John Fogerty Is Re-Recording Creedence Classics. We Asked Him Why (Rolling Stone)

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https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/john-fogerty-re-records-creedence-songs-legacy-album-1235339574/

John Fogerty Is Re-Recording Creedence Classics. We Asked Him Why
On Legacy, the 80-year-old rocker re-creates songs like “Proud Mary” and “Bad Moon Rising,” note for note: “I wanted to call it Taylor’s Version”

By David Browne
May 28, 2025

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Whether he’s joking or not, Fogerty says his label passed on the idea. Then again, he had a point. Onstage at New York’s Beacon Theatre Wednesday night, during the first of two 80th birthday celebration shows, Fogerty announced his upcoming LP, Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. Due Aug. 22, the album’s 20 tracks aren’t just covers of his best-known and beloved songs from his Creedence days. Rather, they’re painstaking recreations of the original versions, down to Fogerty’s singing and guitar parts and the original rhythm section, starting with “Up Around the Bend” and continuing through big hits like “Proud Mary,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and “Down on the Corner,” and deep cuts like “Porterville” and “Bootleg.”

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Musicians have been releasing note-for-note covers of their older material for decades now, but for Fogerty, the thought arrived two years ago. With a push from his wife and manager, Julie, he finally acquired a majority interest in the publishing rights to his Creedence song catalog in 2023. It was Julie, he says, who then suggested a remakes album, although Fogerty admits he was skeptical. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with that,” he says. “But then as time went on, I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll stick my toe in the water and see how that is.’”

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After cutting a few preliminary backing tracks with a band — Shane on guitar and session veterans Bob Glaub on bass and Matt Chamberlain on drums — Fogerty started by adding a new vocal onto the remade “Proud Mary.” The moment proved pivotal to the project. “I’ve been singing ‘Proud Mary’ for over 50 years, and I developed a lot of bad habits singing it, with no reference to the original,” he says. “But here was the moment where I realized, ‘John, that wasn’t close enough. You’re not really doing the song. You’re doing a “drive-by” version.’ I had to relearn the song, with all the inflections in all the same ways. It’s like people in New York don’t go to see the Statue of Liberty, because it’s right there. Shane was able to point out many times, ‘Dad, I think that part is a little more complicated than you’ve been doing it.’”

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In Fogerty’s mind, certain songs have also benefited, especially lyrically, from the passage of time. “When I listen to the finished vocal on ‘Lodi,’ it certainly sounds like the guy who lived that part, whereas I’m not sure the guy who sang it the first time did,” he says.

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And here's a clip from an interview John did at SXSW in March, when he was reminded he'd be turning 80 on May 28 (yesterday) and asked, "How do you plan on celebrating life and career at 80?"