AS John Fogeerty 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. “
When he's Joking or Not, Fogerty Says His Label Passend On The Idea. Then Again, He Had a Point. Onstage at New York's Beacon Theater Wednesday Night, During the First of Two 80th Birthday Celebration Shows, Fogerty Annuunded His Upcoming LP, Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. Two 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 Setion, 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. ”
“I'm Still Kind of Waiting to Hear Feedback,” Fogerty Says. “But the first help 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 beter or Something?
Musicians Have Been Releasing Note-For-Note Covers of Their Older Material for Decades Now, But for Fogerty, The Thought Arringer Two Years Aug. With a push from his his wife and manager, Julie, he -finally acquired a majority interest in the publishing rights to his Creedence Song Catalog in 2023 “I Didn'T Want to Have Anything to do with that,” Heys. “But then as time on, the Thought, 'Okay, I'm stick My Toe in the Water and See How That Is.'
That Process Started with Fogenty and His Son (and Guitarist) Shane Digging Deep Into the Creedence Recordings. With the Help of Isolated Audio Tracks – Known As “Stems” – They Could Listening Separately to Each Vocal and Instrumental Part, Including Every Appeal 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 the was Simply singing the songs, where this time Around the idea was to, the Guess they call it 're-registration,'” 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,” Heys. “But here was the Moment Where i Realized, 'John, that wasn't Close enounted. You're not really doing the song. You're doing a” Drive-by “Version.' I Had to Relearn The Song, with all the inflection in All the Same Ways. 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 with a feys of me Writing it, it was Kind of Straight,” Heys. “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 This The Old Way,' Because the Parts Were Very Much Like a Jam Band, but to Really good Jam Band. Not Waiting Forever for Something to Happen. ”
Adding to the Revisiting-The-Past Process, Fogerty Even Played the Same Rickenback 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, Heys, for $ 40,000. But he passeed at the time, partly for financial rensions and partly emotional ones. It's no secret that fogerty's relations with his bandmates, as well as the Late Fantasy Records Head Saul Zaentz, Have Been Fraaught, Clouded by Lawsuits and Hard Feelings. So the Memories Attached to the Guitar Were, Heys, Too Painful to revisit. “I was Hurt. I was damaged,” Fogerty Says.
In Decade Aug, Though, Julie Fogerty Secretly Bought the Guitar Back (for an undisclosed Sum) and Gave it to Husband As a Christmas Present, After Which Heys the Healing Began. “The Started As a Kid Full of Joy Doing Music, But During the Time of Creedence, and Shortly After that, it Became Certainly not Joyful, “Heys.“ The Idea [behind Legacy] Was To Reconnect and Feel That Way About Everything Again. The Guy Who Couuldn'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,” Heys. “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 of Thing Has Certainly Happened to Me.
Like Swift, Fogerty Does Own the Masters of His Remakes, Which CouUnd Result in A Financial Windfall If Legacy Sells or Streams Well. (Tellingly, Legacy Doesn't includes The Band's Hit Covers of “Susie Q” or “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” in the Written by Fogerty.)
Still, A question Hovers over Legacy: Since These Renditions Faithfully Mimic the Recordings That Longtime Fans Know, Why would have they Need Them? “That's a Great Question, Because I Asked That MySelf,” He Says. “But there's a coupe of Things. Number One, There's probably no chance in the world i will ever have any part of the ownership of the old master. This is Kind of the Taylor Swift part May Not be there in the original Versions. ”
In Fogerty's Mind, Certain Songs Have Also Benefited, Espencially Lyric after, from the Passage of Time. “When I listere to the finished vocal on 'lodi,' it Certainly sounds like the guy play lived that part, where I'm not sure the guy living it the first time did,” heys.
In 2021, Fogenty 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 disappear.
“Do I have a bunch of songs writer and recreded?” Heys. “No, the don't.” But He Adds that Participating in Last Mont's American Music Honors, where Bruce Springsted inditted Him, proved to be inspiring – Especilly After Jackson Browne Led Some of the Musicians in A Version of “Take It Easy”: “Our Drive Back To The Hotel With My Wife, I Said, 'i' Like 10 Feet Off the Ground.
For the Moment, Though, Fogerty Chooses to Revel in Legacy and its surprise AnnoUunement at His Birthday Show. “When you're 80 years old, you finally are given the special key to the kingdom,” Heys. “I Guess you can do whatever you want. And decide this is what i wanted to do, to give myself a present.”
