Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes …

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John Fogerty didn’t. What he inherited was older and stranger. A voice made from gravel and reverb, haunted by unkept American promise. A sense of dread you could dance to. He didn’t just write hits — he wrote dispatches from the other side of the tracks, where the sky was always a little darker and the water never quite clean.

Backstage at the Beacon Theatre in New York on May 28, Fogerty celebrated his 80th birthday with family, fans and a sold-out crowd. There was cake. There were grandkids. And there was that voice — weathered now, yes, but still as present as it was in 1969. He’d be back the next night to do it again, then back on the road, taking his guitar and catalog to a new generation of festivalgoers across Europe and the U.S. He’s not done. Not even close.

On Aug. 22, Fogerty will release “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years (John’s Version),” a re-recording of 20 of his most iconic songs. The project echoes Taylor Swift’s recent reclamation of her back catalog, and Fogerty is in on the irony. “I lobbied very much to call the project ‘Taylor’s Version,’” he told Rolling Stone, laughing. But the stakes are different. Taylor’s is a strategic maneuver. Fogerty’s feels more like closure.

“For most of my life I did not own the songs I had written,” he told American Songwriter. “Getting them back changes everything.”

Songs in exile

He’s referring to a long and bitter legal entanglement with Fantasy Records, which kept him alienated from his own creations for decades. From the late ’60s through the early ’70s, Creedence Clearwater Revival logged 14 consecutive Top 10 singles — “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Fortunate Son,” and so on. But Fogerty had no control over how those songs were used: commercials, movies, covers, licensing. He watched it all unfold from the outside.

Only in January 2023 did he regain a controlling interest in the publishing rights. The master recordings, however, remain owned by someone else. So “Legacy” becomes a way to reclaim the music, if not the original recordings. It features re-recorded versions of the classics, co-produced with his son Shane, with Shane and brother Tyler playing throughout. This time, it’s a family affair — not just in credits, but in spirit.

Said Fogerty to American Songwriter: “It was Tyler who nailed the intro to ‘Lodi.’ Shane who reminded him where the riff bent just so in ‘Green River.’ The songs came back to him not through........

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