L.A. Woman

The title track of the last album with Morrison is the lengthiest song on the album and is thought of as his farewell to Los Angeles before he left for Paris. The lyrics draw on John Rechy's 1963 novel City of Night, and the city is personified as a woman. In the bridge Morrison repeats Mr. Mojo Risin', an anagram of Jim Morrison. Densmore recalled that after they recorded the song Morrison wrote the phrase on a board and showed him the anagram. Densmore knew mojo as a sexual term from the blues, and that gave him the idea of playing slow and dark and then gradually speeding up. Krieger's electric guitar at the start imitates an accelerating car engine.

It was recorded on blues day at the Workshop, with Marc Benno on rhythm guitar and Jerry Scheff on bass. Manzarek played Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes pianos. Krieger has repeatedly called it the quintessential Doors song. The Guardian ranked it eighth among their songs in 2021 and described a loose, rambunctious mood. In 2014 LA Weekly named it the best song ever written about Los Angeles. In 1985 Manzarek directed a music video for it, produced by Rick Schmidlin, that aired on MTV. Billy Idol recorded it for Charmed Life in 1990, and his single reached number 52 on the Hot 100. David Quantick of the BBC wrote in 2012 that the original is so brilliant it forms the chassis of Billy Idol's White Wedding.

Live

The band played it at the Dallas shows of 11 December 1970, where the set also included The Changeling, and it is logged in six setlists in all.