The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman
by Kevin Wierzbicki
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Usually thought of as the band's finest work, L.A. Woman was also the last Doors album to feature Jim Morrison, who died a few months after the album's release. This documentary offers a track-by-track dissection of the album presented by surviving Doors Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore along with insiders like Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman, producer Bruce Botnick and rock DJ Jim Ladd. Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore talk about how they adjusted their playing styles to suit the album's blues-flavored material but the most interesting aspect of the film is how many of the songs, in retrospect, presaged the end of the band. Morrison announced during the mixing of the album that he was going to relocate to Paris to rest and write and at the time the band assumed Morrison was just going on hiatus; now it seems obvious he was saying goodbye or signaling an ending in songs like "The Changeling" and "L.A. Woman." At this point no one will ever know if this is merely conjecture but the insiders seem to concur that Morrison was well aware that L.A. Woman was going to be the last of his work with the Doors. Snippets of live performance and rehearsal are included along with a little in-interview riffing by the surviving band members but it is not the focus of Mr. Mojo Risin' (the title is an anagram of "Jim Morrison") to present the already very well known music of the Doors. An exception is found in the bonus feature segment of the DVD and Blu-ray where the "newly discovered" song "She Smells So Nice" is presented while a photo montage plays as a slideshow.
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The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman
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