The Doors
Waiting For the Sun

*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 3 times lightly at the start of track 1 on side 2, "Spanish Caravan."

This vintage Elektra pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Waiting For the Sun Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1968
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

We Love This Music

My favorite of the first three Doors albums (maybe -- the first album is awfully good, I might have to rethink that ranking), Waiting for the Sun is imbued with more mystery and lyricism than any of the band's previous efforts. The album shows them maturing as a band, smoking large amounts of pot and preparing for the even wilder ride of their next opus, the ambitious Soft Parade.

Actually, as I listen to this album it reminds me more and more of the follow-up. Now that it sounds as good as The Soft Parade (a record I have an amazing pressing of on the rare brown label), I find I've gained a new respect for Waiting.

I started playing these albums when I was in high school on my 8-track tape player. When I got seriously into audio sometime in the 70s, I tried every kind of record I could get my hands on -- Brits, Germans, Japanese, originals, reissues -- but no matter what I did, I couldn't find good sounding pressings of The Doors albums. They sounded terrible for the most part and I just assumed the band -- like so many 60s artists -- had been poorly recorded.

Then in the early 80s the MoFi of the first album came out. It sounded amazing to me (at the time). Ten or so years later the DCC pressing came along and murdered it.

Now we've come full circle -- back to the real thing. I -- and no doubt you -- found out the hard way: there is no substitute for a vintage pressing.

What We're Listening For On Waiting For The Sun

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt -- Bruce Botnick in this case -- would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Track Commentary

The Tracklist tab above will take you to a select song breakdown for each side, with plenty of What to Listen For advice. Other records with track breakdowns can be found here.

A Must Own Rock Record

This is a recording that should be part of any serious rock collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

• Hello, I Love You
• Love Street
• Not To Touch The Earth

Listen to the hard rockin' duel between the keyboards (left channel) and the guitar (right channel) in the middle of the song. Morrison is screaming is head off and Densmore is really slamming on the drums. There's a HUGE amount of information in the grooves there, and only the best copies will be open and spacious enough to not get a bit congested.

• Summer's Almost Gone

On a Hot Stamper copy, this song is tubey magical analog at its best -- warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied.

• Wintertime Love
• The Unknown Soldier

Side Two

• Spanish Caravan
• My Wild Love
• We Could Be So Good Together

This song is a bit midrangy on every last copy we've played, but on a Hot Stamper copy it still can sound wonderful.

• Yes, The River Knows

This song is the best test for transparency and bass definition on side two. You should be able to hear the bassist really pulling on the strings and sliding his fingers up and down the fretboard.

• Five to One

In his review of the 2007 reissue, Sal Cinquemani of Slant wrote "Despite the fact that Morrison was becoming a self-destructing mess, Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore were never more lucid – perhaps to compensate. This was a band at its most dexterous, creative, and musically diverse ..."

With the massive success of the single "Light My Fire" and their initial two albums, L.A.'s the Doors quickly built a sizable reputation for edgy, often over-the-top musical drama. Perhaps wary of stereotyping, or simply worn out from their grueling early success, the band took a decided left turn into softer sounds here, from the pop-drenched "Hello, I Love You" to the flamenco guitar wash of "Spanish Caravan." Even gentle ballads (by the band's standards, anyway) were a part of the Doors' new sensibility, as witnessed by "Love Street" and "Summer's Almost Gone."

But lest one think the band had gone a little too soft, the antiwar diatribe "The Unknown Soldier," the edgy "Five to One," and the deliciously strange "Not to Touch the Earth" were there to remind listeners that even if the band had mellowed a bit, they were still a long way from Jay and the Americans.

- Jerry McCulley