Who’s John Densmore, you ask? He’s the drummer for a defunct band you may have heard of. They’re called the Doors. As Boing Boing reports, John recently turned down Cadillac, who offered the band $15 million for the use of “Break on Through (to the Other Side):
“People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music,” Densmore said. “I’ve had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn’t commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That’s not for rent.”
As regular readers probably know, I find the commercial use of music pretty reprehensible.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Question: would a blatantly pop act like, say, the Backstreet Boys or Beyonce Knowles earn your opprobrium as equally for selling their songs to commercials?
It seems that whether it seems like a sellout depends on who the act is to start with. People would be much more likely to get pissed off about a Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Bruce Springsteen or Clash or Iggy Pop or Fugazi or Nirvana song that got turned into a commercial than, say, something from the Monkees or the Carpenters or Flock of Seagulls or New Kids on the Block or, well, Madonna.
So the second question must become: where’s the line?
Thank god. I love The Doors and now I love John Densmore even more.
Well, I checked iTunes music store and all versions of the songs aren’t free. I see quite a few covers of the song as well, which means the song actually is for rent AND sale.
In other words, Cadillac is already aware that the song is for rent, they’re just trying to settle on a price and Densmore is grabbing the opportunity to make a little publicity. I highly doubt anything noble is going on here.
Paolo: There is a rich and legitimate artistic tradition of allowing other bands to cover your music. As such, I see nothing wrong with any band permitting any other band to play their song.
There’s also an artistic tradition of charging money for performances, or recordings of those performances.
There is not, however, an artistic tradition of endorsement a product with your song or, even worse, your presence, in a commercial setting. It has nothing to do with a performing artist, and everything to do with compromising for cold, hard cash.
Why would you doubt Densmore’s nobility? Do you have any cause to believe that he’s lying? Have you ever heard a Doors song in a commercial? I’ve got some further evidence to support his case: this article. He wrote it 3 years ago, and it explains why he doesn’t permit the commercial use of the Doors’ music: “If I learned anything from Jim, it’s respect for what we created.”
According to him, he’s been steadfast on this point for almost 40 years. I’d call that a little noble.
Derek: I agree–there’s a continuum for these things, and Joni Mitchell’s sin is much worse than Justin Timberlake’s. However, they’re both sins. So, for me there’s not a line, just an a degree of wrongness.
As far as I’m concerned, all artists ought to strive for integrity in what they create, whether they’re Dylan or Britney. The problem often is is that the Britneys and Justins of the world have surrendered their integrity a long time ago, or never had it in the first place.
It’s worth noting that, under current legal arrangements, composers and authors _cannot prevent_ cover versions of their songs. What I mean is, anyone can perform and record a cover song, and there are mechanisms by which, if it’s played in a commercial context such as in a concert or on the radio, the composers/authors get a royalty. But it’s automatic: they have no say in whether it gets done.
Arrangements are different for using the actual _recording_, and (I think) for use in commercials and films and such, which is what Densmore is fighting here. Interestingly, you also have to get permission if you want to reprint lyrics or musical notation–which leads to some interesting consequences.
You’ll often notice that liner notes for albums say “Lyrics reprinted by permission,” even when the lyrics are the artist’s own. But, quite often, if they’ve recorded a cover version of someone else’s songs, those lyrics _won’t_ be reprinted, because they couldn’t or didn’t try to get permission. So it’s much easier to record and release a new version of a song (words, music, and all) than it is to reprint the lyrics, which just shows how strange copyright laws can be.
Anyway, I expect that the tradition of songs shilling for stuff is pretty much as old as songsmith itself, especially since there was no other easy mechanism for musicians to get paid, other than live performance, before the last century. (Bach and Mozart worked for their patrons, after all.) Musicians have probably only been able to afford to have artistic integrity relatively recently, I think.