“I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” (1978) * Written by Tommy Dunbar and James Gangwer * 45: “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” / “Gorilla” * LP: Back to the Drawing Board * Label: Beserkley
The power poppers of the seventies wore their inspirations like musical lapel pins, proudly adopting key hooks from the sixties British Invasion for their own purposes. But tribute, like parody, raises copyright questions. (In his Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Eric Idle recounts playing the Rutles tracks to his pal and cheerleader George Harrison, who made it clear that composer Neil Innes had, alas, entered the copyright danger zone.) When the San Francisco Bay area’s Rubinoos sang “Hey! You! I wanna be your boyfriend,” they managed to pay their respects to both the Rolling Stones, by nabbing the key hook from their “Get Off My Cloud,” and the early Beatles, by using it in service of lovelorn tunesmithery. (Incidental advice to the Rubinoos: try addressing the girl by her name.) So when Avril Lavigne sang “Hey! You! I wanna be your girlfriend” in 2007 and had a radio-drenching #1 hit, songwriters Tommy Dunbar and James Ganwer had no choice but to make legal inquiries, seeing that anyone who knew their tune from 1978 assumed the existence of some sort of arrangement. No, none were made and none would be made. The defendants’ response: didn’t you steal your hook from the Stones?