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The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

John Fogerty on Joe Rogan: How His Own Label Sued His Sound

What happens when you write every CCR song but sign away the masters: Zaentz sued Fogerty for sounding like himself, then collected royalties on songs he wrote.

Joe RoganhostJohn Fogertyguest
Apr 17, 20262h 40mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 3:28

    Draft notice, weight loss, and the real story behind the “weed to avoid the Army” rumor

    1. JR

      Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

    2. JF

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat rock music]

    4. JF

      Think I can just step on the floor right here?

    5. JR

      It doesn't matter. You can leave it on the table. It's fine. There's water there, too, uh, in this metal cup, and then there's coffee.

    6. JF

      Oh, thanks so much.

    7. JR

      There's coffee in here.

    8. JF

      Okay, yeah.

    9. JR

      If you'd like some coffee.

    10. JF

      Yeah, ready to... I have some notes that I'll probably never look at, but-

    11. JR

      You got notes?

    12. JF

      Me?

    13. JR

      What, what's on the notes?

    14. JF

      Uh, just stuff, like what I went through with CCR and all that. But tell me something, did you, did you read up on me or anything, or-

    15. JR

      I'm a huge fan. I don't have to read up on you.

    16. JF

      Okay.

    17. JR

      I read up on you a little bit, just to catch up about how you got out of the, the... Well, you did do military service.

    18. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    19. JR

      But you got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating. I read that. Is that true?

    20. JF

      No.

    21. JR

      Is that true? They lied? There was a story about you smoking a lot of weed and, uh-

    22. JF

      Oh

    23. JR

      ... getting emaciated so you can get out of the Army.

    24. JF

      Well, i- it's not quite in that sequence, but those things did happen.

    25. JR

      [laughs]

    26. JF

      Yeah. I had, I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right? So I was kinda really s- skinny by 1967, '68. Uh, I mean, like 100... I think it was 129 pounds.

    27. JR

      Whoa.

    28. JF

      Yeah. Um, and then I was gonna go, uh, to the, I think it was the Presidio, and I had to meet with a Army doctor, right? And my friends gave me a couple of joints, and I stuck 'em in... You know, I used to smoke in those days, cigarettes. I stuck it in the cigarette, and going across the Bay Bridge [laughs] I smoked 'em. My, that's so fu- I hadn't even thought about it. So if you want, yeah, man, he, he, he went on a starvation di- a protest diet, and then smoked a lot of weed.

    29. JR

      That's what I heard.

    30. JF

      Wasn't quite that way, but yeah, okay. But it's, it's essentially some truth.

  2. 3:28 – 8:57

    Getting sued for sounding like himself: ‘The Old Man Down the Road’ vs. Fantasy/Zaentz

    1. JR

      Yeah. There's... Well, you're also one of the first rock and roll artists that wrote songs, uh, that became very popular about how you're getting screwed over by the record business.

    2. JF

      [laughs] Yeah.

    3. JR

      You know what I mean? I mean, well, so Lynyrd Skynyrd did it, Working for MCA, they did that song. But you had Vance Can't Dance.

    4. JF

      It was actually Zant's Can't Dance.

    5. JR

      But you had to change it, right?

    6. JF

      Yep. Yeah, the name of the person was Zant. Uh, it, it sold about a half a million copies as Zant's, but the record company, Warner Brothers, in their way of settling somewhat, um, had me change it to Vance. Yep.

    7. JR

      'Cause the guy's name was Zant that-

    8. JF

      Zant, yeah

    9. JR

      ... was, that was screwing you up.

    10. JF

      Um, that's right in the middle of, that whole thing was a mess. I got sued for sounding like myself.

    11. JR

      What?

    12. JF

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      How'd that happen?

    14. JF

      I'll tell you.

    15. JR

      [laughs]

    16. JF

      So, and I didn't find this out until... There was eventually a trial. So it's n- many people think that that's funny. "You got sued for sounding like yourself? Why, that's funny." Well, no, you're s- getting a legal lawsuit that's probably gonna take away a lot of your, uh, money, and you're gonna go through three, four years of anguish. Well, anyway, um, ended up in a trial. He was suing me for, at the time, was an enormous amount of money, $144 million for his, uh, whatever, mental anguish or something. Um, r- the, 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 Creedence was, and Saul Zant, who owned it. So, you know, when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the former people s- tend to be jealous, I guess. And, uh, so he was suing me. What had happened, though, I found out in the trial, the bass player from Creedence, uh, was another one of those people, I guess, that couldn't stand that I'd now had success in a later life. Um, he went down to Fantasy and saw Mr. Saul Zant and said, "John is ripping off Creedence. You should sue himThe irony in, in all of that is that I had taught Stu every single note that he ever played [laughs] in Creedence. It was not his own crea- as we talk, you'll, you'll see, um, I was the guy inventing the arrangements, and so to take possession of Creedence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top. Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and that, Saul had unlimited funds, and so it, you know, went to a trial. I pre- prevailed at trial, and [sighs] got that over with.

    17. JR

      But they torture you during the process because it takes years, and it cost-

    18. JF

      Yeah, you're doing depositions and-

    19. JR

      ... an enormous amount of money to fight yourself.

    20. JF

      Yeah, all that stuff.

    21. JR

      That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you.

    22. JF

      Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed. I mean, um, you know, what we're really talking about is when y- 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 and s- style and now says, "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.

    23. JR

      Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that. It's insane because look, so many artists sound like ar- 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.

    24. JF

      Immediately, right. Um, well, that shows the, the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people wanna have. Um, you know, I had written a new song, and he didn't want me to... He, he wanted to own the new st- he wanted to own me, basically.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. JF

      That was the idea. "Well, you can never do anything unless you do it for me," you know? Um, so I was... But not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists. It was kind of a major ruling, and [laughs] thank God it went that way.

  3. 8:57 – 11:38

    Music-industry predation and why fans rarely saw the ugly side

    1. JR

      Well, thank God it also was public, like with that song and the lawsuit around the song, have, you having to change the name of the song. 'Cause back then, at least at the time, like w- this was probably what, the '80s?

    2. JF

      Yep.

    3. JR

      Most people had no idea how evil the music business can be.

    4. JF

      [laughs]

    5. JR

      Unless they were told, they had no idea what... They, they bought the albums, they loved 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-

    6. JF

      Right

    7. JR

      ... own your name, own your likeness. And m- most, uh, fans had no idea.

    8. JF

      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 wanna know all... I didn't even know there was stuff behind it-

    9. JR

      The Colonel

    10. JF

      ... to know.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. JF

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. JF

      Oh, my God. Right, I picked a good one there, didn't I?

    15. JR

      Yeah, it was a really good one.

    16. JF

      I mean, the Colonel was evil. That's just too bad.

    17. JR

      Another similar situation, like there's a, 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 'cause he didn't own his name anymore. Prince.

    18. JF

      Yeah, I remember going, "Well, if he doesn't wanna use it, you know, I'll, I'll take it." [laughs]

    19. JR

      [laughs] Yeah, it's just the, the business itsel- 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, you see that, it just, it just drives you nuts.

    20. JF

      Well, also, um, you know, the, the cre- 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, to, or own that, which is what was gonna happen, is just a, an onerous thing. Um, I'm sh- [laughs] I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff. I'm a lot older, s- I can't say wiser. It's more like, um, I came out on the good side of it, and s- I try not to worry about it too much. But, uh-

    21. JR

      It's great that you came out on the good side of it.

    22. JF

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      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.

  4. 11:38 – 15:49

    Bitterness, self-destruction, and the person who saved his life: meeting Julie

    1. JF

      Yeah, and there's all kinds of, you know, um, bad people around just waiting for you to slip up and sign something that will give your rights away, that sort of thing. Um, I get such a joy out of music, you know? I mean, I just... I, it started that way when I was a little kid. I mean, didn't even know what I was doing. I was... Or what that was. I was hearing this sound, and you know, and I liked it, and I just kinda went with it. I didn't try to, uh, analyze it too much. And of course, later, with all the things, you know, theDifferent roads you g- you go through trying to [chuckles] get to s- some place. Um, a- a- happily, I still get that same joy. I mean, I j- I just, I'm just so glad. You know, I... A lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife, Julie. Uh, if I hadn't have met her, I probably would be dead. [chuckles] Simple as that.

    2. JR

      Really?

    3. JF

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      Wow. Why do you think you'd be dead?

    5. JF

      Um, I didn't see any way out. You know, um, I was really abusing myself, alcohol mostly. I really felt bad inside. I mean, it, it's... When you get like that, uh, Joe, uh, you're not really operating on the same plane in the world that all the other people that you see are. You know, you walk into a market or something, look around, and probably most of the people are kinda normal, you know, whatever we call that. But when you're, when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me. Um, but [chuckles] you know, however you get there, and then you start abusing yourself with, uh, drugs, alcohol, whatever, um, you just kinda... It's, it 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, um, pathetic person. Sad, certainly. So that, you know, that was the deal. That when Julie met me, I was that guy. Um, there was sort of a, certainly a anger, I mean, but a, a bitterness too. Uh, almost like a self-fulfilling, um, prophecy where you look for something to go wrong, and then it goes [laughs] wrong. And you go, "See? I toldja." You know, I mean, it's, it's a terrible mental place to be, and I was there.

    6. JR

      Do you think this was a loop that you got in because of the lawsuits?

    7. JF

      Oh, for su- yeah.

    8. JR

      It... That, that it really just got you that hard.

    9. JF

      Well, there was, uh, there was more than one lawsuit. [chuckles] But the betrayal by, uh, the people in my band, you know. Uh, I just told you about a very evil man, right?

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. JF

      And I'm the only guy from Creedence who's ever actually mentioned that he's an evil person, to the extent that quite publicly, my brother Tom, r- right during this same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend. [laughs]

    12. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    13. JF

      It was just really hard to, uh, deal with. And the other two guys in the bands were, in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it. They just never spoke up. Just kind of, "Give me the money," and, you know.

    14. JR

      How the fuck was your brother saying that guy was your best friend while he was suing you?

    15. JF

      Um, he wanted... He was signed, re-signed, after the break of, breakup of Creedence. He kinda shopped around and didn't have, uh, much success finding a label. And so he went... Right about the time that this trial was going to happen, uh, he re-signed with Fantasy. I'm talking about the first trial.

    16. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    17. JF

      Um-

  5. 15:49 – 25:52

    The offshore tax scheme, Castle Bank, and disappearing band money (CIA twist)

    1. JR

      Which was the first trial?

    2. JF

      The first trial was about, uh, basically the band had lost its life savings. All of us in Creedence, um, 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, if some guy comes walking up to you and got a trench coat on, on a corner in New York City, "Hey, buddy," you know, you-

    3. JR

      [chuckles]

    4. JF

      ... probably gonna avoid that guy. But the record company was in this tax thing. And for all we knew, we were gonna be paying 90% income tax, right? I mean, the tax laws are pretty s- pretty stringent and pretty high. Um, and so they offered us, or basically kinda ushered us into this plan, a ta- offshore tax plan, and it would allow us to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10 and 20%, something like that. Uh, so it was a huge financial savings for us. Uh, 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, uh, the people on our side in the band had it checked out by our people, our own accountant. Um, uh, the bass player's father was a, an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm. They, a- among other people, represented the 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, uh, seemed to be [laughs] not legit to the point that somewhere in the '70s, psht, the bank disappeared and all our money in it disappeared. So we sued.

    5. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    6. JF

      Yep.

    7. JR

      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 you-- They were stealing your money-How?

    8. JF

      I just found that. I don't know. I just typed it in and went to the Wikipedia, and I was like, "Oh-"

    9. JR

      That's-

    10. JF

      "... interesting."

    11. JR

      ... so insane.

    12. JF

      See, I didn't know any of that. [laughs]

    13. JR

      You didn't know until now?

    14. JF

      Oh, I knew that now, or I suspect... Yeah.

    15. JR

      Did you know that up until now, or did you just find it out just now?

    16. JF

      Um, you could tell me a lot of things right now and I'd say, "Oh, yeah, I guess assumed all that stuff was kinda happening." But I didn't know it at the time in the early '70s when we, or late '60s, when we got into this thing. It was actually '76.

    17. JR

      Do you know how anti-American that is? The CIA stole from Creedence Clearwater Revival.

    18. JF

      [laughs] Mm-hmm.

    19. JR

      You know how fucking crazy that is? That is so wild.

    20. JF

      Dude. No, I didn't know that part. The, um-

    21. JR

      [laughs]

    22. JF

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

    23. JR

      Mm.

    24. JF

      It was starting to s- and th- now, we're talking 1975, '76. Um, and so I actually had the meeting and I said, "I, I wanna be out of this plan. I don't wanna..." Oh, I said, I m- 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 and so I can see how much money have I earned." 'Cause 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 the, uh, parking lot in the basement of this tall building in Oakland, and I'm with my, uh, the guy that runs my office, and I say, " [exhales] We're gonna have to have another meeting," because even though I told them I wanna get out of the plan, I didn't stand up, like, on the table and go, "I'm ordering you and you and you, get me out of the plan." I realized they could weasel some more time-

    25. JR

      Right

    26. JF

      ... 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? Um, pretty quickly after that, a, a, 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.

    27. JR

      [laughs]

    28. JF

      He died in a sauna.

    29. JR

      Whoa.

    30. JF

      I've seen that movie.

  6. 25:52 – 35:40

    Winning back money—sort of: the lawsuit outcome and who actually paid

    1. JR

      How much money are we talking about? How much money did they steal from you?

    2. JF

      When it finally was over-

    3. JR

      Yeah

    4. JF

      ... the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle, I mean, you're gonna 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 sound, I mean... I don't know. Uh, Dion once made a joke at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame about Bruce, and [laughs] he made, Dion says, "Well, I sold 40 million," meaning, you know, you, you sue me. "Well, Bruce has that on him." [laughs]

    5. JR

      [laughs]

    6. JF

      It was, it was pretty funny. Yeah, I mean, 8 million i- was, that was it. That was our take from all the sales of Creedence at the time.

    7. JR

      So w- uh, was that the amount of money that was in the bank that they stole from you?

    8. JF

      That was what we got returned to us.

    9. JR

      So you did get the money back?

    10. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      Oh, okay. Well, I figured they would just vanish.

    12. JF

      Um, the, the money didn't come back from Saul Zaentz or Capital 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, 'cause 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 Kantor in Chicago, who designed the plan, and our own, 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, um, a million dollars or whatever, and they settled for, like, $10,000. [laughs]

    13. JR

      Really?

    14. JF

      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, uh, th- through a whole trial, and Creedence got, we, we retained the money we had lost in that plan, the 8 million I just mentioned, uh, from the law firm, uh, or the insurance firm. It was his insurance company's lawyers-

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm

    16. JF

      ... that were representing him, and they had to pay. Nobody else had to pay.

    17. JR

      Interesting.

    18. JF

      And then CIA or whoever you're talking about-

    19. JR

      Yeah

    20. JF

      ... got away with it.

    21. JR

      Of course they did.

    22. JF

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      They know how to do that. It's kinda crazy too that it's only $8 million when you think about how much money you probably made the record companies.

    24. JF

      Yep. Well, there was 100 million records plus, so.

    25. JR

      Right. Do the math. How much was an album back then?

    26. JF

      Four bucks.

    27. JR

      Yeah. So 400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff. Seem, you know. You guys got a small percentage. But 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, it's pretty dark when you really think about it.

    28. JF

      Um, yeah, and Joe, I gotta tell you, um, I love making music and I don't do it for the money. I mean, I know that sounds a little naive, but it just, the happiness in my heart from doing this is from the music-

    29. JR

      I believe you

    30. JF

      ... you know, and from the joy.

  7. 35:40 – 42:51

    Early band names, label control, and the ‘Golliwogs’ shock (and later racial meaning)

    1. JF

      Yeah. Well, I did create that name. Um-

    2. JR

      What was the crazy name that the record company called your, one of your first bands? They-

    3. JF

      Well, it was the same people.

    4. JR

      Same people?

    5. JF

      Yeah. Same, I mean, the same individual musicians. Um, in high school, or junior high actually, I started a band and called it The Blue Velvets. Not all that cre- you know, earth-shaking, but kind of a cool vibe. Um, and we were really The Blue Velvets by... You know, the, I mean, this, this was l- really a trio, but my brother was older. He was in another orbit. Uh, so we kind of went through high school m- 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. Um, and then-After high school-- and Tom, 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 all, it was kind of just haphazard. Um, and finally around the age of 19, I went over and knocked on Fantasy Records' door. They had done this special about Vince Guaraldi, and they were in the Bay Area, so I, you know, went over there and introduced myself. Anyway, some, you know, one thing led to another. Finally, we're recording. Uh, and at that time, I think we made a record with only three of us, me and Tom and Doug, the drummer, and I pl- I overdubbed a bass part. And this is early, or this was in 1964. Uh, when the, they finally pressed the single, one side was called "Little Girl." It's kind of a four-chord doo-wop song. The other side was sort of a English, uh, 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 Golliwogs."

    6. JR

      [laughs]

    7. JF

      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 w- at the last minute 'cause w- w- we weren't really The Blue Velvets anymore, but that was it. We thought it was gonna say Visions. Um, but the record company had decided they wanted to get in on the British Invasion mod whatever and named us The Golliwogs. It sounds like polliwog.

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. JF

      They said, well, a golliwog, you see, is this doll that, uh, when the British soldiers were in India, there would, the kids would have this little doll called a golliwog. And so that's all we knew about it. Um, as time went o- I mean, years and years later, af- long after I'd been, we'd renamed the band, or I'd renamed the band Creedence, found out that golliwog was a, this was a very racial thing. This was the British soldiers calling the f- people-

    10. JR

      Whoa

    11. JF

      ... wogs or golliwogs, yeah.

    12. JR

      That's a golliwog?

    13. JF

      Yeah, a sambo, right?

    14. JR

      Wow.

    15. JF

      Same sort of... Yep.

    16. JR

      And they didn't know this either, obviously.

    17. JF

      [laughs]

    18. JR

      There was no Wikipedia back then.

    19. JF

      I don't know, no. I don't know. I didn't know that.

    20. JR

      That's crazy that they could just change your, the name of your band without you having any knowledge of it at all. You open up the record, and it's right there.

    21. JF

      Yep, and they kind of insisted. You know, it's that same thing that, "Well, we're gonna own the publishing to your song." "No, no, I should own it." "Well, then we're not gonna make any records." "Oh, okay." [laughs]

    22. JR

      You're 19.

    23. JF

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, that's how they get you. You don't know any-

    25. JF

      Well, and you kind of want to make a record.

    26. JR

      Yeah, you want to make a record. It's right there. You, you taste it. "Oh my God, I'm gonna be signed to a record label. I'm gonna be a rock star." And then they come to you with a shady contract, and that's their modus operandi. It's what, what they do with everybody.

    27. JF

      And for... I know they call it business. Um-

    28. JR

      Funny term.

    29. JF

      Yeah. Um, most of those people, I mean, it's like lottery to them. It's like gambling. Um, they don't have a clue what creativity is. And at that age, the young ar- I mean, I, I guess I'm looking at you and saying, "If I only..." [laughs] No, what's that line? "If I didn't know now what I didn't know then." Uh-

    30. JR

      Yeah

  8. 42:51 – 56:32

    Faith, Catholic school trauma, and separating God from man-made institutions

    1. JF

      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.

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. JF

      So the do unto others as you would have them do to you. Yes. Um, I, 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, a reason, you know, to try and be a good person. Um, the reason being you're in God's grace if you do those things, if you try to live a good life-

    4. JR

      Right

    5. JF

      ... honest, and I guess we call it transparent nowadays.

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. JF

      Um, you know, and don't get me wrong, I'm not running around the world with a, thumping a Bible or something. I just think it's common sense about how ultimately you want to exist in the universe, right?

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. JF

      Um, so I, you know, that, 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, 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, [tsking] "You know, he's gonna get his comeuppance someday." [laughs]

    10. JR

      Well, it's a horrible existence-

    11. JF

      Yeah

    12. JR

      ... because nobody loves you when you're like that. If you're, 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-

    13. JF

      Yeah

    14. JR

      ... you exist with the people in your circle. This is-

    15. JF

      I think that's true.

    16. JR

      Yeah.

    17. JF

      I believe that.

    18. JR

      There, 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, uh, if you live your life like God exists, it, you'll, you'll have a much better life. And the golden rule is just... It, it's provable. Like, if you're a nice person and you treat people well and y- it spreads a lot of good energy around you and positive momentum with all these other people, it, 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, it's good for everybody. It's good for you. It's good for the people that you're generous and friendly to. 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.

    19. JF

      Yeah, I, I literally, I believe everything you have just said and literally have sometimes asked God for a... You know, I n- I never sat around and asked for money or a hit record or s- I, I always thought that's kind of poor. That's bad, [laughs] you know?

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. JF

      I mean, that's selfish or greedy or something. But I would ask for clarity or, you know, I would ask God to help me, uh, figure something out. And amazingly, there would be v- through a relation, you know, somebody I was dealing with, there would be something... It was like karma, good karma coming back.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. JF

      And I could see the, see the out... You know, to me, it was a result of my prayer or my openness of wanting to help get a situation resolved. Um, so for me, it, yeah, I've, I've... To me, there's evidence [laughs] that it all works that way.

    24. JR

      Did you always have a belief in God?

    25. JF

      Yeah. I think there was times, um... Yeah, be- because I was just brought up that way. Um, again, I don't believe my... I w- I was just, I was just taught in a kind of nice and simple way about God. It, it wasn't beat over my head or any... I was raised Catholic, so in some sense you can't avoid having it beat over your head, I suppose. And, and some of that I resisted. Um, but I went through the normal things. I did my first communion, my first confession. I did, uh, what do you call that when you're 12 years old? The confirmation.

    26. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JF

      Um, I chose the name for, for St. Jerome basically because there's a song by Bo D- Bo Diddley called "Bring It to Jerome."

    28. JR

      [laughs]

    29. JF

      And, uh, Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his maraca player, and I really liked the vibe of that. Said, "I'm gonna be Jerome. That's my confirmation name."

    30. JR

      [laughs]

  9. 56:32 – 1:09:12

    Childhood sparks: harmonies, family music, Elvis, and deciding ‘that’s what I want to do’

    1. JR

      ... and be fair. Um, how old were you when you first started playing music?

    2. JF

      You mean as-

    3. JR

      Yeah

    4. JF

      ... an instrument?

    5. JR

      Just messing around. Like, how did you get into it?

    6. JF

      Right. Well, I was... Actually, I was given a snare drum. W- uh, I think I was about four years old. It was a really cheap paper one.

    7. JR

      Was your family musicians?

    8. JF

      Uh, not really, but they were musical, both of them, my mom and dad. Um, one of my, one of my finest and favorite memories is, uh, there was... We lived in the Bay Area of, of, uh, uh, 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, uh, creek, this body of water called the Putah Creek. Eventually, they dammed that up and made Lake Berryessa. Uh, but anyway, back then it was just a, a running water and, uh, there was some people could camp there. There was, uh, at this one place they took me, um, reputedly was owned by a, a man named Cody, and he was a direct descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody.

    9. JR

      Wow.

    10. JF

      I actually met him one day when I was about four, and he was probably coming to collect, uh, the payment for the cabin and the, you know, the little space. Anyway, um, and I, I may remember looking at him and going, "Wow." So I was told that story, and he was, he would've been about 75. He literally could've been a son of Buffalo Bill. He would've been born, at that point it was probably 1949, at the story I'm relating, and he c- you know, would've been born in 1875. I mean, it's mind-boggling to think that. Um, but the, the... my favorite memory thing, other, other than the fact that that whole place inspired my song, "Green River," that's, all the [laughs] little parts are in Green River. Um, 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 re- I guess they were more happy or something there. And they... 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, uh, and harmonizing. O- o- one was taking the melody g- and the other was harmonizing.

    11. JR

      Oh, wow.

    12. JF

      The reason I know is 'cause I'd sat there, and I'm probably three, four, five years old, right in there, and said, "What are you guys doing?" 'Cause I knew the melody, but it... "But I hear two notes. What, 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, uh, bonded to that, I guess?

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. JF

      Like that I really like this, whatever it is. So, uh-

    15. JR

      So that was the initial spark.

    16. JF

      Well, they began to notice that I w- I was musical. So at some point I know I, a- again, at my fourth birthday, there, somebody gave me a, 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! Susanna" in the cowboy style. In other words, it was 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 and went, [singing] yeah, that sort of thing. I was just shocked. I, I'd never seen my dad do anything like that. Wow. And then, uh, on top of that, my mom could play piano, what we now call stride piano. She would hit the, [singing] and then play a chord, like a, an octave of bass notes and then a chord above it, [singing] . They'll keep that going as, like, the drummer in the thing and then play melody and high notes up above. And it was, you know, she did, she would... One of my favorite ones was, um, "Harvest Moon," "Shine on Harvest Moon," which is a great song, and it just was magical to me. So that, that kinda opened the door to let me know that, oh-Why? We can do this in our own house. Um, so the piano was around, and then we also, I, 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. Um, just, it was hard to play. The strings were, like, way high and all that. Eventually, my brother Bob told me at some point, "Yeah, we used to play baseball with that guitar. We'd hit ball-" [laughs]

    17. JR

      [laughs]

    18. JF

      Yeah. That's how sturdy it was. But that was around so that I would every once in a while mess with it. Um, but somewhere literally in the seventh grade is where I started to really try and learn a chord and that sort of thing.

    19. JR

      Is that when you thought, "I'm gonna be a musician"?

    20. JF

      I think that moment was a little bit earlier. It was, a- again, up at this place, Winters. Um, I- my dad had driven into the town from our little c- c- cabin, our little campsite, and I was with him, and he'd gone to this general store, and in the... The general store had everything. It had food and stuff, but it also had, uh, 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 that it's playing music that I really like. It's rock and roll, and I'm, you know, I'm about 10 years old. Man, that's good, and I don't know who it is. But it's just got a really bluesy sound, but it's, it's fast. It's rock and roll. And I run over, and I finally determine it's Elvis Presley. I go, "W- I never heard this." I knew of Elvis, of course, on TV. He had done, uh, Heartbreak Hotel. I'd, I had seen the, the Tommy Jimmy Dorsey show that he'd been on three times. He was on there, I think, five times. Anyway, um, 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 vibe, even though he was now on RCA. It was that thing they did on Sun Records, that, just that kinda country wail with guitar that was more country than blues, and the guitar especially just na- I said, "What is that?" I'm watching, and 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, and I s- 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 wanna do."

    21. JR

      Wow.

    22. JF

      And I made up my mind right there in that three minutes of that song. [laughs]

    23. JR

      That's amazing.

    24. JF

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      Wow.

    26. JF

      Well, it was transformative. It still is. It's just a pretty unique slice of American music.

    27. JR

      I don't think I'm aware of that song. I, I'm gonna listen to it after the podcast.

    28. JF

      You probably know his song, Elvis' song, That's All Right, Mama.

    29. JR

      Sure.

    30. JF

      Right. Well, this is in that vein.

  10. 1:09:12 – 1:22:02

    How songs arrive: first songwriting at eight, riffs, titles, and the ‘radio tuning’ muse

    1. JR

      That's amazing. That's amazing. So when we- when did you start writing your own songs?

    2. JF

      I was eight years old.

    3. JR

      Wow. Do you remember your first song?

    4. JF

      Yes.

    5. JR

      What was-

    6. JF

      Or at least the one I remember is, I call it the, as the, the one I can remember. It was a morning. I was getting ready to go to school. I could walk to school. It 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. Uh, Harding School. Um, it was a grammar school. Anyway, I'm getting ready to go to school. Got my lunch. I'm about to turn off the radio, and this commercial comes on. I was listening to R&B, right? The rhythm and blues channel from Oakland. And the DJ suddenly says, "Do you have the wash day blues? Is this day gonna be drudgery bec- well, maybe you're using the wrong..." And they went off talking about laundry soap.

    7. JR

      [laughs]

    8. JF

      Right? I don't know if there was a song involved in the commercial. I think it was just a read commercial. 'Cause it was probably live, you know, right there on-

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm

    10. JF

      ... old-time radio. So I went out the door with, you know, carrying my little sack with the lunch in it. Said, "Wash day blues, wow." I get kinda to the end of the street. I think that's Lynn. I gotta go down, you know, three streets. And I'm walking along, I say, "Wow, what is... " ♪ Dun, dun, dun, dun. ♪ ♪ Oh, I got the wash day blues. ♪ ♪ Dun, dun, dun. ♪ I'm making that noise. It's Muddy Waters. It's the riff from, um, probably Hoochie Coochie Man, you know?

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. JF

      Uh, and it all comes together. I'm just walking down the street singing about all the stuff that... Because it's blues.

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. JF

      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 s- that's my song.

    15. JR

      [laughs]

    16. JF

      You know, for years and years I thought it, I thought... I was embarrassed about that story. I said, "God, John, why couldn't you have a great story about the sinking of the Titanic or something?"

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. JF

      "Wash day blues?" 'Cause it just seems so mundane. But now I kinda recognize because of the, the two elements I had put together, um, it, it's just kind of natural. Um, it's really the process of writing songs.

    19. JR

      That's amazing. And so when, when you wrote songs, like I, I, I saw this, uh, video clip where you're talking about, I think it was Old Man Down the Road. Is that the, the, the beginning riff? ♪ Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. ♪

    20. JF

      You got it.

    21. JR

      Yeah. And you were talking about how you, that riff just hit you.

    22. JF

      Yep.

    23. JR

      Is that-

    24. JF

      Well... Yeah. Um, well, I had this place. Uh, it was my studio. It was a conver- basically the garage of a house that I had bought to be my, my office and my place, so it was a size of a garage. Uh, that, 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, that was my process certainly every weekday morning. Sometimes on Saturday, Sunday, whatever, but certainly the five days a week. Um, and I'd walk in there and, uh, work on music. I did this every day for, I mean, years and years, from '74 until Centerfield came out, basically. Uh, which was 11 years later. [laughs] Um, and so one morning I walk in and I haven't even turned on the, 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 kinda noodling 'cause I like to do that. A lot of my songs have started this way. But suddenly just played, ♪ Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. ♪ And it really had that sound to it. And I, it got my attention because I knew that it wasn't anything else.And I also-- I mean, this is like in a n- 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 dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and I realize 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 [laughs] , you know? You gotta have the right answer, and there's probably only one, 'cause all the other ones are gonna kill it, and you'll never remember this again, 'cause that happens all the time.

    25. JR

      Right.

    26. JF

      You know, it'd be lame. You, you, you're there, you're-- it's precarious, it's hanging in the air, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And you gotta come back with the thing to make it complete, and it has to be the right thing. Uh, uh, uh, dun, dun, dun-

    27. JR

      Yeah

    28. JF

      ... dun, dun, dun. Yeah. [laughs] Yes. And so I dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Oh my God, yeah. And I've-- you know, I play it over and over probably for five minutes. I just tend to do that. That's, that's the joy of music. That's the joy right there, that... 'Cause I knew it wasn't anything else. There was no question in my mind that, well, is this coming from, you know, The Beatles-

    29. JR

      Right

    30. JF

      ... or Howlin' Wolf or something, [laughs] right?

  11. 1:22:02 – 2:07:41

    Writing ‘Fortunate Son’: draft anger, political hypocrisy, and a 20-minute lyric sprint

    1. JR

      Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I feel the exact same way. I think, I think there's truth to what you're saying. Um, I wanna ask you about Fortunate Son. How did you write that? Like, how did, how did that come about? That is, like, one of the greatest rebellion songs of all time.

    2. JF

      [laughs] Appreciate that.

    3. JR

      It's an amazing song. I love it. It's, 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-

    4. JF

      Yeah

    5. JR

      ... you're starting to get tired, crank that sucker up.

    6. JF

      [laughs] Well, um, first of all, I think the first thing I gotta say about it is I was drafted, so I was in the military. And I, I got in the Army Reserves, but, um, was well a- and was on active duty and all the rest, so I well understood the position of, uh, I, I... You might say the military mindset, right? Even though I was a... I was a young person, and this is right during the Vietnam era. And I think I, I, 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, "No, I don't wanna do that." [laughs] Right?

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. JF

      So I got my draft notice, um, was-- got into the Army Reserves. So I understood that side of the coin and that side of fate, you might say. Um, the deal w- I think the deal being, "Okay, I'm in the military, so now I gotta play by the rules. I gotta do everything that's... This is what I am," right?

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. JF

      Um, there's a little-- [sighs] there's a little bit of the whole idea of being American and serving your country. Um, what I'm tr- I'm trying not to, t-trying not to say, "Oh yeah, now I'm gung ho and I'm John Wayne and I'm gonna take, take on Iwo Jima or something," you know? It was more like, "Yeah, but you gotta do this right." You know, you c- you can't just be a, some guy that's on AWOL all the time and being a mess. You know, I wanted to do it right. So, um, I w- I went through all of that and eve- but it's another story, but eventually got my honorable discharge, which led to another song, but it's a different song. Um, and that was just before, just as the Creedence career was getting started. But anyhow, um, during the Vietnam time, you began to... You know, there were, uh, 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 'cause it seemed to be sort of not logical [laughs] how's that. Um, 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, you kinda saw it a few times. These guys were-The fix was in, you know?

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. JF

      And that just, it really didn't seem fair, [coughs] not ju- not just in my own case, but I, I 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.

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. JF

      You know? It just, somebody's ego decided they wanted to have a war, and they had a war. So, m- most of these things that have cropped up ever since have always ended kind of miserably, um, and we never, th- they never were one. They just sort of dissolved.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. JF

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

    17. JR

      Oh, wow

    18. JF

      ... uh, played the conga drum or the shakers or tambourine or piano, you know, all the other stuff. Then they heard how the song went. Um, so they learned their parts as instrumentals, and this was ex- exactly that way. I showed them how to, 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-

    19. JR

      Mm

    20. JF

      ... because, um, starting in 1952, when they sent my second grade class, I think, home to watch, um, to watch the inauguration, I believe, of Eisenhower. Uh, I think that's what it was, and all the, you know, we had a tiny little TV. All I saw was big black limousines. [laughs] That's, uh, that was my entire impression of the presidential thing-

    21. JR

      Right

    22. JF

      ... and politics. So after that, I kind of would watch, uh, parts of the conventions in the summer. Uh, you know, there'd be these gigantic, uh, you know, I didn't know what they were then, but these big rooms full of smoke, and every once in a while, somebody, "Your Honor, the great state of Texas would like to nominate her favorite son, Billy Sol Estes," or whatever.

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. JF

      Right? And they all said that. You know, "The state of Vermont would like to nominate her favorite son." And so that, I had written that one down in my book, and I thought I was gonna write a, kind of a political song. So the band was getting pretty solid in the, in the backing track, and that told me, you know, I, I was driving a career. I mean, I, 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 I w- at one point, after the band had been rehearsing the music for that song, Fortunate Son, uh, for a few weeks, it was getting pretty good. Said, "All right, I gotta write the words. I gotta get the whole song together." I took a little yellow tablet like that, went in my bedroom, and s- sat on the bed, and instead of what I thought it was gonna be, the first thing, I said some... You know, this idea of the red, white, and blue, and the p- they're always super patriots, you know, all this stuff, and bluster and all that, blah, right? And I just go, "How do I get that? How do I get that?" Well, they're waving the flag, and yeah, but what's going on now? They're pointing the cannon at you, [laughs] right?

    25. JR

      Right.

    26. JF

      Uh, yeah, but it ain't me. And I realized, oh, wow, that's something I can repeat. It ain't me. I, I ain't no, you know. And w- literally, that, I mean, it j- 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.

    27. JR

      Wow.

    28. JF

      Coming from the, 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. Um, basically because well-heeled people, uh, getting out of the draft, which kind of pissed me off. [laughs]

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. JF

      You know? I just, you know, there were a lot of guy- now that I was in the, or had been in the military, and I knew there were a lot of other guys felt just like me. It wasn't like they, 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 wanna talk about that.

  12. 2:07:41 – 2:40:08

    CCR leadership, breakthrough confidence (‘Proud Mary’), band fractures, and finding peace later

    1. JF

      And that just happens a lot. Uh, in music, there was people like me. Well, when, when the four people that became Creedence sort of got together in, uh, 1967, after I got off active duty, and we s- "Okay, we're gonna 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, 'cause we, at that point, we started, we said, "We gotta do this all the time if we're ever gonna get any good." So every day during the week, we'd meet at noonOr actually a little before that, maybe 11:00, and sit and talk, and then noon was rehearsal time. Um, and so I'd say, "Okay, anybody got any songs?" And people started looking down. "Yeah. 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. Uh, then next day, same thing, you know, at home, I'd work on some stuff. "Anybody got any songs?" Uh, kind of every- I mean, it was the weirdest quiet. A week later, you know, same thing. And finally I just said, "Well, look, I've been..." You know, I began to feel this thing inside that I gotta push. I mean, I got... I, I think I can do this. And so eventually I g- I got the idea, the songs I'm working on aren't quite there. How about if we take an old song a-and I'll just trick it up, like psychedelicize it? Because I, I'll pick a song I already know is good. It's got good stuff in it, and that's what I did with Suzie Q. I 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, that blank page turned into a different rainbow full of all... Nobody can fault me 'cause it's not my song, right?

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. JF

      Did all this great stuff, this cool musical stuff to it. Um, it got, it... The whole point was to get that tape on a local underground station that was actually playing unpublished tapes, you know, uh, uh, by certain bands. The most famous one you ever heard about w- there was a tape of Janis Joplin singing Hesitation Blues, and Jorma's playing guitar, but in the background, somebody's typing their term paper. [chuckles] It was done in their kitchen, right?

    4. JR

      [laughs]

    5. JF

      And so they were-- It was just sort of a, a, a 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 tapes like that.

    6. JR

      And you could hear the typewriter in the background?

    7. JF

      Yeah, going [imitates typing] .

    8. JR

      [laughs]

    9. JF

      Yeah, yeah. She's singing Hesitation Blues.

    10. JR

      Wow.

    11. JF

      Um, so that became the l-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 Suzie Q. They started playing it probably eight times a day. Each different disc jockey would play it. It's eight minutes and twenty seconds long or whatever, right? And that was really the true beginning. Um, finished that album. My songwriting was, mm, you know, wasn't great. It was competent. But somewhere right after, uh, the album came out... Oh, uh, I wanted to make that point. That everybody had ample opportunity to write a song, and it just kinda wasn't coming. I would show up at the, at the rehearsals, "Well, anybody got a song?" You know, and, and everybody got real quiet. And so I said, "Well, look, okay, let's work on this." And I, I began to realize inside that it was gonna be up to me. It wasn't, it wasn't I wanna control everything. It was, I gotta start rowing this boat, or we're [chuckles] gonna, we're gonna sink in the middle of the ocean. So I started pushing myself harder and harder. Um, the first album comes out on my birthday, uh, 1968. I'm 23 years old, and within, sometime 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 open this package that's been sitting there for a couple days because it said, "Official government business." Who's that for? And I find out it was for me. It was, uh, you know, our apartment house. I'm overjoyed. I mean, this is the biggest struggle, has been, of my life. Wow. Wow. Wow. I turn a little cartwheel on the lawn 'cause I wanna remember that I turned a cartwheel, and ran in the house and picked up my guitar and started playing these chords that are somewhat like Beethoven. [singing] Oh. I start strumming this beat. I start hearing this chorus. See, left the... The first thing I said was, "Left a good job in the city." Well, that was getting out of the Army. Wow. Working for the man every night and day. Wow. What is this? Eventually, I a-arrive at this thing where I say, "Rolling, rolling." Oh, I like that. "Rolling, uh, rolling on the river." It's... That's starting to be beyond me.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. JF

      Out of me, right? I look in my book 'cause 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-

    14. JR

      Ah

    15. JF

      ... first thing. I looked at that and I said, "Wow, this is about... Proud Mary's a riverboat. This is a, a boat named Proud Mary. That's what we're doing here," and I finished the song. Right? I mean, it was kind of Mark Twain, uh-

    16. JR

      Yeah

    17. JF

      ... kinda Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, you know? Uh, had a little bit of kinda gospel flavor and the Old South in it. I said, "Wow." When I got done, which was about a hour, I was about a hour from when I'd opened my honorable discharge, I'm actually holding the, the li- little yellow tablet I'd been writing on. I said, "John, you've written a classic." I realized that this song was w- I had evolved. It was way better than anything I'd ever done before, you know? And so those meetings I'd been having, going to see the band, and, "Well, has anybody got anything?" And no one ever did, and I'd show my little piece of something I was working on. That kinda led, how can I say it, to the confidence to do something really great by just doing it, right? And the knowledge, I mean, I had, I was self-aware. I'm [laughs] looking at this thing, Proud Mary, and it's, it's got Americana in it-

    18. JR

      Yeah

    19. JF

      ... although I don't think I had a word then. It's got, I knew it was Mark Twain and the river and-

    20. JR

      Right

    21. JF

      ... all this soulful stuff. I said, "Wow, this for sure is the best thing I'd ever done." I knew it was a great song [laughs] and the next re- God, I hope I get to do this again.

    22. JR

      [laughs]

    23. JF

      Because you just don't know.

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. JF

      Right?

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. JF

      But that, that was how that came about.

    28. JR

      'Cause it came to you like a bolt of lightning and inspiration-

    29. JF

      Yeah

    30. JR

      ... charged up from the discharge.

Episode duration: 2:40:09

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