Quote:
Originally Posted by eyeteeth
Personally it's an album that never goes away, and never gets re-evaluated and dropped a few notches.
I'm always very conscious of the yawning gap between it and the rest of the catalogue. Not so much a gap in artistry but one in gravity and maturity. The previous albums, which I love very much, each seem to have adolescent elements, often including the obligatory for the time, teenaged girl love song.
There's none of that in L.A. Woman! It's the post pubescent, adult Doors. Deeper and more real.
An album that sounds like how I used to feel two days after a hangover, a little sad, calm, unflinching, reflective.
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I like
L.A. Woman a lot, but it's not my favourite Doors album. I think
LAW is immensely strong for Jim Morrison and mostly mature, but it gets stolid and heavily self-regarding in places (who ever accused Jim Morrison of being self-involved?). We could list our favourite tracks on the lp, and nobody would be too put out. I just think "Cars Hiss by My Window," "L'America" and even "Riders on the Storm" are a bit overwrought.
By contrast,
Hard Rock Cafe/Morrison Hotel is my favourite, and I would argue it's more mature, because it's lighter. Of course, it has epic moments of bombast -- "Roadhouse Blues" and "Ship of Fools" perhaps especially -- but I think there's a knowing irony and absurdity in these pronouncements (of the same kind that you get with Lou's "New Age" in
Loaded). "Peace Frog" is one of my favourite tracks -- all the apocalyptic imagery is offset by the jaunty, funky, positively loungey melody and tempo. As with "Queen of the Highway" and "Spy in the House of Love" all the menace is camp. It conveys a sillier but more spontaneous and innocent picture of the new American West.
When I was a lad in my twenties, there were lots of guys who said Jim Morrison was the great American poet. Do people like that still exist? Anyway, that attitude to The Doors ought to be avoided, IMHO. On the other hand, Jim M. commented that the performing artist he most wanted to emulate was Frank Sinatra. I think that's the best way to approach what the Doors did.
L.A. Woman is tremendous but not perfect.
Hard Rock Cafe/ Morrison Hotel is quirky but, I think, even better. Another 60s album about how your life is saved or damned by rock 'n roll and how the differences between salvation and damnation are not always easily distinguishable. 'Deserves a re-evaluation.