism recontextualizes the band amidst Thomas Pynchon, Pump Up the Volume and assemblage artist Wallace Berman. Isolating bootleg performances of the band at its most intense, he illustrates its persistent transcendence over 40 years of intense hate and hagiography.

"Lester Bangs once called [Morrison] the Oafus Laureate, and that was someone who loved the Doors and flipped over L.A. Woman," Marcus says by phone. "There was something ridiculous, pompous, stupid and megalomaniacal about Morrison that puts people off. He would do things to guarantee him trouble. He instinctively recoiled against authority but was smart enough to make his contempt dramatic, funny and challenging."

Indeed, the critics who attack Morrison's self-seriousness ignore the smirk. In a phone interview, the venerable Beat poet Michael McClure calls Morrison "the best poet of his generation." In The White Album, Joan Didion writes that the Doors are the Norman Mailers of the Top 40, praising their music for insisting that "Love was sex and sex was death and therein lay salvation."

With Morrison's death came a different strain of salvation. The passage of time never eroded the myth; the L.A. Woman stays forever young.

Morrison is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. If he were still alive, he'd be 68 years old. At the close of 2010, Florida governor Charlie Crist finally pardoned him for those misdemeanor convictions, still under appeal at the time of his death.

A decade ago, Ray Manzarek left Los Angeles for a farmhouse in Napa, where he grows heirloom tomatoes and bok choy. Robby Krieger is still in Benedict Canyon, although he no longer owns bobcats. Densmore stays in the Pacific Palisades, not far from the boyhood home that was fatefully bulldozed for a three-way on-ramp at the intersection of the 405 and 10 freeways.

Idle at the intersection of La Cienega and Santa Monica today and you'll see everyone but Jim Morrison. The City of Night has become another gentrified crossroads offering "puppy presents" and frozen yogurt. The Tropicana is deader than Sandy Koufax's left arm, replaced by a Ramada. Duke's is now on Sunset, next to the pay-to-play Whisky. The strip clubs are a flower shop and an Al & Ed's Auto Sound. Monaco Liquor and the Alta Cienega still stand, though; sin never falls out of fashion, and Morrison's old room, #32, has become a shrine.

The Doors Workshop is now Forbidden, a restaurant, bar and lounge that taunts pedestrians with $14 plates of tapas. Should you be looking for it, you'll notice a fake-gold plaque memorializing the place as "the site of the Doors Workshop, where L.A. Woman was recorded and mixed." It's a shallow grave to the moment when the psychedelic era turned sepia — a final barbaric winter before everything got worse. Myths and memories mutate, swamps get drained, but the blues just get older.

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24 comments
yu_bruce
yu_bruce

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Armando
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Armando
Armando

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Armando
Armando

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xer
xer

fantastic

Mnamhie
Mnamhie

The Doors' story has been barfed up a zillion times. Does the lame L.A. Weekly have to regurgitate it once again?

Surfrank
Surfrank

What I've heard about the song L.A. Woman - (not the LP). That it wasn't a song at all; just a boozy, and energetic blues jam. Then Manzeric and some engineer (sorry don't know who) began to work on it, adding the driving bass line and slinky licks by Kreiger. An added rhythm track by Ray on keyboards, and a two verse song had taken shape. The bridge "Mr Mojo Risiiiiin'..." was taken from yet another jam. In a sense the song itself never existed, was never really played all the way through and is just as much a studio creation as say "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" (Beatles); a song that surely was never played in one piece. Is this stuff true?

Dave
Dave

Listen to the live version of L.A. Woman (16:06) on the bootleg album "Boot Yer But" - the track is available on Amazon and I-Tunes. The Doors performed L.A. Woman at their last complete show in Dallas, Texas on December 11, 1970. The song had not yet been recorded in the studio. The band was still developing the song and Morrison was still perfecting his vocal phrasing, there is also a slightly different lyric in the last verse, but the song as heard on the album L. A. Woman is definitely there. L.A. Woman is no studio cut and paste job.

Adam from Oz
Adam from Oz

@Surfrank Go and get the iTunes bonus track to the L.A. Woman 40th Anniversary Edition which is take 1 of L.A. Woman: definitely not a studio creation, and definitely played all the way through.

shocked
shocked

FAIL. I think a baby just died because of the utter stupidity of your comment.

Dr Disney
Dr Disney

Doubt it. There is a bootleg tape of the Doors next to last concert in Dallas where they played several of the songs from L.A. Woman. I believe it is was in December 1970. They performed the song L.A. Woman and it sounds very similar to the album, but the album had not yet been recorded.

Wordman
Wordman

Was able to see the Doors first major show at the old Avalon Ballroom by P.O.P--A fantastic show from a great L.A.Band.(no disrespect for Love intended)

e.a.
e.a.

LA woman is marred by the fact that every woman believes it is about them.

DavidReyesZamora
DavidReyesZamora

Aquí hay información que un fan de The Doors debe saber, hace un año fui a ver la tumba de Jim en París un día iré a High Cienega a buscar esos lugares emblemáticos que deberíamos conocer. Un extraordinario artículo.

Grasshopper
Grasshopper

Fantastic article. The Doors old haunts may be mostly gone now, but their legacy will remain intact forever.

Kenneth
Kenneth

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Soundman
Soundman

As the past fades into the future, we are subject to take notice of what lasting impressions music has played in our lives.As the sights and sounds play out in my head my heroes still live on and accompany my soundtrack of life. Be one with the music!

Jwmm2704
Jwmm2704

Bravo, bravo..What a brilliant 4 page summary of the life, death and resurrection of The Doors, sufficiently hated by those who could not accept an alternative to English rock or the eternally happy sound of the top 40 crowd. The Doors never wanted people to pretend they liked them. "We are the band they like to hate", to quote JM..May he rest in peace but not his music. I ask that they only take that away on the day of my death.Ciao

JWM

 

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