The Doors Honored By Hollywood

The Doors, one of the greatest musical acts of all time were honored with a star on the famous Hollywood Walk Of Fame this past Wednesday. This great dark 1960's group, headed the the late great but certainly controversial, Jim Morrison, were one of the most impressive and big selling of any of the 1960's rock acts.

The Doors had many huge selling hit singles including the megahit, LIGHT MY FIRE as well as decent selling hits like,HELLO, I LOVE YOU, RIDERS ON THE STORM, LOVE HER MADLY, LOVE ME TWO TIMES, THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, TOUCH ME and more. The group was able to land hits on the pop charts while balancing a strong following as a dark underground counterculture 1960's album act. Some of their lyrics were the most radical and counterculture of their time including the revolutionary 60's anthems FIVE TO ONE and TELL ALL THE PEOPLE. THE END was probably one of their most dark and disturbing songs as well. Morrison was probably not a real class conscious revolutionary or even drawn to politics so much as he simply enjoyed penning and weilding in concert some very dark and disturbing, incendiary lyrics and poetry. Morrison celebrated his role as a rebel.

Two of the three original band members, keyboardist Ray Manzarek,68, and guitarist Robby Kreiger,61, were at the dedication ceremony, while fueding drummer, John Densmore, 62, claimed to have a prior obligation with a radio interview, and did not attend.

Manzarek and Krieger have had tense relations with Densmore since 2005 after he organized a successful lawsuit that brought together the family's of Jim Morrison and his common law wife, Pamela Courson into ordering a judge to permanently prevent Manzarek and Kreiger from continuing to perform as The Doors with a new drummer and a Jim Morrisonlike like new lead singer.

Densmore also prevented the use of the songs of The Doors for advertising purposes. This could have been an important source of revenue for the aging members of this band, as it cost them royalty rights to Cadillac wanting to use the Doors song, BREAK ON THROUGH, for their past advertising campaign, but instead worked out a deal to use a Led Zeppelin song instead.

Why Densmore was able to win this lawsuit was highly questionable. It denied the surviving band members a source of income either as performing as The Doors, or in advertising royalties. Further, Morrison had deeply strained relations with his birth family, where there was little reason to believe that either they or the family of his common law wife should have any interest in the financial affairs of The Doors enterprise.

The use of classic rock songs has become an important source of royalties for many aging rock stars or their estates. The son of England's Marc Bolan of T.Rex, Rolan Bolan has been able to have a steady source of royalty income by licensing his dad's songs for advertising or other purposes. And the huge number of releases of unreleased Marc Bolan material probably also helps the son financially as well. It could only be assumed that Jim Morrison would have wanted his longtime friend,Ray Manzarek, as well as Kreiger and Densmore to either carry on or profit from the band's works. This past Christmas season, the band was able to cooperate on a 12 disc CD-DVD boxed set of original, unleased, remixed and video material. Why the same sort of cooperation could not have allowed The Doors to carry on is a good question?

At any rate, it is great that a band so associated with Los Angeles would be so honored by the city with a star on the Walk Of Fame. Some of their albums including LA WOMAN and MORRISON HOTEL/HARD ROCK CAFE had a real connection to the city of Los Angeles. The Doors were one of LA's greaest acts ever. Morrison used to famously muse, "The West is the best".