Black Keys Sue Pizza Hut & Home Depot, Trash Van Halen

When we last checked in on Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, they were sporting ridiculous ponytails for a cameo on Workaholics. So what are they up today? Oh, not much — you know, just slashing and burning all over the damn place by suing giant corporations they claim used their music without permission and trashing one of rock’s iconic bands as being “f*cking retarded.”

Reports Bloomberg:

Patrick Carney and Daniel Auerbach, known as the Black Keys, sued Home Depot for the unauthorized use of “Lonely Boy,” and sued Pizza Hut and its advertising company, Interpublic Group of Cos., over “Gold on the Ceiling,” in separate filings yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles.

The group said Pizza Hut and its ad agency created a commercial for a product called Cheesy Bites Pizza that “prominently features significant portions” of “Gold on the Ceiling.” Home Depot ran a commercial for its Ryobi brand of power tools that uses parts of “Lonely Boy,” the band said.

The use of the songs was “a brazen and improper effort to capitalize on plaintiffs’ hard-earned success,” lawyers for the Black Keys said in the complaints.

I don’t recall hearing the commercials in question, but Black Keys songs have been all over the freaking place in ads over the past few months it seems, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a valid case in both situations.

With that out of the way, check out what Patrick Carney said about Van Halen in new Q&A with Rolling Stone…

I have no interest in seeing bands with partial lineups. I just saw Van Halen without Michael Anthony. I’m not a very big Van Halen fan but it was such a fucking bummer. Like what the fuck is the point?…I mean, sure, Eddie Van Halen’s son is a pretty good bass player and he’s a 20-year-old kid and that’s cool, but like, what the fuck is that? That’s fucking retarded. If someone is able to be in a band for 30 years and then people are okay with replacing him with a 17-year-old, they’re obviously motherfucking assholes, right?

Van Halen now joins Nickelback and Fergie as bands/musicians Patrick Carney has publicly trashed. That’s some company!

(HT: Stereogum)