The Doors LA Woman – the title cut from the album that sold a kazillion was apparently recorded in a house in LA, with Jim Morrison sitting in the bathroom (good echo) doing the vocals as the band was pitched around the room just outside.
For years I thought that the first line was “Well I did a little down about an hour ago.” Downers being the nickname for the original mother of all downers the ROHR 714 Quaalude. When I lived in LA a friend turned me on to a doctor in Compton who saw like 75 patients right in a row and would prescribe 30 Quaaludes and 30 Desoxym an ass kicking methamphetamine, for the office visit fee. (No Dr. Obama – no health insurance accepted.)
You’d have to get there early enough to get in line to make the first 75, which snaked out the door and down the street. I did this little journey twice, both times making the cut. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone, since you’d be in line with 74 other hippies, mostly white, to see a black doctor in Compton. As we stood there cop cars pulled up both times and cops leaped out and started taking photographs of us with those big crime scene cameras – flashbulbs – the whole deal.
Of course, at least 75 of us had weed in our pocket, and we nearly had heart attacks being stoned and photographed by the police! But, we maintained our ranks, and the cops left. (God I’d give anything to have an 8X10 glossy black and white photograph of of me in that line! I wonder what I was wearing? The Jimi Hendrix striped pants? Tie Dye T Shirt?)
When you finally got up to see the doctor, they took you into the next open room and weighed you and took your blood pressure. Then the doctor came in smiling and shook your hand and sat down. He was totally mellow (wonder why) and in a sort of dreamy voice he would say “well why are you here today?” Now, all morning you’d been wondering how this would go, since pharmaceutical drugs were hard to find, and prescribing them like this was totally illegal, and the whole scenario seemed made up the first time you hear it. But, I was prepped by the best and the hippiest and said, “doc, I’m having trouble sleeping and I need to lose weight.”
Now, I’m 22 years old, lean as a #2 pencil, and do not need to lose an ounce, and realistically sleeplessness is a more complex problem, but he said, “okay, I’m going to prescribe you Quaalude for the sleep and Desoxyn for the weight loss.” And proceeded to write out the prescription on his RX pad.
The pads were “sponsored by” a pharmacy a few miles away, so my friend I’d come with and I just went to the nearest drugstore and handed the prescriptions to the pharmacist. He yelled at us to get the hell out of his store and threw the prescriptions back at us. I don’t know if the words hippie scum or quack were actually used that day – but let’s assume so. Suffice it to day, this guy was not in on the fun!
The author - resting.
That night – the women flocked to the house on the beach with the band who started the day with 60 quaaludes and a serious party broke out. Women love Quaaludes. It was like having the only pack of cigarettes in a federal prison – we were Gods.
What I learned from this experience the most was that I hated speed. We took the desoxyn one night and drove drove straight through from LA to Reno Nevada talking 200 miles per hour with the worst case of cotton mouth I’d ever known, and nearly giving myself TMJ from clenching my teeth while my friend talked. Burned out and hungover – I gave the rest away and never touched uppers the rest of my life. I’m decisive like that.
Sometimes I see people going really fast today – hyper and over-amped – and I wonder…
Oh, the actual lyric in the song is “Well I just got into town about an hour ago.” No downer. Must have been pretty mumbly there in the bathroom.
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