L.A. Woman (The Song)

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

L.A. Woman
Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in thier Hollywood bungalows
are you a lucky little lady in The City of Lights
Or just another lost angel...City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woo, c'mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
Drive thru your suburbs
Into your blues, into your blues, yeah
Into your blue-blue Blues
Into your blues, ohh, yeah

I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnite alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone
Motel Money Murder Madness
Let's change the mood from glad to sadness

Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Got to keep on risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mojo Risin', gotta Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', gotta keep on risin'
Risin', risin'
Gone risin', risin'
I'm gone risin', risin'
I gotta risin', risin'
Well, risin', risin'
I gotta, wooo, yeah, risin'
Woah, ohh yeah

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in thier Hollywood bungalows
are you a lucky little lady in The City of Lights
Or just another lost angel...City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woah, c'mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman
L.A. Woman, your my woman
Little L.A. Woman, Little L.A. Woman
L.A. L.A. Woman Woman
L.A. Woman c'mon

Jim Morrison used "City of Night" John Rechy's 1963 novel for inspiration.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

To me, LA Woman is one of the true Doors songs. One day we just started playing. I don't remember how it started but it just kept evolving. Jim made up the words as we went along and the song just grew. Without the luxury of playing it live on stage.
A true group effort.
Robby Krieger


LA WOMAN :
One of my faves.
When I crawled back the next day after throwing my sticks, I couldn't give up grooves like on "LA Woman."
The groove was just it for me.
It's the feel, feel.
The whole album , the vocals are raw, it's just the ...guts. LA Woman was done on 8 track.
The album before, Morrison Hotel, was done on 16 and we wanted to get more raw, and so we forced ourselves into using less tracks 'cause we wanted to do it in our rehearsal room where we were more relaxed, and it paid off.

John Densmore Interview Rhythm & News Magazine 1995

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

More handwritten LA Woman

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The lyric may well have evolved during the LAW session but parts of it also came from Jim's poetry such as this one from #99 of Wilderness.

She’s selling news in the market
Time in the hall
The girls of the factory
Rolling cigars
They haven’t invented musak yet
So I read to them
From The BOOK OF DAYS
a horror story from the Gothic age
a gruesome romance
From the LA
Plague.

I have a vision of America
Seen from the air
28,000 ft. & going fast

A one-armed man in a Texas
parking labyrinth
A burnt tree like a giant primeval bird
in an empty lot in Fresno
Miles & miles of hotel corridors
& elevators, filled w/ citizens

Motel Money Murder Madness
Change the mood from glad to sadness
play the ghost song baby

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Ray Manzarek:
You arrive looking for a little girl in a Hollywood bungalow. Then it goes to half-time. Motels, money, murder, madness. Film noir L.A. You go through the back alleys of Hollywood, looking for drugs, witnessing a crime. Someone pulls out a roscoe and is blasting right between the eyes. They fall hard and fast, blood splashing everywhere. Then they shoulder the gun and get the fuck out of there. That's "L.A. Woman."

Robby Krieger:
We were never stupid enough to ask Jim what his lyrics meant. He never would have given a straight answer. The L.A. woman was the city itself. When he's talking about driving on the freeway, I always think about the intersection of the 405 and the 10. It was actually designed by a woman and it kind of opens up like a pair of legs.

John Densmore:
After we recorded the song, he wrote "Mr. Mojo Rising" on a board and said, "Look at this." He moves the letters around and it was an anagram for his name. I knew that mojo was a sexual term from the blues, and that gave me the idea to go slow and dark with the tempo. It also gave me the idea to slowly speed it up like an orgasm. The difficulty is that it's a seven-minute song, and at the end, I was trying to approximate the same tempo I did seven minutes earlier. I overshot it. It's faster at the end. But you know, sometimes you get excited when you have sex.

###Now this from Densmore is interesting as it is contradicted by the release of LAW 40 year which states that Jim FIRST sang "Mr. Mojo Rising" during Rock Me. We know they had a blackboard in the workshop as we can see it in the photos so this likely happened after Rock Me and NOT LA Woman.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It's interesting once again how a Doors song can evoke a reaction for something that is not there.
The infamous line
'took a little downer about an hour ago'
which is never sung in any of the versions of LAW that are available either studio or live and is never written down in any version of the Morrison lyrics available in an Official songbook or handwritten lyric.

Yet many fans believe that is what is not just said but meant. Just another example of the power of The Doors.

And this particular song book uses exactly that phrase here based on no evidence for it's existence at all.
Weird does not even begin to cover it.

Doors Keyboard Play-along Vol #11

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Page from the 1972 Doors Complete Songbook which shows the lyric to be 'Just got into town about an hour ago' and not 'took a little downer'.
It has been said on Doors forums that Morrison altered the lyric because he did not want to have a drug connection with LAW but the evidence for this argument is so far nonexistent.
Just one of many Doors Myths that have sprung up over the last 40 years.



Also the lyric in the 2003 book has 'with a little girl in a Hollywood bungalow' instead of 'where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows'.
Which to me shows that they just listened to the song and wrote the lyric as what it sounded like rather than bothered to find out the real lyric.

#Whilst it is true Jim does some drunken ad libbing on the Dallas 1970 version, most famously 'are you another dark witness, city of night' but he certainly does not do sing 'downer'.



1972 Doors Complete Songbook