“L.A. Woman” by The Doors

"L.A. Woman" is the title track of the Doors' 1971 album, the last one they made with Jim Morrison before his death on July 3 of that year, and it roars out of the speakers like a convertible running every light on the boulevard. Morrison wrote the words, a portrait of Los Angeles itself, and growls them in a whiskey-cured bellow, while all four Doors share the music credit and ride a loose, rolling blues-rock groove that feels like it could go all night.

Robby Krieger and Marc Benno trade guitar licks, Jerry Scheff plays bass, John Densmore keeps it rattling on drums and Ray Manzarek's keyboard glitters all over the top. Bruce Botnick produced it with the band, and it sounds like the room was hot.

Krieger has often called it the quintessential Doors song, and in 2014 LA Weekly named it the best song ever written about the city. In 1985, fourteen years after Morrison died, Manzarek directed a video for it, produced by Rick Schmidlin, which ran on MTV and turned up in the Doors film Dance on Fire.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.