David Byrne Is Suing Florida Governor Charlie Crist For A Million Bucks
Per Billboard comes the latest "politician swipes a pop song for a campaign ad; pop star recoils in horror" tale -- these are always a delight, even though the epic John McCain/Jackson Browne battle of 2008/9 was supposed to settle this question once and for all in the artists' favor. But no, Charlie Crist, former Republican and newly minted Independent, sassed his senatorial-race opponent, Marco Rubio (who himself prefers Steve Miller), with an ad making liberal use of Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" (great song!), and Dave is having none of it:
Byrne tells Billboard.com that he became aware of the Crist ad from a friend in New York, where the Talking Heads co-founder resides. "I was pretty upset by that," says Byrne, who had Warner Bros. Records contact the Crist campaign, which subsequently stopped using the ad. But, Byrne contends, "in my opinion the damage had already been done by it being out there. People that I knew had seen (the ad), so it had gotten around. The suit, he adds, "is not about politics...It's about copyright and about the fact that it does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for."
$1 million is evidently about what folks have offered Byrne in the past for ads and such, which is in itself pretty amazing. Some environmental organization should scrape up the cash and make good use of "(Nothing But) Flowers."
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