Heaven's Doors

This disc is the last of the Doors. The last of the Doors with Morrison more accurately ... It's mostly a mystery and a miracle.
Because when they go into the studio, the Doors are more or less finished, washed ... Their previous records are increasingly doubtful things like "Roadhouse Blues" or "Touch me" not sufficient to hide the misery creative their latest productions. And especially the Doors exist only for and by Jim Morrison. That's not going very strong ... Exit Dionysian Adonis beginnings and up to a alcoolo poussah, stoned, bearded, often causing the rest of the group in turn quickly concerts in the pathetic cacophony. The Doors missed the appointment of Woodstock whose heroes were on a roll, Led Zeppelin, and a bunch of very electric formations turn tirelessly to make States and amps and guitars roar, the other Californian psychedelic historical groups implode (l 'Airplane), saw country (the Dead), Hendrix and Joplin died. When do the sessions of "LA Woman", the Doors are virtually figure of antiques, surviving vestiges of another time ...
The biggest change comes in sound, and sends the sound to oblivion formula hitherto immutable group. Attached producer Paul Rothchild from the beginning refused the project, and his assistant Bruce Botnick officer finds himself behind the console. The Doors use a second guitarist (Marc Benno) and hardening their approach and "freeing" Krieger, and especially a bassist (Jerry Scheff, session player at Presley). Suddenly, we hear less Manzarek, which is good news, soft bass lines Scheff having made much more invigorating than those produced previously.
The most significant change comes from the voice of Morrison. Served for advantageously blow by his obesity and its many abuses, it will pull from the depths of his being a big deep voice, hoarse, that one would swear weathered by decades behind the microphone, when he was only twenty -seven years.
Morrison, in his rare moments of lucidity, is still not in top form. And what better than the blues to transcribe his moods. "LA Woman" will be a black disc, a blues record. Begin with an amazing title, unexpected from them, "The Changeling," blithe rythm'n'blues, followed by "Love her madly" a sort of country-rock with the organ that gives the late Tex color -mex and hopping. Everything that follows will be much darker, much slower, heavy, ominous, threatening ... far, far away, blues exercises in which the group had already delivered (remember epileptic treatment "Backdoor Man" on their first drive). The clear influence of this disc, it was John Lee Hooker, and not just because of the cover of "Crawling King Snake" as the music features of the old master can be found in each range.
"For hiss by my window," slow to the extreme, draws all its outrageousness of his tempo dazed limit and is for me the best blues strictly title of the disc. "LA Woman" the song, is a boogie as forty generations Canned Heat will not produce. A haunted title alive, always in perpetual motion as urban life it describes. On its final shape trance Jim Morrison plays on its exclaimed anagram ("Mr. Mojo Risin '"). "The America" ​​is another blues obsessed with his reptilian intro, and you almost wait for the disk to find a breath, the sweet ballad "Hyacinth House", which happen in a completely different context for a harmless trifle. Last but not least, "Riders on the Storm" perhaps the best title of the Doors, ends the disc and an end to the psychedelic rock that The Doors had helped establish.
Morrison, exiled to Paris to escape prosecution, died apparently without ever having heard the final mix of this disc. Who is for me by far their best, the biggest blues record made by whites, and incidentally one of the top ten this thing given for dead but whose body is still moving sometimes, rock ...