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Tom Waits Revs Down Lawsuit
If only they went with the Hasselhoff instead...
Tom Waits has settled a lawsuit filed against the German division of General Motors and its ad agency, which he accused of hijacking his trademark sound for a series of overseas car commercials.
The suit, filed in September 2005 in Frankfurt, named the auto manufacturer's Opel unit and the McCann Erickson agency for using what he deemed a "perfect impersonation" of his distinctive growl in a series of ads earlier that year. Waits claimed that commercials featuring the eerily similar voice-for-hire appeared after he rejected a series of offers from the car company to help shill their product.
The 57-year-old singer sought damages and "ill-gotten gains" in his original suit, and also requested profits the carmaker and agency reaped from the ads—which aired in Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway—for violating his personality rights.
Waits and GM announced the settlement in a joint press release Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Waits said he would be donating his share to charity.
"I'm glad to be out of the car sales business once and for all," he said.
McCann Erickson, meanwhile, issued a public statement of apology, saying they "respect Mr. Waits, and deeply regret any embarrassment this may have caused."
The agency had originally claimed that the Frankfurt-based singer used in the ads had simply offered them a "rough voice interpretation" and had not been instructed to mimic either Waits or any other singer. McCann also insisted that Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was the only American singer approached for the gig.
Waits has a history of siccing his legal dogs on advertisers. In 1992, he took Frito-Lay to court, accusing the potato chip purveyor of ripping off his voice for a Doritos ad, and was awarded $2.5 million. He also filed similar suits against Audi and Italian carmaker Lancia.
"Commercials are an unnatural use of my work," Waits said after fans alerted him to the ads in 2005. "It's like having a cow's udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful and humiliating."
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