Forty years ago, the Doors’ Jim Morrison seduced Hollywood with his wild moves and wilder poetry. On Wednesday, the rock band cemented its legendary status with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek, 68, and guitarist Robby Krieger, 61, showed up minus drummer John Densmore for the dedication of the walk’s 2,325th star.
“Jim always used to say: The West is the best!” Krieger said. “It has been an incredible 40 years, and now I’m back with Ray and we’re still playing, and you know, it may never end.”
The band, whose dark sound helped to define the ‘60s, is known for such hits as “Light My Fire” and “L.A. Woman.”
“It is a great honor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ... a street that Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger and I traipsed up and down, going into bars, asking if they’d hire a rock band,” Densmore said in a statement read by Morrison’s nephew, Dylan Graham.
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Densmore, 62, said he was unable to make the ceremony because of an interview commitment to a local radio station.
The hard-living Morrison died at age 27 in 1971 and the Doors dissolved a few years later.
The surviving members have sparred legally over the of the group’s name.
In 2005, a judge issued a permanent injunction barring Krieger and Manzarek from calling themselves the Doors and using any likeness of Morrison to promote a renewed version of the band.