Waiting for the Sun

The Doors' success hardly encouraged them to abandon their try-anything ethos. And while Waiting for the Sun, their third album, was the first not to feature a 10-minute-plus epic, it nonetheless was redolent of adventure. Sun, though more compact, still felt (and feels) like a major statement. Jim Morrison's political bent is at its most explicit, though like his L.A.-rock peer Arthur Lee, he questions both the prosecution of the Vietnam War ("The Unknown Soldier") and the hippie ethos ("Five to One," with its sneer at San Francisco panhandlers "tradin' (their) hours for a handful of dimes"). The band pushes forward with treks into bouncy pop ("Hello, I Love You," "We Could Be So Good Together"), ever-hardening rock ("Five to One") and a range of pieces ("Spanish Caravan," "Yes, the River Knows") that show off a command of moods that few mainstream bands of the era possessed. The Doors, it turned out, had proved only the beginning of their moment.