The history of the battle for John Fogerty to get the publishing rights to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s back has been a long and storied one. Fogerty made the announcement yesterday that he had became to majority owner of the publishing for CCR’s catalogue. The singer who wrote and composed most the hits has finally at long last after 50 years is now the majority owner of CCR’s catalogue of hits which includes, “Proud Mary,” “Have Your Ever Seen The Rain,” “Fortunate Sons,” “Down On The Corner” and “Bad Moon Rising” among them.
The story and battle is one of legend with Fogerty getting sued for sounding to much like himself when he went solo, thankfully Fogerty won, as well as the story of the Old Navy campaign. The story of the Old Navy campaign is that Old Navy wanting and getting permission to use a CCR song for their commercial campaign, but Fogerty didn’t think the song should be used that way and asked Old Navy not to use it. Now Fogerty has no ownership or control of how the music was being used so it was an extreme long shot the singers plea would be met, but out of respect for Fogerty Old Navy chose a different song, one not by CCR for the campaign.
Fogerty was over the moon in celebrating and making the announcement and saw what seemed to become his life’s mission come to fruition. In a day and age where artists, not even old ones are selling the right, publishing and masters to their works that someone would go to the great lengths to get theirs back. There are work arounds to Taylor Swift did to rerecord the songs, but she doesn’t own the rights the original stuff. Whether or not it is something the 77 year old should be doing business wise is a different story, but I am not going to tell the legendary signer-songwriter how to spend his money
As of this January, I own my own songs again. This is something I thought would never be a possibility. After 50 years, I am finally reunited with my songs. I also have a say in where and how my songs are used. Up until this year, that is something I have never been able to do. pic.twitter.com/UISPK8Pb4W
— John Fogerty (@John_Fogerty) January 12, 2023
– Everett
