Artist: Doors, The
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 1968
Duration: 32.49
Rating: 3.5/5
Already boasting two hugely popular albums, The Doors found themselves under heavy pressure while making their third, Waiting For The Sun. Their demanding audience wanted a “hit” from them on one hand, and an artistic statement on the other, and so The Doors got caught between two poles. They’d already used up most of their material on the first two albums, so they had to find the results in the studio, and you can clearly hear it in the quality of the album itself.
So the hit everybody was so impatiently waiting for finally arrived, with “Hello I Love You”, sitting right at track one. The worn-out melody and trivial lyrics brought The Doors a big success, sure, but they also buried the intellectual image they’d built with the previous two albums. On top of that, plenty of critics claimed the melody was lifted from “All Day and All of the Night” by the legendary The Kinks. It’s true that The Doors were fans of The Kinks, but any resemblance was pure coincidence. The album’s themes mostly revolve around love. Winter love, summer love, wild love, our love, love street, like The Doors themselves had finally given in to the hippie influence that was spreading so fast at the time. The disappointment gets even bigger when you compare the album with its predecessors, which radiate originality, tons of imagination and, above all, feel like a whole that makes sense. That’s exactly what you miss most on Waiting for the sun. Morrison’s voice is nicer and more under control, no doubt, but it simply doesn’t pull us in the way the first two albums did. What makes matters worse is that for the first time we get the feeling that even for The Doors, with all their inventiveness, the limits of creativity are not endless.
The album is gentler and more romantic, and definitely not what critics and fans expected from the band. That they’re still the old Doors is mostly evident from three typical tracks: Morrison’s first truly political, anti-war piece “The Unknown Solider”, where they staged the part in which the soldier waits for the firing squad so that Krieger’s guitar stood in for the rifle firing a “sonic bullet” and Morrison dropped to the floor at the shot; the even more revolutionary “Five to one” with its excellent blues riff, a quiet call to arms for the young; and “Not to touch the Earth”, which is just a short insert from the 133-line composition titled “The Celebration of the Lizard”. The latter shows Morrison’s eternal longing to be recognized as a poet and not just a rock star. “Spanish Caravan” might stand out too, where Krieger’s acoustic guitar with a Latin flavor and images of Romani life leave an impression, along with ” My Wild Love”, backed by chanting and rhythmic clapping, with quiet murmuring creating a spooky backdrop. The ballads deserve a smaller mention: “Love Street”, the lament “Sumer’s Almost Gone”, which flows into “Wintertime Love”, and “Yes, The River Knows” with its excellent jazzy guitar bit, plus “We Could Be So Good Together”, which honestly isn’t anything special apart from its provocative lyrics.
For some this is still an excellent album, but it hit real The Doors fans hard with disappointment. It’s also true that most of the songs were recorded in a big hurry and in really difficult circumstances, since Morrison’s drinking and drug use were becoming less and less bearable. That’s how Krieger started taking on the main role in the band, which is definitely very noticeable.
Line-up
Jim Morrison: vocals
Robby Krieger: guitar
Ray Manzarek: keyboards
John Densmore: drums
Production
Paul A. Rothchild
Track list
1.Hello I Love You
2.Love Street
3.Not To Touch The Earth
4.Summer’s Almost Gone
5.Wintertime Love
6.The Unkonown Soldier
7.Spanish Caravan
8.My Wild Love
9.We Could Be So Good Together
10.Yes, The River Knows
11.Five to one
