Happy 45th: The Doors, L.A. Woman

45 years ago today, The Doors released the album which would prove to be their final full-length endeavor with Jim Morrison as their frontman.

Produced by Bruce Botnick and the band, L.A. Woman stands out not only for being Morrison’s swan song with the band but also for being the only album from Morrison’s tenure with the band to be produced by someone other than Paul A. Rothchild. In fact, Rothchild was supposed to produce it, but things never made it past the rehearsal stage.

When Rothchild arrived for rehearsals, he was – as he told BAM in 1981 – riding high on his previous assignment:

“I had just finished making one of the greatest albums of my career, a labor of total love by the most loving and dedicated musicians I'd ever worked with: Janis Joplin's Pearl album. That music was full of heart, the way it's supposed to be in the studio. You got 110 percent from everyone in the band, and 150 percent from Janis.”

It would be fair to say that The Doors did not provide Rothchild with the same percentage, no matter how much rehearsing he tried to do with them, which finally led Rothchild to a point of frustration where he realized that he just couldn’t do the project.

“I went into the studio finally and said, ‘Guys, I think the best thing that could happen is for me to leave, because you've become too reliant on me to come up with the energy and the ideas and the direction, and I just don't want to do it anymore. The only way you'll survive is if you make this record yourself. You'll have to generate the enthusiasm and the brilliance.’ They freaked. Robbie got pale. Ray sat down heavily. Jim turned around and walked to the other side of the studio. John looked like he was going to have a coronary. ‘What are we going to do?’ they asked. I said, ‘You've seen how I work. Bruce has seen me do it for years. Use that as a jumping-off point and make your own Doors record. Because if I put together what we've got and presented it to a record company, we couldn't even get a deal.’"

Given this information, it’s somewhat surprising that The Doors were ultimately able to produce one of the most iconic albums of their career, but they did: most critics loved L.A. Woman, and the title track, “Love Her Madly,” and “Riders on the Storm” have gone on to become some of the band’s best-known songs.

Alas, L.A. Woman was destined to be the final time the world was graced with an album’s worth of new material with Morrison fronting the band, but if you’re going to go out, you might as well go out with an album that finds you at the top of your game.