TORONTO – When Halifax’s
Dave Carroll got off his United Airlines flight last spring and
discovered his $3,500 custom-made guitar was severely damaged –
allegedly by overzealous luggage handlers – at first he was mad.
When
the airline’s customer service team gave him the runaround and refused
to address his complaints to his satisfaction, he was incensed.
But
in typically Canadian fashion, the songwriter decided to be the nice
guy, shrug off his anger, and instead wrote a song about his experience.
As
of Wednesday evening, that song, “United Breaks Guitars,” was the most
popular music video on YouTube with about 169,000 views, and to his
shock, his phone rang and rang and rang all day, with calls from across
the continent.
One minute it was CBS asking him to play the
network’s morning show, the next it was CNN, asking for details about
his story so he could be featured on “The Situation Room with Wolf
Blitzer.”
What started off as a lark has turned into far more
exposure than Carroll has ever had with his band Sons of Maxwell, the
kind of publicity he could never afford to buy, he said in an interview.
“I’ve
been at this for well over 15 years, slugging away at it and … this
has been an incredible lift to our career and my career as a solo
artist,” he said.
After months of badgering with United for some
sort of compensation he gave up, and told the last company
representative that he spoke with that he planned to write a trilogy of
songs about his disappointing experience.
“The whole thing has
been a challenge artistically and that’s what makes this so fun,” he
said, and added that he’s no longer bitter or seeking any kind of
compensation from United.
“I think not only does it resonate
with people because it’s an airline song, which all people can relate
to, but I think the fact it’s a light-hearted song and fun is something
that everyone can appreciate, because not everyone – including myself –
likes to hear angry, hateful songs all the time.”
“It’s nice to have a light-hearted chuckle at things.”
He
posted the video late Monday night and went to bed with the view count
at about half a dozen. The next day he emailed a few hundred fans,
friends and family and within 24 hours, the hits started to grow
exponentially, by about 20,000 per hour.
Carroll said United has
attempted to call him a couple times since the song went viral online,
but he never got to the phone. But someone who spoke with United on his
behalf said the company was gracious in accepting the criticism.
“They
seem encouraged, by all the bad publicity I guess, to change the way
they do things and change the culture of customer complaints,” he said.
“I
think they’re actually having a great attitude about the whole thing,
they’re not coming across as angry or threatening or anything like
that. And maybe this will be a love story at the end of the day,” he
said, noting that while song two of his trilogy is already written,
song three could be about a happy ending.
