John Fogerty feels a huge burden has been lifted from him since regaining the lost rights to all of his Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. Back in January, Fogerty purchased the legendary song catalog from Concord for an undisclosed sum.
Fogerty, who's now on tour with a band that features his two sons, Shane and Tyler, told NBC that with the songs now safely at him and his family, he can rest — and rock — comfortably: “Now I get up in the morning and all of that’s forgotten. I’m a family man. And I love being that guy. There's no locked door anymore on my heart.”
For years, Fogerty refused to play his Creedence hits rather than line the pockets of the late-Saul Zaentz, who owned the band's masters through Fantasy Records. In an effort to extricate himself from Creedence's back-breaking contract, Fogerty sold his publishing and record royalties to Zaentz in 1980 and didn't start performing the songs regularly again until the 1990's.
Over the decades, Creedence songs continued to play a huge role in popular culture, being used in such classic films and TV shows as Forrest Gump, The Big Lebowski, The Gilmore Girls, Stranger Things, The Expendables, Tropic Thunder, State Of Play, How I Met Your Mother, Rudy, The Stand, Better Call Saul, We Are Marshall, Born On The Fourth Of July, and Remember The Titans, among many others. Fogerty recalled: “I think all those years, every time I would hear especially my voice, my recording on the radio and know that somebody else owned that and was almost laughing at me.”
He went on to say, “To get to play my songs now, feeling like they truly are home where they belong — and I get to sing 'Proud Mary' just like I sang it when I was 22 years old.”
After years of ignoring his Creedence hits in concert, over the past two decades, John Fogerty has embraced his past and now includes nearly all of the band's biggest hits in his concert set lists: “I still realize that by far all around the world I am most known for the Creedence era. And those are songs that I love to play. I'm very happy at this stage in my career that people still, y'know, really get a big kick out of hearing “Green River” and “Who'll Stop The Rain,” and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain.” It's a really cool thing (laughs). Sometimes I'm pretty much in awe of the whole situation.”
John Fogerty kicks off his next string of North American dates on June 30th in Dauphin, Mamitoba at Dauphin's Countryfest 2023.
