LA Woman

The release under review is LA Woman on Elektra, catalog number SWG 7513, pressed in Japan in 1971 as the first Victor issue of the album. This is the original Japanese domestic pressing, not a later reissue, and it carries the Victor Musical Industries distribution credit that distinguishes it from subsequent Japanese repressings. The SWG prefix and numbering place this firmly in the earliest wave of Japanese Elektra releases, and collectors tracking this specific catalog number will find it behaves very differently on the market than the more common later Japanese variants.

Physically, this pressing delivers what serious collectors expect from early 1970s Japanese vinyl production. The disc itself is cut on high-quality Japanese vinyl, noticeably heavier and quieter than the contemporaneous US Elektra pressings, with a surface noise floor that benefits the album's dense, blues-saturated production. The cover reproduces the iconic LA Woman artwork, the horizontal band of text and imagery that has come to define the album's visual identity, rendered with the precise ink registration Japanese pressings of this era routinely achieved. Sleeve construction is sturdy, with the kind of cardboard stock that holds its corners and seams decades later when stored properly. The spine text is in both English and Japanese, which is standard for Victor-distributed Elektra product from this period.

The most distinctive physical feature of this release is the inclusion of two separate obi strips. The first is a thin promotional strip marked with a 'NOW' designation, the kind of point-of-sale identifier that Japanese record shops used to flag new arrivals. The second is a Tribute release obi, acknowledging the context of Jim Morrison's death in July 1971, just months after the album's original issue, which gave this pressing an added resonance in the Japanese market. Both obis are notoriously fragile, and finding a copy with both intact and undamaged significantly affects collector value. The fold-out insert accompanying the record contains Japanese liner notes alongside the lyrics, printed on quality paper with a layout that complements rather than crowds the text. The liner notes are written in Japanese and provide commentary on the album and the band that was specifically commissioned for this release, not simply translated from the US version.

LA Woman was the sixth and final studio album completed with all four original Doors members, and this first Japanese Victor pressing captures the album in its intended sequence and track configuration. Side One runs through 'The Changeling,' 'Love Her Madly,' 'Been Down So Long,' 'Cars Hiss By My Window,' and the side-length title track. Side Two opens with 'L'America' and closes with 'Riders On The Storm,' the last track the band recorded together before Morrison's death. The sonic character of this pressing rewards careful listening; the low end on 'Crawling King Snake' and the ambient space around 'Riders On The Storm' are notably well-rendered compared to domestic US copies from the same year.

The SWG 7513 pressing occupies a specific and well-documented position among Japanese Doors releases. On Discogs, 141 collectors currently have it in their collections, against a want count of 885, a ratio that tells you immediately this one is harder to source than it is to want. The dual-obi configuration is what drives most of the collector interest; single-obi or obi-missing copies trade at a significant discount. Collectors building a comprehensive Japanese Doors catalog might also track down the Japanese pressings of The Doors debut and Strange Days from the same Victor-Elektra relationship, where similar quality standards and obi configurations apply.

The album's content needs no introduction to anyone reading this, but the specific sources here are the standard studio recordings from the sessions held partly at the Doors' own workshop space on Santa Monica Boulevard, with the rhythm section of Lonnie Mack and Marc Benno supplementing the core four. Nothing on this pressing is exclusive to this release in terms of alternate takes or bonus content; the value is entirely in the format, the pressing quality, and the physical presentation. For those assembling a full survey of Doors studio output on LP, The Doors Complete Studio Recordings box offers a different kind of completeness, but it cannot replicate what a first Japanese pressing of this caliber brings to the shelf or the turntable.

This is a genuinely desirable pressing for any serious Doors vinyl collector, not because it is exceptionally obscure, but because the combination of first-issue Victor distribution, high-quality Japanese vinyl, and the full dual-obi configuration makes a complete, uncompromised copy difficult to find. The want-to-have ratio on Discogs reflects real market scarcity. If you encounter a copy with both obis intact and the fold-out insert present, the price asked will be earned. Budget accordingly, and inspect the obi strips before committing.