When The Doobie Brothers sent a cease and desist to Bill Murray
The Doobie Brothers exist in a realm of relatively unoffensive rock; picking them as your favourite band is kind of like saying Dazed and Confused is your favourite film. It’s a little bit more than easy watching, but not quite a mindbender that warrants full attention. But that doesn’t undermine its merit.
Then again, with a name like The Doobie Brothers, can you expect anything less? It has to be one of the most comedic band names in music history, and in a sort of weird, indescribable twist of onomatopoeia, there is something about the name that perfectly represents the band.
Perhaps that was what made them somewhat of a soft touch for Bill Murray, who felt their yacht-rock disposition was perfect for the promotion of his new golf brand. After all, many synonymise the smooth worlds of yacht-rock with the lavish lifestyles of upper-middle-class America, so filtering in some of The Doobie Brothers to his golfing world seemed like a perfect fit.
But unsurprisingly, Murray went about it in a relatively unthoughtful manner. Launching his brand ‘William Murray Golf’, Murray used the band’s hit ‘Listen to the Music’ as the soundtrack for its promotion, without asking permission. In true Country Club fashion, the band responded to the disrespect with a quite hilarious cease and desist letter, as opposed to the more rock and roll move of penning a diss track or ripping up Murray’s clothing line.
It read, “It’s a fine song. I know you agree because you keep using it in ads for your ‘Zero Hucks Given’ golf shirts. However, given that you haven’t paid to use it, maybe you should change the name to ‘Zero Bucks Given’. We understand that you’re running other ads using music from other of our clients. It seems like the only person who uses our clients’ music without permission more than you do is Donald Trump.”
It was a song Murray shared with Trump, who was quick to use it regularly in his campaign rollouts across the country. Between golf ads and Presidential runs of Wall Street billionaires, The Doobie Brothers must have surely got the memo somewhere along the line regarding what sort of demographic their music attracts. Or maybe they know and simply do not care, for they keep the paychecks coming. Which probably explains the sustained vein of humour that the cease and desist letter abides by in the later paragraphs. Rather than taking any opportunity to regain financial control over the song, the band simply took a swipe at Murray’s filmography.
“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 that you can’t use music in ads without paying for it.”
Murray found the funny side in The Doobie Brothers’ rather unthreatening letter and responded with a rather humorous version of his own. Not only was it packed with subtle song references, but it also included a somewhat unwanted promise of a shipment of his golf shirts sent to the band. I mean, what on earth has happened to rock and roll?
