Doors Reunite, Morrison Stays Put
September 27 -- The surviving members of the Doors — keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore — performed publicly together for the first time in seven years on Tuesday, at the taping of a VH1 Storytellers installment.
Pinch-hitting for original frontman Jim Morrison, who died of heart failure in 1971, were a slew of singers who owe the Lizard King obvious stylistic debts. Ian Astbury of the Cult pitched in for "Wild Child," "Alabama Song," and "Back Door Man," while Perry Farrell tackled "L.A. Woman." Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland — whose own tussles with drugs and the law echo Morrison's — sang "Break on Through" and "Five to One."
Other participants included Train's Pat Monahan ("Love Me Two Times") and Travis Meeks of Days of the New (the momma's boy anthem "The End"). Scott Stapp and Creed closed out the taping, which also featured the remaining Doors spinning tales about the tunes, with readings of "Roadhouse Blues," "Riders on the Storm," and, yes, "Light My Fire."
All the featured singers (who wisely kept their pants on), along with John Lee Hooker, Aerosmith, Bo Diddley, and others, appear on the forthcoming Doors tribute album Stoned Immaculate, which will be released around the same time the Storytellers segment airs in November.
If Morrison is spinning in his grave at the notion of God-rockers Creed singing his salacious songs, at least he'll keep doing it in the same one in the future. According to the BBC, after the taping, Manzarek revealed that the singer's body, buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, will be staying right where it is.
Don't corpses normally stay where you put them? Well, families of those buried close to Morrison's grave — which attracts thousands of fans annually — have petitioned cemetery officials not to renew the lease on Morrison's plot when it runs out on the 30th anniversary of his death, July 6, 2001. But Manzarek said that "the French government is probably going to supersede" any petition from relatives of the rock star's neighbors.
Related Stories
ABC News Live