The Beat: Toyota Wants Its Mpg

It does not even faze me anymore when treasured songs from my youth are now used to promise me that if I buy a Cadillac I will get as much sex as Robert Plant (as if!), or if I use Fidelity for my investments, I, too, can be as rich as Paul McCartney.

I compare it to living beneath a flight pattern. At first you notice, with irritation, every plane soaring overhead, but soon you do not even hear the rattling of the windows anymore or the dull roar.

However, there is one case that still stops me dead in my tracks and makes me whip my head toward the TV like a dog whose leash has just been severely yanked: when the lyrics are rewritten to suit the product. Such an instance usually reeks of sellout or someone who is in desperate need of money.

So it happened a few days ago when the ethereal, ghostly refrain "I want my MTV" floated out of the TV transformed into "I Want My MPG," followed by the instantly recognizable guitar riff that opens Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." The commercial touts Toyota's fuel-efficient vehicles, including its environmentally friendly Hybrid brands.

Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler is far from a sellout, and surely he does not need the money; so why, Mark, why?

It turns out he liked the message.

"Mark is a fan of Toyota vehicles, and he thought the campaign, which was based around [Toyota's] superior fuel economy, was a message he was happy to endorse," Knopfler's manager Paul Crockford says. He adds that the campaign coincided with the recent Knopfler/Dire Straits greatest-hits package, "Private Investigations: The Best of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler," which meant "additional music presence" during the push of the new release.

Knopfler, of course, approved the lyric change. The guitar intro is taken from the master recording. Knopfler's U.S. publisher, Almo Irving/ Rondor/Universal, was heavily involved in the deal. The ad is expected to run for a year only in the United States.

Knopfler is no stranger to licensing his music for commercial usage: "Going Home" was used in a Shell commercial, while ESPN licensed "Walk of Life."

However, this marks the first time his lyrics have been changed.

While Crockford would not disclose how much Toyota paid Knopfler, he adds that the sum was "not as much as you might think."



LIFETIMERS: David Bowie, Cream, Merle Haggard, Robert Johnson, Jessye Norman, Richard Pryor and the Weavers are the recipients of the Recording Academy's 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award. The beneficiaries are awarded for their lifelong artistic contributions to the recording world.

Additionally, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, engineer Al Schmitt and producer Owen Bradley will receive the Trustees Award, presented for nonperforming contributions. Tom Dowd and Bell Labs/Western Electric will receive Technical Grammy Awards.

The special merit awards will be presented at a Feb. 7 ceremony and recognized during the Feb. 8 Grammy Awards. The honors to Johnson, Pryor, Bradley and Dowd will be presented posthumously.



IN THEIR MEMORY: A fund created in the memory of House of Freaks' Bryan Harvey and his family has been established in their hometown of Richmond, Va. Harvey, his wife and two children were murdered in their house on New Year's Day and the home set ablaze. Following House of Freaks, Harvey had also performed with Steve Wynn in Gutterball.

The Bryan and Kathryn Harvey Family Memorial Endowment fund will provide music, visual art and performing arts enrichment to the Richmond area, including educational scholarships. ••••