Ann Moses, New Musical Express, 21 March 1970
THEY SAY that true love travels on a gravel road… that one cannot understand joy without having felt sorrow… that one does not know sweet until they have tasted bitter…
Listen to John Fogerty’s ‘Lodi’ lyric and you know the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival believe in those adages! The song tells of the heartaches of seeking a pot of gold and getting a heart of lead instead!
Music was a part of John Fogerty’s life from the time he was a child: “I think I started singing when I was two. It just happened. I used to sing and dance to ‘Shoe Fly Pie’, or whatever that song was called. I was a ham.
Listening to r & b
“I was 8-years-old. Tom, my older brother, and I were listening by then quite a lot to a rhythm-and-blues station, which was the only current music one around El Cerrito. The rest of it was all the old Tony Bennett stuff. Anyway, there was a group on one of these stations called The Corvetts. I heard their record and at that point I decided, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do.’ I mean, the record wasn’t that good or anything, I just liked the name and I kept thinking: ‘I’m gonna grow up and have a group called The Corvetts’.”
John began to grow up right then. He got a newspaper route and saved enough money to make a downpayment on a Sears (mail order) guitar on time payments. He and Tom had “fooled around” on the piano at home, but the guitar was something special to John. He began to teach himself to play immediately.
Most important
Music became the most important thing in his life. In eighth grade, he made up excuses to stay home from school so he could have more time to practice. At the end of the year, he had only attended classes about half the time. He was then transferred to another junior high school which John calls “the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” It was there he met Stuart Cook and Doug Clifford. It was 1957.
“How it happened that we got together — I had a guitar but I didn’t want to lug it to school everyday. There was a piano in the music room at school, so during lunch, I’d play the beginning of ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ over and over and over.
“I’d also play what I knew of ‘Tall Cool One’ and ‘What’d I Say’, and after a while kids started gathering in the music room and they would start singing. I never sang, I just played piano. There were only about four songs and then I’d sort of improvise on those.
“Doug happened to see me down there a few times, so he stopped me in the hall one day and said: ‘Hey, you want start a band?’ Already I had all mapped out a band and the name and the instruments, but I didn’t know anybody. Doug said he played drums and I said: ‘Okay, that’s one.’
“We tried out a few piano players, but they didn’t work out, so Doug suggested: ‘My friend Stu can play the piano. I didn’t know Stu. But Stu had a music room, a sort of rumpus room, in his house, and since it was impossible to practice at my house, it worked out well having Stu with us. Of course, Tom was singing already with bands in high school.”
In the early days, around 1959, when the group was playing at junior high school “sock hops,” John was too self-conscious to sing, so the group limited its act to instrumental.
No mikes!
“Because we were an instrumental group, we didn’t have any microphones. We had a couple of songs where everybody would scream out ‘Hully Gully!’ or ‘What’d I Say!’ Anyway, at 13 you don’t have much of a sound!” It wasn’t until 1964 that John began to sing.
It would be many years before Creedence could make it on their own terms. They had to go through a more-than-taxing period as the Golliwogs! Creedence, several years after those early school days, had made the big move of signing a recording contract with Fantasy Records.
As John says: “Remember, there were no major labels in San Francisco and we tried to go on the Los Angeles trip once. All that was was nine million auditions. ‘Put your demo tape in the pile’ and ‘we’ll call you.’ So Fantasy was the only way we could make records.”
The President of Fantasy Records, at that time, was also the manager of the Golliwogs. “We were four dumb kids from El Cerrito who didn’t know anyone… all we knew was music. This guy, supposedly, had all the connections and all that. He told us how everything should be done and we believed him. For a while. Eventually we got rid of him because we could see that we knew more than he did regardless of who he knew.
“He was in control of the record company and supposedly our manager, and superficially the producer of our sessions. Like we either had to please him or no one.”
In pleasing him, they went through the most depressing and backward stage of their careers. “It’s hard to explain when you’re so close to the situation, to let people know what it’s like underneath, to be the underdog.” John is convinced that this is a major reason it took Creedence so long to accomplish what they have. In fact, Stu, Tom and Doug were so down they were convinced that “making it” wasn’t possible at all!
Nothing happened
There was a period, too, when absolutely nothing was happening with the group. Everyone seemed to be off in different directions. To make matters worse, mainstay John was drafted into the Army, stationed in Portland, Oregon. It was there that John first began to sing.
“I met two other musicians and we found a drummer and a bass player. I was just going to play guitar. I didn’t want to do anything else, but none of them could sing. They tried and I said ‘That’s awful! I can do better than that.’ So I had to and started that way.”
But when John got out of the Army and returned to El Cerrito, he came back ready to rejuvenate the Golliwogs and passed on his enthusiasm, hoping to use rejuvenate or revival as part of their new name.
Searching
“We were all searching for this new name. I was watching TV on my mother-in-law’s colour set and the first thing that came on was a beer commercial — you know how TV is — they’re selling that ‘greener pastures on the other side’ trip. I wasn’t listening to the words, I was just watching the pretty pictures. The jingle was saying something about ‘cool, clear water.’
“The thing that came on right after that was an ad for clean water, sponsored by the left-wing of the government. Anyway, it was this little kid running through the woods, and he comes to a river and it’s full of old tyres, automobiles and garbage. This ad was in black and white and it was such a contrast to the other thing, the idea stuck in my mind.
“We had already been fooling around with Creedence. It was in, then it was out, then it was in again — like that. It was in with a thousand other choices.
“It could have been Rufus Clearwater Revival or a bunch of other alternatives. Then it just came out — Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
But the new name for the group did not mean a new way of life or prosperity — not yet. Did John have some kind of insight that kept him going through all the hard times?
“It was that way on my part and a super naivety on their part. Like if they knew then what they know now, and I was telling them all the stuff I used to say, they’d laugh and say: ‘Let’s quit.’ We all sort of agreed that all it would take is a good record, but they weren’t really convinced. So I’d make up little rallying cries.
“In the middle of ’67, we had to drive all the way down to this place called Patterson, California. I remember it was a really long drive and it was freezing, freezing cold. We got 150 dollars. It cost us 30 dollars just to get there. Two agencies were involved and they each took ten per cent. So we ended up with about 80 bucks.
“I really got mad because I knew when we got home the next Monday we’d begin rehearsing as if nothing had happened, as if it wasn’t a big bummer. So I got really angry and pointed it out at the time, on the way back, instead of waiting until Monday, I kept saying: ‘You wanna do this the rest of your life or do you wanna get busy and start learning something?’ So whenever we ran into a bummer show after that we said: ‘Remember Patterson?’ like they used to say: ‘Remember The Alamo?’ But we worked harder.”
Problems still
Still their problems were not over. Until August of 1967 they all were forced to hold down jobs outside of their music! “We did everything. The only one that was even semi-involved with music was my job at Fantasy Records as a shipping clerk. Stu was in school, Doug was a janitor for a while, Stu drove a truck for a while, Tom and I both drove trucks.”
With some kind of driving ambition and insight, John maintained his confidence for he knew “the main thing was to learn how to play the music. Because we were really crummy. I was convinced that we really didn’t deserve to make it until we were good enough.
“As soon as we got together and really learned how to play, then maybe we could gripe about not making it. While we sure didn’t know much about music, we sure did a lot of griping about not making it!”
CREEDENCE DID LEARN HOW TO PLAY. PLAY SO WELL, IN FACT, THAT THEY BECAME ONE OF AMERICA’S TOP GROUPS. NEXT WEEK IN ANOTHER NMEXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, CREEDENCE’S LEADER JOHN FOGERTY TELLS ABOUT HIS SQNGWRITING, WHY THE GROUP MADE IT WHEN THEY DID, WHY HE MUST MANAGE THE GROUP HIMSELF AND HIS THOUGHTS ON THEIR UPCOMING EUROPEAN AND BRITISH TOURS. DON’T MISS IT.
© Ann Moses, 1970
John Fogerty (continued): I Gave Up Note-making a Year Ago
Ann Moses, New Musical Express, 28 March 1970
The second part of Ann Moses’ long rap with John Fogerty, lead singing star of Creedence Clearwater Revival, takes the form of a frank Ask-In in question and answer form. Without more ado, we’ll go right ahead with it. Ann is, of course, asking the questions and JF (John Fogerty) is answering…
Q: HOW DO you go about getting ideas for your songs?
JF: I really don’t know, ’cause it’s not happening all the time. I’ve had 15 years since I decided what I wanted to do to think about it, so most of it is stored in here (indicates head) and you never really forget anything you’ve seen, heard or experienced.
During the time when nothing creative is happenin’, I’m just as much in the dark as everyone else who asks that kind of question of me. I don’t know what it is that makes it happen.
When it isn’t happening I sort of wonder if it all hasn’t gone dry. Then maybe a week later it will all start popping like mad and it starts happening again. It’s just imagination.
Q: In your recent interview with Rolling Stone, you mentioned keeping a notebook to jot down ideas for songs. Do you still do this? and how did you start it?
JF: I’ve always been a great one for organising stuff, but usually I get fed up with it because I see that it’s going nowhere. Like I haven’t been really faithful to the notebook for about a year now!
I haven’t written anything down. I’m more busy doing it than thinking about it. The notebook, right at that time, was a really good thing because I really had a streak, all kinds of different ideas just started coming together.
Q: Writers have been quick to note the melodic similarities between some of your compositions and the early rock and roll numbers — like Elvis’ ‘You’re Right, I’m Left, She’s Gone’, is similar to your ‘Bad Moon Rising’, and ‘Travelin’ Man’ sounds like ‘Long Tall Sally’. How do you feel about these comparisons?
JF:People say that mostly because it’s in the rock and roll idiom. What is happening consciously is an effort to keep our records generally basic. Simple. Not over-arranged and live reproduced and trying to compete with the big factory in LA or New York that demands that you have French horns and all that other stuff.
We play beat music with very few instruments and it comes out basic. But it isn’t like an effort to go further and further and further back, like in chronological order.
It’s more like I’m trying to make each record different than the one before and as different as possible as anything we’ve done before: In that respect it means we’re covering a lot of territory.
Q: How do you react when artists like Elvis record or perform your songs?
JF: I think it’s great in his case. Specially when you grew up with somebody who was your idol and here he’s doing your songs now. I think it’s great!
Q: Do you have a desire to see Elvis perform, since you’ve mentioned how much you liked his early music?
JF: No, I don’t think so, ’cause I don’t want to see someone in a place like that (Las Vegas). Like we’ll never play there. I’ve had friends that have gone and seen him and were still in awe of the whole Presley thing.
Q: What do you feel is Creedence’s basic appeal?
JF: I think it’s the whole thing all tied up together — with hindsight I can say there was a void, a vacuum, a lack of anyone else around like us and that’s probably part of the reason for the success also of Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and that kind of stuff. It’s a getting-back-to-the-roots kind of thing.
Q: Is that why you feel you made it right when you did?
JF: We made it when we did be cause we just started putting out decent records. I think it would have happened five years ago if we were as together then as we are now. I think it’s timeless. I think 20 years from now there will be someone else who’ll come along that will be new, like Creedence seemed to be then, and it will be the same thing then.
It’s basically blues or country or whatever. It’s not sophisticated horns and strings and all that. And there’s always going to be a need for that, regardless of how many planets we conquer.
Q: You seemed to have such confidence that Creedence would make it, in light of all the hardships and disappointments you ran into. What gave you the idea that Creedence, out of the millions of groups that were playing, would make it big?
JF: I felt confidence in my own musical knowledge, I guess. I’d see all the foibles of the artists that would come along with a great record and then their follow-up would just stink. At first, all I knew is that it stunk. As it went along, I got a little older, and began to play better and I could see why it stunk, which is very important.
You’d hear Bobby Rydell or someone who’d have a great record and then his follow-up would be so unrelated to what he did before and it would also be bad. Like Frankie Ford doing ‘Sea Cruise’ and his follow-up was ‘Time After Time’, which was a standard and had horns and violins, and it was a pretty good record, but it wasn’t like ‘Sea Cruise’ at all. It was a whole different kind of music and it wasn’t half as good.
I begin to pick out: “Gee, that sax over there was crummy,” or “They shouldn’t have the violins doin’ that,” and asI got older I got more confidence and thought: “Gee, I would have done this instead of that.”
When the Beatles came along, I was positive… I knew when they did something good, why it was good. In other words, I’d say to myself: “That’s exactly what they should have done.” But a million other people could say that, too. With the Beatles, how could you be wrong?
Q: But you’ve proved, by having hit after hit, that you were right, right?
JF: That’s what it amounts to. After a couple of hit records with songs I was sure of, my whole life was on the line as far as I was concerned. I was really positive. When people would doubt this and the other, I would say: “No, this is the one!” I got more and more confidence.
Q: Why do you feel you must manage the group?
JF: Two things. First, I guess it’s an ego-trip sounding answer, but of all the people I’ve met so far, that are unattached, let’s say, I know more than they do. It’s that simple. I guess basically, it’s because I’ve been doing it full-time for 14 years.
Watching other groups and seeing their mistakes and figuring out why they were mistakes. In other words, I didn’t consider myself a manager five years ago, but that’s what I was doing. I wasn’t vocalising about it. I was just thinking to myself. I just thought I was a musician and that was it.
As time went on I realized other people were going around with these big signs attached to the front of their shirts saying “I’m a producer” and I’d find that I did that, too.
The reason I won’t let anyone else be our manager is that part of really not feeling that they could do better than I could do; and mainly I don’t want to trust someone else now with my career, because we did that once and it was total disaster.
Q: Do you feel you sacrifice any of your creativity by being the group’s manager?
JF: No. I can’t do it all at the same time, but I can break it up into lumps of days. For a few days I’ll plot what we’re gonna do and the next few days I write and the next few days I’ll be thinking about producing. Things are better this way. Things are more together as a package.
As a manager I can tell myself what kind of song would be good now, whereas if I was three separate people, how can a layman — a manager who doesn’t write or sing — how can he tell a singer what to sing? But I can tell myself what the vacuum is and then fill it. Find a need and fill it; and that’s exactly what I do.
Q: Do you have a clear picture of what you hope to achieve career-wise?
JF: I don’t really see any need to do anything. What I call it is sustaining what we have: more singles, more LPs, more concerts. Mainly we want to concentrate on the things that are real and avoid totally the things that are unreal.
Q: What, to you, is real and unreal?
JF: Things that aren’t real are The Andy Williams Show or Pepsi Cola commercials or endorsing Clearasil or all the plastics of the 20th century that a real artist just wouldn’t do.
There are very few real things. Musically, you try to be pure. You make records that you’re in control of. You only do songs that you like. You don’t do a song that your brother-in-law-who-did-you-a-favour-once wrote. You only play in, and at, places that you feel are beneficial to the audience. Simply, you make songs, put them on record and then you go perform them in person.
Q: Can you briefly tell me about your daily routine, since you mainly tour on weekends?
JF: I get up around 10 or 11 or so. The other guys have started getting up earlier, they tell me. Anyway, there’s nothing to do at 8 in the morning for me. We come down to what we call The Factory and rehearse from about 12 to 2.
It’s not like “if everyone happens to fall by.” It’s a formal thing that way, that from Monday through Friday we rehearse.
Unless somebody has an important appointment somewhere or an interview or something. Then we schedule everything around it. From about 2 to 4 I do what I’m doing right now or go down to Fantasy (Records) and talk to Saul (Fantasy’s President), or talk about business, just keep it all going. Around 5 or 6 I go home and lock myself in!
Q: Do you feel it’s important to have a private life, apart from the music?
JF: Yes, ad it should be a private private life, not a public private life, where everyone is watching you. We avoid that completely.
Q: how have you reacted to having acquired a great deal of money in such a short time?
JF: I guess the biggest reaction is no reaction at all. I don’t worry about it anymore. I usually don’t have any cash on me. There’s usually none in the house.
For me, it’s harder than heck to get myself to go out and get a pair of shoes because it involves going to the bank and drawing money.
Q: Do you run into many conflicts? Or are the others pretty much in tune with your ideas?
JF: They are (pretty much in tune). Mainly it’s because I’ve been the qualitative control throughout the years and they respect that. In other words, they think like I do because I gave them the thoughts. It’s as simple as that.
Q: Are you looking forward to your European tour? It’s going to be a pretty fast tour, didn’t you want to see anything while you’re there?
JF: We planned it purposely that way, so we can just get a feel of what’s going on, which is what we had to do in this country. We really know absolutely nothing about what’s going on there.
We don’t know where to play or what’s happening musically. It’s mostly like a quick tour, kind of an education for us. We’re playing only the safe places, I suppose you’d say. The accepted ones.
Other than that, I don’t want to give you that old Press release hooey about it’s so wonderful to be playing for our fans! Of course, that’s true, but people always make that an end in itself.
Obviously we want to see the people who have been buying our records and that kind of thing. Also, we’ve never been there and we want to see what it’s like. It’s kind of half career and half wanting to go, because it’s something we’ve never seen before. We’re all kind of naturally curious.
© Ann Moses, 1970
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