(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Breaking: John Fogerty Allowed to Sound Like John Fogerty [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-01-13  

Every cut from Cosmos Factory released as a single made the Billboard Top 5, six in all.

In 1964, John Fogerty’s San Francisco rock band was starting to get attention. Fogerty, acting as the band’s songwriter, arranger, producer and manager, was stretched thin. He felt relieved when at least one part of the job—making records—was codified when Saul Zentz signed Creedence Clearwater Revival to his Fantasy label.

Fantasy was a local jazz imprint whose best-known artist was pianist Vince Guaraldi, soon to become famous for his compositions written for the Peanuts animated specials. A local/regional jazz label may have seemed an odd fit for a funky swamp rock band like Creedence, but the label took the band to the multi-platinum stratosphere, selling more records than the Beatles in 1969.

Sadly, Fogerty had made the mistake too many young artists make: he hadn’t read the fine print. Zentz’s Fantasy contract took Fogerty’s publishing (and the right to administer it). In 1980, Fogerty even signed away his artist’s royalties from the Creedence recordings to get free of the Fantasy contract.

For decades, Fogerty fought Zentz for his royalties, and to have some say in how his songs were used. In 1985, Zentz sued Fogerty for $144 million because the singer’s album “Centerfield” sounded too much like… John Fogerty of Creedence. (Though Zentz eventually lost the sound-alike suit, it stands as one of the most egregious examples of rights ripoffs.)

In 2004, the Concord label bought the Fantasy catalog and re-instated Fogerty’s artist’s royalties. Zentz died in 2014.

And yesterday, as announced in Variety, Fogerty and Concord management reached an agreement under which Fogerty will be returned his portion of the publishing on the catalog and be allowed a say in how the songs are exploited.

The rights reversion was negotiated between Fogarty (and his wife Julie, who is his manager) and Concord chief Scott Pascucci by Irving Azoff, a legend in the artist and rights management world, who was Fogerty’s manager 20 years ago.

Azoff appealed to Pasucci’s better instincts, saying, ““Scott, you’ve made so much money on Fogerty. Do you want to be known in the music business as Saul Zaentz or [legendary Warner Bros. Records head] Mo Ostin?"

Whatever Azoff used to make the deal happen, it ends one of the longest and most shameful rights battles known to rock and roll. It is a bad moon that has finally set.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/13/2147031/-Breaking-John-Fogarty-Allowed-to-Sound-Like-John-Fogarty

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/