The Trials of John Fogerty : Singer, Executive Locked in Decade-Old Legal Feud

About eight weeks ago, John Fogerty walloped a chair and broke his right hand in two places, all over a song.

“I thought I was restraining myself, but in moments of passion you don’t always do that well,” the former lead singer, guitarist and all-around mastermind of Creedence Clearwater Revival told The Times.

Fogerty’s knuckle-busting anger was aroused by yet another costly round in a decade-old legal feud with his former patron-turned-nemesis, Fantasy Records president Saul Zaentz.

Last week, Fogerty won--after spending $400,000 in legal fees and taking the stand to strum in his own defense. A six-person jury in San Francisco found him innocent of plagiarizing his own 1970 composition “Run Through the Jungle,” which is now owned by Zaentz, and re-recording it as “Old Man Down the Road” on his 1985 Warner Bros. comeback album “Centerfield.”

Some in the recording industry joined Fogerty in hailing the verdict as a legal precedent that could go a long way toward protecting composers’ artistic freedom.

“I don’t think this sets any legal precedent,” said Zaentz’s attorney, Norman Rudman. “I think his playing for the jury was a very significant part of the defense. It overawed them. Not many people have the opportunity to hold in their hands a decision that affects someone larger than life.”

But Fogerty’s attorney disagreed. As frustratingly absurd as the charge might appear on its face, Fogerty’s alleged “cribbing” of his own music might have had long-term legal effects on all songwriters, according to attorney Kenneth Sidle.

“When we researched this, we couldn’t find a case where a songwriter was accused of plagiarizing his own song,” said Sidle. “There was a case in which the artist Vargas was accused of painting the same girls in Playboy that he used to paint in Esquire, and there was a similar case against an artist who painted cardinals for the Franklin Mint and then went out and painted them somewhere else. But this is the only case that ever went to the jury over a songwriter accused of plagiarizing his own song.”

Fogerty says he is proud if he helped protect the rights of other songwriters, but “I want to make it clear that I am not a courtroom groupie.

“If this had succeeded, it would have killed creative energy. Every songwriter would have to re-examine himself every time he wrote something. He’d have to feed everything into a computer to make sure he wasn’t plagiarizing himself. You can’t write that way.”

But the courtroom face-offs between Fogerty and Zaentz over licks and lyrics aren’t over.

“There’s still a defamation action that will probably go to trial early next year in Los Angeles regarding song lyrics and some statements Mr. Fogerty made to the press in which he accused Mr. Zaentz of being a thief,” said attorney Rudman.

That $142-million lawsuit involves two more “Centerfield” compositions, which Rudman alleges to be unvarnished gibes at his client: “Zanz Kant Danz” and “Mr. Greed.” In his Los Angeles Superior Court suit, Zaentz charges that the adulterous, murdering thief that Fogerty sings about on the album is Zaentz.

The lyrics dwell on an Oliver Twist-type pig named Zanz who “can’t dance, but he’ll steal your money,” according to the lyrics.

“It was changed by Warner Bros. in 1985 to ‘Vanz Kant Danz’ after we wrote them a letter protesting it, but not before about 600,000 or 700,000 copies of ‘Centerfield’ had been sold,” Rudman said. “That means there are a lot of people out there who have heard and have permanent records of John Fogerty saying that Saul Zaentz is a thief.”

Zaentz, best known outside the recording business for bankrolling such film classics as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” claimed to have discovered Fogerty working in his mail room shortly after Zaentz took over Berkeley-based Fantasy Records in 1967.

Fogerty and his brothers formed the nucleus of an El Cerrito high school band that went on to record a string of more than a dozen hits between 1968 and 1971, including such pop standards as “Proud Mary” and “Bad Moon Rising.”

Then, in 1972 after selling more than $100 million in albums, Creedence vanished from the charts.

“I felt Creedence would have gone on for a long time but one individual grabbed the golden goose and killed it,” Fogerty said, referring to Zaentz.

Fogerty blamed Zaentz for the stress and financial problems that led to the band’s breakup, though former band members lay an equal share of the blame on an internecine warfare that developed between Fogerty and his older brother. Tom Fogerty, who played rhythm guitar for Creedence, had a falling out with his younger brother over control of the band.

After the breakup, John remained a Fantasy recording artist for almost two years, playing all of the instruments himself in a 1973 album called “Blue Ridge Rangers.”

Zaentz still held the copyright on Fogerty’s music during his Creedence years, however. The similarity of the chord progressions and melody of “Run Through the Jungle” and “Old Man Down the Road” was more than a coincidence, according to Zaentz’s suit.

Despite the testimony of musicologists who used computerized replications of “Old Man Down the Road” and “Run Through the Jungle” to illustrate the similarity, the jury deliberated only three hours before vindicating Fogerty.