A good bit on how John Densmore is fighting hard, against the will of the other band members, to keep Doors songs from being used in commercials. I must say, I admire his convictions, because he turned down $15 million dollars from Cadillac for one song. I’m not sure I could do that, to be honest.

The article is a good one, it goes on to talk about Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and some others still won’t let thier songs be used for commercials. That’s encouraging, but they do mention that these guys still make tons of money from touring, and it might not be the same if they didn’t. It’s a bit weird that Bob Dylan has very recently been criticised for more or less doing the same thing, given that he probably doesn’t have many money troubles. Of course there’s the very routine cry of “Bob, you were the counter-culture icon, why did you sell out?”, but I would imagine that it’s another page on his attempt to distance himself from that status, which started about 40 years ago, so nothing new there. I don’t have any particular problem with artists selling their music, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of creating new music. If done right, it should introduce their stuff to new audiences and help their back catalog sales.

You just have to admire the ethics of these guys that don’t sell, though. Huge ethics, or they just already have huge bank accounts.
Way to go John.