“I am the Lizard King, I can do anything”. – Jim Morrison
Except ensure that the creation of this album went smoothly apparently.
The Doors 3rd album, Waiting for the Sun, began a 4-week run at #1 in the US beginning on August 17th 1968, largely on the success of their second #1 single, “Hello, I Love You”. But it was not an easy trip getting there.
1968 marked the beginning of a somewhat creatively challenging period, starting with this record and continuing on the following record, The Soft Parade, in 1969. Jim Morrison’s drinking was a big issue at the time of creating Waiting for the Sun, and was so bad that drummer John Densmore threatened to quit. Outside of Morrison’s behavior, another roadblock was that the group had purged and used up almost all of Morrison’s early material on their first two records. When it came time to record this one, there was a dearth of material, “Hello, I Love You” and “Summers Almost Gone” being a couple exceptions as those came from Morrison’s fruitful pre-1966 writing period.
Also, the centerpiece of the album was supposed to be a 15+ minute performance piece, "Celebration of the Lizard"….composed as a series of poems, they include musical sections, spoken verse and passages of allegorical storytelling which was intended to be one entire side of the record. However they could never get the recording right, and other than ‘Not to Touch the Earth”, the idea was scrapped for the album. A live version of the entire piece would later appear on the band's 1970 album Absolutely Live.
Controversy and legal difficulties even plagued the recordings after release. “Hello I Love You” features a guitar riff similar to The Kinks ‘All Day and All of the Night”. Guitarist Robby Kreiger denied that the structure was stolen but a UK court ruled in the Kink’s Ray Davies’ favor, thus all royalties to “Hello” are to paid to Davies. Hello, he must really love that.
The album, while considered to be a step down from their first two, has still sold 9 million copies and has received mostly favorable reviews. I think this was the first Doors album I owned and “Hello” was the first Doors song I liked so while its not their finest work overall, it kind of holds a special place for me and has a few great tracks, 'Love Street' and 'Spanish Caravan', in particular.
