USA: The Standells are suing Anheuser-Busch for using their song “Dirty Water” in commercials

The song is used in Boston after Red Sox wins, and the band says the company didn’t have its permission to use it, The Kansas City Star posted June 13.

They were fine with Boston Red Sox fans adopting their 1966 smash "Dirty Water" - the band even performed the song live at Fenway Park before Game 2 of the 2004 World Series. But then Anheuser-Busch, the megabrewers who make Budweiser and other nationally famous bands of beer, decided to use the song in their ads. And while the company has paid the band members its due royalties, the group's still complaining, mainly because no one asked them in the first place.

"An advertiser decided to turn an artist into a pitchman without their consent," the Standells' attorney, Steven Ames Brown, told reporters. "That's morally wrong."

Brown, who won a similar case for The Flamingos last year against Pepsi, says the band is seeking $1 million in damages from brewery and its advertising agency, DDB Chicago Inc. Ironically, although the song in question lyrically presents itself as a hometown boy's ode to Boston, the Standells themselves are from Los Angeles.

14 June, 2006