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Town to Town, Selling a Brand
By ANTHONY DeCURTIS

When the Doors formed back in the 1960's, the band
chose a name inspired by this declaration by William
Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every
thing would appear to man as it is: infinite." 

That mystic source aside, John Densmore, the band's
original drummer, now insists that the meaning of the
band's name is finite indeed. He recently filed suit
against the two other surviving members of the group,
the keyboardist Ray Manzarek and the guitarist Robbie
Krieger, in an effort to derail their plans to tour
later this year as the Doors, with the drummer Stewart
Copeland taking over for Mr. Densmore and the singer
Ian Astbury replacing Jim Morrison, who died in 1971.

The lawsuit doesn't address what might immediately
strike many fans as preposterous: the notion of a
Morrison-less Doors. But the squabble over the band's
"name and original logo," as Mr. Densmore's suit puts
it, does point up the enduring importance in the music
business of top-quality brands from the 1960's and
1970's, even as virtually every other aspect of that
industry founders.

The allure of the Doors has not accrued to its members
as solo performers. "Krieger and Manzarek have gone
out in the past, and they were a club act," said Gary
Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a
publication that tracks the concert business. "But if
you add two more people and call it `The Doors,' it's
suddenly worth more money and sells more tickets." 

For nearly 15 years, the prospect of money and ticket
sales has proved an incentive for bands to get over
those once-insuperable "creative differences" and
reunite. While the Rolling Stones never officially
broke up, feuding between Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards had kept them off the road for eight years
before the group began its "Steel Wheels" stadium tour
in 1989 and shattered the box-office records at the
time. Since then, the group has toured every three or
four years (though without Bill Wyman, the band's
original bass player) with equally lucrative results.
Even the ever-bickering Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel
have had reunions, most recently delivering a chilly
performance at the Grammy Awards last month. They
toured together in the early 1980's and then again 10
years later to sold-out houses. For the most part,
only the Beatles and the Police (who will perform
together for the band's induction into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow night) have been able to
resist the lure of full-scale, money-minting reunions.


But these are groups that reached their prime in the
60's and 70's. The concert industry is now wondering
about the bands from the 80's and 90's and asking, If
any of them reunite, will anyone care? Few groups over
the last two decades have been able to sustain
commercial interest even while they were young let
alone approaching retirement age. Audiences weaned on
videos and the Internet have thus far shown little
desire to grow old alongside their favorite bands,
preferring instead serial, short-lived infatuations. 

Some of the artists in the reconstituted older bands 
like Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac or Don Henley of
the Eagles  established credible solo careers, but
their success does not nearly match the continuing
commercial impact of the outfits they had left behind.
The Eagles, whose manager once defiantly proclaimed
that the band would get back together only "when hell
freezes over," are working on a new album and starting
an 80-date American tour in May. Last year, they
performed 32 shows and earned more than $35 million.
Fleetwood Mac reunited for a hugely successful tour
and live album in 1997. This April, the band will
release "Say You Will," its first album of new
material since 1987, and its tour is once again
expected to be one of the year's most profitable.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band went their
separate ways in the late 80's and then got back
together for a celebratory tour in 2000. Last year,
Mr. Springsteen and the group released "The Rising,"
their first album of original music in 15 years, and
again went on tour, earning more than $42 million in
the fall. (The album won three Grammys last month.)
The band is to leave for Europe this month, then
return to the United States for a summer tour. (Seven
stadium dates in New Jersey in July have already sold
out.)

Far from being a drawback, the age and fragility of
these bands is a strong part of their appeal, said
Danny Goldberg, an industry veteran and the founder of
Artemis Records. "I saw some of the Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young shows," he said, "and as an audience
member you feel that this might be your only chance to
see them. Every single one of the people has to stay
healthy and motivated."

Such brands seem all the more sturdy as the music
business drifts toward a digital haze of endlessly
swapped, instantly disposable Internet files. But in
reality how sturdy are they? Most of the bands have
received strong reviews for their performances, but
how long will it be before they begin to tarnish their
legends? Many of the musicians in those groups are
nearing 60, if they haven't already crossed that line.
Christine McVie, who is 59, has announced that she
will not be joining Fleetwood Mac on tour this year.
John Entwistle of the Who died last year, leaving Pete
Townshend and Roger Daltrey as the only two original
members left in that band. As the case of the Doors
demonstrates, at some point the brand so overwhelms
the existing band that it is hard for audiences to
know exactly what they are paying to see.

Of course, in the rock equivalent of dinner theater,
entrepreneurs who hold the rights to band names have
assembled line-ups featuring relatives of original
members, musicians who worked with the groups, or
sometimes anyone who was available to play a string of
dates that had already been booked for shadow versions
of the Drifters, Steppenwolf, the Byrds, the
Temptations and other groups. Such marginal activity
has been going on for decades and will very likely
never stop. But the fate of groups that have dominated
the concert scene year after year has significant
implications for the future of the music industry.

Most important is the concern that few groups have
risen up with anything like the box-office clout of
those giants of yore. U2, which released its first
album nearly a quarter century ago, has a proven
commercial track record. The Dave Matthews Band, which
earned more than $60 million on the road last year, is
likely to show continued staying power. And R.E.M. and
Pearl Jam remain potent draws on the road. 

But the disappointments far outweigh those success
stories. Guns 'n' Roses, a major force in the late
1980's and early 90's, imploded this year when Axl
Rose took a band of that name on the road with no
other original members. "The business that band was
doing wasn't what anybody expected," Mr. Bongiovanni
said. "They were largely playing to 7,000 people in
18,000-seat arenas." In a perfect twist, other members
of Guns 'n' Roses' classic lineups are planning to
record on their own, and they're currently searching
for a singer to replace Mr. Rose. "It's hard to tell
how savvy the public is when it comes to stuff like
this," said Mr. Bongiovanni. "But you have to believe
they're not stupid."

Indeed, in their brand consciousness, consumers are
responding to a business that has taken marketing 
not developing new talent, not educating new
audiences, not addressing a wide variety of tastes 
as its most important function. For a time, that
blockbuster strategy made a lavishly remunerative
science of selling existing brands, but it allowed few
new ones to develop. Now, if the goose that laid the
golden egg is not yet dead, it may well be breathing
its last.

Mr. Goldberg said the music business was "obviously in
enormous transition."

"Right now, it's getting smaller," he continued. "In
the future, connective tissue may develop between what
are now the separate businesses of CD's, DVD's,
concerts, a maturing Internet and merchandising, and
it could get bigger again."

But for that to happen, performers will have to emerge
who excite the same level of loyalty and passion that
the brands of the 1960's and 1970's have done. And
thus far at least, there is little sign of them on the
horizon.  

Anthony DeCurtis is a contributor at Rolling Stone.


=====
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