A lawyer for the Doobie Brothers has demanded that actor Bill Murray stop using the band’s music – and he did it in a very Bill Murray-like way.
At issue is Murray’s unauthorized use of the 1972 track “Listen to the Music” in commercials for his Zero Hucks Given polo shirts.
“The Doobie Brothers perform and recorded the song… which Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers wrote. It’s a fine song,” reads a letter dated Sept. 23 from Peter T. Paterno of King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano LLP.
“I know you agree because you keep using it for ads… However, given that you haven’t paid to use it, maybe you should change the company name to ‘Zero Bucks Given.’”
Paterno added: “This is the part where I’m supposed to cite the United States Copyright Act, excoriate you for not complying with some subparagraph that I’m too lazy to look up and threaten you with eternal damnation for doing so. But you already earned that with those Garfield movies.
“And you already know you can’t use music in ads without paying for it.”
The lawyer took a parting shot at Murray’s apparel line. “We’d almost be OK with it if the shirts weren’t so damn ugly. But it is what it is.
“So in the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, ‘Au revoir Golfer. Et payer!”
(In Murray’s 1980 movie Caddyshack, his character says: “In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, ‘Au revoir, gopher!”)