The Joe Rogan Experience - #2485 - John Fogerty

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

John Fogerty is a Grammy-winning solo musician, former leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and an inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His latest album is “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years.”www.concordrecords.com/collections/john-fogerty/products/legacy-the-creedence-clearwater-revival-years-liberty-2lp-vinylwww.youtube.com/johnfogertywww.johnfogerty.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. They put your stuff on the floor. It doesn't matter. You can keep it on the table. It's fine. There's water there, too, in this metal cup.

And then there's coffee. Oh, thanks so much. Okay, yeah, you're ready to. I have some notes that I'll probably never look at. You got notes? Me? What's on the notes? Oh, just stuff like what I went through with CCR and all that.

But tell me something. Did you read up on me or anything? I'm a huge fan. I don't have to read up on you. Okay. I read up on you a little bit just to catch up about how you got out of the, well, you did do military service, but you got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating. I read that.

Is that true? No. Is that true? They lied? It was a story about you smoking a lot of. of weed and getting emaciated so you can get out of the army? Well, it's not quite in that sequence, but those things did happen. Yeah, I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right?

So I was kind of really skinny by 1967, 68. I mean, like 100, I think it was 129 pounds. Whoa. Yeah. And then I was going to go to the thing. It was the procedio, and I had to meet with the Army doctor, right? And my friends gave me a couple of joints, and I stuck them in. You know, I used to smoke in those cigarettes.

I stuck it in the cigarette and going across the Bay Bridge. I smoked them. I hadn't even thought about it. So if you went, yeah, man, he went on a starvation diet, a protest diet, and then smoked a lot of weed. That's what I heard. That's quite that way. But yeah, okay, but it's essentially some truth.

Some truth to it. You had a legendary career, my friend. Legendary. Thank you. Still working on it. It's incredible, man. You are like one of the main voices of rock and roll in America. if you really think about it, your songs, I mean, you have so many gigantic hits.

You know, when the UFC has a lot of walkout songs, you know, when fighters come out and walk out, a lot of guys walk out to your music. I don't even know if you're aware of it. Fortunate Sun is a big one. Yeah. Bad mood rising, that's another big one people walk out to. Great. It's pretty awesome.

Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aware of the UFO. see stuff, but it, you know, everybody, whatever floats your boat. Well, people just love your music. Yeah. So you went through many generations. Like, you got your first record contract. How old were you?

Um, I know I signed one when I was around 19. Of course, it would have been unenforceable. It's not legal at the time, right? You had to be 21? Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. There's, well, you're also one of the first.

rock and roll artist that wrote songs that became very popular about how you're getting screwed over by the record business. You know what I mean? So Leonard Skitter did it, working for MCA, they did that song, but you had Vanskans dance.

It was actually Zanz Can't Dance. But you had to change it, right? Yeah, the name of the person was Zance. It sold about a half a million copies as Zance, but the record company, Warner Brothers, in their way of settling somewhat, had me change it to Vance.

Because the guy's name was Zanz, yeah. It was screwing out. That's right in the middle of that whole thing was a mess. I got sued for sounding like myself. What? Yeah. How'd that happen? I'll tell you.

So, and I didn't find this out, and there was eventually a trial. So it's not, many people think that that's funny. You got sued for sounding like you're so, wow, that's funny. Well, no, you're getting a legal lawsuit that's probably going to take away a lot of your money, and you're going to go through three, four years of anguish. Well, anyway, and, and, up in a trial. He was suing me for, at the time, was an enormous amount of money, $144 million for his whatever, metal anguish or something. The logistics, I guess you'd call it,

I had made a new song called The Old Man Down the Road. It was on my album, it was my comeback on Centerfield. And I had finally gotten away from fantasy. records, which is where Credence was, and Saul's aunts who owned it. So, you know, when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the former people tend to be jealous, I guess. And so he was suing me. What had happened, though, I found out in the trial, the bass player from Credence was another one of those people, I guess, it couldn't stand that I'd now had success. in a later life, he went down to fantasy and saw Mr. Saul's ants and said, John is ripping off Credence. You should sue him. The irony in all of that is that I had taught

Stu every single note that he ever played in Credence. It was not his own creation. As we talk, you'll see. I was the guy inventing the arrangements. And so to take possession of credence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top. Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and that saw had unlimited funds. And so it went to a trial. I prevailed that trial and got that over with. But they torture you during the process because it takes years and it costs an enormous amount of money to fight yourself. Yeah, all that stuff.

That is so crazy that they can. sue you for sounding like you? Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevail. I mean, you know, what we're really talking about is when you come into the consciousness of the world, I guess, and you have a certain style, if you're lucky. And so you start creating whatever your art is. You're an actor or you're a painter or, in my case, a musician. And people start liking the style.

well, how unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes ownership of your style and now said, you have to go back and invent some other style, be some other person? You know, it's just, that would be really difficult. Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style, having to, you know, reinvent and change to something else. Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that. It's insane because, look, so many artists sound. like other artists anyway, and no one has a problem with that, as long as they're not ripping off the notes and the lyrics, there's a lot of people that sound like people.

But the idea that you could get sued for sounding like you with new music and new lyrics is, that's one of the most insane things I've ever heard of. I can't believe that didn't get thrown out immediately. Immediately, right. Well, that shows the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people want to have. You know, I had written a new song and he didn't want me to, he wanted to own the new stuff. He wanted to own me, basically. That was the idea. Well, you can never do anything unless you do it for me, you know.

So I was, but not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists. it was kind of a major ruling, and thank God it went that way. Well, thank God it also was public, like with that song and the lawsuit around the song, you having to change the name of the song. Because back then, at least at the time, like, well, this was probably, what, the 80s? Yep. Most people had no idea how evil the music business can be. Unless they were told they had no idea.

They bought the albums. they love the musicians, and they just liked the music. They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. They didn't know how these people own your catalog, they own the music, they own the publishing, they try to just get as much money out of you as humanly possible, own your name, own your likeness. Most fans had no idea.

And that's probably the way it really should be. When I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his guitar player. You know, I didn't want to know all. I didn't even know there was stuff behind it to know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Right. I picked a good one there, didn't I? Yeah, it's a real good one. The colonel was evil. That's just too bad. Another similar situation. Like, there's a lot of these great artists get, like Prince. He got wrapped up to the point where he had to change his name to a symbol because he didn't own his name anymore.

Prince! Yeah, I remember going, well, if he doesn't want to use it, you know, I'll take it. You know. Yeah, it's just the business itself. I mean, you have these creative artists that make this music that everybody loves. And then you have these hyenas that work behind the scenes that are the ones that are collecting the majority of the money from it. And they're not making any music. And to the average fan like myself, like, that's abhorrent.

That's disgusting. Like, you see that. It just drives you nuts. Well, also, you know, the creative people are special. and I mean, you know, look around. There's way more of other types of people than there are creative people. And to douse that, you know, or own that, which is what was going to happen, it's just an onerous thing.

I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff. I'm a lot older. I can't say wiser. It's more like I came out on the good side. of it. I try not to worry about it too much. It's great that you came out on the good side of it. But it's also great for people to know.

And it's really great for young artists to be aware as they're coming up, especially as they're beginning their journey, that this could happen to them. Yeah, and there's all kinds of bad people around just waiting for you to slip up and

sign something that will give your rights away, that sort of thing. I get such a joy out of music, you know. I mean, I just started that way when I was a little kid. I mean, didn't even know what I was doing or what that was. I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it, and I just kind of went with it. I didn't try to analyze it too much.

And, of course, later, with all the things, you know, the different roads you go through trying to get to. someplace, happily, I still get that same joy. I mean, I just, I'm just so glad. You know, a lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife, Julie. If I hadn't met her, I probably would be dead, as simple as that. Really? Yeah.

Wow. Why do you think you'd be dead? I didn't see any way out. You know, I was really abusing myself, alcohol, mostly. I really felt bad inside. I mean, when you get like that, Joe, you're not really operating on the same plane in the world that all the other people that you see. You know, you walk into a market or something and look around,

and probably most of the people are kind of normal, you know, whatever we call that. but when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me. But, you know, however you get there and then you start abusing yourself with drugs, alcohol, whatever, you just kind of becomes a habit. You just stay there, right? And so you're not really enjoying the sunshine. and the love that's around you

and all the rest of it, you become kind of a pathetic person, sad, certainly. So that was the deal. When Julie met me, I was that guy. There was certainly an anger, I mean, but a bitterness too. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where you look for something to go wrong and then it goes wrong. And you go, see, I told you.

I mean, it's a terrible mental place to be and I was there. Do you think this was a loop that you got in because of the lawsuits? Oh, yeah. It really just got you that hard. Well, there was more than one lawsuit. But the betrayal by the people in my band, you know, I just told you about a very evil man, right? And I'm the only guy from Credens who's ever actually mentioned that he's an evil person to the extent that quite publicly my brother Tom, right during the same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend.

Oh, Jesus. It was just really hard to deal with. The other two guys in the band were in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it. They just never spoke up. It's just kind of give me the money. How the fuck was your brother saying that guy was your best friend while he was suing you? He was signed, re-signed after the breakup of credence. He kind of shopped around and didn't have much success finding a label. And so he went right about the time that this trial was going to happen. he resigned with fantasy.

I'm talking about the first trial. Which was the first trial? The first trial was about basically the band had lost its life savings. All of us in credence. The record company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan. And I'm saying this with a smile because nowadays it just sounds so. You know, some guy comes walking up to you and got a trench coat on a corner in New York City. Hey, buddy, you know, you're probably going to avoid that guy.

But the record company was in this tax thing. And for all we knew, we were going to be paying 90% income tax, right? I mean, the tax laws are pretty stringent and pretty high. And so they offered us or basically kind of ushered us into this plan, offshore tax plan, and it would allow us to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, something like that. So it was a huge financial savings for us. I can tell you that the name of this particular thing

was a bank in the Bahamas called Castle Bank. And we had it checked out, I mean, the people on our side and the band had it checked out by our people. Our own accountant, the bass player's father was an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm. They, among other people, represented, to Oakland Raiders, so we thought they were pretty solid, and they checked it all out and said

that it was okay, it was legit. So we did it. But time went on, and it seemed to be not legit, to the point that somewhere in the 70s, the bank disappeared and all our money in it disappeared. So we sued. Oh, Jesus. So here it is. The bank was being used by the CIA to funnel money for covert military operations, including those at Andros Island, a staging area for anti-Castro activities. So they were stealing your money. How? I just found that.

I don't know. I just typed it in and went to the Wikipedia and I was like, well, that's interesting. So insane. See, I didn't know any of that. You didn't know until now? Oh, I knew that now. Or I suspect, yeah. Did you know that up until now, or did you just find it out just now?

You could tell me a lot of things right now, and I'd say, oh, yeah, I guess as soon all that stuff was kind of happening. But I didn't know it at the time in the early 70s, or late 60s, when we got into this thing. It was actually 70s. Do you know how anti-American that is? The CIA stole from Credence Clearwater Revival. You know, fucking crazy that is? That is so wild. No, I didn't know that part.

The funny thing, the funny thing is I had decided to get out of that plan, right? And I'd gone down to see my own people, my accountant, my attorney in Oakland, and told them, I just want out of this thing. I don't like the idea that you got to call, you know, whenever I want some money, like an allowance, you got to call up some bank account somewhere over there, and it takes, you know, some time, some few days before I actually receive my money. And it was starting to just smell. It was starting to, and now we're talking 1975-76.

And so I actually had the meeting. and I said, I want to be out of this plan. I don't want to, oh, I said, one of the things I said to the meeting of professionals, look, take a shoebox, put all the money I've ever earned into the shoebox, and now hand me the shoebox so I can see how much money have I earned, because I didn't know. It was just going straight into this fund, right, into this Castle Bank. but they couldn't tell me.

So I leave. I get down to a parking lot in the basement of this tall building in Oakland, and I'm with the guy that runs my office, and I say, shit, we're going to have to have another meeting. Because even though I told him, I want to get out of the plan,

I didn't stand up like on the table and say, I'm ordering you and you and you get me out of the plan. I realized they could weasel some more time, until I actually pointed. So the next week, I showed up and did that. I'm ordering you. Get me out. Okay, out of the plan, right?

Pretty quickly after that, a week or two, we hear that the bank has closed. There's a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day, and the bank president has died. He died in a sauna. Whoa. I've seen that movie. You know, where I happen in Costello,

and the mob comes in and they're in those heat things that are up to here. And the guy sticks the broom in the doors so you can't get out. I mean, except that this was serious and there will be no more withdrawals until this thing is resolved right you know

a bank president dies you don't close the bank of America right you still can go get your money and so pretty quick after that it all just disappeared

in a pop of smoke they just stole the money done yep and it was the fucking CIA that is crazy that is so crazy how much money was involved

with all the different people that lost their money like how much money was this bank holding. Do you know? Oh, well, there were other names that I never saw in those days. A lot of sort of mobby kind of sounding names. Yeah. I will tell you, after the thing closed, and we got the telegram that the president, I

started, I literally started checking under my cars looking for wires and, you know, something funny. I did that for about three months. Whoa. I finally just, well, I was scared. Yeah, I would be true. Because I was the guy who said, I want to get out of this thing, and suddenly it goes, kaboom, and the president dies. Right. Right. And I just figured that I was some kind of whistleblower to them or something, and, you know, I'm in their way. Wow. I guarantee you're the reason why it happened. I don't think, no, I don't believe that's true. Well, no, I mean, you're, you probably caused

the whole thing to close down. I mean, it's not a coincidence that it closed down right after you asked for your money back. Yeah, I don't know. You're a big public name and a big voice. You get out. I will say after that point in time, I really never wanted to talk too loudly about stuff anymore. Oh, my goodness. I'm not going to. So there eventually was our lawsuit. Well, actually, it was my lawsuit. I got with a lawyer. A tall, building, I call it, and proceeded to start proceedings against this fantasy, our own attorneys and experts, the people that designed this plan, all the rest, right? But I was the only one in the band that did that. The rest of the guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves.

And I was pretty adamant. I'm telling you this, because that's some point later, more than a year had passed, maybe a year and a half, my lawsuit had been rolling along a while. And then the other guys asked to join my lawsuit because the statute of limitations had run out on them being able to sue anyone because they literally tried to stay in the plan. And I was willing to take the penalty whatever it was for being the dumbass that let himself get into some financial thing like this, right? I felt like I used to say, I felt like Joe Lewis. I thought I was going to need an act of Congress to forgive the debt.

These experts in the meeting that I talked about who were trying to dissuade me from making a noise and trying to get. get out of the plan, told me eventually, John, if you receive all the money at once, you will pay more than 110% in taxes of what you have earned. In other words, I was going to go in the hole. Yeah. Yeah, for receiving it all at once, right? That sounds insane. That's why I felt like Joe Lewis.

That's the most insane thing I've ever heard. Well, they were trying to intimidate me. Of course. Sure. Yeah. How much money we were talking about? How much money did they steal from it? Finally was over, the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I mean, you're going to laugh at this. Rock band, victorious, wins 8.1 million. That was our entire take for everybody in the band. Each guy had a little bit different amount. But, you know, those numbers, I mean, I don't know. Dion once made a joke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about Bruce. and the answer is

well I sold 40 million meaning you know you sue me well Bruce has that on him

it was pretty funny yeah I mean 8 million it was that was it that was our take

from all the sales of credence so so was that the amount of money that was in the bank that they

stole from you that was what we got returned to us so you did get the money back Oh, okay. I figured they would just vanish.

The money didn't come back from Saul's Ants or Castle Bank or any of those people. What had happened was fantasy was let out of the lawsuit by the local judge in the Bay Area. I don't know why because they're the ones that got us into the plan. But anyway, they were let out of the whole thing. So who was left was this guy named Bert Cantor in Chicago who designed the plan and our own accountant and lawyers. And so what most of them did was settle for pennies on the dollar. You know, we said that you owe us a million dollars or whatever and they settled for like $10,000. Really?

Right? Rather than go to trial. But our own accountant's legal team said, ah, we got these guys. They can never win this. So, I mean, ironically, they wanted to go to trial and put the poor accountant, you know, who was an old guy, through a whole trial, and Credens got, we retained the money we had lost in that plan, the $8 million I just mentioned, from the law. firm, the insurance firm, it was his insurance company's lawyers that were representing him.

And they had to pay. Nobody else had to pay. And the CIA or whoever you're talking about got away with it. Of course they did. Yeah. They know how to do that. It's kind of crazy, too, that it's only $8 million. When you think about how much money you probably made the record companies.

Yep. Well, there was 100 million records plus. Right. Do the math. How much was an album back then? $400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff. You know, you guys got a small percentage. That's how it works, though.

That's why the business is so dirty. That's what's so, you know, the idea is that they help you and they bring you up. But the reality is they sell art. And if they don't have artists, they have nothing. The artists are what fund their very existence and they make the majority of the money. It's pretty dark when you really think about it. Yeah, and Joe, I got to tell you, I love making music and I don't do it for the money. I mean, I know that sounds a little naive, but just the happiness in my heart from doing this is from the music.

I believe you. I believe you. The only thing is when you, I mean, I'll say, I'm not like, well, maybe I'm an idiot, but probably not about this. When you find out that there was money, but somebody else got it, then that kind of gets your attention. Right. You know, but for me at least, it wasn't even about being famous, literally, if you could believe that. It was the joy of understanding, you know, what the music from other people that you loved. And as you grew up from, you know, that little first inspiration, you began to, you begin to,

kind of understand what it was you liked about what they did. And at some point then started to try and do it yourself. But that was a long, long time after the initial joy of just enjoying what they did. Yeah, it's kind of sad that money always does kind of distort things. But if you were only interested in money and only interested in fame, or if that was your primary concern, there's no way the music would be that good. It's like that that has to come from a real place. It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment.

100%. Yeah. 100%, you know. Well, for me, I did it. And also the prospect of creating something new tomorrow, you know, and the, what's the word? You get certain feelings. Well, we all do, but I've learned to, how can I say? It's sort of, it's like being in a big swimming pool or something.

You know, it's all, it just surrounds you, letting yourself enjoy that feeling and then try to figure out a way to put that into the music. You know, express it. Yeah. Well, you did it, man. It's just, it's a long story with all these different artists that have had to deal with all these horrific managers. I was reading this article about Jimmy Hendry. manager. So one of his bodyguards wrote a book where he's blaming Hendricks manager for his death. And he was

essentially saying that Hendricks was murdered. And Hendricks was about to leave his manager. And that's why he killed him. And I don't know if you know a story about Hendricks, but his girlfriend fell from a roof or jumped off a roof shortly after Hendricks died. And apparently they were trying to get rid of her as well because they knew that she knew the whole deal behind it. Was this the one with kind of a funny, foreign name? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I read a couple of Jimmy biographies, but, you know, yeah. So many of these guys had mobbed up managers. Yeah, I do know that there was some manager of his. I mean, Jimmy owned his masters. That was remarkable. That's why his family has the masters, his estate. State, you know, they're the ones that decide, because every so often a new Jimmy album would come out, that sort of thing.

I didn't know any of this way back then. I just wondered, you know, who was driving the bus. So, I mean, that part was pretty good. He had to talk to somebody at Repre's Records, and some of those people were Repreys Warner Brothers. In other words, about the time I was at Warner Brothers, it must have been a couple of them. You know, that decided that way back in the 60s. I guess I was a little envious because I sure didn't own my masters, that's for sure.

How many people owned their own masters back then? Nobody. That's crazy. How do you think he got that deal? That, I don't know. I don't know how it came about that he was able to have that much influence. I mean, that's the part. I did get the inference from the, at least one of the books I read about it.

Jimmy that they didn't try too hard to save him. Yeah. Jimmy was, I guess, was just really effed up for a couple of weeks there. And no one tried, you know, they were almost, I mean, I almost got the sense that somebody took a bottle of wine and just poured it in them. Yeah, that's what I had heard. Yeah. That's, that was what the bodyguard was inferring that they poured pills and alcohol

down his mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Well, I hope they never be in such a state that I can't protest something like that. Right. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's dark because apparently he was ready to leave. He wanted to leave his manager. And obviously, Jimmy was a gigantic star. Huge. That guy saw all the money. Well, he still is. She still is to this day. Every single guitar survey that ever comes out, you know all the other numbers after two keep changing

with fashion and all that but it's always number one is Jimmy Hendricks always yeah kind of extraordinary when you think about it the guy died at 27 years old you know

and was already just from another planet like you listen to his like you listen to Voodoo Child Slightly Turn you listen to that song you're like is this guy from Earth

like this was so different than any other guitar playing that had ever taken place before him. He was a complete revolutionary, just a completely new creative artist. You know, and one of my favorite musicians absolutely of all time. That's why I named the podcast the Joe Rogan experience. I wondered about that. Well, there it is.

That's it. I'll go for you. Yep. Yep. I should have named it the John Fogarty experience. Instead of Credence? Yeah, well, I did create that name. What was the crazy name that the record company called one of your first bands?

Well, it was the same people. Same people. Yeah, same, I mean, the same individual musicians. In high school, or junior high, actually, I started a band and called it the Blue Velvets. Not all that, you know, earth-shaking, but kind of a cool vibe. And we were really the blue velvets, but, you know, I mean, this was really a trio, but my brother was older. He was in another orbit. So we kind of went through high school, seeing each other every once in a while. It wasn't like we were all tromping around playing gig after gig. It was more like, you know, every few months there might be a sock hop or something like that. and then

after high school and Tom would come and sing he was my older brother he'd come and sing once in a while with us we made a couple of recordings during that time with real record companies but it was always kind of just haphazard and finally around

the age of 19 I went over and knocked on fantasy records door they had done this special about Ben Steraldi, and they were in the Bay Area, so I went over there and introduced myself. Anyway, one thing led to another. Finally, we were recording. And at that time, I think we made a record with only three of it, me and Tom and Doug the drummer, and I overdubbed a bass part.

This was in 1964. When they finally pressed the single, one side was called Little Girl, it was kind of a four-cord doo-wop song, the other side was sort of a English or a British invasion answer kind of thing, mod music. It was called Don't Tell Me No Lies. Anyway, we excitedly go over to San Francisco to their warehouse, and open up the package, and it says,

the Goliwogs. And we look at each other and go, what the hell? No, no, no. I think we had chosen our name to be the visions. It was just something at the last minute

because we weren't really the blue bellets anymore, but that was it. We thought it was going to say visions. But the record company had decided they wanted to get in on the British invasion mod, whatever,

and named us the Goliwogs sounds like Pollywag. Yeah. He said, well, a Goliwag, you see, is this doll that when the British soldiers were in India, the kids would have this little doll called a Goliwag. And so that's all we knew about it. As time went on, I mean, years and years later, long after I had been, we renamed the band, or I'd renamed the band Credence,

found out that Goliwog was a, this was a very racial thing. This was the British soldiers calling the people. Whoa. Wogs or Goliwags, yeah. That's a Goliwags? Yeah, Sambo, right? Wow. Same sort of, yep.

And they didn't know this either, obviously. There was no Wikipedia back then. I don't know, no. I don't know. I didn't know that. That's crazy that they could just change the name of your band without you having any knowledge of it at all. You open up the record and it's right there.

Yep, and they kind of insisted, you know, it's that same thing that, well, we're going to own the publishing to your song. No, no, I should own it. Well, then we're not going to make any records. Oh, okay. You're 19. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's how they get you.

You don't know any. Well, and you kind of want to make a record. Yeah, you want to make a record. It's right there. You can taste it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be signed to a record label. I'm going to be a rock star. and then they come to you with a shady contract.

And that's their modus operandi. That's what they do with everybody. And for, I know they call it business. Funny term. Yeah. Most of those people, I mean, it's like lottery to them. It's like gambling. They don't have a clue what creativity is.

and at that age I mean I guess I'm looking at you and saying if I only No what's that line If I didn't know now what I didn't know then You're a young artist You don't even know what you got Right

Right You know you have feelings about music But you don't You know you're less than a rookie Right You know maybe you were good in junior high But that doesn't mean you're Willie Mays Right

You know? So that's sort of how that works. And they sign you up before any of that self-realization happens, and then you're messed. Yeah. Again, that's what happened to Prince. That's what happened to Skinner. It's what happened to most bands.

I mean, they're very clever in how they do it. They sign a bunch of people that are emerging, and some of them are going to hit. Yep. And they bankroll it, and then they make the majority of the money when those people hit. Well, in our case, Credence was the only thing

that ever happened. Fantasy became a very wealthy record company. Saul eventually went in to making movies. So that money that I had made for him at the record company, you know, turned into

one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Oh, wow. Some other Saul even had in those times had bought the movie rights for Lord of the Rings so you know his

ticket got punched way up high and we never got a dime of course of any of that it's crazy how bad people can get ahead like that well that see that's yeah that's what's disturbing it's a different

that's why I had a little hesitation when you were talking about that you thought the music came from a, or creativity came from a joyful good place. But boy, you can sure look in different parts of entertainment or business in general and see some really bad people have made a lot of money. Well, it takes the good people to create things, though. The creative people make the things, and there's always just going to be people taking advantage of people being naive about business.

I choose to believe that at least it works for me. I choose to believe that you've got to have a good heart. You've got to try to use the golden rule, basically. You know, don't do something bad to him that you wouldn't want to have done to you. So do unto others as you would have them do to you. Yes. I believe in God and I believe God is watching me all the time, you know, all of us, so that that part helps me to feel like there's a reason, you know, to try and be a good person.

The reason being you're in God's grace if you do those things, if you try to live a good life, honest and I guess we call it transparent nowadays. Yeah. You know, don't get me wrong. I'm not running around the world with thumping a Bible or something. I just think it's common sense about how ultimately you want to exist in the universe, right? Yeah. So, you know, that's how I operate.

And so when I, certainly now at my age, when I see other people really getting away with stuff, I just, it isn't like I, gee, that's not fair. I should get the, I don't see it that way now. I just look at that poor sap who's being so evil and go, you know, he's going to get his come up and someday. Well, it's a horrible existence because no one he loves you when you're like that. If you're doing that and fucking people over, all your relationships are adversarial. It's a bad way to exist. You're on a very bad frequency, the way you exist with the people in your circle. I think that's true.

I believe that. There's a lot of people that choose that life just for financial benefit. They choose to just fuck people over and be in that bad frequency all the time. But that's not a good life. And I agree with you. I think if you live your life like God exists, you'll have a much better life. And the golden rules just, it's provable.

Like if you're a nice person and you treat people well, and it spreads a lot of good energy around you and positive momentum with all these other people, it's the butterfly effect. It carries on to other people that they encounter too. They're inspired by how kind and friendly and generous you are. And it's good for everybody. It's good for you.

It's good for the people that you're generous, and friendly too. It's good for the other people that they encounter because they're inspired by it. It's just good for everyone. That's how people should exist. Yeah, I literally, I believe everything you have just said and literally have sometimes asked God for a, you know, I never sat around and asked for money or a hit record or I always thought that's kind of poor. That's bad, you know. I mean, it's selfish or greedy or something. But I would ask for clarity or, you know, I would ask God to help me figure something out. And amazingly, there would be through a relation, you know, somebody I was dealing with, there would be something.

It was like karma, good karma coming back. And I could see the, you know, to me it was a result of my prayer or my, openness of wanting to help get a situation resolved. So for me, to me, there's evidence that it all works that way. Did you always have a belief in God? Yeah. I think there was times, yeah, because I would just brought up that way. Again, I don't believe my, I would just talk in a kind of nice and so.

way about God. It wasn't beat over my head or anything. I was raised Catholic, so in some sense, you can't avoid having it beat over your head, I suppose. And some of that I resisted. But I went through the normal things. I did my first communion, my first confession. I did, what do you call that when you're 12 years old, confirmation. I chose the name for St. Jerome. basically because there's a song by Bo Diddley called Bring It to Jerome. And Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his Maraca player. And I really liked the vibe of that. I'm going to be Jerome.

That's my confirmation name. Yeah, it was there in those ways. There was times I was, boy, you've opened a can of worms here. because I was so invested in being a Catholic, even though my parents tried to have me go to parochial school, Catholic school. I was in the first grade, and then I want to say they kicked me out. And then I tried, my mom had me start again in ninth grade at St. Mary's High School. And they kicked me out again.

But it wasn't my fault. Anyway, the one that happened is funny. I mean, it's just the one that happened in the first grade. I had to take a bus to get there. I lived in El Ciroito, and it was the School of the Madeline in Berkeley. And I mean, the first grade, I'm six years old. So you had to go to the bus stop, get on a bus, get a transfer, so that then when the bus came to a certain stop over in Albany,

you then got on a train, you know, transferred in other words, got on the train and that went another mile or so into Berkeley and at a certain stop right behind the school, the school of the Madeline, Catholic school, you get off the train and go on down into school. Now what happened, my mom was a, my parents had split up, so it was only my mom in the house and she's leaving early because she's got a job as a teacher. So she's out of the house before me. And so it's up to me to get myself together and get to the bus stop on time. Many, many times I was late.

I missed it. So I had to get the next bus, so I'm late. So I'm rushing to school. But I get there after they would march every morning to John Philip Tzuza. and then do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-n-d-d-n-d-you-all that and go on in the school. And I get there now, I'm late. The schoolyard is empty. I literally have to climb over the fence

because they've locked the fence at, boom, 8 o'clock or whatever it was. And I had to scale the fence running the class without going to the bathroom. This was my first grade experience. Sat down in my chair. within an hour I really got to pee and Sister Damien would

not answer me I got it I got it I got it and so she would one day I peed in my seat

it happened again it became a habit Sister Damien John Fogarty has a puddle under his chair oh no right So you became a kid that pees.

That was so traumatizing to me. Yeah. But ask yourself, how is a six-year-old getting on a bus all by himself, traveling three or four miles, then getting out of the bus going over to where the train station thing is? Getting on a train, going over there. And, I mean, I certainly never let my six-year-olds do anything like that. I know. It is kind of crazy how kids were. just able to just leave the house and do anything back then. I think about that. When I was a little

kid, I used to just leave my house. Seven years old, just leave the house, wander around. As long as you were home for dinner time. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's kind of amazing. We all lived. Yeah. If you stop and think about it, but to have to take a bus and then a train and go to school when you're six years old, that's nuts. So I went to Catholic school too for first grade only, and that screwed me off a religion for a long time because I thought of God back when I was a little kid before I went to Catholic school as, you know, God was all knowing

and God is love and God created the universe and God is looking out for you. It's just got some rules you have to follow. Made sense to me. And then when I went to Catholic school, there was a lady, and I don't remember anybody's name from back then, but I remember her. Sister Mary Josephine, she was so mean.

She was just a mean lady She did the whole thing The whacking people with rulers Tell you you're gonna have to stay overnight And you're gonna have to sleep on a nail in the closet Like just evil Like wanted you to cry And when I would cry she'd call me a cry baby

And I remember thinking after that I don't want to have nothing to do with religion ever again Right when I left first grade Yep I hated it And I was like whatever God is This is not God Like these people have nothing to do with God

There's no way this lady is the messenger of God. This lady's mean. That took a whole lifetime to figure out, to realize, well, this is just a man-made thing. You know, God's there. And some man-made thing over here, you know, they became Mormons and some man-made thing over there. They became Muslims. Right. And it's just all man-made.

It isn't actually God. Right. Right. And man is fallible, of course. He's not infinite and he's not infallible. And so all these things were, but that took a lifetime for me. I'm sure I was in my 40s still working on that, right? Yeah.

That God's okay, John. You don't have to resist when somebody wants to make a prayer or something. You know, it isn't God's fault that you peed at your desk when you were in the first grade. It's the mean none. Yeah. I have a similar perspective. I think all religious scriptures, they're trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which is the one I've paid the most attention to. I think they're trying to document a real thing.

But the hand of man is clearly all over it. That's the problem. The problem with anything that's written down. We know that just in like the religious canon, the books that were included in the Bible. Human beings had a decision on what goes in and what doesn't go in. There was rabbis that kept the book of Enoch out of the Old Testament. There's a lot of this weird stuff to it that you go like, well, why do people have any say? Why is a human have any say in what the word of God is?

That sounds crazy. And when you read the scriptures, you're like, somebody wrote that down and someone told that story for who knows how many years before it was ever written down. But I think the origins of it, there's truth to it. It's just you have to get through all these many layers of confusion to try to decipher what God's original message was. And like, how was it received? Who got it?

How did it even get relayed? Like, what was the original event that led to this oral tradition that led to it being written down? I'm smiling because this sounds exactly like a young musician has come to see this more learned person and tell them about his experience. And the more learned person turns into the manager or the record company. And he says, I want to own this. Right. And, you know, they take all that good intentions and faith and somebody ends up owning it.

And you end up paying a tithe, you know, into a plate. And they make a lot of money. In organized religion, especially when it gets to like these huge megachurches and preachers, like that's exactly what it is. It's someone taking advantage of this good thing and profiting off of it immensely. Yeah. But the thing, I think the point of like if you live your life like God's real, it'll be a better life. I agree with that. But I think you also know.

I think you can just... There's something there. It's sensible that you try to share, that you try not to be greedy. Yes. You know, I don't mean you have to be a fool. I just mean that you don't have to be overtly always taking way more than your share. Yeah, just be kind. Be kind and be fair.

How old were you when you first started playing music? You mean as an instrument? Yeah, just messing around. Like, how did you get into it? Right. Well, I was, actually, I was given a snare drum. I think I was about four years old. That was a really cheap paper one.

Was your family musicians? Not really, but they were musical. Both of them, my mom and dad. One of my finest and favorite memories is we lived in the Bay Area of the East Bay from San Francisco. and my parents would go up to this place in northern California near Winters, California. That's up like toward Sacramento. And there was this crick, this body of water called the Puda Creek. Eventually they dammed that up and made Lake Beriesa.

But anyway, back then it was just a running water and there was some people could camp there. There was at this one place they took me, reputedly was owned by a man named Cody, and he was a direct descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. I actually met him one day when I was about four, and he was probably coming to collect the payment for the cabin and the, you know, a little space. Anyway, and I remember looking at him and I was told that story, and he would have been about 75, he literally could have been a son of Buffalo Bill. He would have been born at that point.

It was probably 1949, the story I'm relating, and he would have been born in 1875. I mean, it's mind-boggling to think that. But my favorite memory thing, other than the fact that that whole place inspired my song, Green River, all the little parts are in Green River. But one of the things my parents had this old Ford, old Green Ford, and they'd be driving along at night up there, is what I mean.

I guess they were more happy or something there. And I remember sitting between them, you know, it was just a big couch, the front seat. And they were singing songs in the dark. And they were singing like by the light of the silvery moon or baby face and harmonizing. one was taking the melody and the other was harmonizing the reason I know is because I'd sat there and I'm probably three, four, five years old

right in there and said what are you guys doing? Because I knew the melody but I hear two notes. What are you doing? And they explained they were harmonizing and it was just the coolest thing and it was so such a happy time. I mean I really, I felt

what's that bonded to that I guess like that I really like this whatever it is so that was the initial spark well they begin to notice that I was musical so at some point I know again at my fourth birthday somebody gave me or I had a little toy harmonica and my dad you know those little plastic kind of things my dad picked it up and he played oh suzana in the cowboy style in other words it's probably a C harmonica He played in C, not like blues players do bending notes. He played that thing you see in the cowboy movies when they're sitting around the campfire.

That sort of thing. I was just shocked. I'd never seen my dad do anything like that. Wow. And then on top of that, my mom could play piano, what we now call stride piano. She would hit the ball and then play a chord, like an octave of bass notes,

and then a chord above it. Don't that, don't, dan. Keep that going as like the drummer and the thing, and then play melody and high notes up above. And it was, you know, she would, one of my favorite ones was Harvest Moon, shine on Harvest Moon, which is a great song. And it just was magical to me.

So that kind of opened the door to let me know that, oh, why, we can do it. do this in our own house. So the piano was around, and then we also, I don't know whose it was, but we had an old Stella acoustic guitar. Stella is a name going back into the 30s, 20s, and this thing was built like a tank.

It was hard to play, the strings were like way high and all that. Eventually, brother Bob told me at some point, Yeah, we used to play baseball with that guitar. We'd hit ball. That's how sturdy it was. But that was around so that I would every once in a while mess with it. But somewhere literally in the seventh grade is where I started to really try and learn a chord and that sort of thing. Is that when you thought I'm going to be a musician?

I think that moment was a little bit earlier. It was, again, up at this place, winters. My dad had driven into the town from our little cabin, our little campsite, and I was with him, and he'd gone to this general store. And the general store had everything, had food and stuff, but it also had fishing tackle and, you know, various weird things. So I'm standing there sort of near the counter, and my dad's doing some kind of business. I'm just looking, and suddenly I hear music.

And I'm, what the heck is that? Well, I didn't even know. They had a jukebox in this place, right? And somebody had started the jukebox. So it's playing music that I really like. It's rock and roll. I'm about 10 years old. Man, that's good.

And I don't know who it is. It's just got a really bluesy sound, but it's fast. It's rock and roll. I'd run over and I finally determined it's Elvis Presley. I never heard this. I knew of Elvis, of course, on TV. He had done a Heartbreak Hotel. I had seen the Tommy Jimmy Dorsey show that he'd been on three times.

He was on there, I think, five times. Anyway, and so, wow, Elvis did this. What is this? Well, it turned out it was the other side of his second big million seller, which was, I want you, I need you. I love you. This was a song called My Baby Left Me. And this was basically classic Sun Records by, even though he was now on RCA.

It was that thing they did on Sun Records. It was just that kind of country whale with guitar that was more country than blues. And the guitar especially just, what is that? I'm watching this Scotty Moore, who I didn't know his name at the time, but he's just playing this otherworldly stuff. And that was, I looked at that. I mean, literally my head made, I don't know, I said this to myself, I don't know what they're doing,

but that's what I want to do. Wow. And I made up my mind right there in that three minutes of that song. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. Well, it was transformative. It still is.

It's just a pretty unique slice of American music. I don't think I'm aware of that song. I'm going to listen to it after the podcast. You probably know his song, Elvis's song, That's All Right, Mama. Sure. Right. Well, this is in that vein. It's actually the same writer.

Arthur Cruttup. Interesting. Arthur Big Boy Crut up. So your family was musical, but you didn't know any musician. So what did you think you were going to do? Like, how did you think you were going to eventually become a musician? Did you have a plan? At some point, you know what?

At some point a little earlier than that, but right around that time, it was the era of Dewwap, right? This is the way, I mean, a kid can, you can just go anywhere in your mind, right? And I suppose the Corvette automobile, of course, had come out. So, in a very young mind, but one of those cool, I guess we call them mashups, I was going to have a group, but it was all singing. I was going to have a group, and it was going to be called Johnny Corvette and the Corvettes. Right? And there was four.

I'm Johnny and three other guys, and we're all in sports. Sparkle jackets, you know, the showbiz. Right. And we're black. All of us. That was your idea? That's what I saw. I was referring to what I was seeing to be Johnny Corvette and the Corvettes.

That was one of the ingredients. How are you going to be black? I don't know. I didn't have to worry about that. I mean, the funny thing is that's so similar. here is like when I was little I wanted to be a baseball player right but some kids dream of being in the NBA but you got to be 9-11-7 right you know I mean so how's that going to happen I mean you just said it in a really innocent way but a kid just I'll eat spinach or something you know you eat

spinach and become black and tall you know I don't know but it worked for me I mean literally when I, you know, one of my dreams as a kid really was, I wanted, I love baseball, still do. I wanted the, you know, okay, what do I got to do? And I'd start throwing, I was throwing a ball against the side of the house. I'd made a big, like a target, you know, bullseye, and I don't know why I did it that way. And my mom caught me, I was throwing an actual hardball. And it was dinting the clapboard, you know, the wood. It was, I was tearing the house down.

She got me a tennis ball and that was okay. I was no good. You know, I wasn't, that dream was never going to happen. Is that what inspired put me in coach? Of course. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What a great anthem.

Thank you. It's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, well. I mean, how many baseball games have played that song? My God. I mean, at least, you know, I mean, there's a lot of us, semi-nerds, I guess. You know, wanted to play ball, wanted to be a jock, and just,

really, at some point, you know, the ones that really have it pass you by. Right. Of course. And you just kind of, but in your mind, everybody got the scorecard and they're following the game and all that. And that vicarious joy of watching Otani or Aaron Judge or whoever it is you love, you get to have that in your heart anyway. I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the universe. Okay, I didn't get to play, but I wrote a song, and my song's there all the time. It's just the coolest feeling.

That song's, that song's in the baseball Hall of Fame. That's amazing. It is amazing. It's ridiculous. But it's just like, that happened to me. You know, it's like, God, I could cry over that. When they had sent a letter to me and they were going to, you know, and put the music in the hall, I just was, God, who do I tell? Jeez.

Yeah, it was so good. That's amazing. That's amazing. So when did you start writing your own songs? I was eight years old. Wow. Do you remember your first song? Yes.

Or at least the one I remember is I call it the one I can remember. It was morning. I was getting ready to go to school. I could walk to school was like two and a half blocks from my house, something like that. I lived on Ramona. You go past Pomona. And then the next street was Ashbury. And the school was on Ashbury up about two blocks.

Harding School. It was a grammar school. Anyway, I'm getting ready to go to school, got my lunch. I was about to turn off the radio and this commercial comes on I was listening to R&B the Rhythm and Blues channel from Oakland and the DJ suddenly says

Do you have the wash day blues? Is this day going to be drudgery? Well, maybe you're using the wrong and they went off talking about laundry soap. I don't know if there was a song involved in the commercial. I think it was just a red commercial because it was probably live.

you know, right there on old-time radio. So I went out the door with, you know, carrying my little sack with the lunch in it. It's a wash day blues, wow. I get kind of to the end of the street. I think that's Lynn. I got to go down, you know, three streets.

I'm walking along and I said, wow, what? Dan, dan, dan, dan. You got the watch day blue. I'm making that noise. It's muddy waters. It's the riff from probably hootty. Coochee man, you know. Right.

And it all comes together and just walking down the street singing about all the stuff that, because it's blues. Right. And I'm hearing all these guys on this, you know, channel I listen to, singing the blues and about blues. So I got Wash Day Blues. That's my song. You know, for years and years, I thought,

I was embarrassed about that story. God, John, why couldn't you have a great story about the sinking of a Titanic or something. Watch Dave Blues, because it just seems so mundane. But now I kind of recognize because of the two elements I had put together,

it's just kind of natural. It's really the process of writing songs. That's amazing. And so when you wrote songs, I saw this video clip where you're talking about, I think it was Old Man Down the Road, Is that the beginning riff?

You got it. Yeah. And you were talking about how that riff just hit you. Yep. Is that? Yeah. I had this place. It was my studio.

It was a convert, basically the garage of a house that I had bought to be my office and my place. So it was a size of a garage. I would go there every day. So in the morning I'd get in, I'd turn on my tape recorder and, you know, various pieces of equipment and stuff. That was my process, certainly every weekday morning, sometimes on Saturday, Sunday, whatever, but certainly the five days a week. And I'd walk in there and work on music. I did this every day for, I mean, years and years from 74 until Centerfield came out, basically. which was 11 years later.

And so one morning I walk in and I haven't even turned on the stuff yet. I just, for some reason, I went right to the guitar and I turned on the amp and picked up the guitar and I'm just kind of noodling because I like to do that. A lot of my songs have started this way, but suddenly just played and it really had that sound to it.

And I got my... attention because I knew that it wasn't anything else. And I also, I mean, this is like in a, this is how quick our brains can work, you know, it's taken me way longer to tell it than the actual thing. But so I played the dan-d-d-d-d-d-d-mah-naw. And I realized it's not complete. It needs an answer. And I'm also aware that it's like being on a tightrope or something over Niagara Falls, you know. you've got to have the right answer and there's probably only one because all the other ones are going to kill it and you'll never remember this again

because that happens all the time. Right. You know, it'd be lame. There, it's precarious. It's hanging in the air. Dan, down, down, down. And you've got to come back with the thing to make it complete and it has to be the right thing.

and uh huh uh... dan dan dan dan dan yeah yes! And so I do dan

dan oh my god yeah and I play it over and over probably for five minutes I just tend to do that that's the joy of music that's the joy right there

because I knew it wasn't anything else there was no question in my mind or is this coming from, you know, the Beatles or Howling Wolf or something? Right. So immediately, I had kept this little songbook that's only about that big with titles in it. And I go flipping through the book and I think I see something that's somewhere down the road. Okay. That some reason appealed to me and I stuck with, okay, that's what it's.

called. This song is going to be somewhere down the road. And that day, so now I turn on my tape recorder and all that. I play some, because I had to play real drums. And that's what took me so long, folks. Anyway, so I make a little thing that's just the riff and then make a space of just the drums playing and nothing else so I can kind of listen to it and improvise what's, what's, what's going on after this riff? What's somewhere down the road? And of course I start talking about he get the thunder from the mountain, he bring the lightning from the sky, you know, and all that. And these things are going on. And so you've got to shoot forward probably a few weeks. I realize I'm starting to write a song, but the title, somewhere down the road to me just

seems lame. It seems undefined. Not cool enough. Not focused. And probably not going to remember it because it sounds like just what it is. You won't remember that. Right. Right?

You know, if you say, I've got a polka dot Chevy sitting on top of a bull moose or whatever, and that's your title, you probably get a picture in your head. Right. It's going to stick. So I'm hunting around

and I'm, what are you doing here? What are you talking about in this song? We're talking about this guy. He's evil. He's the old man. He's the old man down the road. That's way better. So the song became that. The deal is

with my little song book probably two years later after that album had come out, I said, you know what? I want to check on where somewhere down the road came. And I went cover to cover, and it's not in there. There is no place where I've written somewhere down the road.

I just thought I saw it. And that led me to a really cool song. Wow. The reason I'm telling you this is there was a time, I had an office in Warner Brothers, and when I was staying down in L.A. and I would go in there all the time and write, had some keyboards and stuff.

And one day I thought I needed a break. I took my book and I went out and sat, it was Warner Brothers parking lot. My car is, I went out to my car and sat down because I was trying to give myself some, you know, get going, do something. And I thumbed through the book, and I saw changing the weather.

I said, man, I like that. And I look up and it's kind of a cloudy, gloomy sky, you know. Yeah. Change in the, yeah. So I ran back in my room when I started, I went off. I was inspired and I wrote a song called Change in the Weather. Well, same deal. After that album came out, I decided to check my, it ain't in there.

It's nowhere in my book where it says, change in the weather. So I nowadays tell people, you know, maybe it's a shapeshift there. And there's stuff in there, it can just kind of go, John, listen to this, I got an idea for you. Right. Well, the creative process is so mysterious. Yes. Because everybody that I talk to, whether it's comedians or authors or musicians,

they say the ideas almost don't feel like they're theirs, like they're receiving them from somewhere. For certain. That's how you feel? Yep. To me, it's like tuning in a radio. Yeah. And a lot of it, there's, I guess it's the way I was raised.

You kind of have to be worthy. Right. You know? I mean, there's a big dose of, if you're all angry and treating people mean and doing all that, I'm closing the book. Yeah. I'm not sending you nothing. I think that too.

Yeah. I think that too. You've got to be receptive. and honor this process that we're going through here. And if you are in that frame of mind and some humility about this whole thing, maybe I'll send you something. The muse. Yeah.

Yeah. Have you ever heard of Stephen Pressfield? Huh? Stephen Pressfield, he's an author. He wrote a great book called The War of Art. And I have boxes of this book out front, and I give it to comedians and artists all the time. because it's just a book about the creative process about writing. And one of the things that he talks about is the muse, about giving honor to the muse and sitting there and calling upon the muse for these ideas.

That if you treat it like it's a real thing, it will provide you. If you show up every day and you put in the work, the muse will give you these ideas. But they do feel, like to everybody that I talk to that's really creative, they feel like they're coming from somewhere. Yeah, and it feels like it's always been there. Right. And it's just up to you to be able to actually be able to see it or hear it. Yeah, right? Yeah.

So I do a lot of, I get ideas in my head. I'm just walking around and it'll play to me the same as if you're listening to the radio. It just gets in the head when you start feeling it. But I do believe you have to. you have to be doing it all the time. Like, for me, it was a process to actually sit down, be ready. And a lot of times nothing happens. You know, you've got a blank sheet of paper, and it stays blank.

Right, right. But if you do that, enough times, at certain times, you'll get a really good inspiration. Yeah. You'll be allowed to receive it. Yeah. Right? But it really isn't you. That's the way I think of it.

What it is is you have talent. You're supposed to honor your talent. And so I'm going to give you something if you're worthy. And now it's up to you to honor, you know, use yourself. Don't just go, I got it. We're done. No. You got to work it now.

Polish it, you know, make it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the exact same way. I think there's truth to what you're saying. I want to ask you about Fortunate Son. How did you write that? Like, how did that come about?

That is, like, one of the greatest rebellion songs of all time. Appreciate that. It's an amazing song. I love it. It's also a fantastic workout song, by the way. That song gets you jazzed up. If you're doing, like, a treadmill or something like that, you're starting to get tired. Crank that sucker up.

Well, first of all, I think the first thing I got to see about it is, I was drafted, so I was in the military, and I got in the Army Reserves, but was well, and was on active duty and all the rest, so I well understood the position of, you might say, the military mindset, right, even though I was a young person, and this is right during the Vietnam era. And I think I really need to say that almost no one my age wanted to be in the army and go to Vietnam. I just, that was something you know, I don't want to do that. Right. So I got my draft notice, got into the Army Reserves. So I understood that side of the coin and that side of fate, you might say.

I think the deal being okay, I'm in the military, so now I got to play by the rules. I got to do everything that's, this is what I am, right? There's a little, there's a little bit of the whole idea of being American and serving your country. I'm trying not to say, oh yeah, now I'm gung-ho and I'm John Wayne and I'm going to take on Iwojima or something. It was more like, yeah, but you've got to do this right. You know, you can't just be some guy that's on AWOL all the time and being a mess. You know, I wanted to do it right. So I went through all of that.

It's another story, but eventually got my honorable discharge, which led to another song, but it's a different song. And that was just before. just as the Creedon's career was getting started. But anyhow, during the Vietnam time, you began, you know, there was a lot of unrest, civil unrest in America and around the world. Those times were very volatile. But especially in America, there was a lot of protests and discussion about the war itself.

Remember, there was a draft, so young people kind of by nature were against the war and against the draft, because it seemed to be sort of not logical as that. And in some instances, you would see on the news, you know, some senator who had the political clout that he could keep his teenage son from being drafted. or get his teenage son into some cushy job. And you kind of saw it a few times these guys were the fix was in, you know? Right. And that just really didn't seem fair. Not just in my own case, but I'm more identified with the people that were protesting the war.

No one had ever really explained why we were having that war, to my mind, we still don't know. Right. You know, it's just somebody's ego decided they wanted to have a war and they had a war. So most of these things that have cropped up ever since have always ended kind of miserably. And we never, they never were won. They just sort of dissolved. Right.

So there was no marching band and all that stuff to get to, you know, like World War II ended with a decisive victory. Anyhow, that angst and anger within me about that situation was fueling my thoughts about the current times. This was 1969. So I started showing the band, all the songs that the band learned and played throughout the credence career, they literally learned them as instrumentals. They didn't hear the song. I didn't show them the song.

So in other words, I would show the bass player his part. Here's how your part goes. Here's how the drums will be. Here's the rhythm guitar part. And the band wouldn't actually hear the whole song until I had gone into the studio after that recording process and added my vocal, sang the background vocal, parts. Oh, wow.

Played the conga drum or the shakers or tambourine or piano, you know, all the other stuff. Then they heard how the song went. So they learned their parts as instrumentals. And this was exactly that way. I showed them how to play, what was the form of the song. And that I didn't even, I don't think I had told them the name of the song yet. I thought I was writing a song called Favorite Son because starting in 1952 when they sent my second grade class, I think, home to watch the inauguration, I believe, of Eisenhower.

I think that's what it was. And we had a tiny little TV. All I saw was big black limousines. That was my entire impression of, the presidential thing and politics. So after that, I kind of would watch parts of the conventions in the summer. You know, there'd be these gigantic, you know, I didn't know what they were then, but these big rooms full of smoke.

And every once in a while, some lady, Your Honor, the great state of Texas would like to nominate her favorite son, Billy Sol Estes or whatever, right? And they all said that. You know, the state of Vermont would like to nominate her favorite son. And so I had written that one down in my book. And I thought I was going to write as kind of a political song. So the band was getting pretty solid in the backing track.

And that told me, you know, I was driving a career. I mean, there wasn't someone else telling me. I was the one deciding and pushing, and I think pushing pretty hard. I just, I wanted a new single to be ready, and this seemed like it might be it. So at one point after the band had been rehearsing the music for that song, Portune It's Son, for a few weeks. It was getting pretty good. All right, I got to write the words.

I got to get the whole song together. I took a little yellow tablet like that, went in my bedroom, sat on the bed, and instead of what I thought it was going to be, the first thing I said, some, you know, this idea of the red, white, and blue, and they're always super patriots, you know, all this stuff, bluster and all that, blah, blah, right? And how do I get that? How do I get that? Well, they're waving the flag. Yeah, but what's going on? now. They're pointing the cannon at you, right? Yeah, but it ain't me.

And I realized, oh, wow, that's something I can repeat. It ain't me. I ain't no, you know. And literally, I mean, I just sort of did it in front of you. Almost the way it played out of me sitting on that bed, literally walked in and 20 minutes later walked out with the whole song. Wow. Coming from, I didn't have.

anything other than favorite son. The rest was just the stuff that was boiling in my head at the time, of course. Basically, because well-heeled people getting out of the draft, which kind of pissed me off. You know, there were a lot of guys, now that I was in them or had been in the military, and I knew there were a lot of other guys felt just like me. It wasn't like I didn't grow up that I wanted to be a soldier. and go do that.

It was just fate that made that happen. So the unfairness of the situation made me want to talk about that. Oh, you nailed it. It's such a great song. So did you have the music all settled out when you went to the musicians and explained to them

how the song was going to play out? Did you have that before the lyrics? Yes. Almost always. So what did you think the song was going to be about when you just brought them to me? music. Well, as I said, I thought it was going to be favorite son. So you kind of still had the theme in your head of how it was about people of the world. It was something around that stuff.

Right. I just didn't know what it would. And I also, you know how there's a t-shirt though. The older I get, the better I was. I was pretty good then. I guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't know what the song was going to be. But I mean, now I would certainly have a little trepidation that I'd go in a room with a blank. I'm probably going to come out of there with a, some, you know, a smiley face that I doodle. There's nothing that no words, meaning somehow I was counting on myself to do it. But that's pretty precocious. Yeah, but that's also that divine intervention of the muse.

Like you put in the work and you called, you called upon it for inspiration and your mind. started lighting up and then you started putting the pieces together yeah oh that's a wonderful joe that's that's an amazing process when because that's what i do i'm not a prize fighter you know i'm not a baseball pitcher let's say because there would be an evolution in his work right you know where something that you can i'm i'm not those things but i am a songwriter and that that it plays out over some that isn't just once. You know, it plays out over some time. And that incidents where you suddenly get a hook into an idea,

and then the gods, the muse, they let you continue forward with something that's way better than you ever dreamed was going to be it. And suddenly, wow, this is really cool. And you're excited and you're happy. and it's coming to be. And you realize, as I said, that was, by the way, by far the quickest I ever wrote a song.

And that's so quick, so fast that, I mean, it's almost like instant replay. It was so fast that you, or at least I did, I thought, man, this is really good. I mean, and just like a minute ago, I was taking a breath hoping that something would happen. Yeah. Well, that's what's amazing about great songs sometimes. Like John Mellencamp was telling me a story about, I Need a Lover that Won't Drive Me Crazy.

Like that song, he wrote in the shower. Oh. Like all together. You mean in one shower? In one shower. He was just taking a shower and all of a sudden, I need a lover that won't drive me crazy. Right. And then next thing you know, he's got it.

Yep. And it's an all-time classic. Yep. It's amazing. Well, that The songwriter, and especially when he's on his game, he knows, and it relates to your own personality, whatever it is you like, the stuff you have gravitated towards.

And so when one of those comes along, it really makes you smile because you're going, yeah, this sounds like me. This is the stuff I like. Right. And you go with it because, I mean, you know, I am, I would say notoriously corny, you know, at least I think I am. You know, it's like they make all these jokes nowadays about dad bod and all those kind of things. Yeah.

I mean, I literally think that's me, right? And some of this, I mean, Suna Field is the corny's thing that was ever invented. I mean, I love it. I unashamedly want to be corny. That's who I am. I'm corny, right? But it, I mean, in that song, it just, that resonates with, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm glad I'm happy. I'm happy to be happy.

I want to be happy, right? In other words, I don't have to feel, because rock and roll is all about dark colors and leather jackets and piercing and, you know, tats and a scowl, you know, Elvis would. all that stuff. That's good. I mean, you know, but I like, you know, well, it seems to be me.

I can just be unashamedly happy. And I'm glad I'm, you know, like Centerfield is so optimistic and just great. It's an awesome song. Yeah. I don't think rock and roll is all dark. I think there's aspects of rock and roll

that people like that are dark because it's mysterious. These guys are rock stars. But, you know, rocks everything. It's like there's so many layers. to it. There's so many different types of personality, and you happy to be happy is also an awesome part of rock. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah. Well, because actually, if real people, all this humans, sort of have all those different parts, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's why we identify with it.

And I think the brooding, dark rock star is like, it's a fantasy idea that people want to, they want to believe that there's that part of them. You know, there's this just, you know what I mean? I'm going to say, it's absolutely, and, you know, Marlon Brando on the motorcycle in the, is it the wild ones, I guess? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. You know, that he's just so bad. Yeah. And so rock stars invent, well, other, I guess, but rock star, because it was right in that era, they invented or gravitated to,

In other words, one picture defines me. Yeah. This is my uniform. You know, I sleep in this. Yeah. I mean, and so, you know, I've got a big chain and a leather jacket. You know, now, I mean, it got more and more violent or dark. Right.

You know, voodoo, voodoo, you know, and all that. But, and it's funny because it's basically, I'm all this all the time. Yeah. This one picture does it. and I kind of my wife and I joke about it because she'll kind of say something like well you don't dress like a rock star

and then of course I'll say because I'm not right I always sort of I mean I have a leather jacket somewhere right or two even and it it

how can I say it to me it was a uniform to me it was a pose and so, you know, I tend to actually just put on clothes you can buy in the store when I get up in the morning. I got to take my kids to school. You know, I didn't put on the whole like, just got off the stage. I don't know, name some place at the whiskey, you know, and now I'm bringing my kids in school. Hey, Mrs. B, what a how you doing?

Flip my cigarette over into the, I guess I could be a sitcom or something. that wasn't me. I kind of was normal dad to my, and I'm glad they saw me that way, tell you the truth. Yeah, absolutely. The idea is silly that everybody has to be one way. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yep.

Well, clearly, when you look at what you produced, like, you clearly are a rock star, and you did it by being yourself. Actually, I think you nailed it there. Here's a real truism. When you're making something, and we talked about this, and it's resonating with you, it just seems like in your wheelhouse, it's you. That's probably going to be really good.

It's comfortable. Sounds like you, you relate. It's great. If you ever get yourself as a songwriter, singer, whatever, so-and-so is going to really like that I did this, and you're off on some weird thing trying to, you know, be a change, different or something. That's not going to work. Absolutely not going to work because you think somebody else sees it a certain way and you're doing it for them and God knows whatever that is.

But it isn't you at all. You probably are just out of your element, off the rails, you might say. And guys do get off the rails. No, I've done it myself. Yeah. Oh, yeah, especially being preachy and that kind of thing. You know, there's some songs that you, oh, God, John, shut up, John. Where does that come from? Does that come from just you have a big audience and you, all these people look up to you and you just start feeling you're important? I think some of it, I don't know all the answers. Who does?

But you're in a mood where you're, or a mode, you're, you want to get some material together. You want to make a record. You want to have some stuff finished and maybe you're not so inspired, right? So, okay, well, I'm going to, how about if I talk about whatever and you start trying, it's almost like a square peg

and a round hole? Yeah, I got to do something because there is some credence to that, just start working, just start moving. You know, don't just sit there. do something. Sorry, and keep grinding and maybe eventually it'll get to where it's natural,

you know, the good part. Yeah. Because just sitting and doing nothing, which I've certainly been accused of, is that's nothing for no one, right? So you start moving your feet and trying to get the juices to flow and all that. But like I said, yeah, I wrote some songs, a whole album really called Eye of the Zombie. it was the follow-up to Centerfield. And I think, well, I had some other, some ulterior,

not that I did it on purpose, but some other ingredients came into my mix. I'll get there in a minute. But anyway, the album as a whole is pretty dark and pretty, and doesn't ring true to me, I think. It's kind of misses the mark. It's off. That album and that period of my life is a really interesting,

really interesting phenomena. I think that I'm not the only one. It's just that I consider myself lucky. So I worked for, you know, I had this enormous band, number one in the world, get screwed by the record company lose my life savings band breaks up

bands in the newspaper saying nasty things about me etc I'm held kind of in a dungeon by the record company and I got to either give them my music

or no one else and I somehow managed to get through all that and it's 15 years after credence breaking up basically

finally come out with an album called Sinnerfield there's happy joyful music

on it goes to number one it's acclaimed which is a wonderful thing

and it's a hit I think what happened is the story I tell about it it's as if you'd been unjustly

in prison convicted of a crime put in the penitentiary for a long time. And one day they decide, oops, you're right.

We made a mistake. You're free because you didn't commit any crimes. We're going to let you free. And you're so happy. You walk out the door. That's center field coming out. And you come out into this big meadow where, you know, green grass and bluebirds.

You know, it's a Disney cartoon, right? Right. And then you turn around and you see freaking sand, Quentin, the prison that you were in, and now you're angry. You look at that and you're just, what that? That's what happened. When Centerfield came out, I should have, and was a success. In other words, I was exonerated or vindicated. I should have immediately gone to therapy, right? Seen a shrink. But that's kind of not my, I wasn't raised anywhere near any of that kind of stuff.

So I didn't know to do that. Instead, all that stuff that I was repressing so that I could do center field, it just came out like, and I was, instead of being overjoyed, I was miserable, bitter, and it happened all at once. It didn't like develop. It was, bam. And for like two years, it was like, you could say Saul's name. I would implode like the werewolf in

and the werewolves of London or something or the, what's that guy? The Hulk. Yeah. And so I made that album and that's all that stuff. I mean, I just didn't have the sense to see that it was nothing like Centerfield. Right.

Not a good, this guy's not happy. It was not a good follow-up. How did you bounce back? I met Julie. Oh. You know, right in the middle of that tour in 86 for I of the zombie, or as we, so I am a zombie. You know, I met Julie. And even though I didn't know, I thought I was in perpetually.

binge mode. Basically, okay, I'm going to go out and tour now. I'm just going to be a rock star on the road and be everything I never got to do for 20 years, right? Now I'm like a little kid musician again. That's what I thought I was doing. Obviously, that comes from some anger to talk like that. Yeah. And so I just thought I was going to make my way through the Hollywood Hills, you might say.

I think I actually said that in those days. And one day just suddenly met Julie not expecting to meet the love of my life, the person I feel that I was destined to meet, and the person that would, through her good graces, helped me find myself and help me enjoy and find the joy of life again, And it all changed. That's awesome. That's awesome.

It's great that you bounced out of that because a lot of people don't. You know, when something bad happens to them, they just go into a spiral. It's kind of amazing that you were joyful at first, but then you started getting resentful and thinking about it, which is totally understandable. Well, you said a spiral, and that's just what it felt like. You're just kind of getting, it's getting worse and worse, not better. alcohol as well, right? Yep. Yeah.

And boy, you know, they call it, it takes you a long time to figure out it's a depressant. Yeah. You are, you're drinking, you think you're drinking to forget stuff, but you're getting more and more depressed. Right. Yeah. And it's weakening your resolve, your body.

It's weakening your vitality. So you're tired and you're angry. That too. And your mindset. Yeah. You just in a miserable. mood. And it's also, that's also in the rock and roll stereotype, you know, the drinking, hard partying, like, one of my favorite songs when I was a kid was a bad company's shooting star. And every kid

that used to listen to that thought they were Johnny. Like, Johnny was a schoolboy when he heard his first Beatles song. It's a sad song. The guy dies young. Comes a rock star and winds up dead. And everybody, like, was romanticizing this song of this terrible lifestyle. that this guy lived. This guy was super talented and had the gift. Well, it's based on, you know, some reality there, of course. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah, we really romanticized the idea of dying young, burn bright, die young. And it's all cool until they're born naive and you're the one that's going to die. Yeah. I mean, at that moment in life, most people, no, I don't want to die. I know. Up until then, it's just sort of a vague idea out there somewhere.

Right, right, right. But weird that it's a romantic vague idea. You know, Johnny died one night, died in his bed, bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head. Like, we just just like assumed, like, this is how it goes. You know, like this is the rock and roll romantic story. Well, you hear those words when you're young, of course. Right. That actually sounds. kind of positive, you know, because if you're rock and roll, man, when you're older, you can hear the same words and you say, yes, that's real, but it's not a positive thing anymore. It's just

sort of a statement of fact, right? Yeah. I mean, there's a, I'm sitting here now, you know, talking about some parts of me that are certainly embarrassed about and probably ashamed of, I've let the shame part go. It just happened, right? I mean, I don't encourage anyone, and I try to tell them, no, stay away from, don't do what I did. But I used to beat myself up a lot with the shame part.

And I think that might be part of the healing, part of the getting out the other end. Because the more and more solid you get in the resolve of the way you're going to really live your life. and not that, the kind of more the shame dissipates. Right. You're not so, it's not tenuous anymore like, oh, I might fall back, you know, you're not so scared that that could happen anymore.

I think the shame is an important element. Yeah. I think the shame of your past and the mistakes that you've made motivates you to never make them again. Yes. As long as you don't think you're still that person. That's the problem with some people, they'll do something in high school and they carry that for the rest of their life.

like that whatever it is whatever stupid mistakes they made whatever behavior they they think that's them forever and that's what's crazy oh we should be able to grow up and yes and you know kids I got married the first time at 20 I mean there just should be a law you know you're just too young you don't know what you're doing right you don't know what all this really means right certainly by the time I met Julie, you know what, though, that experience made me shy away for a few years there from the whole idea of a marriage commitment. I was committed, but the marriage part scared me. You know, it just, oh, my goodness.

And then one day I realized I was sort of, well, wait a minute, go back to square one. What's the most joyful, happy thing you can do? Well, I want to marry her. Right. And have children and have a white picket fence and a house and we go to kindergarten and all those things. You know, we bake cookies at the PTA. I want all that. So, sure.

It's crazy because that's not what anybody thinks of when you think of a rock and roll life. Uh-oh. Right? I suppose. See, I'm corny again. It's not corny. I think it's authentic. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you think at all.

I think it's healthy. You know, I just really, even though my mom, I mean, she was a warrior, you know, think of it, there were five boys. That was my family. My parents split up when I, it was kind of a long, ongoing thing, but somewhere around eight years old. And so it was my mom's job to raise these five boys. and at some point

being a teenager a little later I said it's a wonder we're not all in San Quentin you know I mean

somehow she had enough of her she gave enough of her to inspire us all of us really to

be good people I mean you know we all had our faults and foibles and fell down and all that

but yet the ideal was to try and reach up here and be a good person and because our family wasn't in some sense to try and have a normal family, you know, leave it to beaver and all that sort of thing.

Yeah. So that was a big goal to me, a big inspiration to want that. Well, it's a beautiful thing. There's nothing wrong with that idea. Not at all. Not at all. It's just the idea that there's something wrong with it is that that's the fake rock and roll vision. That's the vision

of the dark artist. I think I don't know if I talk with Julie about this. Sometimes we show up at stuff and there'll be a lot of characters. I'm talking about musical things. A lot of characters roaming around. You know,

and you know, I kind of look like Ward Cleaver, Beaver's Dad, you know, Mr. Boy Scout or something walking around. You know, and she's looking at me like, well, couldn't you have worn something a little more? A little more rock and roll. Yeah, maybe.

And I'm just not bothered. I mean, it is kind of funny, though. Actually, I've worn some cool clothes at some of the stuff. That would all be Julie's doing, of course. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like, you know, could you show up at a reunion of, rock guys, you know, in their 50s or something. Everybody pull out their blotter, you know, their police blood. Oh, yeah, I got busting for me.

And everybody would have a... A rap sheet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be a badge of honor, but I suppose to me, I'm just really glad that it wasn't like that. Well, it's just you being authentic. It's a powerful thing. It's great, too, because the,

influence is to not. The influence is to create an image, you know, and a lot of people cultivated that image. Of course. And they get kind of captured by it. And then you have to be that person forever. You can't like switch. Letterman to Pee Wee Herman on his show. Just think, Pee We, you're going to have to dress like that for the rest of your life. That's true. Right? Right. You become a character. And then that's what people love. They don't love you. They love this fake thing that you've presented to the world. It's the cowboy thing, the motorcycle, whatever.

Look, I like all those too, actually. I love the, I like keeping it as a fantasy. I watch some TV shows, and my favorites are the modern, like Yellowstone and all the other ones. after that there's probably a lot of a lot of what do you call that literary license you know for imagery but I love the imagery yeah I can sit there and watch that river flowing back

past those rocks and the pine trees forever and some cows going over the that's okay I love it and the stoic cowboys living this rough life I like all that of course everybody does it's very romantic when you're looking at it from the outside especially yeah I mean how many many people moved to Montana because of that show.

They're hoping not so many. I bet a lot did, though. A lot did and I think a lot left. Yeah, I think they realize how hard the winters are. They're like, oh, right. This ain't my romantic idea. Yeah, and it's a long winter up there. Yeah.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Music is, it's one of the most powerful things in American culture because a great song, like Fortunate Sun, can inspire people to change their lives. It can inspire people to make decisions. It does things to people. It gives you fuel. Like I was saying, like if I listen to that song when I'm working out, it's like I took an energy pill.

All of a sudden, I have more energy. Like, that's real. It's a powerful thing that you've created. It really is. You know, and the fact that you did it out of love and enjoyment speaks to why the music is so, it resonates so much with people. Well, you know, especially with that song, At that point in the career of my band, remember I was writing all the songs, I'll talk about that after this, I guess, in a minute. But I wanted to have just an all-out screaming rocker, which we didn't have yet.

The career was about a year and a half old. and so I mean I commissioned myself to I want to have that that absolutely loud screaming song with the guitars and all and so that was sort of the commission I gave myself to create as opposed to something like have you ever seen the rain

or even down on the corner which is a different vibe you know I wanted to because I like that I like when bands you know the Beatles actually I want to hold your hand or she was just 17 and saw her standing there I guess

you know or it's not really fast but it certainly had that vibe you know the instrumental rumble by Link Ray I see I've missed you cool

yeah I don't know that song can you put that one up yeah pull that one up we'll get flag we'll remove it Do you do that? Do you play little snippets of music? We can play snippets, but the problem is...

You know, everything we just been talking about? Yeah. Everything, including the guy. If there's a clip of him playing that... The only problem is, well, we can't put it on the podcast itself or we'll get flagged. But we can listen to it right now. Oh, you mean you can't do that? And then we just cut that part out.

That was the musical scale right there. Yeah. What is that? I took so much out of that. But anyway, he was... The Rumble, the song, who's the guy? Link Ray. Oh, God, that's so cool.

And when you saw him, black leather jacket, skinny as a rail, probably had a sit. Yeah. Probably a motorcycle thing. I mean, it was the entire thing in one little two and a half minutes saw. Wow. Look at him there. God, is he looks cool.

Yeah, he's a little older there, but it's, yeah, he's bad. Wow. He looks cool as hell. It's always fascinating to me. where artists had like one incredible song and then never made it. Like, and you'll find out about that song and you go, this is incredible.

How did this guy never make it? How am I? Do you know what Johnny Thunder is? I've heard the name. Okay. Play I'm Alive for him. There's a song that my friend Brian Simpson told me about, God, it must have been like a couple of years ago now.

And he played it for us in the mothership, the comedy club, the Green Room. He goes, you're going to love this song. And I went, who is this? We had to figure out who it was. It's a song from 1969 by this guy, Johnny Thunder. 69? 1969.

And it's fucking incredible. It's such a good song. And I'm like, if I didn't know any better, I'm like, oh, this guy must have been a huge star. I know. But if I heard that and someone said, this guy's a huge star, have you heard this song about, oh, my God, it sounds like a huge star? This guy's fantastic. Listen to this. Listen, us.

How good is that? It's great. How good is that? The song's phenomenal, right? Yeah, did he ever, like, under a different name or anything? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Isn't that crazy? Now, we started playing that song. The attitude's great. He's saying a lot of great stuff. The name's great. It's incredible. Yeah. The voice is incredible.

The sound's incredible. We played that song on the podcast a couple years ago, and now the song's in commercials and all these different things. Oh, is that true? Yeah, but he's dead. He's dead. He died. I think he died in 2019 or something like that. He died in 2024.

2024. Wow. Oh, wow. So he probably died right after we discovered him. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Yeah. I mean, you hear that.

You're like, how did that guy not be one of the biggest artists in the world? Or at least have that song be a big thing. That song wasn't even a big hit. Right. It's crazy. It's just, you realize the slippery nature of success, especially with art. Like sometimes guys just catch lightning. They got that one.

Yep. And that's it. I mean, you know, I think any artist has been around a while. He had another hit? Loop de loop. Oh, I know that song. Oh, Johnny Thunder featuring the Bobettes. When did this come out?

That's 1963. Reach number four. Wow. That's the song I know that one. Wow. I didn't know who the name. Here we go loop-de-lou. Isn't that crazy?

That song was Johnny Thunder's only top 40 hit. That's incredible. How high did it say it got? It said number four. Number four are the U.S. pop charts. Wow. Number six, U.S. R&B charts. Wow.

And the album in Canada, it reached number 14, 2017. several weeks. It's incredible because if you hear that other song, that other song is, that should be gigantic. I'm alive. It should be a huge hit. Right. Meaning your statement of, you know, it's like I'm a man or something. I played that for so many musicians and they listen to it and they never heard it before. Right. And so many guys like, oh, oh my God, you hear, like, oh, baby. It's just cracks. It's a perfect song. It's an amazing song. But it's like the slippery nature of art.

You know, it's just like sometimes. Yeah, so why would something that good just, you know, there's something that? I don't know. The week it came out was 9-11 or something. Well, you know what my fear is? My fear is that he got trapped up in the music business side of it. Yeah. And they just decided not to promote him or something.

You know, he ran a foul with the music company or something. It just doesn't make sense that a guy who can make a song that good. If you can make that song that good, you can make a ton of songs. You would think so. Yeah, you just need the right people with you. Yeah, because he had the voice. He had everything. He had everything.

He had everything. The voice, the sound, the soul to his music, the way he sang, you know, that part, I'm a man. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so good. It just, it's, it is, it's a very difficult thing to capture. And even capture it only once doesn't ensure a long career of getting it right, of finding that thing.

Well, yeah, we were talking about that a little bit a while ago, you know, that first blush when you realize you can do it. Yeah. Because you've never done it before. Yeah. You know, when you cross that particular threshold, that's an amazing transformation, I guess, in an artist's the way he grows. Because until you actually do it, it's all just a dream. You know, I mean, I had grown up writing songs. You know, they weren't great songs.

I mean, I kind of knew it. I was watching all the people I loved. I'm talking about from being four or five years old all the way through growing up. And, you know, things happen, Elvis, Motown and Beatles and all these things happen. And wow, you really like all that. And meanwhile, you're having the dream of being in music somehow. But you never really know if you're going to be able to do that or not. Right.

I mean, this sort of spreads out in a lot of strange ways in entertainment. I mean, I kind of make it similar to what up your baseball player. And you dream of growing up and getting to the major leagues, right? Somebody becomes Willie Mays. Right. And a lot of people don't. you know, and there's, you just don't know, there's that realization, I mean, for Willie, actually, he was, it was slow, if you read about him, him and Derosher were kind of, you know,

Derosher could see it, and Willie's kind of, yeah, so if you're lucky enough and you become Willie Mays, I mean, God bless you, right? But there is that, for most of us, that moment that, well, sorry, kid, you know, you're just, just you're average, but we don't need average. Right. Right. And that just happens a lot. In music, there was people like me.

When the four people that became credence sort of got together in 1967 after I got off active duty and we said, okay, we're going to go for broke. Yeah, okay, we'll have a democracy. yeah we'll vote on everything yeah we'll all write songs and everything right okay one of the things that happened going along those lines

I would show up at the rehearsal you know at that point we started we said we got to do this all the time if we're ever going to get any good so every day during the week we'd meet at noon or actually a little before that maybe 11 and sit and talk

And then noon was rehearsal time. And so I'd say, okay, anybody got any songs? And people started looking down. All right, well, look, I got something and we'd work on my song, right? I mean, we're just sort of getting organized. I've just come off active duty. I've been away from the world, you might say.

And next day, same thing. You know, at home, I'd work on some stuff. Anybody got any songs? I mean, it was the weirdest, quiet. A week later, you know, same thing. And finally, I just, well, look, I've been, you know, I began to feel this thing inside that I got a push. I mean, I think I can do this.

And so eventually I got the idea, the songs I'm working on aren't quite there. How about if we take an old, song and I'll just trick it up, like psychedelicize it, because I'll pick a song I already knows good. It's got good stuff in it. And that's what I did with Susie Kew. It just kind of really arranged it and had all this cool stuff going on. It wasn't something I wrote. It kind of relieved me of the pressure of having to do that and was able to just, hey, just the blank page turned into a different rainbow full of all.

Nobody can fault because it's not my song. Right. Did all this great stuff, this cool musical stuff to it. It got, the whole point was to get that tape on a local underground station that was actually playing unpublished tapes, you know, by certain bands. The most famous one you ever heard about, there was a. tape of Janice Joplin singing hesitation blues

and Yorma's playing guitar but in the background somebody's typing their term paper it was done in their kitchen and so it was just an amateur unauthorized thing but they played it on this one station it became

a hit on that station people requested it. There were a couple other bands that had taped like that. And you can hear the typewriter in the background? Yeah, going yeah yeah she's singing hesitation blues. Wow. So that became the, let's do that.

Let's do an end run around record companies and just bring the thing straight to the station. Well, they loved Susie Q. They started playing it probably eight times a day. Each different disc jockey would play it. It's eight minutes and 20 seconds long or whatever, right? And that was really the true beginning. finished that album. My songwriting was, you know,

wasn't great. It was competent. But somewhere right after the album came out, oh, I wanted to make that point. Everybody had ample opportunity to write a song. And it just kind of wasn't coming. I would show up at the rehearsals. Well, anybody got a song, you know, and everybody got real quiet.

And so I said, well, look, okay, let's work on this. And I began to realize inside that it was going to be up to me. It wasn't, it wasn't I want to control everything. It was, I got to start rolling this boat. We're going to sink in the middle of the ocean. So I started pushing myself harder and harder. The first album comes out on my birthday, 1968. I'm 23 years old.

And within, sometimes shortly after that, I can't really pin down the, I'm still in the Army, right? But I'm working on getting released, getting out. somewhere I think in June or July I don't exactly know my honorable discharge shows up I opened this package that's been sitting there for a couple of days because it said official government business who's that for it I find it was for me it was a you know apartment house I'm overjoyed I mean this is the biggest struggle has been of my life wow wow wow wow I I turned a little cartwheel on the lawn

because I want to remember that I turned the cartwheel and ran in the house and picked up my guitar and started playing these chords that are somewhat like Beethoven. Oh! I start strumming this beat. I start hearing this chorus. see, the first thing I said was left a good job in the city but that was getting out of the army.

Wow, working for the man every night and day. Wow, what is this? Eventually I arrive at this thing where I say, rolling, rolling, oh, I like that, rolling, rolling on the river. That's starting to be beyond me, out of me. I look in my book because I said, what is this thing about?

What am I doing here? The very first thing I had written in my little book of song, titles, was Proud Mary. It's the actual first line, first thing. I looked at that and I said, wow, this is about,

Proud Mary is a riverboat. This is a boat named Proud Mary. That's what we're doing here. And I finished the song. I mean, it was kind of Mark Twain, kind of Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, you know, had a little bit of kind of gospel flavor and the old South in it. It's wow. When I got done, which was about an hour, I was about an hour from when I'd opened my honor of a discharge, I'm actually holding the little yellow tab. I've been writing on.

John, you've written the classic. I realized that this song was, I had evolved. It was way better than anything I'd ever done before. And so those meetings I'd been having, going to see the band, well, anybody got anything and no one ever did, and I'd show my little piece of something I was working on, that kind of led, can I say it,

to the confidence to do something really great by just doing it, right? And the knowledge, I mean, I was self-aware. I'm looking at this thing, Proud Mary, and it's got Americana in it, although I don't think I had a word then. It's got, I knew it was Mark Twain in the river

and all this soulful stuff. For sure is the best thing I'd ever done. I knew it was a great song. And the next relative, God, I hope I get to do this again because you just don't know. Right, right. Because it came to a bolt of lightning and inspiration, charged up from the discharge. Yep. Right.

Yeah. But yes, and something led me to be better than I was. Wow. I mean, I think my point was, it was kind of the Willie Mays thing. I never knew if I would be able to do that or not. Right? Right. You're going along, you're just plunking along clubs, whatever,

learning a chord here and there, learning something off a record, hoping you have a career in music because you like music. Me, because my mother had focused, had kind of pointed out songwriters, it put me in that realm. put, it, it made me at least realize that that was one of the functions of music. That's, that's another story I could tell you.

I don't know if you want to hear that. I want to hear every story. That's a, that's a fantastic story, though, because that you just getting that notice that you've been relieved and you're no longer in active duty, you've got an honorable discharge, you're free, and then the inspiration comes, and you write your greatest song of all time like that. Yep. Or at least the greatest song to that moment, and realize this can be, this can happen.

You really have it. You really have it, because you don't know until you try. You don't know until it happens. Yeah, you don't know. You know, until Willie Mays one day did something on the field. Right. He didn't know. Right.

And there was a point, as I alluded to, I've read about, Derocious. knew when he saw him and really wasn't so sheer yet yeah that's crazy that's crazy bad moon rising is another great fantastic song another huge favorite of mine but uh also because it's in one of my all-time favorite movies american warwolf in london yeah that scene yeah that song that must have been cool to have that song play in that movie it's very cool to me now at the i don't even know if I saw the movie at the time it came out. That was during the time I was still, you know, away from music and kind of angry and pissed off about my situation. So when something would get done with my music, it kind of made me mad because nobody asked me.

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, right, because you didn't have the rights to it. Yep. Oh, wow. Still, phenomenal song. phenomenal song so did you write all the songs

I wrote all the songs from Creedence wow until the last album the seventh album that was basically a result of the guys saying we want to you know there was a big band meeting we want to write the songs and we demand that we get to write the songs and sing the songs and make up our own musical parts

so they got resentful been resisting that because I just I thought it was going to really, I literally thought it would be career suicide. You know, change everything now. Right. Yeah, because, well, here's another part of it. You're struggling in, you know, the early days of your career and all your life getting to that point. You're trying to figure out what works.

Right. Right. I mean, it's just everyone goes through that because clearly you don't know what works yet. I haven't figured it out. And one day when some stuff starts happening, well, that's how you do it, this and this and this. This works. And I got very good at that. And you had put in that work and they hadn't.

So they weren't really contributing. And they must have gotten resentful that you were the one who wrote all these big hits. And eventually they're like, we want to try. We're credence too. Well, especially because two of them had never written a song in their life. Oh, that's crazy. And then they wanted to write a song for credence, small credence was huge. Yeah, I mean, there's a bit of, what's the word, boulder dash into that?

I mean, it's, wow. But maybe you should, you know, rehearse a little first. I mean, I've been writing songs since I was eight. Not that they were good. They could have jumped in. They could have jumped in in in the beginning. Yeah. When you were writing all the songs and they weren't coming up with anything.

If they did, you probably would have did their songs as well. If they went on a similar path to you. Oh, of course. It would have been like, yeah. My songs weren't that good at that time, but they were, how can I say? They were maybe better than average. They weren't great songs yet. They were album songs or something, right? Right.

But what I'm getting at is that the other guys, there was no songs. So that's that thing in. I keep using the Muley Mays, you know, metaphor, if that's what it is. You know, that example, at some point, you're working with the elements in the field that you love, and then you realize how to put it together and to make it happen, if you're lucky. And then comes the time when you actually make something that's good, right? I mean, but that, I can't think of anyone that the first song they ever wrote, boom, was Abe Maria or something, you know? Right.

It's, you know. So, I just thought it was a journey. And, I mean, I have been on the journey myself and seen it come. But I think now I look at it, I was, excuse me, I was probably destined, you know, it was what I loved and that was what was calling me. Yeah. I mean, that was my motivation the whole time since I was a child. I just loved it and wanted to do that, whatever it was. Well, that's why it worked.

Yeah. You put in the work and you loved it and you worked at it and you tried to get it better and you also got inspiration. You were also open to that inspiration. It's just funny that the band members didn't contribute until the seventh album and they wanted to jump in? It's kind of crazy. But understandable, I mean, it's human nature to be resentful,

especially if you've got a huge band and one guy is the lead singer and that guy's also writing all the songs. Yeah, well, I walked around for many months, you know, mulling over this whole thing. Because right after that meeting, shortly after that, my brother Tom decided he just left. Even though I kind of gave in the all of demands, okay, we'll do it that. I could see that the ban was going to disintegrate unless I acquiesced, right? I mean, up until then, I'd managed to keep it.

Don't do that. Don't do that. It's going to wreck us. So when I agreed, I mean, it was literally a couple months later, Tom left. And so now, oh, God, what's going to happen now? So I didn't know if I was just going to go, call it quits or the image in my mind was of when Elvis got taken by the colonel, just kind of pulled out of the other guys and they left them an alert, you might say.

That's the way it looked to me. It's like Elvis got all new guys and just kind of, and it was readily apparent because I had already seen what Elvis come back special, the part where they sat around in a circle and did the old songs, and he had the old guys, Scotty and Bill, or maybe Bill was gone by then, but J.D. Fontana, or J.D. Fontana, and it was just apparent that that was the best thing. Everybody loved that part of his special.

Most people, he just forget that anything else was on that thing, other than Elvis singing those songs. And that sort of was in the back of my, well, maybe they deserve a shot. Maybe they should, you know, maybe I should do this. And so that's kind of why I went forward with it. It almost like flipping a coin like, well, the odds. I think my own sense tells me this isn't going to work, but maybe they deserve a chance. So I kind of went at it blindly that way.

What was it like in the studio when they started bringing the songs? Well, that's, I mean, that's it. I mean, everyone can hear that. All of us can, you know, you just, the album's called Mardi Gras. And in the press, it was murdered. Rolling Stones said, this is the worst album ever made by a major group. And I read that, and I said, I know. I mean, I literally, I felt that it wasn't like I was trying to defend it.

It was, you know, it was just... How did the band react to that? Here's the deal. Instead of going, yeah, that was a mistake. Instead, they said, he made me do it. And so, yeah, they said I made them do it, whereas it was their idea, of course. I didn't want to do that.

And after that, you know, I think we did a tour. Oh, right, we did a tour. One by one, their songs dropped out of the set. The songs that they had done are Marty Groth. The other two guys, yeah, I don't want to sing that anymore. And so we, of course, went back to Proud Mary and Fortunate Son and all that. And there was a point that I could tell that the fans were kind of upset with this whole

premise. Which whole premise? Of them singing songs and kind of struggling along with equal time for everybody. Oh, I see. Yeah.

And so finally it was time there wasn't enough there wasn't any way to put it back together that I could see. It was beyond me. Now in later, later

later years that I'm a much older guy. I mean, there were, you know, there's some decisions that I made. One of them was the decision to not be in the movie Woodstock. They sent a tape of the band doing bad moon rising. It was okay. But what had happened at Woodstock was the Grateful Dead was on before us. Grateful Dead had all taken LSD It's we were supposed to be on at 8 o'clock But it's now 2 o'clock 2.30 in the morning by the time we get

Grateful Dead goes on Kind of loses their way But they're on stage for an hour and a half Or something with nothing going on So that poor audience has been through rain And all the rest and muddy And they just They just crashed

A half a million strike just, boom, you know. And that's what I get, right? We come running out on stage and we're playing a few songs and all I see is sleeping people. And eventually, the last, I think, 20 minutes of our set, finally got them up. We warmed them up for Janus. That's the way I always say. You know, they got going again.

But that was a struggle all through that. So I get sent, and it was a bad taste in my mind. mouth about that evening because we'd gone to so much trouble. And at that moment, we were certainly the number one band in the U.S. and probably on our way to be a number one in the world. And so I just, you know, here's this kind of ordinary tape of bad moon. And I just thought, I don't know, this doesn't help us. It doesn't further us at all.

Nah, I'm going to pass. by the way the grateful dead is not in woodstock either i didn't really reckon it didn't see that until about a year ago you know i mean i just assumed the grateful dead wasn't woodstock right um it's probably unusable so if there'd been an older guy around us a manager that was like 50 instead of me with my bad taste about the evening the older guy might have said hey you know your version of Susie Q Live, even though those people were sleeping, the band was

cooking, you know, you guys played good, you can't hardly see anything anyway, the crappy old, you said, but that recording's good, maybe we should demand that, look, you put us in the movie and give us eight minutes, not two minutes.

Or by then, it was probably 15 minutes long, you know. I think that was a decision that could probably I could reassess. You know, if it was someone else, but that's not what was on my plate at the time.

I was only offered bad, you know, and at the time I felt I was right, because we went on and did great. And by the way, the band broke up before Woodstock came out anyhow, so it kind of was a mute point.

Did it feel better for you when you were on your own? Did you like that better? Or it was just the John? Foggerty Band? You didn't have to have all those guys and all the bullshit? Well, you're asking, you know, we're all human beings and we've got a lot of years behind us. If you're asking me

right now, yeah. Because I play in a band with my sons. Oh, that's awesome. Yep. That's awesome. And, I don't know, there might be a picture of that somewhere. And so,

And all the other guys in the band are their age. Oh, wow. And so, how can I say it? You don't have a whole bunch of people trying to prove something like their record deal or, you know. Because you asked the question kind of caught me by surprise. Well, after Credence, I didn't play for a long time. How long? But the first band, huh?

How long? How long did you? not play for? I went on tour in 86 with a bunch of hired hands, they call it, right? Studio guys. And that was, that was, it was behind, number one, I didn't play any Credence-era songs. I was so mad at my situation, I just played new songs. Wow.

On the left, that's Shane. That's me. That's my son Tyler. That's my daughter, Kelsey. And then that's Jesse Wilson back there, our bass player. That's awesome. And so, yeah, and there's a... Right then, that might be a moment in Chugland

where we all do a rift together and all that, and it's just so cool to all be standing there. That's amazing. So, yeah. I mean, you know, don't get me wrong. The beginnings of credence was magical and wonderful, right? I mean, it truly, look, it waited and planned for your whole life. And it stayed that way for about a year, I think.

And then other stuff that I never understood. I mean, it was beyond, it was unpleasant, and I didn't understand why. So after that, it was, that was difficult. Then when I first started playing again in 86 and much more in 97 after Blue Moon Swamp came out, and I had a series of bands that were, I can say, trying to put people together, parts from here and there and there. So it kind of never really was one solidified thing. and you would find that a lot of people had personal agendas, you might say. They were working on their own career and all that, and there was sort of, believe it or not,

even at that level, different jealousies and things. Again, there I was, I could sense it sometimes. People were jealous. You know, and I'm like, oh, my God, when you see that picture, there's no jealous. Right. See? I mean, this is really full. fun for me now. Well, that is the problem

with so many bands. It's the conflicting personalities. It's always a miracle to me that any band stays together and that they could stay together like the Stones where they're still touring now after all these years. The stones are a lesson in

how everyone should be because we've all heard the stories about the stones. We know there's problems here and there and everywhere and all that. Yet they rose above that. They just decided that, you know, what? Yeah, okay.

What, I don't like that guy over there tonight. But I'm just going to do this and they're all brothers when they're out there doing that. Yeah. And that's great. Yeah. You know, there's, I mean, there's times, let's say, in war or whatever where you have to kind of subjugate your personal stuff for the greater good. Yeah. Right?

And that's kind of what they do, the stones. God bless them. I just think the thing is everybody wants to be the man. And when you've got so many egos and there's one guy like you who's writing all the songs, all these other people, they're just like they feel less, you know, and they get resentful. Yep. I think that's pretty normal human nature, and then that has to be dealt with. Yeah.

Sometimes you can't, though. You know, some people can't be reasons with. Some people just are, they're not rational. They see things in a distorted lens, especially if they're not. the people that created everything, but yet they've been along for the ride, and they don't feel like they're getting what they deserve. That's what it seems like. I wanted to tell you a story about how I got into this in the first place.

Okay. I told you about my mom noticing the music of me. One day she brought me home from nursery school, where she was one of the helper teachers, I guess, one of the moms, you know, of the staff. She brought me home and sat me down on a little chair. Now I look back, it was a little ceremony. She had a little yellow record, a kid's record.

And basically what she did was she played both sides of this little record. One side was O'Souzana, and the other side was Camp Town Races. Do da, do da, you know, that one. And then she asked me, well, do you like this music? I said, yeah, ma'am, these are cool songs or whatever a kid says. I really like these. She says, well, I'm going to play him again, Johnny. She plays both songs, and she says,

do you know that Stephen Foster is the man that wrote both of these songs? What do you mean, Ma? He said, well, Stephen Foster is a real person that wrote this music, and I wanted you to know that these are his wonderful songs and that people do write songs. And then she gave me the record that kind of became my little possession, right? And I have reflected on that moment in my life.

I mean, I used to tell people, why did she do that? What in the world was she thinking, right? And all through the years that I was living at home with my mom, there'd be somebody on TV, there's Irving Berlin. And I go, yeah, mom, hey, he's a songwriter. or she let me know Hogi Carmichael was one of her favorites. So he became one of my favorites, right? And of course, on into the rock and roll era,

as you noticed, the Beatles, Lenin and McCartney, were writing these songs. I mean, it just became a thing, a part of me. And it all started back there with my mom and Stephen Foster. And, number one, he was a great songwriter. So that Lilt, that sort of kind of songwriting,

he's also very corny. I mean, that voice, that personality certainly became it got contributed and it got lent to me through the record, the recording

says Stephen didn't make any records as far as I know. And those songs just sort of of got infiltred into my personality. I mean, my mom, put it this way.

I think I even talked it over with mom. I feel like Stephen Foster could have written Proud Mary. It seems like that territory.

Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Right. I don't know what, my mom was given me a gift. You know, and you just never know

how powerful those little moments with your kids are, but that was a big one for me. That's awesome. That's awesome. Listen, John, it's been an honor having you on. Thank you very much. I'm a gigantic fan. So for me, it was a real pleasure to get to talk to you.

Same here. Great to be here. The story's fantastic. Thank you very much. And you're on tour. Tell everybody where they could see you. Oh, wow. Well, you know, we are the legacy tour. You may know I've just be recorded a lot of my old songs from the Creedens time. And I'm having a ball we're just all over look at that well there you go wow that's a picture from back in the day of course what a cool album too is it really look like that yeah oh nice that's sick i love it beautiful thank you sir really thank you very much it's awesome bye everybody