Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic For more than half a century, John Fogerty stood as the poster boy for all musicians who’d ever signed away rights to their publishing or master recordings and been unable to buy them back.
Over time, Paul McCartney and then Taylor Swift came to be symbols, as well, of artists who tried and failed to win full ownership of their own music.
But even Swift’s radical decision to re-record all her old albums, to do an end run around her former label selling her masters, may not count as quite as bold as the stance Fogerty took for several decades, during which he refused to perform any of his classic late ’60s and early ’70s Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in protest of his inability to purchase publishing rights for that material.
That poster boy for disenfranchisement is now a happy man, from all indications. In early January, Fogerty announced that he had made a deal with Concord Music Group to purchase a majority interest, worldwide, in the Creedence catalog.
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