Fortunate Son

by John Fogerty

  When we got there, Julie went off to the powder room, and I gave the ring to the waiter and explained that he should put the ring in her glass of white wine. He arrives with our glasses. Julie has a little sip, puts it down. I say, “Why don’t you have another sip of your wine?” She’s looking at me. I say, “Maybe I’m trying to seduce you.” She takes a big gulp. Finally she sees the ring. That was one time I truly shocked her.

  The debt I owe Julie is for her sticking with me after she began to see what a lot of baggage there was, what a lot of work I was going to end up being. And I know I was. All I can say is, thank God she saw something and she hung in there.

  Julie: The ring in the wineglass—that was the moment I knew that John was really, really starting to show signs of healing. I just knew that he deserved someone who cared deeply for him. Someone who could celebrate his life, love, and talent. He never had anyone even pat him on the back or give him thanks. Although his mom had been very helpful to John in certain ways, she never gave him affection. He had never had that in his life. To this day, John and I hold hands as if it’s 1987.

  Everybody thought I was crazy, but I felt that John needed help, regardless of how I felt and how bad it got. And it got bad. I remember how his guitars just sat there unplayed. I would go in the studio and see some of his instruments covered in dust, not having been touched for years. They just glowed to me. I felt the energy coming off of them. There was a spiritual connection between those instruments and John, but he couldn’t get back there. The music was there. It was just locked up, frozen in pain. I knew in my heart that I had to help John. The songs he had given us needed to be heard again.

  CHAPTER 16

  Zanz Kant Danz (But He’ll Steal Your Money)

  IN OCTOBER 1988, the plagiarism case went to trial in federal court in San Francisco. Saul Zaentz was claiming that my song “The Old Man Down the Road” was an exact copy of the Creedence song “Run Through the Jungle.” Which Saul owned.

  By this time I’d already been through the 1983 Castle Bank trial, which stretched into three or four months. I’d been giving depositions day after day for Saul’s lawyers. I actually had to go on tour for Eye of the Zombie before the album came out because of the trial date. The day before the first show, in Memphis, I was tied up giving a deposition. One group of depositions went on for a week straight—eight to five every day. This was Saul saying, “I’m going to make John very uncomfortable.” Just because he could. Because he had the money.

  Being deposed is one of the most stressful things ever. They try real hard to break you down. The way lawyers can attack you is unnatural, at times cruel. All day long you’re terrified at what might come out of your mouth, because it can and will be used against you. When you’re done, you go home, conk out, and then you come back and do it again the next day. At one point I was so stressed I couldn’t even remember my own address. My lawyer tried to pass it off as, “Being a celebrity, Mr. Fogerty does not want that information in the public record,” but the truth was, I was so flummoxed I couldn’t even remember where I lived! I was in a state of perpetual anxiety. I felt that my life was at stake in all of this.

  During one group of depositions, I had actually developed a strategy of taking as long as possible to answer. Deposition transcripts don’t note time passing—there’s just the questions, and then the answers. So I’d sit there holding a baseball that I got in Cooperstown. It reminded me of my childhood, and all the wonderful things that came out of the song “Centerfield.” I found solace in that little ball. The lawyer would ask something like, “Mr. Fogerty, where were you the night of the seventh of January, 1978?” And I’d just sit there for ten minutes, playing catch with myself, before answering. I’d think to myself, The hell with you, mister! They just sent you here to spin my wheels and help my attorney get rich. There was some Pyrrhic solace in doing that, but the whole thing was exhausting.

  In addition to this, once the lawsuit was filed, Fantasy just stopped paying me. For three and a half years I didn’t get paid any songwriting royalties, not just for “Run Through the Jungle”—for all my songs, everything. That was illegal: the other songs weren’t in contention—only that one song. They were trying to starve me out. Luckily, I was frugal and lived pretty simply. I had saved my money… otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to fight back.

  I didn’t have Julie come to the trial with me. That was a mistake. Julie’s so beautiful—I didn’t want that jury looking at her and going, “Look at his wife! Oh man, John’s doin’ all right. He doesn’t have any problems at all!” I didn’t want anything outside of the events and the facts to sway their decision. I regret that. I should’ve been there proudly with my wife. I could have used her support a lot more than that little baseball!

  There was a lot at stake in this case. We’re talking about two songs that had been on the radio and earned a lot of money. Everybody knew these songs, including members of the jury. Fantasy was suing to dissolve my authorship of the newer song—it would not be a sovereign, separate song. Legally it would just be “Run Through the Jungle,” and therefore they would own this new song just as they owned the older one.

  Fantasy was the publisher on “Run Through the Jungle,” and in theory I should get 50 percent of the earnings as the writer of the song. Early on the judge in the case ruled that if Fantasy won, not only would they own “The Old Man Down the Road,” but 100 percent of the proceeds would go to Fantasy and nothing to the writer—me. So where in the world does that sort of ruling come from? That is just patently unfair. Thank God they didn’t win, because that would’ve been a pretty horrible precedent for us songwriters.

  Fantasy really had no case. One of the music experts we’d hired was on the stand, and he’d gone through all my music and was pointing out the similarity in style between all my songs, the places where I tended to do things in a similar way. And Fantasy’s lawyer asked, “Well, why didn’t John change the parts that were similar?” And the guy answered, “Because it wouldn’t have sold a nickel’s worth.” Everybody laughed because it was the damn truth. It was my style that was on trial.

  There were so many ridiculous moments during the trial. I had used the word “thunder” in both “The Old Man Down the Road” and “Run Through the Jungle.” So of course they wanted to claim ownership of the word “thunder”—“John, you can’t write another song with that word. That’s unique to our song. And it appears in no other songs anywhere ever in your whole career—just ‘Old Man,’ which obviously came from ‘Run Through the Jungle.’”

  For about a week the only “music” we heard in the courtroom was computer-driven beeps that supposedly represented the melodies of the contested songs. Then they put on my John Fogerty album, and suddenly there’s actual, real music with drums and guitar. Everybody in the courtroom got kind of peppy. And this song I’d written called “The Wall” starts, and the very first line references “thunder.” I could see the whole jury going, “What the… ?!”

  Saul was just out to discredit my music, and me. When we sat down in court the first day, Al Bendich was twenty feet away from me and caught my eye. I could tell he was embarrassed. This lawsuit was clearly vindictive. Near the end of the trial, Saul got on the stand, and my lawyer Ken Sidle asked him, “Mr. Zaentz, isn’t it true that this whole trial is just a vendetta against John Fogerty?” And before he finished the question, Saul exploded, “It’s an answer to a vendetta!” He just had a meltdown. You could see his face turn red and steam come out of his ears. Seeing that was nearly worth the price of admission.

  Fantasy’s lawyers had hired a couple of nerds to try to make their case for them. The thing that really went bust happened the first or second day of the trial. They had programmed both of the songs through a computer. This was their big lab test. First they played the two songs separately, with all their parts. (They never played the actual records for the jury—just crappy, computerized, beeping versions.) Next they stripped the songs down to just their m
elodies and played snippets of them separately. Then they announced that they were going to play the melodies together and instructed us that the places where you’re just hearing one note means the songs are the same, and anytime you hear two notes means the melodies have diverged and are separate, different.

  After about three of these awful computerized notes—beep beep boop—the melodies started separating. To put it mildly, it didn’t help their case. I’m thinking, Didn’t they test this before they did it? Because they are making the case that these are two distinctly different songs. I spent years of my life to get here? I’m watching the jury, and everybody’s squirming in their seats.

  On October 31, I had to testify. I was there to explain the differences between the two songs. Because I’d let my emotions run away with me three days before the trial, I had a cast on my arm. I had been sitting in my office, thinking about what was to come, and I just got really, really angry. I saw Saul sitting there grinning, with all my money and all my songs—and getting away with it. It felt like a volcano was welling up in me, and bam! I hit this office chair as hard as I could. I broke some bones in my hand.

  So I took off my cast in front of everybody and played my Washburn guitar through a little amp. Obviously the people in the courtroom were somewhat entertained. It’s rare that something like this occurs in a courtroom. But this was not a performance. I didn’t have an Elvis jumpsuit on. Everything in a trial is under a microscope. Any little nuance—your facial expressions, or if you happen to say the wrong word at the wrong time—they can hold that against you. So you’re being very serious.

  I explained that there is a certain chord I play that’s really kind of swampy. You play an E7 chord at the seventh fret on the guitar. You have both a low-E and a high-E string ringing out. They are open, not held down like the other strings. This gives the chord a chimey, sustaining sound with a bit of dissonance or mystery to it. Then if you kind of smash or slur your fingers over to the next strings, you get sort of a sustained A chord with elements of the E still there. You don’t hold it there, you just accent it there. It gives the music an eerie feeling. My colors, kind of my invention. At least I feel that way about it. Basically, this trial was all about style—my style of music, swamp rock. And if one guy can own another person’s artistic style for the rest of his life, it would be a horrible thing—for every artist.

  Before this, their expert had played a melody on the piano: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Then he played another: “Rock of Ages.” Exact same notes, different timing. He was trying to say that even though my song “The Old Man Down the Road” had different timing, I was using the same notes as in “Run Through the Jungle.” Yeah, but the point is that they’re different songs! So when I was on the stand, I sang a little bit of both of my songs. And I sang a little of Bo Diddley’s “Bring It to Jerome”—another song that had the same notes as my two. We’re talking about the blues. You’ve only got five notes anyway, so somewhere in your blues song you’re going to have those notes.

  Their expert also labeled certain notes as “pickup notes.” These were notes in the songs that came before or after the bigger beats in the music. He tried to imply that they were spontaneous, unintentional, as if they didn’t count. So I hummed this melody that was unrecognizable to everybody in the courtroom until I sang it with the so-called pickup notes: the song was “Mack the Knife”—and those in-between notes are important!

  At one point I was on the stand explaining how I’d learned about the lawsuit, and that I’d heard they were basing the plagiarism on “Green River,” not “Run Through the Jungle.” And in the course of my testimony I mentioned how an engineer at Wally Heider’s had heard “Green River” as we were working on it and called me at home—this was somebody I didn’t even know—and how he’d quoted the line “Pick up a flat rock / Skip it across Green River” and told me, “That’s such good writing.”

  I was being grilled by Fantasy’s longtime lawyer, Malcolm Bernstein. And he said, “Well, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. That doesn’t prove anything.” I really wanted to stand up and scream at that guy, “You no-good so-and-so, the only thing your client has ever done in life is rip me off and steal my songs.” I didn’t, of course.

  Bernstein was this very distasteful guy. His voice grated on your nerves, and at that moment he was holding my private songwriting notebook, the one I’d written all my titles in. They were allowed access to it because of the trial, and here this creep was thumbing through my personal songbook like it’s nothing and talking about me like I’m nothing. I’m looking at him turn the pages in my songbook—that is my soul. I was completely disgusted by this.*

  I don’t think anyone noticed, but after the trial I heard from the jury foreman, whose name—believe it or not—was Robbie Robertson. He sent me a Christmas card, and on the front was a picture of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, along with the music notation of the song. Mr. Robertson had drawn little arrows pointing to the notes, which he had humorously labeled “pickup notes.” Inside the card he wrote that the most telling moment of the trial was Malcolm Bernstein standing there berating me with my songbook in his hand.

  During the trial, the moment that really knocked me for a loop came during Saul’s testimony. My lawyer asked, “Why did you decide to do this, anyway?” And Saul answered, “Well, that bass player in Creedence, Doug Clifford”—you’d think that Saul could at least remember that Stu Cook is the bass player in Creedence, since the band had made him a fortune—“came to my office with John Fogerty’s new album, and he played John’s new song ‘The Old Man Down the Road,’ and then he played ‘Run Through the Jungle.’ And he said, ‘John is ripping off Creedence! You should sue him!’” So, according to Saul, that’s where he got the idea to sue.

  I had no clue that this had transpired. And to learn by way of Saul was really offensive. You’d think that in the course of depositions and evidence this would’ve come up, but here I was, finding out in the courtroom that someone could be so shallow, so heartless. The whole thing was a shock. It just knocked me out. How could Stu have done this?

  I felt that I had been stabbed in the back. To intentionally go see Saul—a person who’d cheated and lied and really treated all of us like crap—and do that? I’m the guy who actually provided you with millions of dollars, Stu. So that strange bedfellow is the one you climb into bed with—against me?

  After the trial, it took me years and years to be able to write a song anywhere near the territory of “The Old Man Down the Road,” because some part of me down deep inside worried that I was going to get sued again. Finally, in 2007, I was trying to write a swamp rock song for my Revival album. I was up in my little writing studio, and as I started to make that certain chord that I’m very familiar with and am known for, I began to play that funky rhythm. A little devil-lawyer figure appeared on my shoulder. And as I’m doing that swampy-feeling music, this critter says, “You can’t do that!” This had happened many times before—that same little devil would rise up, say those words, and my inspiration would just fizzle. That’s how vulnerable I was. But this time I willed it away. I said, “You go away! You don’t belong here!” And I proceeded to write “Creedence Song.”

  This didn’t happen in some big, heated battle in the middle of a courtroom with a bunch of people. It was a very quiet moment alone in my room. I finally knocked that fear out of my life. That was a moment of victory for me—artistically and emotionally.

  We ended up prevailing in that trial. The six-member jury deliberated for only three hours. But Judge Samuel Conti refused to hold Fantasy responsible for my legal fees, which were in the neighborhood of a million dollars. I had to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I won there on March 1, 1994. It was nine to zip in my favor. I was far from done with Saul Zaentz, however. There was still the matter of the $144 million defamation suit over “Zanz Kant Danz.”

  The trial had ended late on a Friday afternoon, so I flew home to Julie in Los Angeles.
The next Monday, I went back up to San Francisco. I wanted to meet with the judge and ask him man to man why my attorneys’ fees weren’t being paid. I went to the courthouse and spoke to his assistant, who said, “The judge will not see you.”

  At the plagiarism trial, Saul Zaentz’s ex-wife, Celia, had testified for him, which I thought was remarkable considering she went through a bunch of crap with him too. (Celia told me that when they split, she and the kids left the family home completely vacant save for a big picture of Creedence, to remind Saul where his money had come from, and a football. Why the football? I don’t know.) After the judge dismissed everyone that day, I made a point of walking back and saying to her, “Celia, how in the world could you testify for that bum?” And she said, “Oh, John, you and Saul should’ve resolved this years ago.” For some reason that stuck in my head. So after the judge turned me down, I went to a pay phone and called Saul. I wanted to have a meeting with him right away, that afternoon. But he was out of town. So that failed, and I went back home empty-handed.

  A couple of months later, on February 25, 1989, I went to the Bammies in San Francisco. Bill Graham was there. I hadn’t seen much of Bill in my years away from the music business, although we’d run into each other at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. Bill always made a point of inviting me up to the famous jam that just kind of started up spontaneously at the first hall of fame inductions in 1986. I’d been away from music for a long time at that point, and it made me feel really good that he wanted me there.

  Since Eye of the Zombie I’d had trouble writing anything. At one point Julie and I were on vacation, staying in a Chicago hotel. I was trying to write a song on a little pad. She looked over my shoulder, and every word on every page was negative—“hate,” “anguish,” “pain,” “venom.”