SAN DIEGO — Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Creedence Clearwater Revival mastermind John Fogerty has a very sound reason why he initially wanted to tip his hat to Taylor Swift by naming his just-released album of newly rerecorded Creedence hits “Taylor’s Version.”

“I kind of lobbied the people at my record company to call it ‘Taylor’s Version’. That would get a lot of attention, wouldn’t it?” said Fogerty. “I didn’t realize we would end up calling it ‘John’s Version,’ but that makes perfect sense.”

It certainly does on an album whose full title is: “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years — John’s Version.”

More than two decades before Swift was born in 1989 — and 41 years before she unwittingly signed over to her record company the ownership of the master recordings of her first six studio albums in 2005 — a young Fogerty suffered a similar, even more soul-sapping misfortune in the mid-1960s.

It was then that he unwittingly signed away the rights and ownership of his music to Fantasy Records. Consequently, he had no control over “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” “Bad Moon Rising” or any of the other classic Creedence songs he wrote, sang, arranged and recorded with the group he led until its permanent implosion in 1972. He also signed away most of the rights to any future songs he would write for Fantasy.

Multiple lawsuits ensued. Fogerty has been estranged from his former bandmates ever since. He did not release any albums between 1975 and 1985, and refused to perform his Creedence hits for years.

‘Eyes wide open’

“When you’re young, everything is new, like with a little puppy with eyes wide open,” Fogerty said in a 2015 San Diego Union-Tribune interview about his memoir, “Fortunate Son.”

“But as adult, when gnarly, bad things have happened, you cover them up, with sort of Band-Aids, and it makes you less of a creative force. I so much wanted to be a good writer again, be a real person again … and be able to look myself in the mirror, as I can now ….”

Swift only fully realized her quandary in 2018, after her former manager sold the master recordings of her first six albums for more than $300 million. Not a cent of that went to her.

Between 2021 and late 2023, Swift rerecorded and released her first four albums and subtitled each of them “Taylor’s Version.” It took her until this year to be able to buy back all the music on her first six albums, two decades after she had signed away her rights to them when she was a 15-year-old aspiring singer-songwriter.

Fogerty’s battle to buy back his songs dragged on much longer. It took the 2005 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee five decades to reclaim ownership of the 69 songs he wrote and recorded on the seven albums Creedence made between 1968 and 1972.

Or as he put it in a triumphant tweet in early 2023: “After 50 years, I am finally reunited with my songs.”

Fogerty put it more bluntly during his often-rousing San Diego concert last September at The Shell, telling the audience: “I outlived the sons of bitches!”

It was a rare display of profanity from the legendary troubadour — and an understandably exultant one.

“I’m not a big curser,” Fogerty, who turned 80 on May 28, said recently from his Los Angeles home.

“I’m like anybody else. When I’m driving, I might say: ”That effing car got in my way.’ But I find that over-usage (of profanity) just makes you look illiterate and loses its impact. So that ‘sons of …’ is the only cursing I do on stage.”

‘Honoring the songs’

His new album, “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years — John’s Version,” is his way of celebrating the musical legacy he fought so long and hard to make his own again. It features 20 songs, including such enduring favorites as “Proud Mary,” “Lodi,” “Green River” and “Who’ll Stop The Rain.”

More than a dozen of those songs were Top 10 hits for Creedence between 1969 and 1971, and 10 of them sold more than 1 million copies apiece. All of them sound as fresh and vital today as they did when they were first released.

“I’m honoring the songs and the whole wonderful thing I’ve been allowed to do from the beginning of my life, which is a gift,” said Fogerty, who credits his wife, Julie, for encouraging him to revisit his Creedence catalog on “Legacy” anew.

“I think there is some sort of closure, some sort of realignment,” he continued. “I do feel this record is really good and I’m proud of it. This is me — and I can own it.”

Fogerty made his new album of his vintage songs with his touring band, which includes his sons Shane and Tyler, and a few guest musicians. They worked assiduously to capture the same sound and spirit on “Legacy” that gave the original Creedence versions such lasting impact.

Their attention to detail is palpable on an album that lovingly salutes, rather than reinvents, Fogerty’s classic music.

He plays the same Rickenbacker Fireglo 325 guitar that he played on the original recordings. The arrangements of the songs are virtually unchanged, reflecting his astute judgment that there is no need or benefit to tampering with music that has stood the test of time and — for many fans — become part of the aural fabric of their lives.

What is especially remarkable is that Fogerty sings these classics with the same power that he did as a young man, in the same keys and with the same grit as he did 50 or more years ago.

“We’re basically trying to be very faithful to the original recordings I did with Creedence back in the late ’60s,” he said. “And that means there’s a certain amount of high intensity on ‘Legacy’.”

How, exactly, does an 80-year-old singer summon the same vocal force and finesse he had in his early and mid-20s?

Fogerty chuckled.

“You know, I just take care of myself,” he said. “I was a runner all my life, but I’m not currently running. I hike. And it is harder to get the same burn out of two hours of walking or hiking as you did when it was an hour-and-a-half of running.

“I watch my diet but I’m not a fanatic, meaning I enjoy a hamburger every now and then, the normal things in life. But I do try to keep it all in balance. When I’m touring, I can’t drink coffee and I get rest.”

He chuckled again as he reflected on his lifestyle in the 1960s and early ’70s.

“I smoked back then, too,” he said. “Good lord! I did a lot of dumb things in my 20s. And, obviously, smoking is a dumb thing to do. I want to be able to sing well for as long as I can, and that really drives me.”

‘That guy is crazy!’

The photo on the album cover of “Legacy” shows the 23-year-old Fogerty looking intently into the camera — a very serious young man with a single-minded devotion to his craft.

“The first time I saw that picture,” he recalled, “I turned to my wife, and said: ‘Man, that guy is crazy!’ Really, what I was seeing is that I was pretty intense, and I guess I was … I’m not angry there. I’m not confused. I’m certainly not drunk, or high, or all the other things musicians get accused of.

“I look at my face, and especially my eyes, in that picture and I look really, really intense. And I guess that (captures) the truth about what my music career meant to me.”

Was it essential to have that intensity in order to achieve success and sustain it with Creedence?

“Well, yes,” Fogerty said. “You must have read about me for years and know the situation about me and my band, Creedence, and the record company. I think what really got lost is that all of that music was coming out of me.

“I wrote and sang all the songs and arranged all the musical parts. I also sang the background vocal parts on most of the records. Most of the time, I was up to my shoulders, immersed in music and wanting to have as much of a musical career as I could. I’d been waiting my whole life for this.”

Fogerty acknowledges he was reluctant to rerecord his Creedence classics when the idea was first proposed to him by his wife, Julie. It took him time to warm to the idea.

“There was a sort of mystical process that happened,” he said.

“I was not real enthusiastic about doing this album. I had my own musical heroes and watched them rerecord things. And a lot of times, those projects almost seemed like they weren’t really into it, if you know what I mean. They were sort of phoning it in, and that’s a disappointment. I’m talking about people I love — I won’t say any names — so I was afraid of doing that.

“Whereas Julie had this vision that this (album) would be full of joy for me to rerecord my old songs. Now that the album is all done, I wonder: Did Julie know, all those years ago, that we would get (ownership of) my songs back? She’s a manifester, as you can tell, and she got my songs back. Everybody said: ‘They’re not for sale and you’ll never get them back,’ but, somehow, she did.”

A cathartic album

Even though it wasn’t his idea to do “Legacy,” being able to rerecord songs that have long been synonymous with his name has been cathartic for Fogerty.

“If you’d asked me years ago about doing an album like this, I would have said ‘No,’ and perhaps have been a little insulted,” he said. “In all humility, I’m proud of having done this record and have no misgivings.”

But making “Legacy” was not a challenge-free undertaking.

After rerecording his signature song, “Proud Mary,” Fogerty realized his vocals were missing something essential.

“It was good. I sang on key. But it didn’t measure up to the rest of the music on the track,” he said.

‘As I listened, I said: ‘What’s the matter? Why is this like this?’ I finally determined that when I was a kid and sang ‘Proud Mary,’ it was the first really good — great — song I wrote. It was the first time I felt I got into the room of wonderful songwriters I admired. It was the first time I could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them and feel I’d written a song as worthy as theirs.

“I realized what was different was that, when I sang ‘Proud Mary’ back then, it was a matter of life and death. So, I said to myself: ‘John, you’ll have to sing this over and get yourself back to that place where it sounds like a matter of life and death.’ And I did.”

He brings that same do-or-die fervor to the album’s new/old version of “Fortunate Son,” his 1969 Creedence hit, which still stands as one of the most powerful and indelible protest songs of the Vietnam War era.

In previous interviews, Fogerty has cited the actions of then-President Richard M. Nixon and his administration as a key inspiration for “Fortunate Son.” In 2002, much to Forgerty’s chagrin, the song — which attacked hypocrisy and privilege in no uncertain terms — was licensed by Fantasy Records for use in a Wrangler’s blue jeans commercial.

Even worse, the Wrangler’s commercial used just the first two lines of the song to create a faux sense of patriotism: Some folks are born made to wave the flag/ Ooh, they’re red white and blue.

Today, the United States seems even more polarized than it did when Fogerty wrote “Fortunate Son” in 1969. As unthinkable as it may have once seemed, does he now find himself missing Nixon in any way?

“Oh, boy!” Fogerty said. “You know, (he) would sure be a pleasant replacement — a very tame replacement — to what’s going on now…

“I mean, Richard Nixon was a scoundrel for sure. He lied to the American people and that’s what did him in. But I believe there was actually some shame about it in Nixon, as strange as that might sound. I believe he owned those emotions. I think he was a little closer to normal about all of what happened, as opposed to what’s going on now.”

Having revisited and reanimated his musical past, Fogerty is now looking forward to adding another chapter.

“I’m very excited about writing new songs and creating new music,” he said. “There’s a wonderful vibe I have with my sons and the other fellows in the band, who are all about my kids’ age. I don’t have a deadline or anything specific. But I can say but I am almost chomping at the bit to do (new music), so that is my mindset.

“You didn’t ask, but a lot of people ask me: ‘Are you going to retire or quit music?’ I already did that a long time ago. During the unpleasant times (after Creedence), I was away from music for quite a few years and I didn’t like that. I didn’t enjoy being away from music. Doing ‘Legacy’ was necessary for me to get where I am now.”

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