David Byrne To Charlie Crist: You Owe Me $1M For Stealing A Talking Heads Song

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is suing Florida Gov. Charlie "Closet Case" Crist for using the band's hit 1985 single Road To Nowhere without permission in a campaign ad.

Byrne is seeking $1 million in damages from Gov. Charlie Crist, who's also Florida's former Attorney General, and his senatorial campaign for use of the song earlier this year in a website and YouTube ad attacking his then-Republican primary opponent, Marco Rubio. Crist has since changed his campaign and is running as an independent candidate. The suit was filed early Monday afternoon in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. 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."

Byrne's lawyer is the same guy that successfully sued John McCain for using Jackson Browne's Running On Empty without permission in 2008. Crist's GOP Senate opponent Marco Rubio also recently tangled with Steve Miller's lawyers over his unauthorized usage of Take The Money And Run. That case has been settled. Clearly, the GOP does not respect copyright laws.