Latest news with #Creedence
a day ago
- Entertainment
Former Creedence Clearwater front man John Fogerty celebrates 80th with show in Manhattan
NEW YORK -- As he turned 80 this week, John Fogerty was in a mood to honor his past and to revise it. We should all be so alive and so remembered at his age. Fogerty, in the midst of an international tour, played a rowdy 100-minute set Thursday night to an adoring, near-capacity audience at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre. Crowd members spanned from those likely to remember 'Proud Mary,' 'Fortunate Son' and other Creedence Clearwater Revival hits when first released a half-century ago to those looking young enough to have heard about them through their grandparents. At least from a distance, Fogerty didn't look or sound much different from his prime with Creedence, which was rarely off the charts between 1969 and 1971. He wore his trademark flannel shirt; had the same shaggy haircut, although with his bangs brushed back; sang with a vintage roar that has mellowed only slightly; and even played the same guitar, a Rickenbacker, that he had acquired back in the late '60s. Fogerty presented himself as a proud rock 'n' roller, and a very proud family man. His band includes two of his sons on guitar, Shane and Tyler, with daughter Kelsy briefly joining them on a third guitar. Off to the side was his wife, Julie, whom he praised as the love and the hero of his life, if only because she gave one of the greatest gifts an old rock star could ask for: She helped win back rights to his song catalogue. Fogerty had battled over his copyrights for decades, and at one point found himself being sued for plagiarizing one of his Creedence hits, which at the time he didn't own. He has marked his victory with an upcoming album, 'Legacy,' for which he recorded new versions of 20 songs. If you were in the house Thursday night, you couldn't help hearing about it. A promotional film about 'Legacy' opened the show and Fogerty mentioned it again before his encore set. Both the album, subtitled 'The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,' and his concert tell a story of how he wants to look back. As Fogerty noted at one point Thursday night, Creedence Clearwater Revival soared to the highest heights before imploding bitterly in the early '70s and never again recording or touring together. Only Creedence diehards would have known the identity of the other band members — drummer Doug Clifford, bassist Stu Cook, and guitarist Tom Fogerty, John's brother, who died in 1990. Their names were never mentioned, their faces near-invisible among the rush of images that appeared Thursday on a screen behind Fogerty and his band. The new tracks on 'Legacy,' each labeled 'John's Version,' leave only John Fogerty from the original group. The Beacon show was very much about where is he now, and how much he likes it. He dashed about the stage, rocked out on his Rickenbacker with the joy of a teenager on air guitar and even poured himself champagne. Fans clapped and danced, while being showered with confetti and dazzled with lasers and fog. The more informed sang along with 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain' and the baseball anthem 'Centerfield," Fogerty's most famous post-Creedence song. Virtually all stood and cheered to serenade the night's guest of honor, whose birthday was the day before.
San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Former Creedence Clearwater front man John Fogerty celebrates 80th with show in Manhattan
NEW YORK (AP) — As he turned 80 this week, John Fogerty was in a mood to honor his past and to revise it. We should all be so alive and so remembered at his age. Fogerty, in the midst of an international tour, played a rowdy 100-minute set Thursday night to an adoring, near-capacity audience at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre. Crowd members spanned from those likely to remember 'Proud Mary,' 'Fortunate Son' and other Creedence Clearwater Revival hits when first released a half-century ago to those looking young enough to have heard about them through their grandparents. At least from a distance, Fogerty didn't look or sound much different from his prime with Creedence, which was rarely off the charts between 1969 and 1971. He wore his trademark flannel shirt; had the same shaggy haircut, although with his bangs brushed back; sang with a vintage roar that has mellowed only slightly; and even played the same guitar, a Rickenbacker, that he had acquired back in the late '60s. Fogerty presented himself as a proud rock 'n' roller, and a very proud family man. His band includes two of his sons on guitar, Shane and Tyler, with daughter Kelsy briefly joining them on a third guitar. Off to the side was his wife, Julie, whom he praised as the love and the hero of his life, if only because she gave one of the greatest gifts an old rock star could ask for: She helped win back rights to his song catalogue. Fogerty had battled over his copyrights for decades, and at one point found himself being sued for plagiarizing one of his Creedence hits, which at the time he didn't own. He has marked his victory with an upcoming album, 'Legacy,' for which he recorded new versions of 20 songs. If you were in the house Thursday night, you couldn't help hearing about it. A promotional film about 'Legacy' opened the show and Fogerty mentioned it again before his encore set. Both the album, subtitled 'The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,' and his concert tell a story of how he wants to look back. As Fogerty noted at one point Thursday night, Creedence Clearwater Revival soared to the highest heights before imploding bitterly in the early '70s and never again recording or touring together. Only Creedence diehards would have known the identity of the other band members — drummer Doug Clifford, bassist Stu Cook, and guitarist Tom Fogerty, John's brother, who died in 1990. Their names were never mentioned, their faces near-invisible among the rush of images that appeared Thursday on a screen behind Fogerty and his band. The new tracks on 'Legacy,' each labeled 'John's Version,' leave only John Fogerty from the original group. The Beacon show was very much about where is he now, and how much he likes it. He dashed about the stage, rocked out on his Rickenbacker with the joy of a teenager on air guitar and even poured himself champagne. Fans clapped and danced, while being showered with confetti and dazzled with lasers and fog. The more informed sang along with 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain' and the baseball anthem 'Centerfield," Fogerty's most famous post-Creedence song. Virtually all stood and cheered to serenade the night's guest of honor, whose birthday was the day before.
Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Former Creedence Clearwater front man John Fogerty celebrates 80th with show in Manhattan
NEW YORK (AP) — As he turned 80 this week, John Fogerty was in a mood to honor his past and to revise it. We should all be so alive and so remembered at his age. Fogerty, in the midst of an international tour, played a rowdy 100-minute set Thursday night to an adoring, near-capacity audience at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre. Crowd members spanned from those likely to remember 'Proud Mary,' 'Fortunate Son' and other Creedence Clearwater Revival hits when first released a half-century ago to those looking young enough to have heard about them through their grandparents. At least from a distance, Fogerty didn't look or sound much different from his prime with Creedence, which was rarely off the charts between 1969 and 1971. He wore his trademark flannel shirt; had the same shaggy haircut, although with his bangs brushed back; sang with a familiar roar that has mellowed only; and even played the same guitar, a Rickenbacker, that he had acquired back in the late '60s. Fogerty presented himself as a proud rock 'n' roller, and a very proud family man. His band includes two of his sons on guitar, Shane and Tyler, with daughter Kelsy briefly joining them on another guitar. Off to the side was his wife, Julie, whom he praised as the love and the hero of his life, if only because she gave one of the greatest gifts an old rock star could ask for: She helped win back rights to his song catalogue. Fogerty had battled over his copyrights for decades, and at one point found himself being sued for plagiarizing one of his Creedence hits, which at the time he didn't own. He has marked his victory with an upcoming album, 'Legacy,' for which he recorded new versions of 20 songs. If you were in the house Thursday night, you couldn't help hearing about it. A promotional film about 'Legacy' opened the show and Fogerty mentioned it again before his encore set. Both the album, subtitled 'The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,' and his concert tell a story of how he wants to look back. As Fogerty noted at one point Thursday night, Creedence Clearwater Revival soared to the highest heights before imploding bitterly in the early '70s and never again recording or touring together. Only Creedence diehards would have known the identity of the other band members — drummer Doug Clifford, bassist Stu Cook, and guitarist Tom Fogerty, John's brother, who died in 1990. Their names were never mentioned, their faces near-invisible among the rush of images that appeared Thursday on a screen behind Fogerty and his band. The new tracks on 'Legacy' leave only John from the original group. The Beacon show was very much about where is he now, and how much he is enjoying himself. He dashed about the stage, rocked out on his Rickenbacker with the joy of a teenager on air guitar and even poured himself champagne. Fans clapped and danced, while being showered with confetti and dazzled with lasers and fog. The more informed sang along with 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain' and the baseball anthem 'Centerfield,' Fogerty's most famous post-Creedence song. Virtually all stood and cheered to serenade the night's guest of honor, whose birthday was the day before.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
John Fogerty to Release New Recordings of Creedence Clearwater Revival Songs — Basically ‘John's Versions'
Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty has announced the release of a collection of re-recordings of his classic songs from the Creedence era, titled 'Legacy: the Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,' and arriving August 22, 2025 via Concord. The 20-track collection features newly recorded versions of Fogerty compositions from the late 1960s and early 1970s, including 'Proud Mary,' 'Bad Moon Rising,' 'Fortunate Son' and 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain.' The new versions are described in the announcement as 'both a celebration of an iconic catalog and a personal reclamation of artistic ownership,' and 'fresh takes on the music that continues to define American rock, recorded with renewed energy and a deep sense of purpose as he celebrates his 80th birthday.' More from Variety Amazon Prime Video Taps Eric Church, John Fogerty for NASCAR Theme Based on Retooled CCR Smash NAMM Convention Adds Brandi Carlile for Session Exploring Her Views on Record Production John Fogerty Recounts His Epic Journey to Finally Control His Classic Creedence Songs: 'Good Things Come to Those Who Wait' - for 55 Years Fogerty announced the album from the stage during his sold-out 80th birthday concert Wednesday night at New York's Beacon. 'For most of my life I did not own the songs I had written,' says Fogerty. 'Getting them back changes everything. Legacy is my way of celebrating that — of playing these songs on my terms, with the people I love.' The album was produced by Fogerty and his son Shane Fogerty, with executive production by his wife and manager Julie Fogerty. While Fogerty did not mention it, the move is similar to Taylor Swift's re-recordings of her first six albums on Big Machine Records, the rights to which were sold without her consent; she has painstakingly re-recorded four of the albums as 'Taylor's Version's in a move to gain control of the material. Many artists have re-recorded songs from their catalog in an effort to sidestep record deals they felt were unfair, but the move is doubly significant for Fogerty, as he bitterly battled with former Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz for decades over control of his catalog. Zaentz signed Fogerty and Creedence in the mid-1960s to an onerous contract that he defended aggressively and litigiously for decades. Fogerty's deep frustration over the situation led him to essentially retire from releasing and performing music for many years, re-emerging in 1985 with his 'Centerfield' album, which included the thinly veiled song and music video, 'Vanz Kant Danz' (which unsurprisingly led to a $144 million, ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit from Zaentz, who claimed the song copied Fogerty's own hit 'Run Through the Jungle'). The battle consumed Fogerty for decades of his life and the artist's life and sidelined his music career for many years, although Concord quickly improved the terms of the deal when it acquired the Fantasy catalog in 2004. Finally, in 2023, nearly 10 years after Zaentz's death and more than a half-century after the songs were released, Concord sold Fogerty a majority interest in the global publishing rights to his song catalog with the group for an undisclosed sum. Although ownership of the original recordings remains with Concord, apparently no bad feelings, as the company will also release the new Fogerty-owned versions. Julie Fogerty said, 'I knew first hand how much it meant for John to get his publishing back. It has been so joyful and beautiful since this happened for him. This is a celebration of his life's work. It is the biggest party for the good guy/artist winning.' Both Shane and his brother Tyler Fogerty perform throughout the album, accompanied by musicians Matt Chamberlain, Bob Malone, Bob Glaub and Rob Stone. Today, new recordings of 'Up Around The Bend' 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain,' and 'Porterville' are available on streaming services now. Best of Variety 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
John Fogerty Is Re-Recording Creedence Classics. We Asked Him Why
As John Fogerty begins talking about his new album, a bemused smile comes over his face. 'I wanted to call it Taylor's Version,' he says during a recent visit to New York. 'I lobbied very much to the record company.' Whether he's joking or not, Fogerty says his label passed on the idea. Then again, he had a point. Onstage at New York's Beacon Theatre Wednesday night, during the first of two 80th birthday celebration shows, Fogerty announced his upcoming LP, Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. Due Aug. 22, the album's 20 tracks aren't just covers of his best-known and beloved songs from his Creedence days. Rather, they're painstaking recreations of the original versions, down to Fogerty's singing and guitar parts and the original rhythm section, starting with 'Up Around the Bend' and continuing through big hits like 'Proud Mary,' 'Who'll Stop the Rain,' 'Bad Moon Rising,' and 'Down on the Corner,' and deep cuts like 'Porterville' and 'Bootleg.' More from Rolling Stone John Fogerty Celebrated His 80th Birthday With Cake, Confetti, and Loads of CCR Classics Bruce Springsteen Jams With John Fogerty, Tom Morello, Smokey Robinson at American Music Honors The Best of SXSW Day One: John Fogerty, Case Oats, Gloin, and More 'I'm still kind of waiting to hear feedback,' Fogerty says. 'But the first five or six people I've talked to who've listened to it all say it sounds 'fresher.' Maybe what they're saying is it's clearer, or the fidelity is better or something? That may be something I hadn't even counted on, but there's more dimension to it, more depth.' Musicians have been releasing note-for-note covers of their older material for decades now, but for Fogerty, the thought arrived two years ago. With a push from his wife and manager, Julie, he finally acquired a majority interest in the publishing rights to his Creedence song catalog in 2023. It was Julie, he says, who then suggested a remakes album, although Fogerty admits he was skeptical. 'I didn't want to have anything to do with that,' he says. 'But then as time went on, I thought, 'Okay, I'll stick my toe in the water and see how that is.'' That process started with Fogerty and his son (and guitarist) Shane digging deep into the Creedence recordings. With the help of isolated audio tracks — known as 'stems' — they could listen separately to each vocal and instrumental part, including every aspect of Fogerty's singing, in order to create a precision copy. In that regard, Fogerty insists the project is different from his previous remakes albums: the all-star duets project Wrote a Song for Everyone and 2020's Fogerty's Factory, where he recut Creedence songs with members of his family. 'In those cases, I suppose I was simply singing the songs, whereas this time around the idea was to, I guess they call it 're-record,'' he says. 'Instead of going off on a tangent of 'Oh, let's do a folk music version' or something, the idea was to sound closely like the original.' After cutting a few preliminary backing tracks with a band — Shane on guitar and session veterans Bob Glaub on bass and Matt Chamberlain on drums — Fogerty started by adding a new vocal onto the remade 'Proud Mary.' The moment proved pivotal to the project. 'I've been singing 'Proud Mary' for over 50 years, and I developed a lot of bad habits singing it, with no reference to the original,' he says. 'But here was the moment where I realized, 'John, that wasn't close enough. You're not really doing the song. You're doing a 'drive-by' version.' I had to relearn the song, with all the inflections in all the same ways. It's like people in New York don't go to see the Statue of Liberty, because it's right there. Shane was able to point out many times, 'Dad, I think that part is a little more complicated than you've been doing it.'' That process continued as more songs were recreated over a period of two years. Fogerty realized he was singing 'Lookin' Out My Back Door' with what he calls 'more syncopation' at his concerts. 'The way I had recorded it, because it was probably within a few weeks of me writing it, it was kind of straight,' he says. 'Kind of corny, you know? Then we listened to 'Born on the Bayou,' and it became a whole new thing. I said, 'Man, I like this better than the old way,' because the parts were very much like a jam band, but a really good jam band. Not waiting forever for something to happen.' Adding to the revisiting-the-past process, Fogerty even played the same Rickenbacker guitar (with 'Acme' hand-painted on its body) that he'd used during his Creedence days. He'd given it away in the Seventies and had an opportunity to buy it back in the Nineties, he says, for $40,000. But he passed at the time, partly for financial reasons and partly emotional ones. It's no secret that Fogerty's relations with his former bandmates, as well as the late Fantasy Records head Saul Zaentz, have been fraught, clouded by lawsuits and hard feelings. So the memories attached to the guitar were, he says, too painful to revisit. 'I was hurt. I was damaged,' Fogerty says. A decade ago, though, Julie Fogerty secretly bought the guitar back (for an undisclosed sum) and gave it to her husband as a Christmas present, after which he says the healing began. 'I started as a kid full of joy doing music, but during the time of Creedence, and shortly after that, it became certainly not joyful,' he says. 'The idea [behind Legacy] was to reconnect and feel that way about everything again. The guy who couldn't even stand to look at his own guitar in the Nineties or beyond would have never done that.' Even if he didn't use a Swiftian title for the album, Fogerty says Legacy is nonetheless connected to the way Swift began remaking her albums after her back catalog was sold to Scooter Braun. (Similarly, Fogerty and his former bandmates in Creedence don't own the masters of their albums.) 'I understood her plight,' he says. 'She's had a wonderful career, and, of course, had saved a lot of money and was a major touring artist, so she was quite able to pay whatever amount the person that was going to sell it. I really felt for her at the time, because the guy was selling it to somebody else. That sort of thing has certainly happened to me. It's very much like what Saul Zaentz might do.' Like Swift, Fogerty does own the masters of his remakes, which could result in a financial windfall if Legacy sells or streams well. (Tellingly, Legacy doesn't include the band's hit covers of 'Susie Q' or 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine,' neither written by Fogerty.) Still, a question hovers over Legacy: Since these renditions faithfully mimic the recordings that longtime fans know, why would they need them? 'That's a great question, because I asked that myself,' he says. 'But there's a couple of things. Number one, there's probably no chance in the world I will ever have any part of the ownership of the old masters. This is kind of the Taylor Swift part. But another thing is, I think there's a joy quite evident in the music that may not be there in the original versions.' In Fogerty's mind, certain songs have also benefited, especially lyrically, from the passage of time. 'When I listen to the finished vocal on 'Lodi,' it certainly sounds like the guy who lived that part, whereas I'm not sure the guy who sang it the first time did,' he says. In 2021, Fogerty re-emerged with the gospel-style 'Weeping in the Promised Land,' his first newly written song in eight years. At the time, he told Rolling Stone that an album would likely follow, but it never did, and he now says fans expecting such a record may be disappointed. 'Do I have a bunch of songs written and recorded?' he says. 'No, I don't.' But he adds that participating in last month's American Music Honors, where Bruce Springsteen inducted him, proved to be inspiring — especially after Jackson Browne led some of the musicians in a version of 'Take It Easy': 'On our drive back to the hotel with my wife, I said, 'I'm like 10 feet off the ground. I want to go write songs and record them!'' For the moment, though, Fogerty chooses to revel in Legacy and its surprise announcement at his birthday show. 'When you're 80 years old, you finally are given the special key to the kingdom,' he says. 'I guess you can do whatever you want. And I decided this is what I wanted to do, to give myself a present.' 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