The Time John Fogerty Was Sued for Ripping Off John Fogerty

[luisam]

 

John Cameron Fogerty, as the lead guitarist, lead singer, and principal songwriter was the main responsible of the success of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival. He founded the band together with Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and his brother Tom Fogerty. CCR, as it's best known, had nine top-ten singles and eight gold albums between 1968 and 1972, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

 

After all, Fogerty was CCR, was he not? He wrote, produced, arranged and sang 97% of their material. Additionally, he played all the instrumentation save for the rhythm guitar, bass and drums. This includes backing vocals on all but four songs ("Susie Q," "Porterville," "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "Sailor's Lament,"); and he wrote many of his bandmates' parts as well.

 

After CCR parted ways in 1972, Fogerty had a successful solo career. He was listed as number 40 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists (at number 40) and the number 72 of the list of 100 Greatest Singers. Some of his best known songs with CCR include "Proud Mary", "Down on the Corner", "Centerfield", "Bad Moon Rising", "Green River", and Fortunate Son".

 

Still in high school he formed his first band with his brother Tom Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford called "Blue Velvet" which would be in 1967 the lineup of Credence Clearwater Revival.  Meanwhile , in 1964, the band was signed to Fantasy Records, where John Fogerty worked as warehouseman. Max Weiss, one of Fantasy's co-owners, initially changed the group's name to The Visions, but when their songs were released as a single, in November 1964, Weiss renamed them The Golliwogs , releasing seven singles in the San Francisco Bay area. For the composing credits on the first six singles, the Fogerty brothers adopted the pseudonyms "Rann Wild" and "Toby Green", and all songs were credited to Wild and Green.

 

In December 1967, the Golliwogs changed their name to Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR). The last single by The Golliwogs ,"Porterville", was reissued the following month as the first single by Creedence Clearwater Revival and the band's first album was released in July 1968.

 

The group disbanded acrimoniously in late 1972 after four years of chart-topping success. Tom Fogerty had officially left the previous year, and John was at odds with the remaining members over matters of business and artistic control, all of which resulted in subsequent lawsuits among the former bandmates.

Since 1956, one of the executive of Fantasy Records was Saul Zaentz. In 1967 with other partners he purchased the label from founders Max and Sol Weiss. Fantasy Records still owns the distribution and publishing rights to the music of CCR.

 

In 1973, Fogerty began his solo career with The Blue Ridge Rangers, his one-man band collection of country and gospel songs. Under his old CCR contract, however, Fogerty owed Fantasy eight more records. In the end, he refused to work for the label. The impasse was resolved only when Asylum Records' David Geffen bought Fogerty's contract for $1,000,000. Additionally, bad investments by Zaentz and Fantasy, seemingly on the group's behalf, cost CCR millions of dollars, some of which the group recouped through legal proceedings.

 

One of the solid hits of CCR is “Run Through the Jungle”, released in 1970, eventually be certified gold by the RIAA, but it didn’t really grab headlines until 1985 when Fogerty released a solo track called “The Old Man Down the Road.”

 

“The Old Man Down the Road” is a pretty nice song, too; it even cracked the top 10 on the singles charts. One person wasn’t a fan, though. Saul Zaentz, who owned CCR’s old label Fantasy Records, also owned the copyright to “Run Through the Jungle.” Zaentz felt that “The Old Man Down the Road” was simply “Run Through the Jungle” with different words. In other words, according to his conceptualization, John Fogerty had plagiarized a John Fogerty song to which he didn’t own the copyright…. So he sued Forgerty in federal court for copyright infringement!

 

It’s worth noting that Zaentz and Fogerty weren’t on the best of terms in the first place. The same 1985 album that featured “The Old Man Down the Road,” Centerfield, also included the tracks “Mr. Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.” Critics and fans saw these songs as pointed attacks on Zaentz, and the label head initiated a separate $144 million defamation lawsuit that claimed Fogerty portrayed him as “a thief, robber, adulterer, and murderer.” The two sides settled that suit out of court.

 

Defamation aside, was there musically any merit to the copyright claims? Have a listen and decide for yourself:

 

"Run Through the Jungle"

 

 

“The Old Man Down the Road”

 

 

The case ended up before a jury in Federal District Court in San Francisco in late 1988. The two-week trial featured Fogerty taking the witness stand with guitar in hand to explain that yes, the two songs may have sounded somewhat similar, but they were both variations on his signature “swamp rock” style. Simply put, of course two John Fogerty songs sounded the same.

 

This logic seemed pretty sound to the jury. It only took two hours of deliberation for the jury to determine that the two songs didn’t meet the legal standard of being “substantially similar” that would have constituted copyright infringement. The Fogerty camp let out a collective “huzzah!”

 

The real legal action was just warming up, though. Since Fogerty had successfully defended himself against Fantasy Records’ suit, he sought reimbursement for his attorney’s fees. No dice. If the plaintiff, Fantasy, had been successful in its suit against Fogerty, the label would have been able to seek its lawyer fees from the musician. Since Fogerty had been a prevailing defendant, though, the court ruled that he could only seek fees if he could show that Fantasy’s suit was frivolous or had been made in bad faith. Fantasy’s suit may not have panned out, but it didn’t fit those criteria.

 

This decision put Fogerty in a sticky spot. Sure, he had won the case, but he was on the hook for $1.09 million in fees for his attorneys and those of his current label, Warner Brothers. Fogerty and his team didn’t think this arrangement was very fair, so they appealed the decision. In 1993 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit shot down that appeal, though, on the same grounds—the original suit had been neither frivolous nor brought in bad faith.

 

After that failed appeal, Fogerty v. Fantasy – which would be an awesome title for a Fogerty concept record about battling elves, by the way – ended up in front of the Supreme Court. Fogerty’s camp made the same argument: that it made no sense to have a dual standard for plaintiffs and defendants seeking reimbursement for lawyer fees under the Copyright Act of 1976.

 

In March 1994, the Supreme Court issued a 9-to-0 decision in favor of Fogerty. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that there was nothing in the Copyright Act of 1976 that implied that Congress wanted anything other than a level playing field when it came to awarding attorney’s fees to the prevailing party.

 

Rehnquist also hinted at a bit of Creedence fandom, writing that CCR "has been recognized as one of the greatest American rock and roll groups of all time."