This guy ripped off Fogerty on the ownership of CCR’s music.
He won’t be missed.
As a film producer he put through some great stuff.
Speaking of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, didn’t Michael Douglas get the rights for that under shadowy circumstances from Kesey? And what was Zaentz’s role, if any in that acquisition?
“This guy ripped off Fogerty on the ownership of CCR’s music.
He won’t be missed.”
If you think this, you know nothing about what actually happened. Fogerty signed the same publishing contract when he did his record deal with Fantasy (Zaentz) as did every other singer songwriter of the era. The publishing part of the conflict was minor. The big disputes were over (1) who was responsible for the losses Zaentz and Fogerty and everyone else involved took in offshore the Castle Bank and Trust offshore tax shelter deals the whole group of them got involved in the Bahamas; and (2) who was responsible for slander in the Zaentz Can’t Dance lawsuit, just Fogerty or Warner Records.
Fogerty was borderline crazy, in my opinion. He thought Zaentz had secret contacts to the Bahamians or some such nonsense and hundreds of thousands of dollars (more like millions) in legal fees were wasted for Fogerty to lose. And, despite being represented by one of the biggest, most-expensive and meanest law firms in the country, Fogerty did lose.
Zaentz was one of the few honest film/music producers around and Fogerty’s attacks on him demeaned a very fine man.