L.A. Women – The Doors

“L.A. Woman” – Song by the Doors from the album L.A. Woman. Released on April 19, 1971.
Recorded between December 1970 – January 1971.

The song is the title track of their 1971 album L.A. Woman, the final album to feature Jim Morrison before his death on July 3, 1971.

“Mr. Mojo Risin'” is an anagram for “Jim Morrison.” He repeats the phrase at the end of the song faster and faster to simulate orgasm. Early blues musicians often referred to their “Mojo,” like in the Muddy Waters song “Got My Mojo Working.”

A mojo is a Hoodoo charm, usually a bag filled with items like roots, lodestone, rattlesnake rattles, alligator teeth, charms, coins – whatever does the trick. Different bags would be used for different purposes: If the bag were red, it would be a mojo for love and you would have to put a personal item, such as hair or bit of clothing in order for the mojo to work. If the mojo were made out of a black bag it would be for death. Many white listeners, including Jim Morrison, thought mojo meant sexual energy, and that is how it’s usually interpreted today, in part due to Austin Powers movies.

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The Doors - L.A. Woman

The Doors - L.A. Woman07:48

Keyboardist Ray Manzarek explained the song’s meaning to Uncut magazine September 2011: “A song about driving madly down the LA freeway – either heading into LA or going out on the 405 up to San Francisco. You’re a beatnik on the road, like Kerouac and Neal Cassady, barreling down the freeway as fast as you can go.”

Morrison recorded his vocals in the studio bathroom to get a fuller sound. He spent a lot of time in there anyway because of all the beer he drank during the sessions.
The Doors performed this live only once, in Dallas at the State Fair Music Hall on December 11, 1970. The only live recording of this is on the bootleg If It Ain’t One Thing, It’s Another. The band wanted to bring more musicians along to simulate the studio sound, but Morrison died before they could launch the tour.

Morrison got the idea for the “City of Night” lyric from John Rechy’s 1963 book of the same name. The book describes a sordid world of sexual perversion, which Morrison translated to Los Angeles.