The Doors
L.A. Woman

THE REVIEW

The essence of this album and the soul of this group at its final chapter emerge with masterful musical inspiration that, in truth, had been missing in the last two productions of the Californian band: "The Soft Parade" and "Morrison Hotel." The sound of the album is a return to the roots for the band, a perfectly accomplished attempt to ride again the dirty streets of blues, while Jim, the lizard king now transformed into a wise bearded poet, sings with a rough alcoholic voice, angry, but at the same time full of sadness.

The album opens with "The Changeling," a powerful track, full of energy and skillfully embellished by Manzarek's organ, back in perfect form after a period of decline. It proceeds with "Love Her Madly," a typical Doors song, simple, melodic, and electrifying, and "Been Down So Long," a classic piece of little depth, but which precedes the exceptional "Cars Hiss By My Window," a simple blues, just guitar and voice, with a strong atmospheric charge typical of the American countryside life, where it's easy to imagine Morrison singing on a deck chair while downing a good bottle of whiskey. "L.A. Woman" is the strongest track in terms of impact, a blues ride towards the deserted roads of California to reach the orgiastic perdition of Los Angeles. All the "Doors" are at their peak in this song, Krieger wields a guitar as biting as never before in his career, Manzarek literally pounds his piano, while Densmore, with his rhythmic carpet, accompanies everyone with great mastery. The slowed-down part where Jim uses the acronym Mr. Mojo Risin is absolutely brilliant, a way to break the fast tempo of the song, something few other musicians would have dared to do. After the title track, the album does not lose depth and continues with the psychedelic "L'America," the soft "Hyacinth House," and "Crawling King Snake," another blues with a strong rhythmic depth, emphasized by a Morrison increasingly immersed in the part of the wise shaman singing his adventures. Before concluding this tribute to American music, "The WASP" gives us one of Jim's best interpretations, a poem that the Doors' singer already recited at his band's concerts and which here finds the right musical base to honor it. The last track is "Riders on the Storm," Morrison's and the Doors' musical testament, an absolute milestone in the history not only of this group, but of all rock. The ghostly noise of rain and lightning serves as a backdrop to soft and dreamlike melodies, sounds from another world that accompany Jim's whispered voice in his most touching interpretation. For this song, it's useless to waste words, because there wouldn't be enough; you need to listen to it, get inside it, breathe it, only in this way you will understand why it is so special.

The Doors could not have crafted a better epilogue for their extraordinary career, and Morrison, for his part, could not have done anything but give us all his love for music and poetry with this album. The last album of the "Doors" is everything every artist would want to record to end their career: inspired, divinely played, and with so much passion. A few months after the release of L.A. Woman, Morrison would die at the age of 27, and perhaps, without exaggeration, with him would definitively die a whole generation of people who believed in something and who wanted to change the world even with music. Today, these people are no longer here, but their master, their guide, lives and will live forever for all those who will learn to understand and love him. 

"When my body becomes ash, my name will be legend"

James Douglas Morrison