The Doors Banned From British Radio: But Jim Morrison’s Not To Blame

The Doors have never featured heavily on British radio in recent years, but now the four riders of the acid apocalypse are courting controversy once more after the BBC announced it was banning all Doors songs from the airwaves.

And, surprisingly, the hell-raising, authority-baiting, chuck it in the f***-it bucket and move on spirit of Jim Morrison, which rumbles like thunder and dances like lightning every time a Doors song is played, is not the reason for the ban.

As you can imagine. It’s something a lot more bland, predictable, and drab. In other words, it’s all about the money.

The Guardian reports that the BBC has emailed an internal memo to its DJs and staff not to play any music by the Doors, not even cover versions of their songs.

Why issue such a troubling decree? Do the powers that be still remain deeply concerned about the revolutionary vibe of the Doors music and the effect Morrison’s swagger, intellect, and habit of turning people on to the truth will have on young minds?

When alive, they could silence Morrison by arresting him and threatening him with some hard jail time on some trumped up charge of indecent exposure. Dead, they can only try to ban the Lizard King from crawling into the listening souls of curious spirits, because by dying Morrison and the Doors’ music has done what Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Darth Vader he’d do.

“You can’t win, Vader. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Here’s the thing. Are the buffoon like bastions of the establishment once again concerned that there liquid night music of The Doors will seep into curious minds, and cleanse the doors of perception so man sees things as they truly are – infinite!

Nope! Nothing so romantic, the sharks in suits are refusing to play the Doors music just to protect their financial interests. How dull!

The BBC’s legal department are concerned because The Doors – alongside Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt, and Journey – have withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS).

What this means is that, every time the BBC plays the music of The Doors, it breaches their copyright because it has no means of paying the Doors any royalties for broadcasting their music.

In a strongly worded email, the BBC makes its intentions clear when it comes to not spinning any Doors tracks on its wheels of steel.

“You can NOT use tracks by these composers on the radio and/or online.
You can NOT use tracks by these composers whether they are originals or covers.
You can NOT use the lyrics.
You can NOT put performances using these compositions on line.
You can NOT use tracks which include samples of these compositions e.g. Tracks by Skrillex/Chase & Status
You can NOT use clips which include any compositions by these composers”

It’s easy to forget in this forsaken age of tepid tunes and turgid talents, what great music, looks, sounds, and feels like. The Doors ticked those boxes and scaled the heights in a way that the masters of mediocrity such as Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding, and the rest of the heavily rotated gang of dismal dunces favoured by BBC DJs just cannot.

With the Doors banned from the BBC, any young listeners who now listen to BBC radio will never experience the pure unbounded joy of stumbling across Ray Manzerak pounding the ivories like a demented carny and conjuring up a hypnotic sound storm for Robbie Krieger to writhe through like an electric snake, as John Densmore drops the beats for Jim Morrison to spit poetry all over and baptize the entire Doors sound in an unholy matrimony of blood and fire.

Nope all they’ll get now is some ginger bloke with a face that suggests severe constipation and a voice that could curdle milk, singing “Wake me up.”

As Morrison was fond of snarling, “Money beats soul every single time.”

Or as Morrissey once crooned, “Hang the blessed DJ. Because the music that they constantly play, It says nothing to me about my life.”

[Photo via Getty Images]