DoorsFanPeter, on 14 July 2011 - 05:58 PM, said:
Are the Rothschild sessions expolored indepth thru thoughts from Paul via archival audio & print interivews or will they be quickly glazed over with a quick quotes from Band/Bruce?
Good question. Rothchild goes into detail in the BAM interview. He seems to have had some sour grapes due to the success of the LA Woman album if you read between his drama queen lines.
http://archives.wait...hchild_bam.html
Quote
BAM: You were trying to make a point earlier about L.A. Woman and Riders on the Storm. I'd like to get back to that.
PR: Okay, we're back at L.A. Woman. Let's put this in my career perspective. I had close to 100 LP's under my belt. I had just finished making one of the greatest albums of my career, a labor of total love by the most loving and dedicated musicians I'd ever worked with. I'm talking about Janis Joplin's Pearl album. That music was full of heart, the way it's supposed to be in the studio. You got 110 percent from everyone in the band, and 150 percent from Janis.
That's the setting for this story about L.A. Woman:
I went into rehearsals with the Doors for about a month. They were set up in the basement of their offices on Santa Monica Blvd. But it was a joke! They'd come straggling in. Jim wouldn't even show up half the time. There was no enthusiasm at all. They were drugged on their own boredom. Just totally bummed out. Ray would try to get things together. He has this great enthusiasm! Still does. I love that man! John was really ANGRY about Jim's attitude, and Robbie sort of laughed at it and said, "That's Jim!"
It wasn't just Jim, though. They'd all been lazy. They only had four or five songs that were even defined enough to play as songs at that point. The most complete were L.A. Woman and Riders on the Storm, both of which I thought were great, great songs. My problem was I couldn't get them to play either of them decently. It was like trying to watch an 80 year old man trying to run the marathon. There was simply NOTHING THERE. There was NO energy. They couldn't have played Stormy Weather. Their heart wasn't in it, and it was easy to see why. JIM'S heart wasn't in it.
We rehearsed and rehearsed, but it didn't get any better. Finally I said, "Let's go in the studio. We've got to make a record sometime." I figured I'd be able to do it like the last few - patch together the best stuff. Ray would be a great cheerleader, and we'd finally get this thing going.
Well, we went in the studio, and it was DREADFUL. Wall to wall boredom. Jim wasn't into it at all. He'd get into his spoiled brat thing, and drag everything down deliberately. It was the military kid showing his father what a punk he could be. It was that simple.
I worked my ass off for a week, but it was still just fucking awful. I'd go into them and TELL them that, hoping that it would make them angry enough to do something good: "This isn't rock 'n' roll, it's cocktail lounge music!" But they just didn't have the heart any more. You know, it got so bad that for the first time in my career, I found myself drifting off to sleep, putting my head on the console and nodding off. It was just BAD. capital B, capital A, capital D, capital D, BADD!
I finally turned to Bruce Botnick and said, "I know another producer would stick with this because it's a quarter of a million dollars for the producer, but I can't do it. The reason I went into production was I loved music. But I cannot prostitute myself. This is whoring."
I went into the studio finally and said, "Guys, I think the best thing that could happen is for me to leave, because you've become too reliant on me to come up with the energy and the ideas and the direction, and I just don't want to do it anymore. The only way you'll survive is if you make this record yourself. You'll have to generate the enthusiasm and the brilliance." They freaked. Robbie got pale. Ray sat down heavily. Jim turned around and walked to the other side of the studio. John looked like he was going to have a coronary. "What are we going to do", they asked. I said, "You've seen how I work. Bruce has seen me do it for years. Use that as a jumping-off point and make your own Doors record. Because, if I put together what we've got and presented it to a record company, we couldn't even get a deal."
We said a very warm and tender and loving goodbye and I left. I'm still dear friends with them. If Jim were still alive, we'd still be making poetry records together.
The Doors did go on to produce their own record with Bruce, and from it came two excellent cuts - L.A. Woman and Riders on the Storm, the two that had been excellent in rehearsal. As far as I'm concerned you can take the entire rest of the record and throw it in the garbage can. I think it's terrible.'
BAM: Love Her Madly was not one of their better singles, I agree.
PR: That's exactly the song I was talking about that I said sounded like cocktail music. THAT'S the song that drove me out of the studio. That it sold a million copies means nothing to me. It's still bad music.
Edited by hardrockcafe, 14 July 2011 - 11:31 PM.
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