I was never a Doors fan. I thought them a little too light, a little too pretentious. I mean, at the time I was into Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath. The Doors were almost "pop" by comparison.

But then they came out with L.A. Woman. I seem to remember someone telling me to listen to it and I didn't want to. I'd found "People Are Strange" and "Light My Fire" rather weak to tell the truth. Why would I want to listen to anything else by the "pretentious" Jim Morrison and his band? They'd never produced a half-decent guitar solo so I wasn't interested.

Happily, I relented and gave it a listen. I still regularly do so today. From the outset, the charging start that "The Changeling" gives to the album, I was surprised, my eyebrows going up so high they were almost higher than my rock-snobbishness, but I kept listening. Barely do you catch your breath before "Love Her Madly" wades in with still more tempo to "up the ante" as it were. 

Now I was beginning to tap my feet as I marvelled at the great starkness of this album. No over-production here. Just a bunch of guys getting it together in the studio. One thing I also never much liked about the Doors was the fact that they didn't have a bass player.  For me no rock song is complete without a great bass at the bottom of it. For this album the band had enlisted Jerry Scheff, who does a superb job all the way through, as does Marc Benno, who they brought in to add his bluesy guitar touch to the mix. But that's about it. There is "space" in the mix, similar to the way Free used to accomplish it, on such masterpieces as "Fire and Water." Why add brass and stuff when really bluesy music ought to sound forthright and "dirty." There is bluesy "dirt" by the bucket-load on L.A. Woman. You can pick an instrument and listen to it if you want, including Morrison's voice, which I'd never appreciated before. On this album it's nothing short of magnificent.

I was always a blues fan. I referred above to Led Zeppelin, who borrowed very heavily from the blues greats, and so I appreciate that there wouldn't be any "rock" without there first having been the blues. A lot of young music freaks like me in the 70's went back to John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Howling Wolf after hearing their songs, or their influence at any rate, in the work of the modern bands. L.A. Woman is almost entirely a blues album. A great electric blues album in fact.

"Been Down So Long," "Cars Hiss by my Window" and "Crawling King Snake" are perfect. I can grab my bass and play along with them today and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I have to admit to finding the lyrics to "Riders on the Storm" a bit weak in places, but this is still a blues song deep down. And the lyrical weakness is more than compensated for by the overall atmospheric groove it creates. The production is a little more extravagant here, but it works as it flows over you deliciously.

One of the reasons why I still play this album a lot is the sheer simplicity of it. By "simplicity" I only refer to the plain production. Not the playing. I love Robbie Kreiger's aggressive guitar solos, the staccato organ playing on Manzarak, and the fact that there's a fab bass groove going on under it all.

The cover of the 12 inch always annoyed me though. That see-thru yellow bit and the rounded corners didn't do it for me. But who cares? These days I play it on an MP3 CD and never look at the cover anyway. 

I have to admit to still not having checked out any other Doors albums. I never even saw the movie. I suppose I still don't consider myself a Doors fan. Maybe I'm a bit frightened that they'll disappoint me after L.A. Woman. If you want to make a suggestion, if you think I'll be pleasantly surprised, go ahead!