Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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, he's ready to... I have some notes that I'll probably never look at.
You got notes? Me? What's on the notes?
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 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 1965. Seven, 68. I mean, like a hundred and I think it was one hundred and twenty nine pounds. Whoa. Yeah. And then I was going to go to the thing. It was the Presidio and I had to meet with the army doctor. Right.
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Chapter 2: How did John Fogerty's military service influence his music career?
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 Son is a big one.
Yeah. Bad Moon Rising, that's another big one people walk out to. Great.
Wow.
It's pretty awesome.
Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but, you know, everybody, whatever floats your boat.
Wow, people just love your music.
Yeah.
So you went through many generations. Like, you got your first record contract. How old were you?
I know I signed one when I was around 19. Of course, it would have been unenforceable.
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Chapter 3: What led to the lawsuit against John Fogerty?
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, 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. 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 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 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, 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. Oh, my God. Right. I picked a good one there, didn't I? Yeah, that's a really good one. I mean, 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, I'll take it. Yeah.
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, that's abhorrent. That's disgusting. You see that. It just drives you nuts.
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Chapter 4: How does John Fogerty reflect on his creative process?
Yeah.
I've 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. They're the ones that decide, because 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 who was driving the bus. So, I mean, that part was... Was pretty good.
He had to talk to somebody at Reprise Records, and some of those people were Reprise Warner Brothers. In other words, about the time I was at Warner Brothers, it must have been a couple of them 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 at least one of the books I read about Jimmy that they didn't try too hard to save him. Jimmy, I guess, was just really effed up for a couple of weeks there.
I mean, I almost got the sense that somebody took a bottle of wine and just... Poured it in him.
Yeah, that's what I heard. That was what the bodyguard was inferring, that they poured pills and alcohol down his mouth.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What does John Fogerty say about honoring talent?
You'll be allowed to receive it. 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.
First of all, I think the first thing I got to say about it is I was drafted, so I was in the military. I got in the Army Reserves, but 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...
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Chapter 6: How did John Fogerty write 'Fortunate Son'?
That was something, no, I don't want to do that. 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 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 Iwo Jima or something. It was more like, yeah, but you got to do this right. You can't just be a some guy that's on AWOL all the time and being a mess, 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 Creedence career was getting started. But anyhow, during the Vietnam time, 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.
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Chapter 7: What was the impact of the Vietnam War on Fogerty's songwriting?
Right. And that just really didn't seem fair. Right. 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. Somebody's ego decided they wanted to have a war and they had a war. Most of these things that have cropped up
ever since, have always ended kind of miserably. And they never were won, they just sort of dissolved. 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 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 Creedence 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 I don't think I had told them the name of the song yet. I thought I was writing a song called Favorite Son.
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Chapter 8: How did John Fogerty's personal experiences shape his music career?
Because starting in 1952 when they sent my second grade class, I think, home to watch... to watch the inauguration, I believe, of Eisenhower. I think that's what it was. 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.
There'd be these gigantic... 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 Saul Estes, or whatever. And they all said that. 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 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.
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 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 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, sat on the bed, And instead of what I thought it was going to be, the first thing I said, 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, blah, right? And I said, 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?
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 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.
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