The Doors song that drove away their producer
While Jim Morrison stood trial for his notorious incident during The Doors’ 1969 concert in Miami, guitarist Robby Krieger had work on his mind. Just because their singer was stuck in the courthouse didn’t mean that The Doors could slow down – they had the studio booked for November of 1970. As one of the band’s primary songwriters, Krieger would have to produce something for the group when they started recording.
Krieger wound up composing ‘Love Her Madly’ in the weeks prior to the start of the L.A. Woman sessions. But it wasn’t divine inspiration. “To be honest? I was bored,” Krieger told Classic Rock in 2011 about the song’s genesis. “I knew we’d have to get back in the studio, so I went and bought a new guitar – an acoustic Gibson 335 12-string. One day I was strumming the new purchase and I stumbled over a nice riff and some shuffle chords, and Love Her Madly started to take shape.”
Inspired by the fights that he would have with his then-girlfriend and later wife Lynn, Krieger penned a jazzy song that was softer than most of the band’s previous material. The Doors had just come off the bluesy Morrison Hotel, and most of L.A. Woman would reflect that sound… with the exception of ‘Love Her Madly’.
“It was an easy-listening song, but Jim loved that; he liked to croon. When he wanted to he could sing like Frank Sinatra, who he listened to a lot,” Krieger added. “Jim always told me: ‘Put in something that makes the listener confused,'” said Krieger. “It didn’t mean much – seven horses were like a lucky omen. Jim liked horse racing from his Florida days. The bit about ‘seem to be on the mark’ simply fitted the military rhythm.”
However, the lighter tones of ‘Love Her Madly’ weren’t embraced by everyone. Producer Paul Rothchild, who had produced all of the band’s previous five albums, was put out by the band’s stylistic shift. “It was early on in the L.A. Woman sessions. Paul heard ‘Riders On The Storm’ and ‘Love Her Madly’ and dropped his bombshell: ‘I am not going to produce this! It’s cocktail music!’ The story goes that he’d just finished Janis Joplin’s Pearl album, and she died in early October.”
“A few days later he sees Jim in bad shape and thinks: ‘This is all going the same way’. He thought we were on the way down, and didn’t want to be dragged along,” Krieger added. “But Jim was very much alive then, so I don’t know his real reasoning.”
“That’s exactly the song I was talking about that I said sounded like cocktail music,” Rothchild told BAM magazine after the fact. “That’s the song that drove me out of the studio. That it sold a million copies means nothing to me. It’s still bad music.”
Check out ‘Love Her Madly’ down below.
