Elektra 74024
Producer: Paul A. Rothchild
Track listing: Hello, I Love You / Love Street / Not to Touch the Earth / Summer’s Almost Gone / Wintertime Love / The Unknown Soldier / Spanish Caravan / My Wild Love / We Could So Good Together / Yes, the River Knows / Five to One
September 7, 1968
4 weeks (nonconsecutive)
When the Doors entered the studio in early 1968, the band “hit the third wall,” said producer Paul A. Rothchild. The Los Angeles band’s 1967 self-titled debut album, which featured the Number One hit “Light My Fire,” was recorded in mere days. Strange Days, the followup album released later that year, took about two months. Then came Waiting the Sun, which could have been called Waiting for Jim, as Doors frontman Jim Morrison “frequently didn’t show up or showed up late, drunk or uninspired,” Rothchild said.
In a short 12 months, Morrison had become a rock star and sex symbol and he was beginning to feel trapped by his image. “He was getting tired of the rock star trip,” said Rothchild. “With that much fame, he figured, ‘I am the Lizard King, I can do anything,'” as Morrison himself stated at the end of “Not to Touch the Earth.” Morrison frequently showed up stoned with various hangers-on in tow. Drummer John Densmore got disgusted that at one point he quit the band, only to return to the studio next day. As manager Bill Siddons noted, “Jim’s unpredictable behavior was wearing everyone out.”
Morrison’s inner struggle, coupled with the band’s shortage of new material and Rothchild’s perfectionist tendencies, made the sessions difficult. “It didn’t have the ease that the other records had,” said Rothchild. “Most of it was invented in the studio. They were digging for tunes.”
“Five to One” came together from studio jam, with Morrison chanting his lyrics over Densmore’s 4/4 beat, while Robbie Krieger and Ray Manzarek improvised guitar and keyboard parts, respectively.
Yet other songs were extremely tedious to record. Part of “The Unknown Soldier” took up to 60 takes to complete. The track, which Rothchild said was “pieced together in sections like a film,” was Morrison’s first overtly political song.
“Hello, I Love You” showed the other side of the Doors. The song was discovered by Rothchild after he asked the band if they had any songs that they thought “were not worthy of their dignity.” When Densmore brought up the title, Morrison cringed. “Jim said, ‘It’s just a dumb little song I wrote out in Venice one day when I saw this black chick walk by,”‘ Rothchild recalled. “He sang the song and when they hit the chorus the first time, I shit in my pants. I said, ‘That’s a Number One record.”‘
With a little studio wizardry and experimenting, including a middle section in which Rothchild stacked 10 different recordings of Krieger’s guitar recorded different speeds, the song was completed. Rothchild’s hunch proved to to be correct, as “Hello, I Love You” became the Doors’ second Number One single on August 3, 1968.
Just over a month later, Waiting for the Sun would become the Doors’ first and only Number One album. Said Rothchild of the difficult sessions, “We knew where the end of the maze was. Sometimes we would rattle around inside, but we knew we would come out the other end.”
Yet three years later, Morrison’s self- destructive behavior took its final toll. On July 2, 1971, he was found dead in bathtub in Paris. Medical officials said Morrison, 27, died of a heart attack. He may have suspected his fate as early as Waiting for Sun, as he sung in “Five to One”: “No one here gets out alive.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of September 7, 1968
1. Waiting for the Sun, The Doors
2. Time Peace/ Greatest Hits, The Rascals
3. Wheels of Fire, Cream
4. Feliciano!, Jose Feliciano
5. Realization, Johnny Rivers