Creedence Clearwater Revival After CCR
 In 1973, John launched a solo career with a collection of country and gospel songs on which he played all of the instruments, under the nom de plume The Blue Ridge Rangers. The album was a hit (reaching # 47 on the Billboard 200) but Fogerty blamed on lack of support from Fantasy Records, with which he was in virtual open warfare. Although still owing Fantasy eight more records under his old Creedence contract, John refused to work for the label any longer, and both sides reached an impasse that was only resolved when David Geffen of Asylum Records agreed to buy Fogerty's contract from Fantasy for $1,000,000. However, the purchase only applied to Fogerty's releases in the USA and Canada. Fantasy still controlled his distribution for the rest of the world.
1974 saw the release of the only record released after the breakup to feature the four original band members (or John Fogerty with any of the others, for that matter), the Tom Fogerty solo album, Zephyr National. Though there may not be an instance where all four are on the same recording, a few of the songs sound very much like the vintage CCR style, particularly the aptly titled Joyful Resurrection (as rumor has it, all four did reportedly play the instrumentation on this song, but John recorded his part separately from the other three, and it was added to the mix later). All four appear on the back cover of the original release of the album.
Asylum (and Fantasy outside North America) released John Fogerty in 1975 (Fogerty himself refers to the album as Shep, after the name of his dog who is featured on the jacket cover with him). The LP scored a Top 40 hit with Rockin' All Over the World, later a British hit single for Status Quo, and sold modestly well, but fell far short of the commercial heights scaled by CCR. When a follow-up album entitled Hoodoo was politely rejected by the record label, Fogerty entered into a nine year period away from the music industry (later agreeing with the company's assessment that Hoodoo was not very good, John instructed them to burn the tapes; whether the label complied or not was unclear. Hoodoo is available, in poor sound quality, through internet music sharing programs; hence, it does appear that the label did not comply with Fogerty's request).
In 1980, Fantasy Records released a concert LP from the band entitled Live From Royal Albert Hall. Unfortunately, it was soon thereafter determined that the performance was recorded not in London, England as the LP name claimed, but rather in Oakland, California. Subsequent pressings of the album have been retitled simply The Concert.
Reemerging in 1985 with Centerfield, Fogerty had a sizeable hit album in an era where several artists who were strongly influenced by CCR, including Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, were among rock's biggest stars. This album was his first for Warner Bros. Records as his Asylum contract was transferred to co-owned Warner Bros. With two Top 40 singles—The Old Man Down the Road (#10) and Rock and Roll Girls (#20), plus the ubiquitous title track, Fogerty seemed poised to again be a major force in rock and roll. But the 1986 follow-up record, Eye of the Zombie, was a critical and commercial disappointment, scraping to #76 in the Billboard 200 and he was stung by complaints over his steadfast refusal to play any of his Creedence songs in concert. This was largely because had he played them live, he would have had to pay performance royalties to Zaentz, who held the copyrights, but also because he said it was too painful to revisit the past just yet.
Fogerty also found himself embroiled in new lawsuits with Zaentz, one over the song Zanz Kant Danz, which the Fantasy Records mogul took to be an attack on him and another in which he was taken to court for plagiarizing himself. According to Zaentz, Centerfield's The Old Man Down the Road was a bald rewrite of CCR's Run Through the Jungle, and Fantasy, not John Fogerty, owned the rights to Run Through the Jungle. Although Fogerty lost the defamation case (and subsequently re-recorded the song as Vanz Kant Danz for later pressings of the album), he won the plagiarism case; the judge ruled that it was impossible for artists to plagiarize themselves regardless of who held the legal rights to their music. Concurrent with this wrangling, the band's Chronicle, Vol. 2 compilation was also released on CD in 1986, but Creedence was misspelled as Credence. Fogarty said his decision to start performing his CCR hits again was prompted by a conversation with his friend, legendary guitarist Duane Eddy, in which Eddy told him You know, if you don't start doing your CCR songs again, everybody's gonna think that Proud Mary is Tina Turner's song! (Turner went Top ten with a cover of the song in 1971).
Once again, Fogerty retreated from music for another decade. He returned to the business in the late 1990s, touring frequently (and now playing a great many CCR tunes live, a decision he came to following a concert for Vietnam veterans; realizing how much the old CCR tunes meant to them, he decided the time had come to perform them again), releasing occasional albums, and even winning a Grammy Award.
Best friends since high school, band members Doug Clifford and Stu Cook continued to work together following the demise of CCR, both as session players, as well as members of the Don Harrison Band. They also founded Factory Productions, a mobile recording service in the Bay Area. Clifford recorded a solo record in 1972, largely to help fulfill CCR's contractual obligations to Fantasy. Following a relatively lengthy period of musical inactivity, the duo formed a band in 1995 with other musicians called Creedence Clearwater Revisited. Still active, they tour globally, performing the original band's classics. An injunction by John Fogerty against the band using that name forced them to temporarily tour under the title Cosmo's Factory, but the courts later ruled in Cook and Clifford's favor.
In 1990, Tom Fogerty died of AIDS, which he contracted from a blood transfusion. John and Tom never fully reconciled the estrangement that followed their bitter falling out in CCR, though John did visit his older brother several times during Tom's final illness.[citation needed]
CCR was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 on the first ballot. At the induction, Tom Fogerty's widow, Tricia, brought the urn containing his ashes for a CCR reunion. Tom's son Jeff, a professional musician, was also on hand to take his father's place as rhythm guitarist for the traditional post-awards jam, but John would not perform with fellow bandmates Stu and Doug, instead having them barred from the stage while he played with an all-star band that included Springsteen and Robbie Robertson. Urban legend holds that Cook and Clifford and their families walked out of the ceremony in protest, but that's not true. They stayed till the end and even had a group photo taken with Fogerty in the press room, though all three stared straight ahead and didn't utter a word to each other. Afterwards in the lobby, Clifford had tears in his eyes and told fans of his disappointment.
The success of Creedence Clearwater Revival made Fantasy Records and Saul Zaentz a great deal of money. Zaentz used his wealth to become a film producer, and he made a number of hits, including Best Picture Oscar winners One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, and The English Patient. In 2004, he sold Fantasy to Concord Records. As a goodwill gesture, Concord has sought to make good on the unfulfilled verbal promises made to CCR nearly forty years ago, paying the band a higher royalty rate on their sales. John Fogerty, seeing that Zantz was no longer involved in Fantasy, also signed a new recording contract with Concord/Fantasy.
Over the years, the public's interest in CCR remained strong, and their catalog of records continued to sell well worldwide. However, they resisted all suggestions that they reunite. There were a pair of unofficial reunion performances by the band, however: all four members jammed together at Tom Fogerty's wedding on October, 19 1980, and John, Stu and Doug performed at their 20th high school reunion in 1983 (at which they referred to themselves not as CCR, but rather as the Blue Velvets, which had been the name of their garage band in school). But with the new round of lawsuits between John and Saul Zaentz in the 80s and 90s, animosities between Fogerty and his fellow bandmates were reignited. Today, John Fogerty says he has no intention of ever working with Stu Cook and Doug Clifford again, and they also insist they have no desire to collaborate with John again.
Creedence Clearwater Revival was somewhat unfashionable during the time they were active, because they concentrated on tightly-focused, well-crafted short songs rather than long, loose album cuts. Unlike many other popular artists of the day, they eschewed drug use, and did not loudly announce their political beliefs (although they were all against the war in Vietnam, and they contributed substantially monetarily to the American Indian Movement). However, within a few years of their breakup, their legacy became secure as one of the great American rock bands, and they heavily influenced the entire genres of heartland rock, country rock.
Decades after they last recorded together, CCR's music remains in heavy rotation on oldies and classic rock radio stations. Fogerty's songs are considered classics of the rock form: the near-perfect epitome of the fabled two-and-a-half minute 45 rpm and have been covered by multiple artists; Fortunate Son in particular has emerged as a political anthem both against war as well as in opposition to class privilege. Creedence songs frequently appear both in films and on television, and indeed CCR continues to find new fans among people who weren't even born until after the band split up. Their musical legacy, in short, will far outlast the lawsuits, arguments, and animosities that continue to plague the surviving members of this ensemble band.
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