by John Fogerty
I wasn’t sure how I should feel about the professionals that I already had working on this. After all, many of them were also representing my ex-bandmates, and those guys didn’t want to get out of the plan. I decided that I needed to be represented by a “Tall Building”—meaning a law firm in a big, fancy building. I didn’t know where to start, so I called Joe Smith at Asylum Records. It was Joe who had suggested that I go fix whatever was bothering me.
Joe recommended Werner Wolfen at the firm of Irell and Manella in Century City. Werner was absolutely wonderful to me. The way I feel, looking back on it now, is if I hadn’t had Werner Wolfen in my corner from this point on, I never would have survived this mess. Werner had me come down to his office and pour out the whole dismal, awful story. Over the next few weeks he took me under his wing and just went to work. He felt it was really wrong, what had happened to me, and he just wanted to help. At this point in my economic life, I never could have afforded the representation that Werner and his firm gave me. Basically, he provided me with Ferrari performance for the price of a Kia. I will always be grateful for his generosity.
A day or two after the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre telegram, I suddenly remembered that a separate account had been set up for my songwriting royalties. To their credit, BMI had refused to send payments to some obscure entity in the Bahamas.
I didn’t know where it was or how to get at it—that’s how naive and out of touch I was. I told Jake to go down to my accountant’s office and camp out there until he had the details. Because Ed was acting more and more nervous and evasive about this thing.
We found out that the BMI money had gone into an account at the Royal Bank of Canada. I instructed Jake to tell Ed, “Get that money back!” The check arrived and it was made out to “Fred Fogerty.” Ed was going to send it back, but I said, “No, don’t do that! If it goes back, I’m sure we will never see it again!” I signed the check and deposited it at my bank in El Cerrito. At that moment that was all the money I had in the world. The IRS, of course, contended that I owed taxes on the income that had been deposited in Castle Bank. (The whole point of “the plan” had been to avoid paying income tax.) So this check that was made out to Fred Fogerty? That money went straight to the IRS.
The other guys in Creedence were represented by many of the same lawyers and accountants as me. When they learned about my decision to leave the Castle Bank plan, their reaction was, “John is crazy,” and they went about trying to salvage their funds while staying in the plan. Tom went so far as to fly to Geneva with one of the professionals, hoping to transfer his account to Switzerland. The three of them stayed in the plan for another year or so without taking action to withdraw from it, even though their accounts were frozen too.
I was now suing Saul, Fantasy Records, my accountant, my lawyer, and mastermind Burt Kanter. So did Tom, Doug, and Stu, in a separate action. They had lost their life savings like I had, but they got wind of the fact that I had actually rescued my songwriting money. They started going, “Well, John saved some money. Maybe we should get some of that.” So they not only sued everybody I was suing: they also sued me.
At some point—more than a year and some months later—my new lawyer, Ken Sidle from Irell and Manella, came to me and said, “John, the other guys have hit a brick wall with their case. They waited too long to take action, and the statute of limitations ran out.” More than likely, the judge would throw their case out. Ken said, “I’ve heard from their attorney, and they’re wondering if they can attach their case to your case.”
This gave me pause. So many times I had bit my tongue and kept the band moving forward despite what I thought was foolish and very self-destructive behavior. So many times I had kept quiet while they were hurling insults at me. I said, “Geez, they want me to save their butts… again. Wow.”
But I didn’t think about it for very long. I looked at Ken and said, “I guess it’s not their fault that they lost their money.” (I thought to myself, Yeah, because crooks stole our money, but I didn’t say that out loud.) I let Tom, Stu, and Doug join my case.
I didn’t have to do this. Given how they had treated me, that might’ve been one of the most generous things I’ve ever done. Not that anybody ever said thank you. Meanwhile, they still had their suit against me—so if we didn’t prevail together in the one case, they could still come after the one thing I’d managed to save: my personal songwriting royalties. The fact that they were both joining my team and suing me at the same time is a curious piece of rock and roll history.
Tom was living in Hawaii then. He’d made a couple of records, and I just thought they were bad. He’d done the Elvis song “Mystery Train,” and it was a mess. I remember thinking to myself, Y’know, it would be really cool to help Tom make a better album. Maybe I could be his producer. We were pretty estranged then. I’d get all these weird letters from him full of rants about what a crook Saul was, plus wacky ideas like how Creedence should just reunite and cover some old pop tune. I would read his letters and immediately burn them. They were so weird and delusional. I didn’t want to ever be tempted to release them to the world.
Then Tom got back from Hawaii, and what do I hear? He’d gone to several labels looking for a record deal, and no one would sign him. So he went back to Fantasy Records! I couldn’t believe it; I mean, Saul stole Tom’s money too. This was the way that Saul bought Tom’s allegiance so Tom wouldn’t sue him. What’s a couple of recording sessions to him? Sure enough, Tom dropped out of the lawsuit against Saul (although he still profited from it in the end). It was such a Machiavellian thing for Saul to do. Saul Zaentz really poisoned my relationship with my brother. There’s no doubt in my mind that things would’ve been different without Saul in the picture, that Tom and I would still be making music together today.
Despite all the people we had originally sued, the trial wound up being solely against our accountant, Ed Arnold. His insurance carrier thought they could beat the case, so we went to court. We had settled with Burt Kanter and the others for pennies on the dollar. Fantasy had been dropped from the case altogether. This fact has always bothered me. How in the world could Fantasy be dropped from this case? We were four kids from El Cerrito. We didn’t know anything about “international banking.” The label that we recorded for, Fantasy, had gotten themselves into this Castle Bank plan. Then they insisted that we be in their plan. Obviously, we didn’t make that decision without Fantasy Records. Burt Kanter, the owner of Castle Bank and director of the plan, was on the board of directors of Fantasy Records. I have always wondered if there wasn’t some kind of relationship between Burt, Saul, and the people who were handling the case in the legal system. Some kind of “cocktail party coziness.”
The trial was surreal. There were some weird characters on the stand. One day this person showed up to testify. We called her the mystery woman because we didn’t know anything about her. And the day she’s there to testify, four or five of the biggest guys you ever saw walk right in and sit down in the front row. They were in suits, had no necks, and looked like human torpedoes. They were very interested in the mystery woman’s testimony. Then they were gone. That was scary.
One of the witnesses was a guy named Elliot Steinberg, and he is a prime example of the weasel mentality among these guys. My attorney Ken Sidle questioned Steinberg on the witness stand, under oath, about a particular meeting involving the professionals representing Creedence and some of the people from “the plan.”
Sidle: “Mr. Steinberg, who did you represent at that meeting?”
Steinberg: “No one.”
Sidle: “No one?”
Steinberg: “That’s right, no one.”
Sidle: “Well, who did you represent before the meeting?”
Steinberg: “Saul Zaentz.”
Sidle: “And who did you represent after the meeting?”
Steinberg: “Saul Zaentz.”
Sidle: “So, that being the case, who did you represent during the meeting?”
&nbs
p; Steinberg: “No one.”
At this point, my brother Tom—who was seated about four feet to my right—said, “I believe him.”
A whoosh of disbelief and almost laughter enveloped the rest of us, who were all seated closely in a group. Tom’s former wife, Gail, turned around towards our row and said, “Mashed potato brains.”
When Steinberg was finished testifying, he walked directly out of the courtroom and down the hall. I got right up and followed him out. I found him in a phone booth. I poked my head in and said, “Elliot, how do you sleep at night?” I just shook my head, staring at him. He just sort of looked down. I was very angry. We had really been screwed over by those people. I turned around and there was my old tour manager, Bruce Young. I asked him what he was doing there. He said, “I didn’t know if you were gonna kill him.”
Burt Kanter’s receptionist testified. She had a Bahamian accent. At one point my attorney asked her if the bank was actually solvent. “Oh, we got plenty moooooney,” she drawled. Everybody cracked up.
In May 1983, the jury decided in our favor. The headline in the San Francisco paper said, “Creedence Wins Case, Gets 8.3 Million.” That might sound like a lot to you, but considering the fact that we sold millions upon millions of records, it was pathetic. And it all came from Ed Arnold’s insurance company. Saul Zaentz and Fantasy never paid a dime. They got away with it. They took our money, and they kept our money.*
Let me add a final dismal detail: Fantasy was always years behind on their payments to us. In 1973, we’d still be after them to pay what they owed for 1969. When Castle Bank was frozen and closed, they suddenly claimed that they’d been very timely in depositing our royalty payments into the bank. But the deal was, according to them, that they were somehow depositing checks into a defunct, insolvent bank after it had been shut down. Right? Who was there at the “bank” to receive the checks? How could anyone disprove it now? It was a devious and despicable move on their part, since it allowed them to appear current in their payments without sending us checks. Our money, and whatever records that went with it, was all gone.
You know that phrase “art imitates life, and life imitates art”? In 1984, I took Martha and the kids to see Pinocchio. Disney had rereleased the animated feature to theaters, and it was playing at the Albany Theatre on Solano Avenue, where I’d gone as a kid. We got to the theater and they’d converted it into two screens. The fact that I was planning to watch Pinocchio wasn’t even the funniest part, because what was playing in the other theater? Amadeus—the story of some greedy, heavyset guy who takes control of Mozart and takes all his money. Who produced Amadeus? Saul Zaentz.
Gritting my teeth, I took my wife and kids to Pinocchio. If you’re not familiar with the story, Stromboli, a greedy, heavyset guy with a beard, takes possession of Pinocchio and keeps him in a birdcage, only letting him out to sing and dance onstage so people will throw money.
There’s a famous scene where Stromboli is counting all the gold he’s made off the puppet. “My little wooden gold mine,” he calls Pinocchio, to whom he’s only given one measly silver coin. “One for you, two for me! One for you, three for me!”
I had felt pretty much alone in my struggles with Saul. Going hunting, getting the earring, and all that. But life can learn a lot from art too.
A few days after watching Pinocchio, Martha came to me and said, “I finally understand what you’ve been trying to tell me.”
CHAPTER 14
Put Me In, Coach
SINCE THE FAILURE of Hoodoo, I’d been locking myself away in my tiny garage studio on Key Route Boulevard in Albany, California. I had my mixing board in there, a professional eight-track tape machine, some amplifiers, and a big speaker that I called Godzilla, which eventually damaged my hearing. I’d start at ten and work all day. Sometimes I’d come back after dinner and a run and play some more. No weekends off. Day in, day out, all I did for years was work on my playing, trying to perform better so that I could somehow present this one-man-band thing.
I had to be good enough on all the instruments to sound authoritative. The music had to have a certain swagger to it. The drums continually held me back. I wish now that I could take the ten years I spent playing drums and have that time invested in the guitar. I guess I can say that I got good enough, but I never really got great. There’s a scene in Pinocchio where he believes enough and he’s a good enough boy that all the puppet strings fall away, the Disney music comes up, and he says, “I’m a real boy!” Well, I’d be on those drums just waiting for the day when I could say, “I’m a real band!” I deluded myself into thinking that it might even come true at some point.
You might ask, why didn’t I just go find other people to make music with? I guess I’m persistent. Or stubborn? Depends on how you look at it. I’d been on this road for a long, long time, and I’m no quitter. It seemed to me that I should fulfill this dream, accomplish what I’d set out to do. I don’t let go of an obsession so easily, especially then. I was pretty tenacious. I’d lock my alligator jaws onto an idea and never let go. Until maybe I collapsed.
Or until it worked.
At first I wasn’t capable of writing songs, so I’d do covers—“Break My Mind,” “Stood Up,” all kinds of songs out of the past. I was basically making a recording every day, but the real point was to get better. I kept busy. Whatever flicker, whatever ember was alive down in my soul, I was protecting that with the last Viking armor of the ages. In a sense, the one-man band was a kind of therapy. I’d just keep going to my garage, practice drums and work on arrangements, try to stay sane.
People would come visit. All they had to do was mention Fantasy Records or the band breaking up or Saul Zaentz, and it was like pushing a button. This involuntary anger would erupt out of me. It was not coming from a position of strength. I was a sorrowful person who felt that he had no recourse in life. I would see reflected in their eyes what they saw looking at me: “Man, they look at me like I’m dead. They talk to me like I’m dead.” To them I was a has-been. It was a terrible mirror.
There finally came that day when I said, “Okay, I have to write a song.” This was a very big deal. It had been a long time. So I thought, I’ll go fishing. It was spring of 1984. I rented a boat, took my fishing stuff and a pad and a pen, and went to the San Pablo Reservoir in El Sobrante. I thought, Well, I’ll just see if I can think about writing a song. I knew that somewhere in my DNA was the ability, because I’d done it once upon a time. You have to understand: I had been so far away from songwriting for so long that I was sort of scared of it. But I got in the boat, started fishing, and started thinking.
I started remembering when Eisenhower had been elected. They sent us home from Harding School so we could see the inauguration on television. This was early ’53. All I could see on the screen was a bunch of big black Cadillacs. I start thinking about that. And other things I saw on TV then: the Yankees, the Mickey Mouse Club, and Elvis on Ed Sullivan. All the things I had experienced while watching TV.
The words started to come. And then a melody. Instead of thinking about the process of writing a song, I slid into actually writing a song. But I didn’t know that. If you become self-aware, you break the spell. It’s really true. So I just stayed with it. It was stuff I knew.
A few hours went by. I’m not sure if I got a nibble as far as fishing went. I paid for the boat and packed up my stuff, just as I had done a zillion times before. I walked to the car, opened the door. I was sort of in a trance. I put my pole and tackle box in the back of the car, and as I was closing the door the realization came to me: “Damn, I wrote a song.” It had been since Hoodoo—1976!
It was overwhelming. I had gone on that trip with the hope, “Maybe I can think about what it would be like to write a song. Maybe I could make an outline. Maybe I can come up with an idea or a direction.” Maybe.
And now I was on the other side of that hope and I had a song: “I Saw It on TV,” which would be on Centerfield. It’s like suddenly becoming Willie Mays. And
I thought, Okay. Here we go! I can write songs again. We’re gonna get down the road now. If life were like the movies, this would’ve been one of those times when the emotional soundtrack music gets real loud and the whole audience bursts into tears.
I wrote a lot of Centerfield in my car. I had to find a place where I wasn’t going to get tapped on the shoulder. Where I could concentrate. At first I’d try to get away to somewhere in the Bay Area. I’d drive over to Berkeley and to a BART station and park. Then I’d get pissed off—too many cars, people staring. I couldn’t find that perfect place. Finally I just decided, “I can’t get away from ’em. There’s nowhere to go.” Necessity over comfort—you just have to do it. So I’d drive over to El Cerrito Plaza and literally park right between two cars. Nobody notices you then. Or in front of somebody’s house. I’d listen to a little music, maybe smoke a bit of a cigar, pull out my notebook, and get myself into the frame of mind of whatever song for Centerfield I was working on. People would be walking by and I’d be writing “Big Train (from Memphis).” I was so friggin’ focused.
After Warner Bros. Records took over the Asylum label, I worked with Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, two of the best guys I’ve ever known in my life. Lenny is one of the truly great rock and roll people, a great record man. He really loves music. You’ll never know all the different suggestions Lenny gave people that led to hit records. That was a good time in my life—being with a real record company in the real record business doing real stuff. That’s the only time that has ever happened in my life. I’m sure I made it a little difficult for them at times, me being the kind of sporadic artist that I have been since my heyday with Creedence. It wasn’t meant in any mean way, it’s just that I kind of disappeared at times.
Lenny and Mo treated me—and my music—with so much respect. They put that company behind me. With Fantasy, the budget was always ten cents and they never did anything. The Warner Bros. building was so full of life, the energy was so great. It was swinging. It was smokin’ hot. People had ideas, they were all working. It was very artist-friendly. Looking in the rearview mirror, those were the days. We all didn’t know how good we had it.