n this Aug. 16, 2012 file photo, Ray Manzarek of The Doors performs at the Sunset Strip Music Festival launch party celebrating The Doors at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, Calif. — Photo AP

LOS ANGELES: Ray Manzarek, co-founder of legendary 1960s group The Doors and creator of their signature organ sound, died Monday after a long battle with cancer, his manager said. He was 74.

Manzarek formed the group — whose worldwide hits included “Light My Fire”and “L.A. Woman” — with Jim Morrison in 1965 after the two met by chance in Venice Beach, California.

He died surrounded by his wife Dorothy and brothers Rick and James in a clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after “a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer,”said a statement on the Doors Facebook page.

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” The Doors’ guitarist and long-time collaborator Robby Krieger was quoted as saying.

“I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him,” he added.

Tom Vitorino, the keyboardist’s manager, told AFP: “Ray Manzarek was larger than life. He will be missed.”The Doors were one of the biggest acts of the 1960s, selling over 100 million albums worldwide and earning 19 Gold, 14 Platinum and five multi-Platinum albums in America alone.

Morrison impressed Manzarek, who moved from Chicago to Los Angeles to study film, with an early version of “Moonlight Drive” during their chance meeting on Venice Beach.

Manzarak was responsible for the band’s trademark sound, including the rolling organ on songs like “Light My Fire.” Other hits included “Break On Through to the Other Side,” “The End” and “Hello, I Love You.” He was “really the driving force behind (the band) to make it all happen,”former band manager Bill Siddons said. “He was the guy behind the curtain that
made things happen.” Morrison’s untimely death in 1971 aged 27 effectively ended the band’s iconic phase, although the group continued to perform and release music with various band line-ups.

Manzarek wrote a best-selling book about his life, “Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors,” in 1998. He was played by Kyle McLachlan in the 1991 Oliver Stone biopic “The Doors.”

Slash, the former lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, was among the first to pay tribute, posting on his Twitter account: “RIP Ray Manzarek words cannot express.”

Morrison’s sudden death — he was found in a bathtub in his Paris apartment — stunned fans of the band, which broke fresh ground in psychedelic rock with such hits as “Riders on the Storm” and “People are Strange” and “Light My Fire”.

There was never an autopsy, giving rise to multiple conspiracy theories, as Morrison’s remains were buried in the French capital’s Pere Lachaise cemetery, alongside other such notables as Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Oscar Wilde.

Morrison moved to Paris after the 1971 release of “L.A. Woman” and lived in the then-not-yet-hip Marais district with partner Pamela Coulson. It was she who found him dead, with a heart attack officially cited as the cause.

Manzarek, who did much to keep the Doors flame burning, once suggested another possibility. Recalling a 1970 conversation with Morrison, he wondered if the intense frontman had just faked his death to start a new life incognito.

In 2011 Manzarek and Krieger marked the 40th anniversary of the singer’s death with a sell-out concert at the Bataclan club in Paris.

The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where flowers were placed Monday in Manzarek’s memory.

A custom-made electric guitar played by the late John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles. — Courtesy Photo

LOS ANGELES: A custom-made electric guitar played by the late John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles sold at a New York auction on Saturday for $408,000, said officials with the company behind the event.

The semi-hollow-body guitar, manufactured by the VOX company, was sold to an unidentified US buyer at the “Music Icons” event organized by Beverly Hills, California-based Julien’s Auctions and held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan.

Julien’s said previously it expected the guitar, which was the centerpiece of Saturday’s sale, to fetch between $200,000 and $300,000.

Harrison played the instrument, distinguished by two symmetrical flared shoulders on the upper body, while practicing “I Am The Walrus,” and Lennon used it in a video session for the song “Hello, Goodbye,” according to a statement from Julien’s Auctions.

Both songs were on the Beatles’ 1967 album “Magical Mystery Tour.”

The VOX guitar was a prototype instrument custom-built for Lennon in 1966, said Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien’s. Lennon gave the VOX guitar as a gift in 1967 to Yanni “Magic Alex” Mardas, who was the electronics engineer for the band’s Apple Records label, the auction house said.

The instrument, displayed in recent weeks at a museum in Ireland before the sale, was sold a few years ago by Christie’s Auction House for a little over $100,000. Nolan said the latest buyer, who sent a representative to Saturday’s auction to bid on his behalf, wished to remain anonymous.

Lennon was shot to death in New York in 1980 by a deranged fan, and Harrison died of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 2001.
The surviving members of the Beatles are Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

Dutt, 53, surrendered on Thursday to serve out the remaining three-and-a-half years of a five-year term in a case linked to deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings.

Dutt’s lawyer, Rizwan Merchant, has demanded the transfer of the actor whom he said was being kept in the cell once occupied by Mumbai attacks gunman Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, according to the Indian Express daily newspaper.

Pakistani-born Kasab was executed last November, nearly four years after 166 people died in a three-day rampage in the Indian metropolis.

The steel bunker specially built for Kasab at Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail had no ventilation and the actor could not even tell if it was day or night, the lawyer said.

“He (Dutt) is not a terrorist” and should not be kept in such a cell, the lawyer was quoted as saying.

There was no immediate comment available from the jail.

The actor, whose parents were two of India’s biggest stars, shot to fame in the 1980s in a string of action movies in which he performed his own stunts, earning him the nickname “Deadly Dutt”.

He was convicted in 2006 of possessing guns supplied by gangsters who staged the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 257 people but was freed on bail after serving 18 months in prison. In March, the Supreme Court upheld Dutt’s conviction.

He was cleared in 2007 of more serious conspiracy charges in the blasts, believed staged by Muslim underworld leaders in revenge for religious riots in which mainly Muslims died after the razing of an ancient mosque by Hindu zealots.

Dutt, whose mother was Muslim and father Hindu, was found guilty of possession of an automatic rifle and a pistol which he insisted were only meant to protect his family in Mumbai’s charged atmosphere following the mosque’s destruction.

After the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, the father-of-three wept and declared himself “a shattered man”.

A man is detained by police and local security after shooting on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival near the Grand Journal de Canal+ television studio set on the Croisette in Cannes May 17, 2013. — Reuters Photo

CANNES: A man was arrested on Friday after causing a scare at the Cannes Film Festival, where he attacked a TV studio with a gun loaded with blanks and a dummy grenade, police and witnesses said.

There were no casualties in the incident, and the TV channel, France’s Canal +, resumed broadcasts after a break of several minutes.

The suspected assailant fired twice in the air as he approached the temporary studio, set up on the Croisette seafront for special coverage of the film festival, they said.

“He said to a woman next to him ‘if I were you, I wouldn’t stick around here’,” said Michel Denisot, the programme’s presenter.

“The police intervened. He had a hand grenade. There were no bullets in the gun and the grenade was a fake,” he told viewers.
There was a brief moment of panic in the crowd around the seafront studio, but no-one was hurt.

Marcel Authier, in charge of public security in the local Alpes-Maritimes department, told AFP that the arrested individual was a 42-year-old man.

“It’s someone mentally unstable who was immediately arrested,” Authier said.

Police sources said the man also carried a switchblade knife and had shouted: “I’m doing this in the name of God” during his arrest.
Earlier Friday, jewellery worth $1.4 million due to be loaned to stars at the Cannes Film Festival was stolen from a local hotel in a pre-dawn heist, according to French investigators.

Swiss jewellers Chopard said, without giving a figure, that the value of the lost items was far lower. It also denied that the jewels were to be worn by actresses at the festival.

The Cannes Film Festival is ranked as the world’s most prestigious movie showcase.

Security for the event is high, and was stepped up after the April 15 bomb attacks in Boston.

George Michael was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a traffic accident. —Photo by AP

LONDON: British singer George Michael has received medical treatment after a car crash on Thursday, his publicist said.

The 49-year-old former Wham! front man was being treated for “minor cuts and bruises” after the accident, Michael’s spokeswoman said.

“George Michael was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a traffic accident yesterday evening, no third party was involved,” a spokeswoman said on Friday.

“He is being treated for superficial cuts and bruises but is fine.”

British media reported that the accident occurred just outside London on a motorway during rush hour.

The “Careless Whisper” singer has suffered a string of accidents and health scares recently.

Last year he cancelled his tour of Australia due to “major anxiety” brought on by a 2011 battle with severe pneumonia in Vienna, where he was treated in intensive care for a month for a life-threatening illness.

Michael has sold an estimated 100 million records over his career, but has hit headlines in recent years for his personal life more often than for his music.

In 1998 he was arrested in California for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public toilet and also had a number of run-ins with British police for possession of narcotics.

He served a term in jail for driving under the influence of cannabis.