Legal Rights To Music
Creedence Clearwater Revival's catalogue of songs has frequently been used or referenced in popular culture. In part this is because John Fogerty "long ago signed away legal control of his old recordings to Creedence's record label, Fantasy Records." Fogerty objected to what he regarded as a misuse of his music in an NPR interview:
Folks will remember Forrest Gump and that was a great movie, but they don't remember all the really poor movies that Fantasy Records stuck Creedence music into: car commercials, tire commercials. I'm remembering a paint thinner ad at one point, the song "Who'll Stop the Rain". Oh, boy. That's clever, isn't it?
Of particular interest was the use of his protest song "Fortunate Son" in a blue jean commercial. In this case, the advertiser eventually stopped using the song, as Fogerty related in a later interview:
Yes, the people that owned Fantasy Records also owned all my early songs, and they would do all kinds of stuff I really hated in a commercial way with my songs. ... Then one day somebody from the L.A. Times actually bothered to call me up and ask me how I felt, and I finally had a chance to talk about it. And I said I'm very much against my song being used to sell pants. ... So my position got stated very well in the newspaper, and lo and behold, Wrangler to their credit said, "Wow, even though we made our agreement with the publisher, the owner of the song, we can see now that John Fogerty really hates the idea," so they stopped doing it.
Read more about this topic: Creedence Clearwater Revival
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