Doors drummer keeping it realDoors' drummer John Densmore has consistently used his power of veto within the band's hippy-era communal decision-making process to stop any Doors music from being used for advertising. It all stems from an incident back in '67, as John remembers...

...when Buick proffered $75,000 to use "Light My Fire" to hawk its new hot little offering--the Opel. As the story goes--which everyone knows who's read my autobiography or seen Oliver Stone's movie--Ray, Robby and John (that's me) OK'd it, while Jim was out of town. He came back and went nuts. And it wasn't even his song (Robby primarily having penned "LMF")! In retrospect, his calling up Buick and saying that if they aired the ad, he'd smash an Opel on television with a sledgehammer was fantastic! I guess that's one of the reasons I miss the guy.

Great stuff. Since then, and after the death of Morrisson, John has been the one to veto any attempts by the other two band members (it would seem keyboardist Ray Manzarek is particularly keen on taking some of the advertising dollars being thrown their way - Ray's got a new album out, but the way, with the Cult's Ian Astbury doing some vocals...), even if the said advertising dollars are upwards of US$15m in a campaign to help flog off the new Cadillac.

Now that is keeping it real.

[via boingboing]
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