Forty Years On, The Doors Are Still Lighting Fires

There's a lot of activity surrounding The Doors' 40th anniversary, including a box set, reissues, a documentary, a television special, coffee-table books, downloadable concerts, merchandise, plans for a Las Vegas attraction, exhibits and, possibly, the group's music being licensed for commercials.

Rhino will release a 12-disc box set this fall that will include remastered versions of the band's first six studio albums along with bonus tracks. The records will be paired with six DVDs featuring 5.1 remixes of the albums and bonus material. There will also be a vinyl box set, and the individual release of each album in a two-disc set.

The classic rock group will soon make more than a dozen concerts available to download from their website through a deal with Basecamp Productions, which created Pearl Jam's concert download store. One of the shows, recorded at a small San Francisco club called the Matrix a few months after the release of the group's debut album in 1967, will also be released as a CD. Many of the other performances were recorded in 1970 for the Absolutely Live album but were never released.

A coffee-table book put together by surviving band members and Rolling Stone journalist Ben Fong-Torres will be published by Hyperion Books in the fall. Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame curator Jim Henke has been working on a book called Jim Morrison: Treasures.

Production has begun on a theatrical documentary on The Doors that will feature new interviews with Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, previously unseen footage and interviews with Jim Morrison, and interviews with Morrison's family that were shot in December. The film is being produced by Dick Wolf, the Emmy Award-winning creator of Law & Order.

A multi-night TV special called Six Nights, Six Years, Six Records is slated to air next summer.

A traveling Doors memorabilia exhibit is in the works and a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame exhibit is scheduled to open next April. A Las Vegas show compared to "a one-hour acid trip" should open in 2008.

The Doors have never allowed their music to be used in commercials. They came close in 1969 when the musicians agreed to licence "Light My Fire" to Buick to advertise its German-made Opel, but Morrison vetoed the deal. Since then, Densmore has opposed any commercial involvement, although he recently said that he might be open to granting use of the group's music for an environmentally friendly product.

The Doors music has been used in movies (Apocalypse Now, Forrest Gump, Jarhead) and TV shows (Alias, Entourage, The Simpsons).

All deals involving The Doors must now be approved by all of the partners in the band's assets. The three surviving members have a 75-per cent share and Morrison's families and his late girlfriend, Pamela Courson, share the remainder. Ian Astbury wishes that he had a piece of the action.