By the Doors's third LP, the recording of which commenced less than a year after the release of their debut, the band had run out of songs and Jim Morrison was often drunk or absent from the studio. Three songs were composed solely by guitarist Robby Krieger (who had penned the Doors's biggest hit, "Light My Fire"), and, like their sophomore effort, other tracks were leftovers from previous sessions. You can instantly recognize Krieger's contributions due to their unabashed romanticism and the absence of Morrison's cynicism ("Wintertime winds blow cold this season/Fallin' in love I'm hopin' to be!" goes the impossibly gushy first line of "Wintertime Love"), while "We Could Be So Good Together" is categorically pre-fame Morrison ("The time you wait subtracts from joy" is the kind of hippie idealism he'd long given up on).
With the radio-friendly "Hello, I Love You" as its first single (another song mined from the band's catalog of unreleased songs), Waiting for the Sun appeared to many as the Doors's attempt to regain the success they'd enjoyed prior to the remarkable but difficult Strange Days. Despite its trippy undertones and frenzied climax (heightened further by Morrison's previously unheard screams on the newly expanded version of the CD), the song was innocuous enough to score the band its second—and last—#1 single, as well as their only chart-topping LP. The album is home to some of the Doors's prettiest, most genial lilts: "Love Street," a fictionalized sketch of the Bohemian street where Morrison lived with his wife, Pamela Courson; the wistful "Summer's Almost Gone," which includes the lovely refrain, "Morning found us calmly unaware/Noon burned gold into our hair"; and the placid piano ballad "Yes, The River Knows." More and more, Morrison was starting to emulate one of his idols, Frank Sinatra—after all, they had an insatiable taste for women and alcohol in common.
With the radio-friendly "Hello, I Love You" as its first single (another song mined from the band's catalog of unreleased songs), Waiting for the Sun appeared to many as the Doors's attempt to regain the success they'd enjoyed prior to the remarkable but difficult Strange Days. Despite its trippy undertones and frenzied climax (heightened further by Morrison's previously unheard screams on the newly expanded version of the CD), the song was innocuous enough to score the band its second—and last—#1 single, as well as their only chart-topping LP. The album is home to some of the Doors's prettiest, most genial lilts: "Love Street," a fictionalized sketch of the Bohemian street where Morrison lived with his wife, Pamela Courson; the wistful "Summer's Almost Gone," which includes the lovely refrain, "Morning found us calmly unaware/Noon burned gold into our hair"; and the placid piano ballad "Yes, The River Knows." More and more, Morrison was starting to emulate one of his idols, Frank Sinatra—after all, they had an insatiable taste for women and alcohol in common.
