Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty

TL;DR

John Fogerty recounts CCR's legal battles, CIA-linked bank fraud, record industry exploitation, and personal struggles with alcoholism and betrayal.

Key Points

• 1.Fogerty avoided military service through extreme weight loss and marijuana. He dropped to 129 pounds around 1967–68 and smoked joints crossing the Bay Bridge before his army doctor appointment.
• 2.Fogerty was sued for sounding like himself. Former label owner Saul Zaentz sued him for $144 million claiming his song 'The Old Man Down the Road' plagiarized CCR — music Fogerty himself wrote and arranged — and Fogerty prevailed at trial.
• 3.CCR's bassist convinced Zaentz to file the lawsuit. Stu Cook went to Fantasy Records and claimed Fogerty was ripping off Credence, despite Fogerty having taught him every note he ever played.
• 4.The band's song 'Zance Can't Dance' had to be renamed to 'Vance.' Warner Brothers forced the change because the character's name matched a real person involved in a legal dispute; it had already sold half a million copies as 'Zance.'
• 5.CCR lost their entire savings through a CIA-linked offshore tax scheme. They invested in Castle Bank in the Bahamas to reduce their tax rate to 10–20%, but the bank was secretly used by the CIA to fund anti-Castro operations and covert military activities.
• 6.The Castle Bank president died in a sauna and the bank closed on Valentine's Day. Fogerty had just formally demanded withdrawal of his funds weeks earlier, leading him to check under his cars for bombs for three months fearing retaliation.
• 7.CCR collectively won only $8.1 million from 100 million+ record sales. At $4 per album, that represents roughly $400 million in gross revenue — the band received a tiny fraction while Fantasy Records funded films like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'
• 8.Fogerty's brother Tom publicly called Saul Zaentz his best friend while Zaentz was suing John. Tom had re-signed with Fantasy Records around the time of the first trial after struggling to find another label.
• 9.Fantasy Records was let out of the Castle Bank lawsuit by a local Bay Area judge. The remaining defendants — including the plan's designer Bert Caner in Chicago and the band's own accountants — mostly settled for pennies on the dollar rather than face trial.
• 10.The record company named CCR's early band 'The Golliwogs' without their knowledge. Fogerty only discovered decades later that 'golliwog' was a racist British colonial term used to demean Indian people — the band had wanted to be called 'The Visions.'
• 11.Fogerty credits his wife Julie with saving his life. He was heavily abusing alcohol, deeply bitter from industry betrayals, and says he saw no way out — calling it a self-fulfilling prophecy of looking for things to go wrong.
• 12.Fogerty discussed Jimi Hendrix's suspected murder. A bodyguard's book alleged Hendrix's manager had him killed before he could leave — with pills and alcohol poured down his throat — and that Hendrix's girlfriend was also targeted because she knew the truth.
• 13.Hendrix was remarkable for owning his own masters, something virtually no artist did in the 1960s. This is why his estate controls his catalog to this day and continues releasing new compilations.
• 14.Fogerty's early Catholic school trauma shaped his long complicated relationship with religion. Forced to navigate buses and trains alone at age six, he repeatedly wet himself in class because a nun named Sister Damian refused to let him use the bathroom.
• 15.Fogerty's childhood memory of his parents harmonizing in a green Ford inspired his love of music. Summers near Putah Creek in Northern California — near a cabin owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody — directly inspired the song 'Green River.'