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The Doors
Waiting for the Sun
(Elektra/Rhino)
First Appeared in The Music Box, June 2007, Volume 14, #6
Written by John Metzger
From a commercial perspective, Waiting for the Sun, The Doors’ third
outing, accomplished its goals. It was, after all, the band’s first #1 album;
likewise, Hello, I Love You returned the group to the top of the singles
chart for the first time since Light My Fire. After the release of Oliver
Stone’s biopic about the ensemble, the set obtained a momentary boost in stature
when the director not only had recognized the possibilities that lurked within
it but also had used its songs to boost the visual impact of his film. Since
then, however, Waiting for the Sun quietly has come back down to Earth,
and in doing so, it has regained the distinction of being the most frustrating
effort within The Doors’ canon because it contains such an overwhelming amount
of unrealized potential.
The preceding year had been a whirlwind of change for The Doors. The group
had gone from being a mainstay of Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip to having a national
profile. The recording of two albums combined with a relentless touring and
publicity schedule as well as front man Jim Morrison’s increasingly excessive
drinking had begun to take its toll on the outfit. Wanting to concoct an epic
tune along the lines of The End and When the Music’s Over, the
band pushed itself too hard to finish The Celebration of the Lizard. When
the recording sessions began to drag, The Doors scrapped its plans completely,
salvaged Not to Touch the Earth by paring it down to a four-minute
length, and rushed Waiting for the Sun to market. It’s no wonder that the
endeavor sounded so unfocused and scattered.
As the "work-in-progress" rendition of The Celebration of the Lizard —
which is featured on the recent reissue of Waiting for the Sun — makes
clear, The Doors made the right decision to jettison its development of the
poem. It was, in effect, an extension of the concepts explored on Horse
Latitudes — the same ones that would fill Morrison’s solo outing An
American Prayer — but it had spiraled out of control. Without the proper
time to groom the art-rock piece, it never would have worked, and under immense
pressure to finish the album, The Doors’ opportunities were evaporating quickly.
The abandonment of The Celebration of the Lizard, however, exacerbated
the general problems that plagued Waiting for the Sun in general. By
hastily assembling the remaining recordings in its arsenal, the group wound up
with an outing that was considerably less cohesive than Strange Days or
its self-titled debut had been. Instead of making smooth transitions from one
song to the next with an interconnected stream of thought that bound its
contents together, the set largely consisted of song pairings. Love Street
answered Hello, I Love You; Summer’s Almost Gone slipped
seamlessly into Wintertime Love; and the call-to-arms in Five to One
was a response to the antiwar statement outlined in the theatrical refrains of
The Unknown Soldier.
Buried within the new version of Waiting for the Sun are hints of the
magnificent and powerful statement that the album could have been. In the proper
context, The Celebration of the Lizard’s tale of a "mass exodus from
modern civilization" — an idea that is echoed musically in My Wild Love’s
tribal chant — not only would have flourished, but it also would have turned the
outing into a true, final chapter in The Doors’ opening trilogy. In its
scattered state, however, The Doors’ notion of breaking free from reality to
achieve a society that was filled with people who had reached a higher state of
consciousness remained lost, having never found its way to the other side of Strange Days’ disorienting textures. 
Waiting for the Sun is available from Amazon.com.
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This album is also included
in the Perception boxed set, which
is available from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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