The Doors: Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman

Inside Story Of THE DOORS Only Garage Album- L.A. Woman
Forty years ago in 1971, I bought L.A.Woman, and as all Doors fans back then, was completely blown away by their yet- another amazing sound. As like the Classic Albums dvd THE DOORS from 2008, this dvd also takes us into the making of the Doors L.A. Woman, with amazing stories and footage. The surviving Doors John Densmore, Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger tell us the stories behind 9 of their 10 songs- The Changeling, Been Down So Long, Crawling King Snake, Love Her Madly, L.A. Woman, The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat), Riders On The Storm, Cars Hiss By My Window and Hyacinth House. The only song not covered is L'America.

Jim Morrison was and would never be the same after the Miami arrest, and his lyrics on this album especially attest to that fact. When The Doors went to begin recording this album at the Sunset Sound Studios in LA, Paul Rothchild didn't like one sound they were playing and walked out saying he would not record any of it. Paul Rothchild recorded all...

The Inside Story of L.A. Woman
For the second year in a row The Doors have released a documentary on film about the band. Last year it was "When You're Strange" with footage taken mostly from Jim Morrison's film "HWY." This year to kick off the self described "The Year of The Doors" is the film "The Doors Mr. Mojo Risin': The Making of L.A. Woman."

"The Doors Mr. Mojo Risin': The Making of L.A. Woman" tells the story of the making of The Doors seminal album, "L.A. Woman". Relying on mostly footage taken from The Doors documentary, "Feast of Friends", (that was shot in the 60's and has been used for most other video projects since then) and new interviews with the surviving members of The Doors, including Bruce Botnick, and Paul Rothchild explaining why he decided not to produce L.A. Woman (every previous Doors album was produced by Rothchild) and exactly which song he considered "cocktail music". Other interviews include Morrison's film school friend, Frank Lisciandro, early Doors advocate DJ, Jim Ladd...

Great look at the making of a great album
I loved this documentary, with as some others have said is basically the same style as the Classic Albums series. It's an hour long, but the bonus features run a total of forty or so minutes - which really adds value to the release. I immediately went to check out the newly rediscovered song recorded during the album sessions: "She Smells So Nice." Don't expect much if you haven't heard it yet, but it was still a fun piece of history to hear. It's basically a blues jam with what sounds like improvised lyrics (with unfortunate distortion marring the vocal track).

But the main documentary goes through the album, song by song (minus "L'America" for some weird reason), with the surviving Doors offering lots of interesting anecdotes. They also - separately - play their individual parts for some of the songs, which is cool. Producer Bruce Botnick isolates separate tracks from the master tapes - allowing the viewer to hear portions of some songs with just one instrument,...

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