Dec 20, 2024
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The Jew and the Cowboy: Saul Zaentz and Creedence Clearwater
by Doniphan Blair
Saul Zaentz (rt) confers closely with Anthony Minghella on the set of 'The English Patient', his most acclaimed movie as well as the one most threatened by money flow variables. photo: courtesy SpokeoBY 1968, AMERICA WAS BEING ROCKED
by assassinations, foreign wars and rapidly-radicalizing youth. Berkeley led the way with the free speech movement, starting in 1964, which grew into the People's Park Riots by 1969, while, across the bay in San Francisco, the Summer of Love was still going full tilt.
The local art scene was equally agitated. Although it exploded in various, very different directions, some of the most stellar and fascinating was the work of two immense talents, both associated with Fantasy Studios, but who couldn't have been more different. Indeed, they later came into conflict.
By 1968, one was about to became a premiere independent film producer, the other a titanic rock star; one was into long, literary and often not-set-in-America stories, the other short, homespun Ur-Americana tales but equally evocative and complete; one was older, Eastern, Jewish, well-read and intellectual, the other was a young man of the West, dedicated to his craft and from an Irish and Christian background. Both were self-taught.
Saul Zaentz and John Fogerty: Theirs is a drama of Zaentzian proportions, if only he revealed his inner-most psyche in his films, as did Alfred Hitchcock. While he came close on many occasions, when he died on January 3rd, 2014, he left the Zaentz-Fogerty story as Fantasy Studio's unfilmed—and still somewhat unexplained—tragedy.
When Saul Zaentz and John Fogerty first met, Fantasy was a venerable, two-decades-old, jazz label on Treat Street, in San Francisco's seedy, South of Market neighborhood. Fantasy made its name and some bank on early recordings of Dave Brubeck and late Lenny Bruce as well as Vince Guaraldi, a pianist-composer who scored, in both senses of the word, on the "Peanuts" television specials.
By 1968, Fantasy had just been acquired by a consortium led by Zaentz, the label's main sales rep of 12 years, who moved shop to West Oakland, setting up in a glorified garage in the middle of the ghetto, not far from the Black Panthers' HQ.
Creedence Clearwater Revival, (lf-rt) John Fogerty, Doug Clfford, Tom Fogerty and Stu Cook, in a classic American settings—the rail yard. photo: courtesy CreedenceThis was no biggy for Zaentz, since he had worked and socialized with African-Americans his entire adult life. Indeed, Zaentz was quite the hipster, having left an immigrant Jewish home in central New Jersey at 15 and hitchhiked, freight-hopped and gambled—he began earning a living cardsharking in his teens—his way across the country, including the South.
Along the way, however, he became a voracious reader and took some college courses, in business as it happened. Not only did Zaentz end up in the music business, road-managing many bands, among them Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz, he married into jazz royalty: Celia Mingus, ex-wife of bassist Charles Mingus.
Celia and Saul became close when she came to work as a secretary at Fantasy in 1960. Together, they raised Mingus's son Dorian, a musician, and their own three children, Athena, Joshua and Jonathan, who also got into music with the band DJ Burns and other groups.
By the end of 1967, Zaentz was fully in command of Fantasy and initiated regular meetings with one of the label's only two rock acts. While the other was a freaky outfit from Manhattan's Lower East Side, fronted by the wild Jewish poet, Tuli Kupferberg, and called The Fugs, this band consisted of four, comparatively clean-cut and plaid-shirt-wearing young men from El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley.
They were Tom Fogerty—the one blonde—and his younger brother John, both playing guitars and singing, and bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford—the latter three only 22 but already veterans of EIGHT years of gigging around the East Bay!
Although they had signed with Fantasy's previous owners, Max and Sol Weiss, and had been with Fantasy for four years, recording a dozen singles and even working in the stock room (some of them, including John Fogerty), they had recently regrouped, since John had just gotten out of the Army Reserves and Doug the Coast Guard.
After enjoying some airplay with their "Brown-Eyed Girl" (not the Van Morrison song), and its first inklings of their soon-to-be-patented "Swamp Rock" sound, they decided: "We need a new identity." This was perfectly logical to Zaentz, their nominal manager, who would come to see them at their first regular gig in San Francisco, once a week at an Italian restaurant, and whom the Fogerties seemed to see as a father figure. They had lost their own to divorce and alcoholism.
Certainly, the label's previous owners, Max and Sol, had been remiss in that regard. Hardcore beatniks of the Hebrew persuasion, they were known for packing guns and distributing shady, smaller labels, some rumored to pay now-famous jazz artists for recording sessions in heroin—all a tad frightening for the freshfaced El Cerrito boys.
Zaentz wins the Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. photo: courtesy The AcademyStranger still, Max, or perhaps his wife, had suggested changing their name from Tom Fogerty and the Blue Velvets, which was very '50s, to The Golliwogs—an oddly racist moniker, since Golliwog was the name of an Aunt Jemima doll sold in England—which they did after recording three singles.
The Weisses' fantasy was that Fantasy would stand up and fight the English invasion—since Golliwogs supposedly sounded like The Hollys or The Kinks—and The Boys from El Cerrito would become The Beatles of Berkeley. The Golliwogs recorded nine double-sided singles for Fantasy.
After meetings with Saul, who was much less beat and much more business (indeed, he saved the Weisses' company), they all agreed that that name was ridiculous and they rechristened themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, although at least one of their number did harbor Beatle-like ambitions.
Working together, Saul, Tom, John, Stu and Doug would do extremely well—for a while. By 1971, three short years later, Fantasy would be moving again, this time into a massive, custom-built corporate headquarters, replete with sauna, on 10th and Parker in Berkeley, at eight stories one of the tallest buildings in Berkeley until today. Creedence would be moving, too—racing, in fact—up the charts!
In 1968, Creedence Clearwater Revival had their first platinum album (self-titled) and went on to have 16 top-40 hits, six number twos (the number one spot eluded them) and five more platinum albums, as well as earning enumerable accolades and ancillary achievements—all within three years! Another contender for top hippie band, the Grateful Dead, had only one top-forty hit, "Touch of Grey", and twenty years after the fact, in 1987.
While the Dead and the Jefferson Airplane specialized in the space jams so intoxicating to white hippies, Creedence played for all Americans—and got them dancing. Mick Jagger may have coined the term "Swamp Rock" a few years before but the Rolling Stones only conjured it a few years later with their masterwork "Exile on Mainstreet," (1972).
"[They] became the number one band in the world, for a hot minute," noted Hank Bordowitz, in a recent conversation with this author, "between them and Zeppelin." A rock and roll writer out of New York, Bordowitz has written a fascinating book about Creedence, "Bad Moon Rising" (2007).
Since that hot minute transpired in 1969, the year when Creedence produced THREE platinum albums to Zep's two, and many people were having very intense experiences—in Vietnam and elsewhere, Creedence became central to the soundtrack of the '60s. A touchstone for a generation, Creedance remains in rotation on oldies, or just plain rock, stations.
In addition to playing Woodstock, Creedence was proclaimed the best band of 1969 by Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines and Bob Dylan. With their raw and Southern, yet hip and minimalist, sound, The Boys from El Cerrito conjured a roots rock widely accepted as unique and pure, not parody.
Indeed, they were quickly covered by black artists, notably Ike and Tina Turner who had their biggest hit in 1970 with "Proud Mary", a song Dylan also called his favorite of the year, off Creedence's breakout 1969 album, "Born on the Bayou".
John Fogerty keeps playing and touring extensively, this shot circa 2005. photo: courtesy J. FogertyMerle Saunders (1934-2008), a black Bay Area pianist also on Fantasy, who later made records with Tom Fogerty and the Dead's Jerry Garcia (1942-95), recalled getting into arguments for insisting that Creedence, whom he knew from "the office," were white.
Creedence appealed across geography and culture as well as race, with its fresh vision of America, which included critiques of the hippies themselves, like "Don't Look Now" (1969). With minimal but artful verses, CCR, as it is sometimes called, tackled the big issues of the day: war, entitlement and enjoyment, if not that much love—save for a few like their first hit, "Suzie Q", from 1968, their only cover hit (by Dale Hawkins).
Compared to the wild and wooly musicians of psychedelic San Francisco, The Boys from El Cerrito were notably grounded and innocent, prone to short songs, lots of rehearsal, early marriages, with many kids, and minimal hedonism.
How did they come to capture the heart of American music using themes borrowed from Louisiana that they didn't really know first hand? Garcia started in country, the Byrds out of LA were masters of the genre and the Allman Brothers were already rising out of Macon, Georgia—but Creedence aced them all on the charts.
The Fogerty brothers had grown up listening to broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry and other country music favored by their Montana-raised mother. When she went to sleep, however, they would sneak down to the basement and listen to the AM stations rocking out rhythm and blues. Soon older brother Tom was amassing an enormous collection of 45s and then Long Playing albums.
Although they had been playing since childhood and gigging since early teens, they were probably as surprised as anyone when they exploded into national and international acclaim—adored from Japan to Israel as well worshipped in England (by Joe Strummer of The Clash, for example). But they grew to fit, especially John Fogerty.
With a decade of rock and roll school behind him as well as a solid band, who encouraged him to overcome his shyness, John emerged as a unique singer, one able to caterwaul—"make a shrill howling or wailing sound!"
Then, as Creedence started to chart with their first hit, "Suzie Q", their only cover hit, he started channeling a downhome soul who could pen iconic anthem after anthem. From 1968 to 1970, fully eight Creedence singles IN A ROW went top forty—first the "A" and then the "B" sides, 16 hits in all!
"John had this great foundation, like a freight train backing him up," is how Jeff Fogerty, John's nephew and Tom's son, summarized it. "He had been at it for years and was super-confident. Once the floodgates opened in John's brain [summer of '68], all these songs started coming."
And the band was as tight as white on rice. "They were so good that they would record at Wally Heider's Hyde Street Studios and do one or two takes and that was it!" Jeff noted. "On 'Traveling Band', John broke a string on the first take. But on the second take, they nailed it. It was completely perfect—and an amp lit on fire! My dad kept that amp."
Zaentz receives the Academy Award for 'Cuckoo's' in 1976 with co-producer Michael Douglas. photo: courtesy AcademyBy 1971, Saul Zaentz had decided to lead Fantasy in an equally ambitious if entirely different direction: opening a motion picture department. Although he must have started considering it in the mid ‘60s, Fantasy Films and later the Saul Zaentz Company, jumped fullblown into filmmaking in 1973 with the very professional "Payday", co-produced by Zaentz's friend Ralph Gleason, the San Francisco music critic who co-founded Rolling Stone and the Monterey Jazz Festival.
About a dissolute and mean but charismatic and sexy country musician, played to the hilt by Rip Torn, "Payday" was a downer and it went down. Made cheaply, for some $70,000, it earned back only around 85% of that. But its intimate look at a day in the life of a small-time star, as he and his entourage toured the South in a Cadillac and a station wagon, was very sophisticated and well-rendered—so much so, some country stars swore it was based on their life!
After "Payday", which is generally not listed on Zaentz's filmography, he got the hang of it and produced a string of eclectic hits, starting with his next outing, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) from the book by the same name.
By Ken Kesey, "Cuckoo's" was one of the few literary masterpieces to emerge from the North-West hippie scene. One of its unabashed heroes, Kesey was one the few people the sometimes-snobby author Tom Wolfe didn't deign to denigrate, covering him lovingly in the bestseller "The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test" (1968).
Despite Kirk Douglas's acclaimed rendering of "Cuckoo's"'s title character in the popular Broadway play (1963–64), he couldn't get Hollywood financing for a film, due to its aggressively anti-authoritarian stance. He released the property to his son Michael, who eventually connected with Zaentz, a producer flush with rock'n'roll cash.
In addition to a masterful screenplay, which varied from the original book, and a striking star, Jack Nicholson, Zaentz created "Cuckoo's" in collaboration with noted Czech director Miloš Forman. Also starring Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, it hit the mid-'70s like a bomb, continuing Nicholson's character from "Easy Rider" (1969) and bringing the ideas of the book to a much wider audience. "Cuckoo's" went on to win five Oscars.
Along with Coppola's "Godfather" (1972) and Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977), "Cuckoo's" helped turn Northern California into a hotbed of premier but still independent film. But it was not easy and, on a number of occasions, Zaentz had to mortgage his home.
Zaentz came to partner with some of the greatest indie directors of the day. In addition to Forman, there was the Australian Peter Weir ("The Mosquito Coast", 1986), the Argentine Hector Babenco ("At Play in the Fields of the Lord", 1991), the Brit Anthony Minghella (1954-2008) ("The English Patient", 1996) and Bay Area homeboy, Phillip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being", 1988). There was also much additional talent like master editor and sound designer Walter Murch.
I say "collaborate" and "partner," since Zaentz was not a producer in the traditional sense, more a producer "auteur," starting with his selection of the property.
All his films were from great books, except his last, "Goya's Ghost" (2005), which was written by Forman and Luis Buñuel's longtime collaborator, Jean-Claude Carriére, and his first. "Payday"'s screenplay was penned by the little known but talented Bay Arean Don Carpenter (1931-95), author of "Hard Rain Falling" (1966), and directed by the Canadian Daryl Duke (1929-2006), who did a ton of television both before and after. Evidently, the "Payday" experience put Zaentz off working with lesser-knowns as well as downer stories—from then on he waxed more romantic.
Whatever it was, Zaentz was responsible since, in addition to choosing the story, he hired the director and decided on the "feel." But Zaentz didn't micro-manage his movies, save monetarily. Indeed, he believed in letting artists express themselves, a method undoubtedly learned at the knee of great jazz talents and applied to Creedence.
As he conquered Hollywood, Zaentz continued to work with Forman, who went on to do the counterculture hit, "Hair" (1979), and "The People Vs Larry Flynt" (1996) with other producers. Together, they did "Amadeus" in 1984—also Oscar-winning (eight that time)—and finally "Goya's Ghost", one of Zaentz's most fascinating flops, starring Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem. Instead of "Payday"'s foreign territory, this one explored issues seemingly closer to Zaentz's heart: the fine arts, being Jewish and the lingering Inquisition in 18th century Spain.
Ralph Fiennes, evidently the perfect female heterosexual romantic love object, in 'The English Patient', Zaentz's most successful film. photo: courtesy Zaentz filmsBut there were many more, sometimes not fully acknowledged, Zaentz greats: notably "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" written by Forman's fellow Czech dissident, Milan Kundera, and directed by Phil Kaufman, which was very influential among young people in the '80s, and "The Mosquito Coast" by Peter Weir and penned by Paul Theroux. Both were about rebels, one who stands up to Soviet sameness by enjoying life and sex, the other who flees civilization for the jungle.
It was "The English Patient"(1996) by the visionary writer Michael Ondaatje and directed by Minghella, however, which won a whopping nine Oscars and the hearts of twenty-something women world-wide. With its hero, the eponymous and mysterious patient from England, its gorgeous locations and its multiple boundary-breaking love affairs, the film stirred intense romantic longing.
Then there is the curious "Lord of the Rings" (1978), an animated feature condensing that epic tale (it was supposed to be a two-parter, but the sequel was cancelled) by hipster-king and animator-par-excellence, Ralph Bakshi.
Zaentz Films is still in court over that property since it owns most of the rights. Although Peter Jackson, who just enjoyed phenomenal success with it, paid his fair share to Zaentz, a distributor in Brazil, Thailand or Russia didn't give a full accounting, as is invariable in the film business.
Zaentz produced ten films in all, almost all immensely literate, romantic, philosophical and rebellious—and they brought together dreamers, artists and lovers, not only in America but around the world. Indeed, they were almost all of one piece, in much the same manner as John Fogerty conjured a modern-woods worldview with his tunes and Creedence's grooves.
By 1972, when "Payday" was in production, Fantasy had become the world's largest indie music label, having bought up dozens of labels like Prestige, Riverside and Milestone. But the band at its center was starting to crumble, wounded by the greed, ambition or indifference of Zaentz and/or John Fogerty and/or Tom Fogerty, who quit the band in 1971, decrying domination by his younger brother.
As John started writing and singing Creedence's songs, his self-awareness as an artist, as well as his outright artistry, expanded exponentially, leading him to identify more as a poet-rocker, in the mode of Bob Dylan. Due to his monomaniac drive and indefatigable energy, he also assumed the role of manager, booking agent and producer, all of which caused consternation and then resentment among band mates, despite their appreciation of his effort and creativity.
"My dad was like, 'I can't take John's ego any more," said Jeff. "'We built this whole thing together and now [he's] treating me like some sort of sideman.'"
John became an obsessive perfectionist who remained in the studio, remixing and overdubbing, long after his band mates had retired or were asked to leave. He had a penchant for erasing inferior tracks and even kept Creedence out of the Woodstock movie and album, despite the fact that their performance was perfectly adequate, according to many who saw it. But they came on at 3 am, when everyone was wasted, not the optimum time for a dance band, and, regardless, John felt it was inferior.
Stu Cook, Doug Clifford and John Fogerty, a trio in 1971, flying to a gig in a small plane. photo: courtesy J. FogertyCreedence did their last album, "Mardi Gras" (1972) as a trio and a democracy. To prove his artistic point, John insisted Stu and Doug, the bassist and drummer, write and sing their thirds of the album, which they were not prepared to do. Evidently, they didn't want John to become less of an artist, just a friendlier one, to recreate the feelings of the band they had started as 14-year-olds.
Within seven years, they were broke as well as broken up.
How this art and economic catastrophe went down remains a mystery to me, even though I just read Bordowitz's detailed "Bad Moon Rising", which ably depicts the near-equal parts of fast fame, emerging genius, sibling rivalry, antique jazz contracts, band mismanagement and offshore banking scandals.
Called the "saddest story in rock and roll" by Laurie Clifford, the drummer's wife, the story unfolds like a Greek tragedy‚ rising to touch the sun but then inexorably marching down to its doom.
The sibling rivalry was built-in, of course, from when John, Stu and Doug could barely get into bars to gig let alone sign contracts. As much as the four-year older Tom was their first front man, John had been focusing on music since he was eight and it was he who had organized the original band with Doug and Stu, his junior high school buds.
Behind it all looms Fantasy, first of all the bad contract, then the bad management, finally the very bad overseas tax shelter.
When I emailed Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and a producer who has worked at Saul Zaentz Films and still has an office in Berkeley's Fantasy Building, now called the Zaentz Media Center, he said that—as far as he could see—Saul had done nothing wrong and the bad actor was John.
"Saul was a visionary with a gracious and generous spirit," Paul said, while also admitting "he was a force of nature." Saul was "an inspiration and true champion to independent film makers," he added, all completely true as well as understandable panegyrics from a relative who himself seems like a nice guy. Although he was too busy to go into detail, preparing for a large memorial to his uncle for early February, to be attended by many cinema notables, Paul did offer some insights.
"Ask John Fogerty," Paul recommended by email, "[I]f you claim [Saul] stole your money, why didn't you have the case go to court to prove your 'truth'?" "[D]oesn't it make you wonder," he added, "with Saul's 60 years in the record and film business, John, and not the other 3 members of Creedence, is the only person who constantly screams about Saul."
In point of fact, this is how one of those members, Tom Fogerty, saw things in 1975: "A lot of people who didn't really have much to do of anything except distribute records, we made them millionaires... Their lack of gratitude is mind-boggling. It crushes me sometimes, to be treated so shabbily after everything we've done for them, even just on a financial level... to be treated so rudely is strange," (from "Bad Moon Rising").
When The El Cerrito Boys first signed with Fantasy in 1964, it was allegedly a standard '50s jazz contract—five percent of net sales and no residuals—which the Weiss brothers offered them ON THE SPOT! That was after either John or Tom contacted Fantasy (accounts differ, even there) and they came down to the office to play a tape or actually play (again memories vary).
Some band members suggested they shop around or consult a lawyer—and Stu's father was, in fact, a well-known, white-shoe attorney (who was undoubtedly heartbroken when his son dropped out of law school to help create Creedence)—but they were on a roll and the "Let's go for it!" team took the day.
Zaentz (mid) confers on set with Milos Forman (lf). photo: courtesy S. ZaentzThat was in 1964, a year before the other Bay Area rock bands started to sign—the Grateful Dead even holding off until after Gleeson's Monterey Pop festival, in 1967, to scope the industry. In the end, Creedence's "First Contact," the first meeting between the barbarian artists and the label—the suits, the representatives of civilization—didn't go that well. Ironically, First Contact was a theme Zaentz would take up in his films.
One of his favorites from his own oeuvre was "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", from the eponymous book by the talented and travel-oriented Peter Matthiesson, a property Zaentz tried to acquire since he read it, shortly after it came out in 1965. It concerned American missionaries and Brazilian officials, in a frontier Amazonian town, laying siege to the nearby natives, and two travelers, one a Jew and the other half American-Indian (the perfect Zaentzian pair), who get stranded there and become involved in a government plot to move a native village.
Zaentz finally bought it twenty years later for around a million and a half. Although the three hour-long opus was star-studded and shot on spectacular locations, it didn't do that well with audiences when released in 1991. But the long sections in the Indian village, with native actors and Tom Bergener (as the half-breed) exploring ideas about colonialism and conflict as well as cooperation and some romance—notably when Berenger encounters a married missionary woman, played by Daryl Hannah, swimming naked in a paradise pool—are excellent and evocative.
Creedence's record deal was low for rock, as they learned when they met their peers at Woodstock. Fantasy renegotiated in 1967, allowing rates to rise to around 10% and finally 12% of album sales, albeit with no publishing residuals. Moreover, CCR was obligated to deliver up to a dozen and a half songs a year, which, if unfulfilled, were carried to the following year.
According to Tom as well as John, Saul had promised that if Creedence made it, he would revisit the contract again. Jazz contracts were often done on handshakes and the all-important "personal word." For this reason, they continued their artist-entrepreneur meetings in the early 1970s.
At that time, "Saul, in his appreciation for what Creedence had done, offered John Fogerty/Creedence Clearwater Revival 10% of the entire company," Paul Zaentz wrote me by email, probably repeating the standard corporate history, since he was not around at the time.
"Apparently, John did not understand the offer, never asked for clarification and never communicated it to the rest of the band. That would have been a lot more money then Creedence ever made selling records."
In point of fact, some close to the band say that Saul offered significantly more of Fantasy but no catalog residuals and John counter-offered with a little less of the company but a healthy share of Creedence licensing. Although he rejected that proposal, Zaentz came up with an alternative plan.
Jeff Fogerty, who provided many interesting insights into both Zaentz and his uncle and father, working with Bob Nunes on drums on his first solo album 'The Macchine' at Hillside Recorders studio. photo: D. BlairHe would help The El Cerrito Boys set up a corporation—to be called King David, for some strange reason—and then an offshore tax shelter with the Castle Bank and Trust in Nassau, Bahamas. Although Castle Bank was run by an ex-OSS guy and used by the CIA and the mob to launder money, it was vaguely legit. Indeed, along with Hugh Hefner and various highrolling hipsters, Fantasy itself parked its profits there, where it earned good interest, tax-free.
This would be a win-win, according to Zaentz, and Creedence agreed, even if it was somewhat shady for the sometimes very moral John. Unfortunately, it was essentially a Ponzi scheme and, in 1978, Castle Bank collapsed.
Just before that, however, Fantasy began making another movie, a beautifully-shot but lesser Zaentz effort, the heartfelt American Indian tale called "Three Warriors" (1977). For this reason, their accountants drained Fantasy's account a few months before Castle Bank's demise.
"All of sudden we were broke," recalled Jeff. "We went back to Saul saying, 'This is a big problem, we can't pay our bills,' and he said, 'I can't help you, you need to sell more records.'"
Despite Tom Fogerty's feelings of betrayal, "My dad remained friends with Saul until he died [in 1993]," Jeff explained, simply because "That was the guy paying the money... and my dad had a house, a wife, four kids and no [other] career."
To be sure, Fantasy probably didn't do anything egregiously abrogating the letter of the law, either in the Bahamas or in Berkeley. Low-ball contracts were common in the music business, where they provided the labels a form of insurance, with the few hit makers covering the losses of promoting dozens if not hundreds of lesser artists.
"Saul was a business man, first last and always, but he liked being in the business of the arts," is how Bordowitz sees it. "He probably thought, 'It's about goddamn time one of my investments paid off!'"
But wouldn't it have been good business to keep Creedence intact and producing platinum? Admittedly, John's intense artistic identity as well as, to a lesser degree, spectacular fame, had gone to his head, making him a tad insufferable, but wasn't that a standard working condition in the music business? Was it easier to deal with Miles Davis, a trained pugilist?
As Creedence's manager and father-figure, wasn't Zaentz well-positioned to arbitrate the band's rivalries and financial catastrophes, if only a little? Or was there an extreme event—a scream-fest or outright fistfight—between John and Saul, which caused Saul to realize that he was no longer not only not interested in low-brow rock and roll but in helping his Creedence proteges whatsoever?
"It was probably nothing personal with the people," speculates Jeff, who knew Saul from when he was a child attending Fantasy's office picnics in Tilden Park in the hills above Berkeley. "I don't think it was like 'Fuck you Dad, fuck you, John.' I think in [Saul's] brain, he thought, 'Here I have a product; I sold that product; I need a new product."
In fact, Saul, who was always kind or even indulgent to Jeff, once explained to him that music was a more temporary commodity, whereas movies were a better art investment, with their longer shelf-life—although Creedence may defy that thesis given they far surpass Zaentz's films in YouTube hits.
Of course, it was much bigger than mere product. Around when Tom was quitting Creedence in 1971, Zaentz was handing off their account to Ralph Kaffle, the new president of Fantasy Music, and plunging—without looking back, apparently—into the production of visionary films. Indeed, after Zaentz films swept the Oscars in 1977 and then again in 1985, he was hailed as the new titan of independent cinema.
And so it was that two stellar creators passed in the hallways of Fantasy, one career rising, the other crashing—although Fantasy continued to sell tons of Creedence and all its members did return to and achieve success in music, notably John, who remains a top act, but also Stu and Doug who started the band, Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
"Violated" and like an "art slave" is what John Fogerty says he felt. Because he could not stomach paying residuals to the label that had so abused him, his band and his art, he didn't play his own tunes for years, until he finally traded various royalties to buy back the North American rights. The Beatles never owned their rights either but Berkeley in the '60s was not Liverpool in the '60s. During that time, John suffered bouts of depression, years of writer's block and ended up breaking with Doug and Stu as well as his brother, Tom.
From John's perspective, no one, not Saul with money nor his band mates with respect, were acknowledging that he was the poet who bled buckets for Creedence. It's as if The Beatles had just John Lennon, and the other three were a little like George Harrison: they wanted to express themselves but were not as prolific or iconic. Once the feelings of these simultaneously sensitive and hard-headed men were hurt, they were hard to repair.
On the set of his last film, 'Goya's Ghost', Zaentz chats with actor John Stellan Skarsgård. photo: courtesy S. ZaentzWith the collapse of Castle Bank in 1978, John's outrage went ballistic and he began a long litany of litigation, although the first briefs were not against Fantasy but the money men to whom they had entrusted Creedence. Within seven years, however, Saul was suing John, after John returned to music with "Centerfield", his well-selling 1985 solo outing, which went to number one in the US (notably he played all the instruments, including drums).
Zaentz claimed that the "Centerfield" tune "Zanz Cant Danz", about a pickpocketing pig who works the crowd, while his partner breakdances—replete with a humorous, expensive and COMPLETELY over the top claymation music video, was about him, as was another song, the even more vicious and self-explanatory "Mr. Greed".
Fogerty's new label, Warner Bros, got Fogerty to change the title of "Zanz Cant Danz" to "Vanz Cant Danz" but Paul Zaentz assured me that John also had to pay a pretty penny for defamation. There is an odd moment in the song's music video, however, when the pig morphs into various characters, detective, cowboy and then John Fogerty for a second, suggesting that Fogerty himself could understand where Zaentz was coming from.
In another odd and intimate twist, Zaentz accused Fogerty of plagiarizing his own song, "Run Through the Jungle", which Fantasy owned, with his new song, "Old Man in the Road". But at the court trial, when Fogerty pulled out a guitar on the stand and played each song—and Swamp Rock is often one chord, groove-based and similar sounding—the jury still heard a distinction.
Considering Fantasy moved to Berkeley shortly after the free speech movement, you'd think Zaentz would have ignored mere words, which can't break your bones, as the saying goes, and should be allowable expression. But "Mr. Greed"'s opening lines, "Why do you have to own everything you see," followed by "devil of consumption," "You got away with murder, did you do your mama proud?" and "You feast on blood," may have smacked to Zaentz of anti-Semitism, which would explain his elevated reaction.
Bordowitz, who is Jewish, told me he didn't detect a single, solitary whiff of anti-Semitism in all his research into Creedence, even though the Fogarties were an old Western family, where a tad can sometimes stray. Their mother was from Montana, which is where this author first heard the saying, "Don't Jew me," still in common usage when he visited the otherwise lovely state in 1968. Zaentz would have been very familiar with the slur from his travels in the old South.
While Jews helped found the film business, as pioneers and studio heads, and then writers, directors and actors, in the popular music business, many entered on the marginal end, where they both encouraged new sounds but sometimes didn't pay a lot. Although that was exactly like other record producers, their practices gained greater visibility since many were immigrants and their acts often achieved greater success. The famous label, Chess Records of Chicago, founded by Leonard and Phil Chess (originally Lejzor and Fiszel Czyz from Poland), was known for stringent contracts.
As Bordowitz explained, "Record industry, comic books, new entertainments, were the only way Jews could make any money back then," when quotas, prejudice and old-boy networks, as well as sheer economics, kept them out.
"Actually (Zaentz's) contract was a lot better than one with Chess Records," said Bordowitz, who now teaches at Bergen College, in New Jersey, where he uses the Fantasy-Creedence 1967 contract as a sample in his class on music law. "The Chess Records contract was impossible, (the Fantasy one) was merely unlikely..." that the artist would make money.
There is little doubt that the Fantasy contract can be considered somewhat onerous: in addition to paying Creedence less than most rock bands, and obligating them to produce more, Fantasy licensed Creedence songs to anyone with a pulse.
That included a paint manufacturer, which used "Who'll Stop the Rain", a moving heart-felt ballad, in a 30-second spot to promote paint thinner, grievously insulting John's ever-expanding artistic temperament. When a Wrangler Jeans executive read that Fogerty was deeply offended by the gross commercialization of his work, he withdrew the company's use of a Creedence tune—VOLUNTARILY!
Zaentz was "the most parsimonious person imaginable," Bordowitz quotes director Antony Minghella as saying, even though Zaentz's prodigious generosity and effort saved Minghella's project, "The English Patient".
As Minghella was setting up to shoot on-location in Tunisia, "The English Patient" had its funding pulled by its primary investor, 20th Century Fox, over Zaentz's refusal to insert bigger-name stars. Zaentz wanted to continue with the actors he had already hired, like the little-known but excellent Willem Dafoe.
Hence, he had to jog, hat in hand, to the Weinstein brothers, also tough-negotiating film producers of Jewish extraction, who locked him into a lousy deal. Indeed, Zaentz had to keep suing them, and their Disney Corporation partners, almost to the end of his life, to recoup his own investment in his extremely successful—nine Oscar-wins!— film.
Zaentz also bought Creedence a one thousand dollar amp, in the early days when they really needed it. On the eighth floor of his Fantasy Building, he provided a coterie of documentary filmmakers subsidized rent, which helped build Berkeley's famous documentary community, an arrangement lasting until a few years after he sold the building around 2006.
Ken Kesey, the author of Zaentz's first hit, claimed Zaentz held off paying him until Herb Caen, the columnist and defender of all things San Francisco, blasted Zaentz in his SF Chronicle column. Kesey received a big check shortly thereafter, although Paul Zaentz insisted there was no monies available earlier and his remuneration followed standard industry timetables.
"He was always unhappy with Zaentz, his treatment of the film, disputes over money," recalled James Dalessandro, a writer/scriptwriter and friend of Kesey. "He said he had never seen 'Cuckoo's Nest', and I made a vow to do the same. (But) I saw it a year after Ken died [1935-2001]. It's a great film. It's different from Ken's book, but it's wonderful."
"Director's loved him, actor's loved him. The movie-going public idolized him," continued Delassandro, in a recent email. "He was the most important indie producer in San Francisco, with a record for making quality films that cannot be matched."
Regardless, Zaentz grew very grouchy about John Fogerty. Rather than dismiss his songs as the free speech of a litigious crank who lost a few million at art roulette, Zaentz sued, bringing the whole issue of onerous contracts back into the public eye. Ask any musician about Creedence and their second association is usually bad Fantasy contracts.
Sure a few million can put a hair up even the most Gandi-esque hindquarters but was money the only thing that so estranged these two immense talents, who, at one point in the '60s, were somewhat or totally enamored? While the Fogerties regarded Zaentz as a father-figure, Zaentz appears to have returned the affection. Indeed, he may have named his son, Johnny, who was born in the mid '60s, after John Fogerty.
Was Fogerty the "Golden Gentile," the boy-wonder poet-star of an older and nebishy-looking Jewish impresario’s imagination? Or was he like that at first but then grew arrogant or even phony and didn't deserve the success Zaentz helped him achieve? Their aesthetics were certainly very different, almost opposing. Or were such considerations not even part of it?
While Zaentz may have broken off the bromance for perfectly logical reasons—he was switching businesses, moving from music into film, and he needed to maintain those old contracts simply to do so—there remains the fascinating red herring of the movie "Payday".
"I want everyone to know that the big hero Maurey Dann is nothing but a raper and a coward!" is one powerful line, shouted by the boyfriend of the woman who had sex with Dann, the country music star played by Rip Torn. Set in a crowded restaurant, this scene provides "Payday" a very well-rendered and -motivated as well as moral conclusion.
Was "Payday"'s brutal portrait of the country music scene, with its intimate sex, shady manager's money dealings and maniac musician, who murders the guy who called him a raper and gets his driver to take the fall, a comment on Fogerty's rose-tinted view of the South, Zaentz's actual knowledge of it OR the whole sordid music business? Certainly, Zaentz and his West Coast creative team were boldly plumbing the depths of a whole 'nother America, a bit like Fogerty.
But also: Imagine if The Beatles' managers Brian Epstein or George Martin had jumped into filmmaking with a story about a band, but instead of "A Hard Day's Night", they set it in Los Angeles, and instead brunette moptops, their characters were blond and crewcut? Wouldn't there be an odd but opposing parallelism, what Freud called the "narcissism of small differences"?
Did Saul and John somehow, at some point, decide that instead of father and son, or artist and impresario, they were aesthetic opposites or even enemies? Or was it just the luck of the art business: some go up, some go down. Once, after John complained he couldn't write music while dealing with so many problems, Saul supposedly lectured him that suffering was instructive to the artist.
Conversely, millions are instructive to the producer, allowing him to do his art. Perhaps the Fantasy-Creedence deal was a subliminal hand-off between music and film, between the largess of the '60s and the more sophisticated culture the world would need in the '80s and '90s to recover from that jarring and revolutionary experience.
Although Tom, Stu and Doug continued in the music business, Tom came to regret quitting Creedence and tragically contracted AIDS through a blood transfer, dying in 1993.
They played together only once again, at Tom's marriage to his second wife Trish, in 1983, when his younger brother John showed up and son Jeff stood in for Tom on two Creedence tunes so he could dance with his new bride. One of Tom's last requests was for Jeff to make tapes for John of their early favorite songs, to remind John of their childhood joy making music together.
The Fogerty family was injured in the whole process, with Tom's first wife, Jeff's mom, leaving him over money troubles. Bassist Stu also got divorced, largely due to financial tensions, although, along with Doug the drummer, he continued to side with Zaentz, despite holding his nose in disgust. Fantasy was their meal ticket and John's endless legal and artistic attacks appeared to damage Creedence's earnings.
They did maintain some communication, however, and on occasion attempted to get back together, once inspired by Jeff. Also an accomplished guitarist and producer, Jeff played with Parliament Funkadelics for seven years and is now finishing his first solo album, The Macchine, working with the drummers Ben Smith, from Heart, and Kenny Aronoff, from his uncle John's band.
"In 1979, I guess I was 15, and getting into guitar," Jeff told me, "and I asked my dad, 'How did you guys start?'"
"'We started with the blues' [he said,] and he laid out four albums: a Jimmy Reed, a Howling Wolf, The Beatles' 'Revolver' and Jimi Hendrix's 'Are You Experienced'."
Suddenly inspired by Jeff's query, Tom called The Boys from El Cerrito: Doug was there in 15 minutes, Stu five minutes later and John in about an hour. "My dad said, 'Just go in the back room with the stereo and keep playing records LOUD," but Jeff ignored him and listened in.
"They were saying 'Yes' and 'No, that didn't work out,' and 'But when we were kids...' There was laughter and yelling but [in the end[ John said, 'I just can't do it.' There was no 'Fuck you,' 'I hate you,' it was just: 'I can't do it.'"
After a dozen years of insufficient psychic and fiduciary support, John was finally bit by the music bug again while out fishing—at the San Pablo Dam just north of El Cerrito, as it happened, not a Cajun bayou. After a couple of lackluster albums, he did get his groove back with "Centerfield." He also started a new family with a lovely wife who helps him keep on track and going strong on his solo career although he remains estranged from many in his family.
John even re-signed with Fantasy in 2005, once Zaentz relinquished control. David Geffen of Asylum began the process of liberating John from Fantasy in 1978 but it took millions of dollars and years of negotiations to complete the process. He remains popular and tours often, his 2013 "Wrote a Song for Everyone" doing notably well.
John continued to eschew playing with his bandmates, including at Creedence's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, which understandably devastated Stu and Doug—admittedly, he had Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson, of The Band, backing him instead.
Zaentz, for his part, continued to enjoy immense and well-earned reverence in Hollywood where he won the Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Zaentz was arguably Northern California's greatest film producer, since he wasn't running a one-director shop, like Lucasfilm or American Zoetrope (Francis Ford Coppola's production house), and he developed sophisticated facilities and local talent as much or more than they did.
He also did a lot to advance a certain Northern Californian romanticism, albeit in sophisticated and sometimes hard-to-parse dramaturge. But that is also very romantic, in that it keeps the viewer guessing, growing and imagining new possibilities.
Fantasy Music was also a big player in film soundtracks, given its Creedence catalog, notably "Suzie Q" in "Apocalypse Now" (1978), "Fortunate Son" in Forrest Gump" (1994), "Bad Moon Rising" in "American Werewolf In London" (1981) and the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski" (1998), which had two Creedence numbers, "Run Through the Jungle" (the subject of one of Saul's suits) and "Lookin' Out My Back Door".
After Zaentz died at 92, on January 3rd, 2014 in San Francisco, from complications with Alzheimer’s, he was incredibly well-lauded in the regular as well as the media press, save for two inevitable flies in the ointment: He was a tough negotiator and one of his old colleagues remained bitter.
"I would urge anyone to keep awake when making contracts with [Zaentz]," noted Richard Corliss, in the Time Magazine obit (1/9/14). "Above all, I would suggest, the exactness and the ambition come out of the same genes. Saul Zaentz is the nearest we have to teach ourselves what the great age of Goldwyn, Mayer, Zanuck and Selznick was like.”
Inevitably, Corliss added, "When his longtime enemy died last week, Fogerty, in lieu of an R.I.P., posted an animated version of the song [the harsh 'Vanz Cant Danz' music video] on his Twitter account. Some people believe in God; Fogerty, no less devoutly, believes in grudges."
Although transcendence and forgiveness are recommended, especially by saints, is it really so strange for an artist to use culture and the court of public opinion, the one trump card he holds over the entrepreneurs and their lawyers, who in turn are using their avenues of redress as aggressively as possible?
Of course, culture often only quantum leaps when business and the arts work together, as the Medicis proved in the 15th century with Michaelangelo and Da Vinci, and film and music often do today.
By the time they were talking turkey in the mid-'60s, both Zaentz and Fogerty were at the top of their game and had been in their businesses for a long time. Both must have been well-aware of exactly which cards the other held but they still couldn't strike a deal! Either something very bad happened or it was a perfect storm.
Even if Zaentz was right by the letter of the law, was he right by the spirit, not only of the law but of Berkeley, where he lived, and the anti-authoritarian films, which he made? Isn't John Fogerty essentially the "Mac" McMurphy character in "Cuckoo's", the guy who stood up to authority and went down for his dreams and dignity?
"Fantasy got something like 120 million during that time," claims Jeff Fogerty, referring to the period from 1968, when The Boys from El Cerrito morphed into Creedence Clearwater Revival, until 1978 and the Castle Bank catastrophe.
"Fantasy could have said, 'We will give each of you guys one million so that you can get on with your life because you helped us. But zero, nothing?" After arduous court dealing, lawyers fees, paying alimony arrears to an ex-wife, his dad only got about $150,000 out of the Castle debacle, Jeff said.
Sure, if it was Colt 45 Records, out of Dallas, dealing with a country musician, like the Maurey Dann-character from "Payday", perhaps the bad deals and broken hearts wouldn't stick in the eye so pointedly. But Berkeley, home of the free speech movement, and a company by the name of Fantasy?!?
Symbols have meaning—isn't that what art is about? Isn't that precisely how impresarios make money, by converting ephemeral aesthetics into physical art and cash?
Wasn’t Fantasy the same forward thinkers who gave us albums by Lenny Bruce!!! If Bruce hadn't died from a heroin overdose in Hollywood in 1966, what would he have had to say to Saul at the office picnic in Tilden Park a couple of years later?
Meanwhile, Saul was the guy who struggled mightily to bring us romantic flights of fancy like the "The English Patient" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" (both with airplanes central to their symbol structures)!
And how is the Zaentz-Fogerty story remembered by the denizens of the "People's Republic of Berkeley," many of them laborers in the fields of every righteous cause imaginable? When I asked around, I found little is recalled aside from the tragic mess.
Shouldn't, somehow, someway, some modest amends be made: perhaps Berkeley's next nonprofit could be an old folks home for rock'n'rollers called the Clearwater Rest Home—now there's a commercialization dear old John (now 68) might abide!
The mystery of where the relationship went off the rails will probably remain unanswered until all the details are revealed (notably by Saul's colleagues, who didn't talk to Bordowitz, although one anonymously sent him their complete Creedence file), either in print or, preferably, film.
Alas, the latter will probably have to wait for the next Zaentz and the next Fogerty getting together to make the next "Payday", a tragic but epic interaction of passion, art, ego and dreams that could be called "The Jew and the Cowboy".
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Feb 01, 2014 - 03:17 AM
by Doniphan Blair
Saul Zaentz (rt) confers closely with Anthony Minghella on the set of 'The English Patient', his most acclaimed movie as well as the one most threatened by money flow variables. photo: courtesy Spokeoby assassinations, foreign wars and rapidly-radicalizing youth. Berkeley led the way with the free speech movement, starting in 1964, which grew into the People's Park Riots by 1969, while, across the bay in San Francisco, the Summer of Love was still going full tilt.
The local art scene was equally agitated. Although it exploded in various, very different directions, some of the most stellar and fascinating was the work of two immense talents, both associated with Fantasy Studios, but who couldn't have been more different. Indeed, they later came into conflict.
By 1968, one was about to became a premiere independent film producer, the other a titanic rock star; one was into long, literary and often not-set-in-America stories, the other short, homespun Ur-Americana tales but equally evocative and complete; one was older, Eastern, Jewish, well-read and intellectual, the other was a young man of the West, dedicated to his craft and from an Irish and Christian background. Both were self-taught.
Saul Zaentz and John Fogerty: Theirs is a drama of Zaentzian proportions, if only he revealed his inner-most psyche in his films, as did Alfred Hitchcock. While he came close on many occasions, when he died on January 3rd, 2014, he left the Zaentz-Fogerty story as Fantasy Studio's unfilmed—and still somewhat unexplained—tragedy.
When Saul Zaentz and John Fogerty first met, Fantasy was a venerable, two-decades-old, jazz label on Treat Street, in San Francisco's seedy, South of Market neighborhood. Fantasy made its name and some bank on early recordings of Dave Brubeck and late Lenny Bruce as well as Vince Guaraldi, a pianist-composer who scored, in both senses of the word, on the "Peanuts" television specials.
By 1968, Fantasy had just been acquired by a consortium led by Zaentz, the label's main sales rep of 12 years, who moved shop to West Oakland, setting up in a glorified garage in the middle of the ghetto, not far from the Black Panthers' HQ.
Creedence Clearwater Revival, (lf-rt) John Fogerty, Doug Clfford, Tom Fogerty and Stu Cook, in a classic American settings—the rail yard. photo: courtesy CreedenceAlong the way, however, he became a voracious reader and took some college courses, in business as it happened. Not only did Zaentz end up in the music business, road-managing many bands, among them Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz, he married into jazz royalty: Celia Mingus, ex-wife of bassist Charles Mingus.
Celia and Saul became close when she came to work as a secretary at Fantasy in 1960. Together, they raised Mingus's son Dorian, a musician, and their own three children, Athena, Joshua and Jonathan, who also got into music with the band DJ Burns and other groups.
By the end of 1967, Zaentz was fully in command of Fantasy and initiated regular meetings with one of the label's only two rock acts. While the other was a freaky outfit from Manhattan's Lower East Side, fronted by the wild Jewish poet, Tuli Kupferberg, and called The Fugs, this band consisted of four, comparatively clean-cut and plaid-shirt-wearing young men from El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley.
They were Tom Fogerty—the one blonde—and his younger brother John, both playing guitars and singing, and bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford—the latter three only 22 but already veterans of EIGHT years of gigging around the East Bay!
Although they had signed with Fantasy's previous owners, Max and Sol Weiss, and had been with Fantasy for four years, recording a dozen singles and even working in the stock room (some of them, including John Fogerty), they had recently regrouped, since John had just gotten out of the Army Reserves and Doug the Coast Guard.
After enjoying some airplay with their "Brown-Eyed Girl" (not the Van Morrison song), and its first inklings of their soon-to-be-patented "Swamp Rock" sound, they decided: "We need a new identity." This was perfectly logical to Zaentz, their nominal manager, who would come to see them at their first regular gig in San Francisco, once a week at an Italian restaurant, and whom the Fogerties seemed to see as a father figure. They had lost their own to divorce and alcoholism.
Certainly, the label's previous owners, Max and Sol, had been remiss in that regard. Hardcore beatniks of the Hebrew persuasion, they were known for packing guns and distributing shady, smaller labels, some rumored to pay now-famous jazz artists for recording sessions in heroin—all a tad frightening for the freshfaced El Cerrito boys.
Zaentz wins the Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. photo: courtesy The AcademyThe Weisses' fantasy was that Fantasy would stand up and fight the English invasion—since Golliwogs supposedly sounded like The Hollys or The Kinks—and The Boys from El Cerrito would become The Beatles of Berkeley. The Golliwogs recorded nine double-sided singles for Fantasy.
After meetings with Saul, who was much less beat and much more business (indeed, he saved the Weisses' company), they all agreed that that name was ridiculous and they rechristened themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, although at least one of their number did harbor Beatle-like ambitions.
Working together, Saul, Tom, John, Stu and Doug would do extremely well—for a while. By 1971, three short years later, Fantasy would be moving again, this time into a massive, custom-built corporate headquarters, replete with sauna, on 10th and Parker in Berkeley, at eight stories one of the tallest buildings in Berkeley until today. Creedence would be moving, too—racing, in fact—up the charts!
In 1968, Creedence Clearwater Revival had their first platinum album (self-titled) and went on to have 16 top-40 hits, six number twos (the number one spot eluded them) and five more platinum albums, as well as earning enumerable accolades and ancillary achievements—all within three years! Another contender for top hippie band, the Grateful Dead, had only one top-forty hit, "Touch of Grey", and twenty years after the fact, in 1987.
While the Dead and the Jefferson Airplane specialized in the space jams so intoxicating to white hippies, Creedence played for all Americans—and got them dancing. Mick Jagger may have coined the term "Swamp Rock" a few years before but the Rolling Stones only conjured it a few years later with their masterwork "Exile on Mainstreet," (1972).
"[They] became the number one band in the world, for a hot minute," noted Hank Bordowitz, in a recent conversation with this author, "between them and Zeppelin." A rock and roll writer out of New York, Bordowitz has written a fascinating book about Creedence, "Bad Moon Rising" (2007).
Since that hot minute transpired in 1969, the year when Creedence produced THREE platinum albums to Zep's two, and many people were having very intense experiences—in Vietnam and elsewhere, Creedence became central to the soundtrack of the '60s. A touchstone for a generation, Creedance remains in rotation on oldies, or just plain rock, stations.
In addition to playing Woodstock, Creedence was proclaimed the best band of 1969 by Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines and Bob Dylan. With their raw and Southern, yet hip and minimalist, sound, The Boys from El Cerrito conjured a roots rock widely accepted as unique and pure, not parody.
Indeed, they were quickly covered by black artists, notably Ike and Tina Turner who had their biggest hit in 1970 with "Proud Mary", a song Dylan also called his favorite of the year, off Creedence's breakout 1969 album, "Born on the Bayou".
John Fogerty keeps playing and touring extensively, this shot circa 2005. photo: courtesy J. FogertyCreedence appealed across geography and culture as well as race, with its fresh vision of America, which included critiques of the hippies themselves, like "Don't Look Now" (1969). With minimal but artful verses, CCR, as it is sometimes called, tackled the big issues of the day: war, entitlement and enjoyment, if not that much love—save for a few like their first hit, "Suzie Q", from 1968, their only cover hit (by Dale Hawkins).
Compared to the wild and wooly musicians of psychedelic San Francisco, The Boys from El Cerrito were notably grounded and innocent, prone to short songs, lots of rehearsal, early marriages, with many kids, and minimal hedonism.
How did they come to capture the heart of American music using themes borrowed from Louisiana that they didn't really know first hand? Garcia started in country, the Byrds out of LA were masters of the genre and the Allman Brothers were already rising out of Macon, Georgia—but Creedence aced them all on the charts.
The Fogerty brothers had grown up listening to broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry and other country music favored by their Montana-raised mother. When she went to sleep, however, they would sneak down to the basement and listen to the AM stations rocking out rhythm and blues. Soon older brother Tom was amassing an enormous collection of 45s and then Long Playing albums.
Although they had been playing since childhood and gigging since early teens, they were probably as surprised as anyone when they exploded into national and international acclaim—adored from Japan to Israel as well worshipped in England (by Joe Strummer of The Clash, for example). But they grew to fit, especially John Fogerty.
With a decade of rock and roll school behind him as well as a solid band, who encouraged him to overcome his shyness, John emerged as a unique singer, one able to caterwaul—"make a shrill howling or wailing sound!"
Then, as Creedence started to chart with their first hit, "Suzie Q", their only cover hit, he started channeling a downhome soul who could pen iconic anthem after anthem. From 1968 to 1970, fully eight Creedence singles IN A ROW went top forty—first the "A" and then the "B" sides, 16 hits in all!
"John had this great foundation, like a freight train backing him up," is how Jeff Fogerty, John's nephew and Tom's son, summarized it. "He had been at it for years and was super-confident. Once the floodgates opened in John's brain [summer of '68], all these songs started coming."
And the band was as tight as white on rice. "They were so good that they would record at Wally Heider's Hyde Street Studios and do one or two takes and that was it!" Jeff noted. "On 'Traveling Band', John broke a string on the first take. But on the second take, they nailed it. It was completely perfect—and an amp lit on fire! My dad kept that amp."
Zaentz receives the Academy Award for 'Cuckoo's' in 1976 with co-producer Michael Douglas. photo: courtesy AcademyAbout a dissolute and mean but charismatic and sexy country musician, played to the hilt by Rip Torn, "Payday" was a downer and it went down. Made cheaply, for some $70,000, it earned back only around 85% of that. But its intimate look at a day in the life of a small-time star, as he and his entourage toured the South in a Cadillac and a station wagon, was very sophisticated and well-rendered—so much so, some country stars swore it was based on their life!
After "Payday", which is generally not listed on Zaentz's filmography, he got the hang of it and produced a string of eclectic hits, starting with his next outing, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) from the book by the same name.
By Ken Kesey, "Cuckoo's" was one of the few literary masterpieces to emerge from the North-West hippie scene. One of its unabashed heroes, Kesey was one the few people the sometimes-snobby author Tom Wolfe didn't deign to denigrate, covering him lovingly in the bestseller "The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test" (1968).
Despite Kirk Douglas's acclaimed rendering of "Cuckoo's"'s title character in the popular Broadway play (1963–64), he couldn't get Hollywood financing for a film, due to its aggressively anti-authoritarian stance. He released the property to his son Michael, who eventually connected with Zaentz, a producer flush with rock'n'roll cash.
In addition to a masterful screenplay, which varied from the original book, and a striking star, Jack Nicholson, Zaentz created "Cuckoo's" in collaboration with noted Czech director Miloš Forman. Also starring Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, it hit the mid-'70s like a bomb, continuing Nicholson's character from "Easy Rider" (1969) and bringing the ideas of the book to a much wider audience. "Cuckoo's" went on to win five Oscars.
Along with Coppola's "Godfather" (1972) and Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977), "Cuckoo's" helped turn Northern California into a hotbed of premier but still independent film. But it was not easy and, on a number of occasions, Zaentz had to mortgage his home.
Zaentz came to partner with some of the greatest indie directors of the day. In addition to Forman, there was the Australian Peter Weir ("The Mosquito Coast", 1986), the Argentine Hector Babenco ("At Play in the Fields of the Lord", 1991), the Brit Anthony Minghella (1954-2008) ("The English Patient", 1996) and Bay Area homeboy, Phillip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being", 1988). There was also much additional talent like master editor and sound designer Walter Murch.
I say "collaborate" and "partner," since Zaentz was not a producer in the traditional sense, more a producer "auteur," starting with his selection of the property.
All his films were from great books, except his last, "Goya's Ghost" (2005), which was written by Forman and Luis Buñuel's longtime collaborator, Jean-Claude Carriére, and his first. "Payday"'s screenplay was penned by the little known but talented Bay Arean Don Carpenter (1931-95), author of "Hard Rain Falling" (1966), and directed by the Canadian Daryl Duke (1929-2006), who did a ton of television both before and after. Evidently, the "Payday" experience put Zaentz off working with lesser-knowns as well as downer stories—from then on he waxed more romantic.
Whatever it was, Zaentz was responsible since, in addition to choosing the story, he hired the director and decided on the "feel." But Zaentz didn't micro-manage his movies, save monetarily. Indeed, he believed in letting artists express themselves, a method undoubtedly learned at the knee of great jazz talents and applied to Creedence.
As he conquered Hollywood, Zaentz continued to work with Forman, who went on to do the counterculture hit, "Hair" (1979), and "The People Vs Larry Flynt" (1996) with other producers. Together, they did "Amadeus" in 1984—also Oscar-winning (eight that time)—and finally "Goya's Ghost", one of Zaentz's most fascinating flops, starring Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem. Instead of "Payday"'s foreign territory, this one explored issues seemingly closer to Zaentz's heart: the fine arts, being Jewish and the lingering Inquisition in 18th century Spain.
Ralph Fiennes, evidently the perfect female heterosexual romantic love object, in 'The English Patient', Zaentz's most successful film. photo: courtesy Zaentz filmsIt was "The English Patient"(1996) by the visionary writer Michael Ondaatje and directed by Minghella, however, which won a whopping nine Oscars and the hearts of twenty-something women world-wide. With its hero, the eponymous and mysterious patient from England, its gorgeous locations and its multiple boundary-breaking love affairs, the film stirred intense romantic longing.
Then there is the curious "Lord of the Rings" (1978), an animated feature condensing that epic tale (it was supposed to be a two-parter, but the sequel was cancelled) by hipster-king and animator-par-excellence, Ralph Bakshi.
Zaentz Films is still in court over that property since it owns most of the rights. Although Peter Jackson, who just enjoyed phenomenal success with it, paid his fair share to Zaentz, a distributor in Brazil, Thailand or Russia didn't give a full accounting, as is invariable in the film business.
Zaentz produced ten films in all, almost all immensely literate, romantic, philosophical and rebellious—and they brought together dreamers, artists and lovers, not only in America but around the world. Indeed, they were almost all of one piece, in much the same manner as John Fogerty conjured a modern-woods worldview with his tunes and Creedence's grooves.
By 1972, when "Payday" was in production, Fantasy had become the world's largest indie music label, having bought up dozens of labels like Prestige, Riverside and Milestone. But the band at its center was starting to crumble, wounded by the greed, ambition or indifference of Zaentz and/or John Fogerty and/or Tom Fogerty, who quit the band in 1971, decrying domination by his younger brother.
As John started writing and singing Creedence's songs, his self-awareness as an artist, as well as his outright artistry, expanded exponentially, leading him to identify more as a poet-rocker, in the mode of Bob Dylan. Due to his monomaniac drive and indefatigable energy, he also assumed the role of manager, booking agent and producer, all of which caused consternation and then resentment among band mates, despite their appreciation of his effort and creativity.
"My dad was like, 'I can't take John's ego any more," said Jeff. "'We built this whole thing together and now [he's] treating me like some sort of sideman.'"
John became an obsessive perfectionist who remained in the studio, remixing and overdubbing, long after his band mates had retired or were asked to leave. He had a penchant for erasing inferior tracks and even kept Creedence out of the Woodstock movie and album, despite the fact that their performance was perfectly adequate, according to many who saw it. But they came on at 3 am, when everyone was wasted, not the optimum time for a dance band, and, regardless, John felt it was inferior.
Stu Cook, Doug Clifford and John Fogerty, a trio in 1971, flying to a gig in a small plane. photo: courtesy J. FogertyWithin seven years, they were broke as well as broken up.
How this art and economic catastrophe went down remains a mystery to me, even though I just read Bordowitz's detailed "Bad Moon Rising", which ably depicts the near-equal parts of fast fame, emerging genius, sibling rivalry, antique jazz contracts, band mismanagement and offshore banking scandals.
Called the "saddest story in rock and roll" by Laurie Clifford, the drummer's wife, the story unfolds like a Greek tragedy‚ rising to touch the sun but then inexorably marching down to its doom.
The sibling rivalry was built-in, of course, from when John, Stu and Doug could barely get into bars to gig let alone sign contracts. As much as the four-year older Tom was their first front man, John had been focusing on music since he was eight and it was he who had organized the original band with Doug and Stu, his junior high school buds.
Behind it all looms Fantasy, first of all the bad contract, then the bad management, finally the very bad overseas tax shelter.
When I emailed Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and a producer who has worked at Saul Zaentz Films and still has an office in Berkeley's Fantasy Building, now called the Zaentz Media Center, he said that—as far as he could see—Saul had done nothing wrong and the bad actor was John.
"Saul was a visionary with a gracious and generous spirit," Paul said, while also admitting "he was a force of nature." Saul was "an inspiration and true champion to independent film makers," he added, all completely true as well as understandable panegyrics from a relative who himself seems like a nice guy. Although he was too busy to go into detail, preparing for a large memorial to his uncle for early February, to be attended by many cinema notables, Paul did offer some insights.
"Ask John Fogerty," Paul recommended by email, "[I]f you claim [Saul] stole your money, why didn't you have the case go to court to prove your 'truth'?" "[D]oesn't it make you wonder," he added, "with Saul's 60 years in the record and film business, John, and not the other 3 members of Creedence, is the only person who constantly screams about Saul."
In point of fact, this is how one of those members, Tom Fogerty, saw things in 1975: "A lot of people who didn't really have much to do of anything except distribute records, we made them millionaires... Their lack of gratitude is mind-boggling. It crushes me sometimes, to be treated so shabbily after everything we've done for them, even just on a financial level... to be treated so rudely is strange," (from "Bad Moon Rising").
When The El Cerrito Boys first signed with Fantasy in 1964, it was allegedly a standard '50s jazz contract—five percent of net sales and no residuals—which the Weiss brothers offered them ON THE SPOT! That was after either John or Tom contacted Fantasy (accounts differ, even there) and they came down to the office to play a tape or actually play (again memories vary).
Some band members suggested they shop around or consult a lawyer—and Stu's father was, in fact, a well-known, white-shoe attorney (who was undoubtedly heartbroken when his son dropped out of law school to help create Creedence)—but they were on a roll and the "Let's go for it!" team took the day.
Zaentz (mid) confers on set with Milos Forman (lf). photo: courtesy S. ZaentzOne of his favorites from his own oeuvre was "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", from the eponymous book by the talented and travel-oriented Peter Matthiesson, a property Zaentz tried to acquire since he read it, shortly after it came out in 1965. It concerned American missionaries and Brazilian officials, in a frontier Amazonian town, laying siege to the nearby natives, and two travelers, one a Jew and the other half American-Indian (the perfect Zaentzian pair), who get stranded there and become involved in a government plot to move a native village.
Zaentz finally bought it twenty years later for around a million and a half. Although the three hour-long opus was star-studded and shot on spectacular locations, it didn't do that well with audiences when released in 1991. But the long sections in the Indian village, with native actors and Tom Bergener (as the half-breed) exploring ideas about colonialism and conflict as well as cooperation and some romance—notably when Berenger encounters a married missionary woman, played by Daryl Hannah, swimming naked in a paradise pool—are excellent and evocative.
Creedence's record deal was low for rock, as they learned when they met their peers at Woodstock. Fantasy renegotiated in 1967, allowing rates to rise to around 10% and finally 12% of album sales, albeit with no publishing residuals. Moreover, CCR was obligated to deliver up to a dozen and a half songs a year, which, if unfulfilled, were carried to the following year.
According to Tom as well as John, Saul had promised that if Creedence made it, he would revisit the contract again. Jazz contracts were often done on handshakes and the all-important "personal word." For this reason, they continued their artist-entrepreneur meetings in the early 1970s.
At that time, "Saul, in his appreciation for what Creedence had done, offered John Fogerty/Creedence Clearwater Revival 10% of the entire company," Paul Zaentz wrote me by email, probably repeating the standard corporate history, since he was not around at the time.
"Apparently, John did not understand the offer, never asked for clarification and never communicated it to the rest of the band. That would have been a lot more money then Creedence ever made selling records."
In point of fact, some close to the band say that Saul offered significantly more of Fantasy but no catalog residuals and John counter-offered with a little less of the company but a healthy share of Creedence licensing. Although he rejected that proposal, Zaentz came up with an alternative plan.
Jeff Fogerty, who provided many interesting insights into both Zaentz and his uncle and father, working with Bob Nunes on drums on his first solo album 'The Macchine' at Hillside Recorders studio. photo: D. BlairThis would be a win-win, according to Zaentz, and Creedence agreed, even if it was somewhat shady for the sometimes very moral John. Unfortunately, it was essentially a Ponzi scheme and, in 1978, Castle Bank collapsed.
Just before that, however, Fantasy began making another movie, a beautifully-shot but lesser Zaentz effort, the heartfelt American Indian tale called "Three Warriors" (1977). For this reason, their accountants drained Fantasy's account a few months before Castle Bank's demise.
"All of sudden we were broke," recalled Jeff. "We went back to Saul saying, 'This is a big problem, we can't pay our bills,' and he said, 'I can't help you, you need to sell more records.'"
Despite Tom Fogerty's feelings of betrayal, "My dad remained friends with Saul until he died [in 1993]," Jeff explained, simply because "That was the guy paying the money... and my dad had a house, a wife, four kids and no [other] career."
To be sure, Fantasy probably didn't do anything egregiously abrogating the letter of the law, either in the Bahamas or in Berkeley. Low-ball contracts were common in the music business, where they provided the labels a form of insurance, with the few hit makers covering the losses of promoting dozens if not hundreds of lesser artists.
"Saul was a business man, first last and always, but he liked being in the business of the arts," is how Bordowitz sees it. "He probably thought, 'It's about goddamn time one of my investments paid off!'"
But wouldn't it have been good business to keep Creedence intact and producing platinum? Admittedly, John's intense artistic identity as well as, to a lesser degree, spectacular fame, had gone to his head, making him a tad insufferable, but wasn't that a standard working condition in the music business? Was it easier to deal with Miles Davis, a trained pugilist?
As Creedence's manager and father-figure, wasn't Zaentz well-positioned to arbitrate the band's rivalries and financial catastrophes, if only a little? Or was there an extreme event—a scream-fest or outright fistfight—between John and Saul, which caused Saul to realize that he was no longer not only not interested in low-brow rock and roll but in helping his Creedence proteges whatsoever?
"It was probably nothing personal with the people," speculates Jeff, who knew Saul from when he was a child attending Fantasy's office picnics in Tilden Park in the hills above Berkeley. "I don't think it was like 'Fuck you Dad, fuck you, John.' I think in [Saul's] brain, he thought, 'Here I have a product; I sold that product; I need a new product."
In fact, Saul, who was always kind or even indulgent to Jeff, once explained to him that music was a more temporary commodity, whereas movies were a better art investment, with their longer shelf-life—although Creedence may defy that thesis given they far surpass Zaentz's films in YouTube hits.
Of course, it was much bigger than mere product. Around when Tom was quitting Creedence in 1971, Zaentz was handing off their account to Ralph Kaffle, the new president of Fantasy Music, and plunging—without looking back, apparently—into the production of visionary films. Indeed, after Zaentz films swept the Oscars in 1977 and then again in 1985, he was hailed as the new titan of independent cinema.
And so it was that two stellar creators passed in the hallways of Fantasy, one career rising, the other crashing—although Fantasy continued to sell tons of Creedence and all its members did return to and achieve success in music, notably John, who remains a top act, but also Stu and Doug who started the band, Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
"Violated" and like an "art slave" is what John Fogerty says he felt. Because he could not stomach paying residuals to the label that had so abused him, his band and his art, he didn't play his own tunes for years, until he finally traded various royalties to buy back the North American rights. The Beatles never owned their rights either but Berkeley in the '60s was not Liverpool in the '60s. During that time, John suffered bouts of depression, years of writer's block and ended up breaking with Doug and Stu as well as his brother, Tom.
From John's perspective, no one, not Saul with money nor his band mates with respect, were acknowledging that he was the poet who bled buckets for Creedence. It's as if The Beatles had just John Lennon, and the other three were a little like George Harrison: they wanted to express themselves but were not as prolific or iconic. Once the feelings of these simultaneously sensitive and hard-headed men were hurt, they were hard to repair.
On the set of his last film, 'Goya's Ghost', Zaentz chats with actor John Stellan Skarsgård. photo: courtesy S. ZaentzZaentz claimed that the "Centerfield" tune "Zanz Cant Danz", about a pickpocketing pig who works the crowd, while his partner breakdances—replete with a humorous, expensive and COMPLETELY over the top claymation music video, was about him, as was another song, the even more vicious and self-explanatory "Mr. Greed".
Fogerty's new label, Warner Bros, got Fogerty to change the title of "Zanz Cant Danz" to "Vanz Cant Danz" but Paul Zaentz assured me that John also had to pay a pretty penny for defamation. There is an odd moment in the song's music video, however, when the pig morphs into various characters, detective, cowboy and then John Fogerty for a second, suggesting that Fogerty himself could understand where Zaentz was coming from.
In another odd and intimate twist, Zaentz accused Fogerty of plagiarizing his own song, "Run Through the Jungle", which Fantasy owned, with his new song, "Old Man in the Road". But at the court trial, when Fogerty pulled out a guitar on the stand and played each song—and Swamp Rock is often one chord, groove-based and similar sounding—the jury still heard a distinction.
Considering Fantasy moved to Berkeley shortly after the free speech movement, you'd think Zaentz would have ignored mere words, which can't break your bones, as the saying goes, and should be allowable expression. But "Mr. Greed"'s opening lines, "Why do you have to own everything you see," followed by "devil of consumption," "You got away with murder, did you do your mama proud?" and "You feast on blood," may have smacked to Zaentz of anti-Semitism, which would explain his elevated reaction.
Bordowitz, who is Jewish, told me he didn't detect a single, solitary whiff of anti-Semitism in all his research into Creedence, even though the Fogarties were an old Western family, where a tad can sometimes stray. Their mother was from Montana, which is where this author first heard the saying, "Don't Jew me," still in common usage when he visited the otherwise lovely state in 1968. Zaentz would have been very familiar with the slur from his travels in the old South.
While Jews helped found the film business, as pioneers and studio heads, and then writers, directors and actors, in the popular music business, many entered on the marginal end, where they both encouraged new sounds but sometimes didn't pay a lot. Although that was exactly like other record producers, their practices gained greater visibility since many were immigrants and their acts often achieved greater success. The famous label, Chess Records of Chicago, founded by Leonard and Phil Chess (originally Lejzor and Fiszel Czyz from Poland), was known for stringent contracts.
As Bordowitz explained, "Record industry, comic books, new entertainments, were the only way Jews could make any money back then," when quotas, prejudice and old-boy networks, as well as sheer economics, kept them out.
"Actually (Zaentz's) contract was a lot better than one with Chess Records," said Bordowitz, who now teaches at Bergen College, in New Jersey, where he uses the Fantasy-Creedence 1967 contract as a sample in his class on music law. "The Chess Records contract was impossible, (the Fantasy one) was merely unlikely..." that the artist would make money.
There is little doubt that the Fantasy contract can be considered somewhat onerous: in addition to paying Creedence less than most rock bands, and obligating them to produce more, Fantasy licensed Creedence songs to anyone with a pulse.
That included a paint manufacturer, which used "Who'll Stop the Rain", a moving heart-felt ballad, in a 30-second spot to promote paint thinner, grievously insulting John's ever-expanding artistic temperament. When a Wrangler Jeans executive read that Fogerty was deeply offended by the gross commercialization of his work, he withdrew the company's use of a Creedence tune—VOLUNTARILY!
Zaentz was "the most parsimonious person imaginable," Bordowitz quotes director Antony Minghella as saying, even though Zaentz's prodigious generosity and effort saved Minghella's project, "The English Patient".
As Minghella was setting up to shoot on-location in Tunisia, "The English Patient" had its funding pulled by its primary investor, 20th Century Fox, over Zaentz's refusal to insert bigger-name stars. Zaentz wanted to continue with the actors he had already hired, like the little-known but excellent Willem Dafoe.
Hence, he had to jog, hat in hand, to the Weinstein brothers, also tough-negotiating film producers of Jewish extraction, who locked him into a lousy deal. Indeed, Zaentz had to keep suing them, and their Disney Corporation partners, almost to the end of his life, to recoup his own investment in his extremely successful—nine Oscar-wins!— film.
Zaentz also bought Creedence a one thousand dollar amp, in the early days when they really needed it. On the eighth floor of his Fantasy Building, he provided a coterie of documentary filmmakers subsidized rent, which helped build Berkeley's famous documentary community, an arrangement lasting until a few years after he sold the building around 2006.
Ken Kesey, the author of Zaentz's first hit, claimed Zaentz held off paying him until Herb Caen, the columnist and defender of all things San Francisco, blasted Zaentz in his SF Chronicle column. Kesey received a big check shortly thereafter, although Paul Zaentz insisted there was no monies available earlier and his remuneration followed standard industry timetables.
"He was always unhappy with Zaentz, his treatment of the film, disputes over money," recalled James Dalessandro, a writer/scriptwriter and friend of Kesey. "He said he had never seen 'Cuckoo's Nest', and I made a vow to do the same. (But) I saw it a year after Ken died [1935-2001]. It's a great film. It's different from Ken's book, but it's wonderful."
"Director's loved him, actor's loved him. The movie-going public idolized him," continued Delassandro, in a recent email. "He was the most important indie producer in San Francisco, with a record for making quality films that cannot be matched."
Regardless, Zaentz grew very grouchy about John Fogerty. Rather than dismiss his songs as the free speech of a litigious crank who lost a few million at art roulette, Zaentz sued, bringing the whole issue of onerous contracts back into the public eye. Ask any musician about Creedence and their second association is usually bad Fantasy contracts.
Sure a few million can put a hair up even the most Gandi-esque hindquarters but was money the only thing that so estranged these two immense talents, who, at one point in the '60s, were somewhat or totally enamored? While the Fogerties regarded Zaentz as a father-figure, Zaentz appears to have returned the affection. Indeed, he may have named his son, Johnny, who was born in the mid '60s, after John Fogerty.
Was Fogerty the "Golden Gentile," the boy-wonder poet-star of an older and nebishy-looking Jewish impresario’s imagination? Or was he like that at first but then grew arrogant or even phony and didn't deserve the success Zaentz helped him achieve? Their aesthetics were certainly very different, almost opposing. Or were such considerations not even part of it?
While Zaentz may have broken off the bromance for perfectly logical reasons—he was switching businesses, moving from music into film, and he needed to maintain those old contracts simply to do so—there remains the fascinating red herring of the movie "Payday".
"I want everyone to know that the big hero Maurey Dann is nothing but a raper and a coward!" is one powerful line, shouted by the boyfriend of the woman who had sex with Dann, the country music star played by Rip Torn. Set in a crowded restaurant, this scene provides "Payday" a very well-rendered and -motivated as well as moral conclusion.
Was "Payday"'s brutal portrait of the country music scene, with its intimate sex, shady manager's money dealings and maniac musician, who murders the guy who called him a raper and gets his driver to take the fall, a comment on Fogerty's rose-tinted view of the South, Zaentz's actual knowledge of it OR the whole sordid music business? Certainly, Zaentz and his West Coast creative team were boldly plumbing the depths of a whole 'nother America, a bit like Fogerty.
But also: Imagine if The Beatles' managers Brian Epstein or George Martin had jumped into filmmaking with a story about a band, but instead of "A Hard Day's Night", they set it in Los Angeles, and instead brunette moptops, their characters were blond and crewcut? Wouldn't there be an odd but opposing parallelism, what Freud called the "narcissism of small differences"?
Did Saul and John somehow, at some point, decide that instead of father and son, or artist and impresario, they were aesthetic opposites or even enemies? Or was it just the luck of the art business: some go up, some go down. Once, after John complained he couldn't write music while dealing with so many problems, Saul supposedly lectured him that suffering was instructive to the artist.
Conversely, millions are instructive to the producer, allowing him to do his art. Perhaps the Fantasy-Creedence deal was a subliminal hand-off between music and film, between the largess of the '60s and the more sophisticated culture the world would need in the '80s and '90s to recover from that jarring and revolutionary experience.
Although Tom, Stu and Doug continued in the music business, Tom came to regret quitting Creedence and tragically contracted AIDS through a blood transfer, dying in 1993.
They played together only once again, at Tom's marriage to his second wife Trish, in 1983, when his younger brother John showed up and son Jeff stood in for Tom on two Creedence tunes so he could dance with his new bride. One of Tom's last requests was for Jeff to make tapes for John of their early favorite songs, to remind John of their childhood joy making music together.
The Fogerty family was injured in the whole process, with Tom's first wife, Jeff's mom, leaving him over money troubles. Bassist Stu also got divorced, largely due to financial tensions, although, along with Doug the drummer, he continued to side with Zaentz, despite holding his nose in disgust. Fantasy was their meal ticket and John's endless legal and artistic attacks appeared to damage Creedence's earnings.
They did maintain some communication, however, and on occasion attempted to get back together, once inspired by Jeff. Also an accomplished guitarist and producer, Jeff played with Parliament Funkadelics for seven years and is now finishing his first solo album, The Macchine, working with the drummers Ben Smith, from Heart, and Kenny Aronoff, from his uncle John's band.
"In 1979, I guess I was 15, and getting into guitar," Jeff told me, "and I asked my dad, 'How did you guys start?'"
"'We started with the blues' [he said,] and he laid out four albums: a Jimmy Reed, a Howling Wolf, The Beatles' 'Revolver' and Jimi Hendrix's 'Are You Experienced'."
Suddenly inspired by Jeff's query, Tom called The Boys from El Cerrito: Doug was there in 15 minutes, Stu five minutes later and John in about an hour. "My dad said, 'Just go in the back room with the stereo and keep playing records LOUD," but Jeff ignored him and listened in.
"They were saying 'Yes' and 'No, that didn't work out,' and 'But when we were kids...' There was laughter and yelling but [in the end[ John said, 'I just can't do it.' There was no 'Fuck you,' 'I hate you,' it was just: 'I can't do it.'"
After a dozen years of insufficient psychic and fiduciary support, John was finally bit by the music bug again while out fishing—at the San Pablo Dam just north of El Cerrito, as it happened, not a Cajun bayou. After a couple of lackluster albums, he did get his groove back with "Centerfield." He also started a new family with a lovely wife who helps him keep on track and going strong on his solo career although he remains estranged from many in his family.
John even re-signed with Fantasy in 2005, once Zaentz relinquished control. David Geffen of Asylum began the process of liberating John from Fantasy in 1978 but it took millions of dollars and years of negotiations to complete the process. He remains popular and tours often, his 2013 "Wrote a Song for Everyone" doing notably well.
John continued to eschew playing with his bandmates, including at Creedence's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, which understandably devastated Stu and Doug—admittedly, he had Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson, of The Band, backing him instead.
Zaentz, for his part, continued to enjoy immense and well-earned reverence in Hollywood where he won the Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Zaentz was arguably Northern California's greatest film producer, since he wasn't running a one-director shop, like Lucasfilm or American Zoetrope (Francis Ford Coppola's production house), and he developed sophisticated facilities and local talent as much or more than they did.
He also did a lot to advance a certain Northern Californian romanticism, albeit in sophisticated and sometimes hard-to-parse dramaturge. But that is also very romantic, in that it keeps the viewer guessing, growing and imagining new possibilities.
Fantasy Music was also a big player in film soundtracks, given its Creedence catalog, notably "Suzie Q" in "Apocalypse Now" (1978), "Fortunate Son" in Forrest Gump" (1994), "Bad Moon Rising" in "American Werewolf In London" (1981) and the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski" (1998), which had two Creedence numbers, "Run Through the Jungle" (the subject of one of Saul's suits) and "Lookin' Out My Back Door".
After Zaentz died at 92, on January 3rd, 2014 in San Francisco, from complications with Alzheimer’s, he was incredibly well-lauded in the regular as well as the media press, save for two inevitable flies in the ointment: He was a tough negotiator and one of his old colleagues remained bitter.
"I would urge anyone to keep awake when making contracts with [Zaentz]," noted Richard Corliss, in the Time Magazine obit (1/9/14). "Above all, I would suggest, the exactness and the ambition come out of the same genes. Saul Zaentz is the nearest we have to teach ourselves what the great age of Goldwyn, Mayer, Zanuck and Selznick was like.”
Inevitably, Corliss added, "When his longtime enemy died last week, Fogerty, in lieu of an R.I.P., posted an animated version of the song [the harsh 'Vanz Cant Danz' music video] on his Twitter account. Some people believe in God; Fogerty, no less devoutly, believes in grudges."
Although transcendence and forgiveness are recommended, especially by saints, is it really so strange for an artist to use culture and the court of public opinion, the one trump card he holds over the entrepreneurs and their lawyers, who in turn are using their avenues of redress as aggressively as possible?
Of course, culture often only quantum leaps when business and the arts work together, as the Medicis proved in the 15th century with Michaelangelo and Da Vinci, and film and music often do today.
By the time they were talking turkey in the mid-'60s, both Zaentz and Fogerty were at the top of their game and had been in their businesses for a long time. Both must have been well-aware of exactly which cards the other held but they still couldn't strike a deal! Either something very bad happened or it was a perfect storm.
Even if Zaentz was right by the letter of the law, was he right by the spirit, not only of the law but of Berkeley, where he lived, and the anti-authoritarian films, which he made? Isn't John Fogerty essentially the "Mac" McMurphy character in "Cuckoo's", the guy who stood up to authority and went down for his dreams and dignity?
"Fantasy got something like 120 million during that time," claims Jeff Fogerty, referring to the period from 1968, when The Boys from El Cerrito morphed into Creedence Clearwater Revival, until 1978 and the Castle Bank catastrophe.
"Fantasy could have said, 'We will give each of you guys one million so that you can get on with your life because you helped us. But zero, nothing?" After arduous court dealing, lawyers fees, paying alimony arrears to an ex-wife, his dad only got about $150,000 out of the Castle debacle, Jeff said.
Sure, if it was Colt 45 Records, out of Dallas, dealing with a country musician, like the Maurey Dann-character from "Payday", perhaps the bad deals and broken hearts wouldn't stick in the eye so pointedly. But Berkeley, home of the free speech movement, and a company by the name of Fantasy?!?
Symbols have meaning—isn't that what art is about? Isn't that precisely how impresarios make money, by converting ephemeral aesthetics into physical art and cash?
Wasn’t Fantasy the same forward thinkers who gave us albums by Lenny Bruce!!! If Bruce hadn't died from a heroin overdose in Hollywood in 1966, what would he have had to say to Saul at the office picnic in Tilden Park a couple of years later?
Meanwhile, Saul was the guy who struggled mightily to bring us romantic flights of fancy like the "The English Patient" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" (both with airplanes central to their symbol structures)!
And how is the Zaentz-Fogerty story remembered by the denizens of the "People's Republic of Berkeley," many of them laborers in the fields of every righteous cause imaginable? When I asked around, I found little is recalled aside from the tragic mess.
Shouldn't, somehow, someway, some modest amends be made: perhaps Berkeley's next nonprofit could be an old folks home for rock'n'rollers called the Clearwater Rest Home—now there's a commercialization dear old John (now 68) might abide!
The mystery of where the relationship went off the rails will probably remain unanswered until all the details are revealed (notably by Saul's colleagues, who didn't talk to Bordowitz, although one anonymously sent him their complete Creedence file), either in print or, preferably, film.
Alas, the latter will probably have to wait for the next Zaentz and the next Fogerty getting together to make the next "Payday", a tragic but epic interaction of passion, art, ego and dreams that could be called "The Jew and the Cowboy".
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Feb 01, 2014 - 03:17 AM
