As a general rule, when rock songs are used in commercials it devalues the whole reason those songs were made.  Far be in from me to stop anyone from making a buck, as if you own the rights to a song you can do what you want with it.  I do think that established rock bands, ones with a huge catalog from which they receive tremendous royalties from, debase the initial reasons behind the making of those songs when they do this. 

When the Rolling Stones sold their song ‘Start Me Up’ for the launch of Windows 95, they didn’t do it because they were hurting for cash.  They did it so maybe Keith Richards could have another mountain of cocaine the size you normally see in Department of Transportation building that house salt piles used in melting ice and snow on the road.

The same thing goes for when Led Zeppelin decided to piss on their legacy and allow Cadillac to use their song ‘Rock and Roll’.  It’s not as though Zeppelin had squandered their fortune and were playing songs for cash in a London subway station. 

In a non-direct fashion, this leads me to a commercial I watched last week in one of the few times I see live TV anymore.  An ad for Hampton Inns came on and the song was immediately familiar.  It was a cover of the Beatles classic “With A Little Help From My Friends”.  Ignoring the fact that it was a horrific cover song and that they don’t have to pay royalties if you don’t use the original, there was a completely different question I had for this marketing campaign.

On the surface, the implying factor is that the staff at Hampton Inns will treat you and help you like an old friend.  But did anyone in the advertising agency that was responsible for this realize what the actual song initially stood for?  “I get by with a little help from my friends”, while possible a tad more subtle than “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, was still about drug use!  The Beatles’ “friends” were pot, acid, mushrooms and any other illicit drug they could get their hands on at the time!  Granted, most musicians make their best music while high as a kite, so I can’t blame them for creating odes to their creative master.

This is comparable to if Amtrak using the Grateful Dead’s song ‘Casey Jones’ song in an ad campaign.  Sure they’re talking about riding that train but they’re also high on cocaine.