|
article in today's times:
Still Fighting for the Right to His Voice
By BEN SISARIO
Tom Waits sounded exhausted. "There are things I would rather be doing," he sighed in a telephone interview Wednesday night.
Mr. Waits has won wide acclaim and a cult following for his ballads of gutter characters and doomed lovers, sung in a distinctive sandpaper baritone. But that style has attracted imitators over the years, particularly in the advertising world, and Mr. Waits has established a laborious side business protecting his musical identity.
Sixteen years ago he won an influential case against Frito-Lay over a vocal sound-alike in a Doritos commercial, and he has pursued imitators ever since. Last Friday Mr. Waits was awarded damages in a case against the Audi division of Volkswagen for a commercial in Spain using music that was similar to his song "Innocent When You Dream," sung in a voice like his. Another lawsuit is pending in Germany against the Opel division of General Motors, this one for a version of the Brahms "Lullaby" performed in what he calls a suspiciously Waitsian voice.
"It does take a tremendous amount of time, energy and money" to pursue these cases, Mr. Waits said from his home in Northern California. "But in a way," he added, "you're building a road that other people will drive on. I have a moral right to my voice. It's like property - there's a fence around it, in a way."
At a time when musicians are increasingly open to licensing their music for advertising, television and other commercial uses, Mr. Waits has steadily built a reputation not only for refusing to license his music, but also for aggressively defending his style as a unique legal property.
"It's part of an artist's odyssey," he said, "discovering your own voice and struggling to find the combination of qualities that makes you unique. It's kind of like your face, your identity. Now I've got these unscrupulous doppelgängers out there - my evil twin who is undermining every move I make."
The Frito-Lay case won him $2.5 million. The Spanish case was decided by an appeals court in Barcelona on Nov. 17, and damages were awarded last Friday. Mr. Waits is to receive $43,000 for copyright infringement and an additional $36,000 for violation of his "moral rights" as an artist.
The court ruled that both Audi and the studio that produced the commercial, Tandem CampMany Guasch in Barcelona, are responsible for the damages.
Jeffrey M. Liebenson, a partner at the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman in New York who specializes in music copyright, said Mr. Waits's suits were having a significant effect on the law in the United States and, now, Europe.
"When something like this happens which he finds to be particularly objectionable," Mr. Liebenson said, referring to the Audi and Opel advertisements, "he's willing to be engaged in an effort to assert his rights, and in doing so he has helped clarify the law in two key jurisdictions."
In both cases, Mr. Waits said, the agencies had first approached him to perform and then, when he turned them down, hired imitators.
Ricardo Pérez-Solero, a lawyer for Tandem, which produced the Audi commercial, said the company had hired a singer named José María Martín to write and record an original song that would sound like Mr. Waits, but did not believe Mr. Waits's rights were violated.
"We acted in complete and absolute good faith," he said.
Opel, in a statement last April when Mr. Waits first complained about its commercial, said it had never asked him about it or considered his voice as a model. But documents provided to The New York Times by Mr. Waits show that his publishing company was approached by an Amsterdam agency in late 2004 with an offer for the Opel commercial and declined it.
Representatives for Opel did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
Mr. Waits said there were two kinds of imitation. "I don't mind if someone wants to try to sound like me to do a show," he said. "I get a kick out of that."
"I make a distinction," he added, "between people who use the voice as a creative item and people who are selling cigarettes and underwear. It's a big difference. We all know the difference. And it's stealing. They get a lot out of standing next to me, and I just get big legal bills."
|
