RIDERS ON THE STORM: THE DOORS AND THE MAKING OF L. A. WOMAN
The Doors couldn’t believe it. They’d dutifully been rehearsing in preparation for recording their sixth studio album. And now their longtime producer, Paul Rothchild, told them he couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t like their new songs, and he’d had enough. He wasn’t going to produce their next a lbum. But if they were momentarily taken aback by Rothchild’s refusal to work with them again, they soon reconfigured. Why not work with their regula r engineer, Bruce Botnick , and co-produce the album themselves? They could even bring in some equipment and record in their own rehearsal space. “Everybody loved the idea and overall felt a tremendous relief that we were on our own, without somebody telling us what to do,” Botnick later recalled. Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, in a recent “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit, cited the resulting sessions as his favorite with the group “because it felt like home. I wish we would’ve done all the albums like that.” That newfound f reedom enabled The Doors to create what’s considered one of their finest a lbums: L . A . Woman, released in April 1971. For its 50th anniversary, the album is being reissued in a newly remastered 3-CD/1-LP deluxe edition, with plenty of bonus material (a Dolby Atmos mix will also be available via streaming).
The release of two Doors-related books adds to the bounty. Krieger has finally released his long-awaited memoir, Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying, and Playing Guitar with The Doors. And The Collected Works of Jim Morrison, edited by the singer’s longtime friend Frank Lisciandro, compiles Morrison’s writings, many of which are previously unpublished, in one 582-page volume, in both trade and deluxe editions.
The fall of 1970 had been a discouraging time for The Doors. The previous year, Morrison’s antics at the band’s March 1 show in Miami had led
