John Fogerty on CCR, ‘Fortunate Son’ and Donald Trump

In a time of exploding success and creativity in rock music, Creedence Clearwater Revival was quite possibly the finest singles band of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in suburban El Cerrito in Northern California by frontman John Fogerty, his brother Tom on guitar, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, CCR put up an absurd number of all-timers in the space of about 2 1/2 years, including most of the 20 collected on “Chronicle,” the 1976 greatest-hits LP that still sits on the Billboard 200 album chart today, nearly half a century later.

The band’s instantly identifiable sound — which the members began developing first as the Blue Velvets and then as the Golliwogs — combined blues, rock, psychedelia and R&B; John Fogerty’s voice, preternaturally scratchy and soulful for a guy in his early 20s, gave the music a feeling of sex and grit even as he flexed his commercial pop smarts as a producer and hook-meister.

For all their popularity, Fogerty refused to play Creedence’s biggest hits for decades due to a prolonged legal battle with his old label, Fantasy Records, over the rights to his songs — a feud that reached a kind of apex when Fantasy’s head honcho, Saul Zaentz, sued Fogerty for plagiarizing himself with his solo song “The Old Man Down the Road,” which Zaentz said sounded too much like CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle.” (Fogerty eventually won; Zaentz died in 2014.)

Yet two years ago, Fogerty regained control of his publishing, and now he’s made an album of Taylor Swift-style rerecorded versions of the band’s songs called “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,” due Aug. 22. Ahead of a concert Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl, where he’ll be accompanied by a band that includes his sons Shane and Tyler, Fogerty, 80, called from the road to tell the stories behind five of his signature tunes.

‘Proud Mary’ (1969)

After charting in 1968 with covers of Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” Fogerty scored his first hit as a songwriter with this funky and propulsive country-soul jam.

“Proud Mary” came as a bolt of lightning and inspiration from heaven. I’d received my honorable discharge from the Army in the middle of 1968, and I was overjoyed — I mean, absolutely euphoric. It meant that I could now pursue music full-time. So I went in the house with my Rickenbacker guitar and started strumming some chords, and the first line I wrote was “Left a good job in the city / Working for the man every night and day.” That’s how I felt getting out of the Army.

But what is this song about? I really didn’t know. I went to my little song book that I’d only started writing in a few months before — it was a conscious decision to get more professional — and, lo and behold, the very first thing I’d ever written in that book was the phrase “Proud Mary.” I didn’t know what it meant — I just wrote it down because that was gonna be my job. I’ve got this little book, and I’m gonna collect my thoughts.

At the very bottom of the same page was the word “riverboat.” I remember saying to myself, “Oh, this song’s about a riverboat named Proud Mary.” How strange is that? Who writes a song about a boat? But after that I was off and running — finished the song within the hour, and for the first time in my life, I was looking at the page and I said, “My God, I’ve written a classic.” I knew it was a great song, like the people I admired so much: Hoagy Carmichael or Leiber & Stoller or Lennon & McCartney. I felt it in my bones.

Where did the narrator’s accent come from? “Big wheel keep on toinin’” and all that?
Howlin’ Wolf was a huge inspiration to me when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. He said things like that a lot, and I guess it went into my brain. I didn’t do it consciously — it just seemed right to me when I was writing the song.

CCR had five singles that got to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Proud Mary.” Do you recall what was at No. 1 when “Proud Mary” reached No. 2?
Let’s see, this was early 1969 — I’d love to think that it was [Otis Redding’s] “Dock of the Bay.”

“Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone.
No kidding. How cool.

Did you know Sly?
I never met Sly Stone. I really loved the records. I was at Woodstock, and he was a couple acts after me. I watched Janis [Joplin] and then some of Sly, and then we retired to our Holiday Inn — must have been 4 in the morning by then.

Ike and Tina Turner remade “Proud Mary” for themselves.
It’s almost a different song. First time I heard it, I was driving in my car — was one of those times you pump your first and go, “Yeah!”

‘Lodi’ (1969)

This twangy account of a musician fallen on hard times first appeared on the B-side of the “Bad Moon Rising” single.

My mom and dad loved traveling from our little town of El Cerrito. We would drive up San Pablo Avenue — I don’t think there was a freeway back then — and cross the Carquinez Bridge into Vallejo and keep going up into the northern-central part of California and all those wonderful places like Stockton and Tracy and Modesto. I got to know all these towns like Dixon and Davis, and I heard my parents talk about Lodi. As a youngster, that was one of the words I saved in my book, like I was talking about earlier. I told myself, “That’s important, John — you need to save that and remember it.”

As I started to get a little older, I remember playing on campus at Cal Berkeley with a ragtag group of guys — a local dance kind of thing for the students. The guy from Quicksilver Messenger Service with the afro [David Freiberg], he was there too playing with his band, and they did a song where it sounded like he was saying “Lodi.” I was heartbroken. When he got done with his set, I went over and asked the gentleman, “What was that song you were doing? Was it called ‘Lodi’?” He said, “Oh, you mean ‘Codeine.’” Boy, did I crack up. Here I am, the farmer boy thinking about Lodi, and he’s the downtown guy talking about drugs.

Anyway, all that meandering my family did through the Central Valley was very important to me. There came a time when I was inspired to write a song framed in a place that was kind of out of the way. I was 23 or so, but I was picturing a much older person than myself — maybe Merle Haggard when he gets older. There he is, stuck in this little town because he’d drifted in and he doesn’t have the money to get out.

‘Fortunate Son’ (1969)

Immediately adopted as an anthem among those opposed to the Vietnam War, Fogerty’s searing protest song was later inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

You said in 2014 that you weren’t entirely satisfied by your lead vocal.
I still feel the same way. The basic tracks for “Down on the Corner” and “Fortunate Son” were both recorded, and one afternoon I went over to Wally Heider’s studio to finish the songs. For “Down on the Corner,” I did the maracas and the middle solo part, then sang all the background vocals, then sang the lead. So I’d been singing at the top of my lungs for probably an hour and a half, then I had to go back and finish “Fortunate Son.” I was screaming my heart out, doing the best I could, but later I felt that some of the notes were a little flat — that I hadn’t quite hit the mark. I always sort of cringed about that.

There’s an argument to be made that the raggedness in your voice is what gives the song its urgency.
I know that in the case of the Beatles, John would just sit in the studio screaming and screaming until his voice got raw enough, then he’d record some takes. Perhaps the fact that it was a little out of tune made it — what’s the word? — more pop-worthy. I don’t know.

“Fortunate Son” was heard at President Trump’s recent military parade, despite your asking him not to use it during his 2020 campaign.
I didn’t watch other than a few seconds. I was trying to find the Yankee game and came across the parade. I was expecting it would be like the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s morning, but it seemed really kind of sleepy. Somebody emailed me later that night and told me. I thought it was strange — thought it would be something that someone would be wary of.

Because of the cease-and-desist — and because the song is literally about a person of privilege avoiding military service.
I thought to myself: Do you think somebody did it on purpose? Are they doing it as some weird kind of performance art? I might be giving too much credit to the thought that went into it.

“Fortunate Son” is one of the great rock songs about class, which is a concept that Trump has deeply reshaped in his time.
He’s a rich guy but he manages to make himself look like the underdog and the victim. I’m from the ’60s — the hippie era — when young people were much more unified in the sense that everybody should be equal and everyone should be tolerant and respectful of each other. It’s a little different now, even though I’m very happy that people are protesting and making noise and pointing out injustice — I’m thrilled that’s going on instead of just standing by and watching somebody get lit on fire.

But we’re so polarized in America now. I’m hopeful, though. You didn’t ask me the question, but I am. I think we’re all starting to get tired of that. It doesn’t work very well — what we’re doing right now is certainly not working. If we fire everybody and quit all knowledge and science and education and manners and morality and ethics and kick out all the immigrants — well, I guess you and me are probably gone along with everybody else. I mean, it’s just such complete negativity. As Americans, that’s not us — that’s not how we roll.

‘Run Through the Jungle’ (1970)

With worries about the spread of gun ownership in his head, Fogerty devised one of his eeriest productions for this swampy psych-rock number.

I was trying to do a lot with a little — certainly got the band cooking and got a good groove going. For the intro, I wanted to create maybe a Stanley Kubrick movie soundscape, but of course I didn’t have a symphony orchestra or synthesizers or any of that kind of stuff. I had to imagine: How do I use these rock ’n’ roll instruments — basically guitar and piano and a little bit of percussion and some backward tape — and create that ominous, rolling vibe?

Along with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, you were one of the few rock and pop musicians of that era who produced your own records.
To me, it was natural. I remember a time in the little shed that Fantasy had built outside the back of their warehouse to use as a recording studio — I was working there one day, had the earphones on and I was at the mic. This was Golliwogs time, probably ’65 or ’66, and I was trying to get something accomplished that was not getting accomplished. I said out loud, “Well, I guess Phil Spector’s not gonna come down here and produce us, so I’m gonna have to learn how to be a producer myself.”

Saul Zaentz famously took you to court for self-plagiarism. Is there anything at all in your mind that connects “Run Through the Jungle” and “The Old Man Down the Road”?
Other than both of them having a very deep footprint within the blues, which is what has influenced me greatly in my life, I never thought they were even similar. The whole thing was preposterous.

‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ (1970)

After CCR’s “Pendulum” LP — which included this tender ballad that now boasts more than 2 billion streams on Spotify — Tom Fogerty quit the group; the remaining three members went their separate ways less than two years later.

I loved my band — I thought it was the culmination of everything I’d been working for — and to watch it sort of disintegrating, I just felt powerless. That’s why I use the strange metaphor of rain coming down on a sunny day: We had finally found our sunny day, and yet everybody seemed to be more and more unhappy. I just felt completely befuddled by what was going on — I didn’t know what to say or do that was gonna fix it.

Up to that time, I’d thought the way to fix it was: Well, I’ll just write more songs and we’ll have more success — that’ll take care of all our problems. That’s how I felt — pathetically so — even as far as my relationship with Saul Zaentz and the horrible contract. I thought if I just showed that I was a great songwriter and could make these records that perhaps he would have some empathy and go, “I should treat John better because I want to have more of these songs.” When I say that now, it sounds utterly foolish.

In spite of the pain you were in at the time, this song is one of your sweetest.
That’s true. It’s like an atom bomb going off in your backyard — it’s so horrible that you just sort of cling to your positive human emotion. Even if it’s painful, you try to feel rather than be numb.

“Have You Ever Seen the Rain” has been covered widely: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, the Ramones, Rod Stewart. You have a favorite rendition besides yours?
I really liked Bonnie Tyler’s version.