The Doors – Waiting for the Sun
The Doors released their third album on this day in 1968. Given the success of their first two releases, The Doors and Strange Days (both from ’67), expectations were high among fans and critics. While received fairly well, Waiting for the Sun was still considered a bit of a let down after the band had blasted onto the scene the year before.
Due to the amount of time the Doors were spending on the road and doing TV appearances, they had a relative shortage of material to record. Some songs on the album were the last of the leftovers from Jim Morrison’s compositions which landed on the first two releases, and they intended to compensate for the dearth of new material with a long piece titled The Celebration of the Lizard. That track was a collection of song fragments with Morrison’s lyrics, but the band failed to achieve a satisfactory recording so it was left off the album. Oddly, the solid title track was also left off and later used on the 1970 Morrison Hotel record.
The result was a good but not great album, including the band’s second #1, Hello, I Love You. To me, it’s an enjoyable listen all the way through without any clunkers, although the standouts are obvious. Robby Krieger’s flamenco and electric guitars on Spanish Caravan are among my favorite sounds on the album, and Morrison’s lyrics are worth another reading 50 years on. While songs such as Love Street lighten the vibe, the overall tone is even a little darker than on the first two albums (tracks such as The End from their debut notwithstanding), and Jim’s behavior was becoming more unpredictable on stage and off. The Doors were very active at this point, and we’ll hear from them again in these pages shortly.
Tracklist:
Side One:
- Hello, I Love You
- Love Street
- Not to Touch the Earth
- Summer’s Almost Gone
- Wintertime Love
- The Unknown Soldier
Side Two:
- Spanish Caravan
- My Wild Love
- We Could Be So Good Together
- Yes, the River Knows
- Five to One
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_the_Sun
-Stephen
50th Music Anniversaries and Other Musings 
I am not much of a Doors fan but I do own all their studio albums- so I guess I am at least a casual fan. Every album has at least a couple good songs on it- I was never a big fan of this one– their classics in my opinion their first album and their last album. In between uneven although I have to rank Strange Days ahead of the rest of the pack of the other albums. Never got the fascination with Jim Morrison. Poet? If he was a poet I am Lawrence Welk.
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Not a bad album but definitely not their best work. I prefer their first and last studio records. I don’t feel The Doors beat their own gems like “Light My Fire”, “The End” and “Riders On The Storm.”
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I like this album a lot Intro. In my travels i dont see these guys get a lot of love. J and I did a dual take on ‘Morrison Hotel a while back. It was a lot of fun.
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