What Nobody Told You About John Fogerty

as the lead singer and primary creative force in credence clearwater revival john fogerty helped define rock and roll history both in his music career and outside of it he's lived an eventful and remarkable life so let's go up around the bend and discover the untold truth of john fogerty through his work in credence clearwater revival and in his solo efforts fogarty has been one of the most prominent practitioners of swamp rock that's a genre that combines hard rock with blues folk and various forms of music native to the gulf coast area of the american southeast acting like a louisiana boy is something fogarty fully embraced as he sang in a gritty raspy voice with a strong twinge of a bayou area accent on all of his songs perhaps most famously on the ccr track born on the bayou but while fogerty obviously loves and appreciates swamp rock and all that it represents he isn't from the area in fact he was born far away from the bayou as he arrived in the world in 1945 in berkeley california the golden state is known for a lot of musical styles and thanks to fogarty one of those is a genre more properly associated with another part of the country entirely the credence clearwater revival song fortunate sun is a blistering takedown of young men who use their money power and connections to avoid serving in combat during the vietnam war it was released around the peak of the conflict in 1969 and thanks to its enduring cultural appeal it's frequently used in movies set in that era fogarty composed the song in just 20 minutes as he was inspired by his distaste for the lavish 1968 wedding between dwight eisenhower's grandson and richard nixon's daughter which contrasted sharply with the war's violence and the protests of the day but in a way fogarty was also a bit of a fortunate son himself around the time that he received his draft notice he went to an army recruiter and volunteered hoping to be rewarded with a less dangerous assignment and he wound up with a job as a supply clerk in the u.s army reserve he went through training at fort bragg and was stationed at fort knox serving stateside for about two years in total as he told goldmine magazine in 1997. luckily for me i didn't have to go overseas or serve three years in the hardcore army fogarty's experience is hardly the same as draft dodging but he was certainly spared the worst of the war's horrors i just want to say what a great country we live in and god bless the men and women who protect us in the late 60s and early 70s when rock bands typically favored short and punchy names fogarty fronted a group with a long-winded vaguely pretentious mouthful of a name the three words in credence clearwater revival sounded like they were carefully chosen surely one would assume they must have some deeper meaning when saul's ants of fantasy records signed the band they were known as the gollywogs but zance hated that name so he struck a deal the band would come up with 10 new name possibilities and he'd come up with another 10 and they'd find one that everybody agreed on as guitarist tom fogarty recalled in the book bad moon rising some of the suggestions included muddy rabbit deep bottle blue and credence new ball and the ruby his bandmates became obsessed with that last one which was inspired by the real name of a friend of toms then they started surgically building a title adding an e to turn credence into credence thereby suggesting a creed or a deeply held belief and clear water was taken from an ad for olympia beer which was produced from cool clear water water the natural element then john fogarty put those two words together with revival as the band felt like they were getting a second win with their record deal and the rest is history creden's clear water revival wasn't just about that hard and fast dirty rock and roll as they also occasionally released pleasant little ditties that made for great sing-alongs case in point the joyful and jaunty looking out my back door according to ccr drummer doug clifford john fogerty wrote the song for his son josh who was just three years old at the time of composition looking out my back tour describes in great detail a wacky circus-like procession witnessed by the narrator while he as the title indicates looks out his back door among the sights to behold are a cartwheeling giant musician elephants flying spoons and a magician creating illusions and as it turns out fogarty was inspired by a very own rock and roll source dr seuss's 1937 book and to think that i saw it on mulberry street he knew his son would enjoy hearing his dad's voice coming out of the radio crooning some goofy lyrics despite the kid-friendly source material the preponderance of weird events and magical creatures led many at the time to think the song actually celebrated mind-altering drugs vice president spiro agnew even publicly called out the psychedelic references that weren't quite there in 1970 creedence clearwater revival took the john fogarty composition travel and band all the way to number two on the pop chart it was a fast and hard rocking song with howling vocals that spoke to the contemporary rise of heavy metal but also felt like a classic 50s rocker that someone like little richard could have recorded that evocation was likely no accident as fogarty was a big fan of the flamboyant rock and roll pioneer all those great early little richard songs like tutti frutti and good golly miss molly were recorded and released by specialty records which signed the performer to an exploitative contract the terms of that contract initially paid him fifty dollars for the rights to songs with a half cent royalty for each copy sold specialty controlled good golly miss molly and in october 1971 the company felt that travel and band was such an egregious rip-off of the little richard song that it sued fogarty for 500 000 for copyright infringement ultimately though the case was eventually dropped john fogarty's older brother tom was also a member of creedence clearwater revival both fogarties originally had their own separate northern california rock bands and after tom's group spider web and the insects flopped he joined jon in the group that would eventually become ccr tom could sing and write songs but jon quickly emerged as the more dominant front man and composer only one song that tom wrote walk on the water made it on to ccr's first album frustrated by his lack of creative input as ccr rose to the top of the rock world tom left the band in 1971. disputes over the control of ccr's music further drove a wedge between the brothers john contributed some work to tom's 1974 album zephyr national but they remained distant until the end tom died from complications of aids in 1990 at age 48 reportedly contracting the disease from a blood transfusion he received after a surgical procedure years later john was able to come to terms with the relationship in 2019 he told ultimate classic rock at some point i made a point to myself of forgiving my brother i just felt like i had to do that because he wasn't around for me to get to work it out with him i tried but he was so not connected to reality soon after credence clearwater revival disbanded in 1972 john fogerty released a couple of solo albums but neither sold well then in 1976 he put together the album hudu but it's single you got the magic tanked asylum records opted to shelve the album and it's never been officially released fogerty had to deal with that personal failure while still dealing with lingering issues over what he felt were unfair deals with saul zentz and ccr's label fantasy records between 1975 and 1985 he didn't release any albums at all he didn't start recording again until 1983 but then he abandoned an entire album because he thought it was subpar then in 1985 he unleashed centerfield in which he worked out some demons the songs mr greed and zance can't dance were both about zance although a slander lawsuit forced him to change the title of the latter to vance can dance nevertheless the bitterness persisted fogarty didn't start playing his ccr songs live until 2004. a year later he signed a new contract with ironically enough fantasy records zance was out of the picture by this point as the label had been sold to concord music group credence clearwater revival's fifth album cosmos factory released in 1970 is full of some classic songs but its title speaks to simmering banned turmoil ccr used to practice in a berkeley california warehouse and the atmosphere there along with how fogarty made drummer doug cosmo clifford relentlessly rehearse made it feel like a factory fogerty was not only the leader of ccr's musical direction he was also the manager which may not have been the ideal situation as clifford told louder sound john was brilliant at all the musical things but he had no experience at managing particularly at the level we were involved at it was a critical mistake and ultimately it broke up the band after ccr split bogerty thought that his bandmates betrayed him because they'd sold their right to vote on banned decisions and thus control of the band to saul's ants while fogarty and his former band mates remained distant over the years their lawyers didn't in the 90s clifford and bassist stu cook toured as credence clearwater revisited fogerty sued in 1996 as he controlled the ccr name the parties reached an agreement in 2001 wherein clifford and cook paid fogerty a royalty for billing themselves by the new name they stopped paying that fee in 2011 when fogarty disparaged revisited in interviews which was a violation of the legal agreement that led to even more lawsuits fogerty came back in a big way with his chart-topping 1985 release center field the album's title track is a nostalgic tune about baseball that soon became a standard played over the loudspeakers at major and minor league ballparks the song was inspired by stories that fogerty's father and older brothers told him about legendary ball players like joe dimaggio and babe ruth as fogarty recalled to mlb.com in 2010 when i was a little kid there were no teams on the west coast so the idea of a major league team was really mythical to me the players were heroes to me as long as i can remember because the san francisco born dimaggio played center field fogarty came to believe that that position in yankee stadium was quote the most hallowed place in all of the universe in 2010 fogerty was recognized for his unique contribution to the national pastime as the national baseball hall of fame honored centerfield on the occasion of its 25th anniversary fogarty played live at the induction ceremony and also donated his custom bat-shaped guitar to the museum when i originally wrote this song it was basically an eight-year-old boy uh saying thank you to baseball for all the joy and inspiration not only did john fogerty resent fantasy records boss saul zance he also resented his former credence clearwater revival bandmates stu cook and doug clifford that deep long-standing animosity has prevented ccr from ever reuniting since their 1972 split in fact all four band members have played together again just once in 1980 at tom fogarty's wedding in 1993 john fogarty was given a chance to let bygones be bygones when incoming president bill clinton asked ccr to play at his inauguration but fogarty passed on the gig as he recalled in his memoir fortunate son i said i'm not playing as a band with credence i don't play with those guys we will never play as a band again john fogerty is a man of his word and ccr still hasn't played music together though the surviving original members did all share a stage in 1993 when they were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame but when it came time for the customary performance for the newly inducted act fogarty played with rock legends bruce springsteen and robbie robertson instead as he'd prevented cook and clifford from taking the stage check out one 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Channel: Grunge

Views: 116,671

Rating: 4.8429751 out of 5

Keywords: grunge, ccr, creedence clearwater revival, musicians, john fogerty

Id: _oQtbA3NzuM

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021