John Fogerty in-depth – the good, the bad, and the ugly - Interview in 1985
The Conversation
[Music]
they're rolling okay John people said
that you gave up the business after your album John Fogerty in 75 is that true yes oh actually no it's not true
I had to withdraw from the limelight at that point because of various legal and
kind of financial and involvement that came came along with the success of
Creedence and that's all been pretty well documented and we don't have that
kind of time here to talk about it but I really had to go back and start working
on my music privately it was I was in a situation where I was sort of forced to
do it that way so I accepted the challenge and started climbing up the mountain from the bottom and now you've
starting on your new album I mean hasn't the music business gotten harder and you
know tougher to break through I would if I was just a totally unknown person right now in about 20 years old I think
and knowing what I know now I think it'd be it I'd feel differently it'd be real
tough I think there's there's so many bands and there's so many names and you
know all about them even if you don't hear the music I just think there's a lot more I don't think it's competition
but there's just a lot more activity and more people more records coming out all the time but do you feel like you have
to fight harder to really make it then anyone CCR oh no personally I don't feel
that way at all it's it's a it's a totally self-contained fight I have to
please myself before I try to please anybody else with the music and happily
when when I'm able to really hit the spot and find something that I like it
seems to go well you know if I turn that into a record and put it out
but I don't think I don't think of it as in terms of a fight out there or in
competition with anybody else at all what idea is you're trying to put across with with centerfield well the central
theme really I would say is hope and optimism I mean is that what you want
for the next few years I think it's an overall thing you know to me the there's
a in one of the unassuming songs is rock
and roll girls but the opening line is almost my philosophy of life the trick
is to ride and make it to the bell and to me what that means is you're supposed
to get all the way to the end I mean of life standing up no excuses no
groveling you know no laying your thing off on somebody else and that's kind of
the whole point of centerfield it yeah as an album I mean and also in the way
I've tried to live my own life you know you there's always hope long as
you're trying there's hope mm-hm if you have a goal or a dream just stick to it
hang on to it let's make a big jump back to the way you started off in the music
business tell me tell me how that happened well I'm not sure what at what
point you'd say I started but your first band okay well I met the I met Doug in
the eighth grade junior high school and what it was is I used to go down to the
music room every day after school and play the piano and Doug start dropping
by you know be a lot of kids there but Doug started dropping by a lot as did several other people and I'd be playing
do you want to dance and what I say flight of the bumblebee things like that and he started talking about drums one
day and we like we walked home because we lived on the same trail the same you
know walk same way to get home and it made it sound like he had a set of drums and
everything so I said well sure let's come let's come by your house and see your set well it turned out he had a
cousin or somebody who played a snare and anyway he had one snare drum and he
put it in a flower pot stand this is one of these modern art kind of things came up like that and he laid the drum in it
and I was all he had and here I thought he had a set of drums in his living room something we borrowed a hi-hat which is
I mean it was like somebody had welded this thing together it was this ungodly
piece of machinery and we borrowed that and I brought over my little sears and
roebuck amp and a guitar he started playing so that's very basic
but in the eighth grade we thought it was pretty good and sometime during that same period of time I actually I had
tried out three or four different piano players and Stu cook was it wasn't that
he was the best piano player at that point but it seemed like he would learn the most and also he was kind of the
most like us he was a easiest first to get along with he seemed that kind of a
similar background so that was really the basis of we would call that self the blue Velvets in those days Tommy Fogarty
and well eventually Tom joined but he didn't really start performing with us a lot until two or three years later
though you were helping out your big brother you know what what kind of repertoire did you did you play we were
pretty much like any American Garage Band of those days you have to understand like in junior high we were
the only band in the school and when we got to high school I think there was one other rock-and-roll band just they were
just graduating and leaving when we got there it wasn't like how it was after the Beatles went and it seemed like
every school I had 50 bands we were the band of the school we played all the
kind of instrumentals particularly we concentrated on instrumentals like Duane Eddy or the ventures we played Torquay
by the fire and a lot of things that I sort of
arranged for our little trio because we we end up playing a lot of weddings and
bar mitzvahs yeah all that sort of thing little dancers and stuff so we we wanted
some more kind of classy sort of music I mean you might say danceable or adult
music like 5 foot 2 and my Blue Heaven as dumb as that was you begin to learn
about kind of a broader spectrum of music than just listening to your one
top 40 station you learn that there's a lot more going on when you appeal when
you try to appeal to a larger audience so even at the age of 14 we were sort of
trying to be a dance band rather than just a bunch of greasers making noise
how about the vocals I mean did you start seeing around that period for the I sang it very very little in those days
and I was like before my voice changed even and so I would do hully gully and
we did some blues songs but I had two squeaky little voice it's kind of funny actually to be singing okay I didn't
really start singing seriously until i was about 19 or 20 years old what kind
of songs were you seeing then well then it was I took a trip up to Oregon with a
couple other musicians in the summer of 64 and kind of discovered my voice I had
a little tape recorder those days it was reel-to-reel and I would I just would
lay it on the stage and I put the microphone somewhere near the monitors and in just one little mic where it
could pick up the drums and the guitar and everything but also get the vocal and I take that tape off and listen to
myself and I did this every single day it was great training and you know I'd listen to how I approached a song like I
think let's see we did let's go let's go as one of the songs we used to do I'm
sure we did what I say and a couple of Wilson Pickett songs and I was listening to myself develop an edge
this harshness and so I'd listen each day and then I'd kind of well how what
could I do to fix that up or get a little better sound then that night you know I have a tape recorder there again
and I try it when we tried that song again and over the course of that summer I really kind of developed what later
became my style but it was it it evolved out of this opportunity to hear it every
single day and wonder what made it you know what I could do to push it and make it better how this all happened in 1964
where this time you were in a different band well I never considered myself away from the blue Velvets that was the main
band I it was like a marriage almost I mean even in in the eighth or ninth grade I was committed to that band even
though there was quite a period of time that the other guys weren't a matter of fact they went off to college and got
girlfriends and all the rest of it you know but I always thought this was the it this was the real band and I'd go off
on these other side endeavors but that wasn't ever in my mind anyway intended
to be anything more than a diversion the the song brown-eyed girl you you did
that in 64 but that was with a different band though oh no this was the golliwogs
it was Doug and Stu and myself and Tom just changed the name that's right
actually we didn't change the name we thought we were the blue Velvets but by
the time that record came out I it was either the end of 64 or early 65 it's a
galley walks we were flabbergasted I didn't even know what a was I'm
not sure I do now but we sort of labored under that name but we never liked it
after that I mean what happened you know the British Invasion was coming on what
happened to the golliwogs or the blue Velvets well the golliwogs were actually named that by a a man at the record
company because of the British Invasion he thought it sounded British beetle II and all the rest and that was the reason
but we were I mean we were totally going away from being ourselves where who were
these silly little white hats and you know funny mod clothes and the whole
thing like a lot of other kids in America did trying to emulate the English thing I'd say the best thing
during that time for us was that we were traveling around California doing these
very minor hit records that the golliwogs had you know we were big in
Turlock and Modesto and sometimes Marysville and we were touring as a unit
the four of us driving all around up and down the state which is almost like driving in England on the m1 I mean it's
the distances are pretty enormous to a little Volkswagen van that's about on
its last legs all the time so I think it's just that experience helped make us
jail we were together an awful lot and we'd talk about music and offal at 167
the band changed name again did the record company decide on that no we I
got out of the Army in 67 and we sort of
resolved to really you know as adults as grownups anyway at the age of 22 to
really go for it to either we were we're really going to commit ourselves and everything we had or else we weren't
gonna make it so we pulled out whatever resources we had dug and stew moved into a place
together actually stew sold his car for cash to help us buy equipment we all
kind of made a last ditch this is really it we're gonna you know we're gonna go
for broke try everything we can and one of the things we did at that point was to also say look that name is awful we
got to have a better name than that because this is this is we're going for the big time now this isn't the silly
little game of a stupid record company guy you know I mean the record company
was the entire thing would fit in a couple of those planters out there I mean if
there was just call it a postage stamp record company would be to give it a euphemism and right at that point that
ownership had changed to the present ownership of fantasy records and so it
meant that we no longer had to keep that name it's the old people that wanted us to use that name so at that point we
called ourself Creedence Clearwater Revival and we're we were able to go in
with two hours of studio time shortly thereafter and record a demo tape which
is the same version of that is susie-q on the album but at first it was just a
demo tape that we took to the local FM station and they started playing it a lot like four or five times a day and in
exactly the same form that it appears on the record well that course increased our notoriety around the Bay Area and
finally around California we started getting to play larger and larger venues
just because of this demo tape and wisely the man at the record company finally saw oh these guys are getting
popular maybe they should make an album but so we got to go in and with
something like seven or eight hours of studio time we made the first album the
budget was like less than two thousand dollars and the album became a hit and
we sort of took off from there and who was the leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival Tom were you if you can speak of
a leader that is well somewhere between the time I got at somewhere between the time I went in the army and the time
when I came out of the army it sort of evolved and changed because Tom being older had always sort of taken a
leadership role whenever it was the four of us together but of course all those
years through high school in junior high I was the leader of the trio the blue Velvets and Tom would only sort of two
three times a year he'd come and sing well something like that or we try and make a demo record this was like from 1959 till
1966 so that basically I was the leader of the trio all during those years and we
were much more active Tom kind of didn't really perform with us a lot but when I
got out of the Army and we all really kind of were serious about it then I became the leader at that point that
meaning did you kind of kept everything together as well well because simply because I was the best the music leader and eventually the
sort of management leader I don't know what else to call it Queens always used to say we had no manager but 50% of the things I was
doing was music and the other 50% was some who was business related and now
that I'm an older person I would call that management even though he didn't have a separate guy with a plaid coat in
a cigar you know doing these making these decisions okay at the time you
were working in San Francisco it was the flowerpower era how come see see I wasn't playing psychedelic music or
underground I never really liked that stuff very much and it seemed very transient I were actually right now I
can't even think of one flowerpower tech record that I like I'm sure there were a
few then but I was more into Stax vote Booker T and the MGS and Otis Redding
and James Brown you know all the great kind of R&B stuff or elles country and
psychedelic was always sort of this watered-down kind of middle class skinny
little white boys trying to sound heavy and be laid back you know Wow groovy and
I just couldn't identify with that it wasn't the psychedelic music selling a lot of records at that's how I didn't
you may or may not be true I'm not I don't even know if that's true or not I just know that when I would go to the
Fillmore and go to to see quote the famous psychedelic bands most the time
they put me to sleep there's big play like 15 minute long jams and things and
you really I went so a Frank Zappa and the mothers of invention and I sat on I had
to sit on the floor because it's because the other half of the show was Booker T and the MGS and that's why I went but
the first half was Frank Zappa Mothers of Invention and I mean it was the most
boring thing I've ever seen and at one point he stood there and another guy too and they talked about their 57 Chevy and
mag wheels and something like that well the music was going and he talked for like 25 minutes I got really agitated
and so did everybody else well next day I ran in the paper that he does that on purpose or he does to make
us all man just to see what it would be like see I didn't pay $3 to you know to
get old man I want to hear great music from Booker T it's one of the weirdest presentations and I know he's a pioneer
because a lot of people do that now yeah he still does it
CCI became world famous who wrote the hits I mean I'm talking like Suzy Q put a spell on you
Proud Mary born on the Bay you bad moon rising well with the exception of the first two I
I began to write in the beginning like Suzie Q is a great old Dale Hawkins song
he helped write it but there were some other people screaming Jay Hawkins did I put a spell on you and that's another
great old R&B song that I loved it happened to fit my vocal style I could I could sing that well that was the reason
we decided to do that particular song but somewhere between the first and
second album I discovered that I sort of
evolved I mean I had always been trying to write music but somewhere during that
summer of 67 I started really coming up with things like proud Mary was during
that time born on the bayou it was kind of a little mythical invention of the Louisiana swamp rock
and all that sort of thing sort of came out it was a concentration of about two
months time of songwriting staying up all night thinking about where did we
fit in American rock that sort of thing and it evolved right there what are your
favorites the ones you wrote probably Green River I like the place that that song supposed
to be coming from green remember I always thought was like the heart and soul of what Creedence is musically and
also just kind of what it's talking about because that whole album and specifically that song okay you wrote
them how about the arrangements the same thing yeah how about Tony Joe white what
influences did he have oh I would say he had probably no influence on us we liked
him but he was sort of parallel he came along at the same time we did we toured
with and he's a great guy he's wonderful now moving along into the 70s early 70s
something went wrong what happened exactly well I went out to get gas one
day I came back the house was gone somebody put cement in my swimming pool
I don't I think what really the simplest way to say it is every band evolves to
the same place because I've seen it I'm gonna open up a clinic on Sunset Boulevard Fogerty's Fogarty's how so
Fame or something and I'm going to counsel all these young bands so you know he's got blond hair and that makes
you jealous doesn't it he sings all the vocals and that makes you jealous
doesn't it I mean it's like you're all this silly stuff happens you're referring to your brother Tom oh I was
referring to all bands all the ends of the what happens is you got to be in the
guys and start out there's no success so the sky's the limit everybody wants to get there then you have success at first
you knocked out by it it's great it's wonderful after a year or so you accept that as a normal condition that's the
first mistake right there this is not a normal condition you've probably I can guarantee you will
probably be a has-been within three years if you don't you're very extremely
lucky well anyway so you start accepting this Fame and it's notoriety as a normal state of affairs and it's
gonna go on forever that's the second mistake finally you start the band as a
whole starts feeling that you know each individual starts thinking that he is the important cog and since if that is
true then I should start singing the songs or at least writing these songs
that he shouldn't have to write all the songs I'm gonna write all the songs now I mean every band in the world does this
and if you allow that to happen the thing you started with is going to be
different it's going to change you know sports guys know this they get to the
World Series they say let's go with what got us here and they put in their ace and he mows them down but bands don't
know that they get to the top the World Series then they bring in the waterboy they say all right
waterboy you sing all the tunes from now on you know the audience goes ARF
I mean we did it that's what happened to us and I've seen it happen time after time it's a it's a fatal mistake but
it's like a moth to a flame everybody seems to want to do it that way they
continue as a trio but just think of all those solo albums you get there first
there's a band you only get one or two albums a year you got a five piece band that's five six solo albums ever you
know but the trio didn't last long right no I mean that was really like we
didn't know what to do you know we we started as a trio there we were we were if we were a trio again but that was
kind of it was already we had passed our Rubicon you know our bridge too far the
rules were different now it was a democracy everybody I was not the leader anymore everyone was gonna sing everyone
was gonna write everyone was gonna arrange true democracy just like Athens
so it was chaos and it collapsed under its own weight but a solo career started
first I was in the album by the Blue Ridge Rangers who all those guys were singing right - but who were there that
was basic that's me / Debbie just that was a one man being okay that
album in your solo album in 1975 were praised by the critics nevertheless you stop that so sure it was praised but
well that's a I was a blind man in a fog
so what did you stop I started to make a
another album after that and it was even worse it was never released and Joe
Smith the head of asylum records that I was now on said this really doesn't
sound like it's up to par John why don't you go home and straighten out all these other things you're involved in first
you don't have to make a record now yeah just just ease that out of your mind you don't have to you don't owe anybody
anything I want you straighten out this other baloney and you'd say baloney but that's what it was and that's what I did
I went home and started to attack kind of all these nagging financial and legal
problems that ups until this time I had just sort of been running on a treadmill
trying to get to where the career would you know ignite again and since I was
now relieved of that sort of burden or pressure I started to really attack
these things one of which was this great financial plan that the people at fantasy had gotten us involved in and as
soon as I started kind of tapping around the shadows of this thing to find out well where's all the money how much did
we earn how much was spent how much is left as soon as I did that it all disappeared boom gone it was it like
within weeks so and then I realized that
I still owned product to fantasy records and they were somehow connected to this bank and the whole thing got real vague
and so I decided I'd better put lawyers on the case and kind of fight this thing
out before I make any more records and that's basically what I've been doing for ten years
okay but now you're up on the go what are your plans for the future
I was gonna try and be funny but there's no point to it I really am very anxious
to get out in the world tour all the rest of it but I will make another album
before I do go touring the basic reason is I'm not going to do the old songs and
since I'm not going to do the old songs I'm gonna only going to do new songs or at least new to me
I need quite a lot of more material than the 9 songs that appear on centerfield
before I can do it I do you think of the people that will go to a concert that they'll still expect to see see our song
here maybe I'll have to print it right on the ticket this is not CCR because it
isn't actually and even though I would say a large part of what CCR was after
all I wrote the songs and sang them and that sort of thing I'm also the guy who had to live for the last 12 or 13 years
with the knowledge that the the benefit of my life's work all went to somebody
else and besides that he also was holding on to me for the future it was
like a bear trap around my ankle holding me to a chain to the wall in the
basement and I didn't make me real happy yeah we'll pick it up at the tour you're
gonna be touring again well what can people expect from a concert by John
Fogerty why all about an hour and a half of intensity but no CCR songs no I
really don't intend to do that those songs again basically because they
didn't as much joy as they may have brought to people you know outside of my
room the result that happened to me because those songs were owned by the
record company and that record company treating me and the other guys the way
they did it didn't bring us a lot of joy at all and it's all kind of mixed up inside I just assume that sing them
anymore okay how about for the future for you I mean besides touring well I intend to
make another album before I would go out and that involves finding a lot of new
music that I do feel joy about and one of the wonderful things that happened because of making the album centerfield
and also it's kind of wrapped up in my relationship here with the Warner Brothers it's finding a lot of people
that really care I really try hard you know I hadn't had that experience before
tell you the truth and there is a lot of joy for me now I love singing and I love
the whole kind of idea of creating something that's going to be appreciated
and then put into a media or into a form
that's going to be appreciated so I'm
not really having a lot of fun right now this is just great right now for me okay
do you like it like that okay so we do the the logos rub Beauty
is one of those people right there okay oh man down the road the video clip is
exquisite do you think about the concept yourself or know that if if you call
that a concept was basically an idea that evolved out of the director
mctaggerty and Jeff air off here at Warner Brothers and myself talking about
you know what what did we want to do with the video basically I think we all agreed that we didn't want to be just
your ordinary lots of flesh and a bombs going off video so we started talking
about this idea of following a continuous chord and that appealed to me just because it was kind of different
not the wall at one point I realized there was no swamp enos in there though
and I really wanted a swamp in there because especially the opening lines of
old man sound like it came right out of a great old swamp great old bog in the
fog and so that became necessary but I wouldn't I had
really I was not the central idea in this at all I had a lot of fun being
there and helping to make the thing that's a lot of fun tell you what we'll take a look at it right now okay