Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0116 _STORY INSPIRE: Decisions that transforman, with John Fogerty

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#0116 _STORY INSPIRE: Decisions that transforman, with John Fogerty · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Put your stuff on the floor.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. You can keep it on the table.
• 0:17
  It's fine. There's water there, too, in this metal cup.
• 0:22
  And then there's coffee.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, thanks so much. Okay, yeah, he's ready to... I
• 0:27
  have some notes that I'll probably never look at, but.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: You got notes?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Meh.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: What's on the notes?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Just stuff like what I went through with CCR and
• 0:40
  all that. But tell me something. Did you read up
• 0:45
  on me or anything?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan. I don't have to read up
• 0:48
  on you. Okay. I read up on you a little
• 0:50
  bit just to catch up about how you got out
• 0:53
  of the– well, you did do military service, but you
• 0:57
  got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating.
• 1:00
  I read that. Is that true?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Is that true? They lied to you? There was a
• 1:04
  story about you smoking a lot of weed and getting
• 1:07
  emaciated so you can get out of the Army.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not quite in that sequence, but those things
• 1:16
  did happen. Yeah, I had determined to lose a lot
• 1:24
  of weight, right? So I was kind of really skinny
• 1:30
  by 1965. seven, 68. Uh, I mean like a hundred
• 1:35
  and I think it was 129 pounds.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, and then I was going to go, uh,
• 1:42
  to the thing. It was the presidio and I had
• 1:45
  to meet with the army doctor. Right. And my friends
• 1:52
  gave me a couple of joints and I stuck them in,
• 1:55
  you know, I used to smoke and those cigarettes, I
• 1:58
  stuck it in the, cigarette and going across the bay
• 2:02
  bridge i smoked them that's so i hadn't even thought
• 2:06
  about it so if you want yeah man he he
• 2:08
  he went on a starvation diet a protest diet and
• 2:11
  then smoked a lot of weed that's what i heard
• 2:14
  that way but yeah okay but it's it's essentially some.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Truth some truth to it uh you had a legendary
• 2:22
  career my friend Thank you.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Still working on it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It's incredible, man. You are like one of the main
• 2:30
  voices of rock and roll in America, if you really
• 2:32
  think about it. Your songs, I mean, you have so
• 2:37
  many gigantic hits. You know, when the UFC has a
• 2:42
  lot of walkout songs, you know, when fighters come out
• 2:44
  and walk out, a lot of guys walk out to
• 2:46
  your music. I don't even know if you're aware of it.
• 2:49
  Fortunate Son is a big one.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Bad Moon Rising, that's another big one people walk out to.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Great. Wow.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: It's pretty awesome.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but,
• 3:03
  you know, everybody, whatever floats your boat.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Wow, people just love your music.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: So you went through many generations. Like, you got your
• 3:12
  first record contract. How old were you?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I know I signed one when I was around 19.
• 3:18
  Of course, it would have been....
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Unenforceable it's not legal at the time right you had
• 3:25
  to be.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: 21 yeah I believe so.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah there's well you're also one of the first rock
• 3:32
  and roll artists that wrote songs that became very popular
• 3:37
  about how you're getting screwed over by the record business
• 3:40
  you know what I mean so Leonard Skidder did it
• 3:43
  working for MCA they did that song but you had
• 3:46
  Vans Can't Dance.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: It was actually Zant's Can't Dance but you had to
• 3:50
  change it right yep Yeah, the name of the person
• 3:53
  was Zantz. It sold about a half a million copies
• 3:57
  as Zantz. But the record company, Warner Brothers, in their
• 4:03
  way of settling somewhat, had me change it to Vance.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Because the guy's name was Zantz.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Zantz, yeah.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: It was screwing up.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: That's right in the middle of that whole thing was
• 4:20
  a mess. I got sued for sounding like myself.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: What?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: How'd that happen?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you. So, and I didn't find this out
• 4:33
  and there was eventually a trial. So it's not, many
• 4:38
  people think that that's funny. You got sued for sounding
• 4:42
  like yourself. Wow, that's funny. Well, no, you're getting a
• 4:45
  legal lawsuit that's probably going to take away a lot
• 4:50
  of your money, and you're going to go through three,
• 4:55
  four years of anguish. Well, anyway, ended up in a trial.
• 5:01
  He was suing me for, at the time, was an
• 5:04
  enormous amount of money, $ 144 million for his, whatever, mental
• 5:10
  anguish or something. The logistics, I guess you'd call it,
• 5:19
  I had made a new song called the old man
• 5:21
  down the road. It was on my album. It was
• 5:23
  my comeback on center field. And I had finally gotten
• 5:28
  away from fantasy records, which is where credence was and
• 5:32
  saw its hands who owned it. So, you know, when
• 5:37
  you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the
• 5:41
  former people tend to be jealous, I guess. And, uh,
• 5:47
  So he was suing me. What had happened, though, I
• 5:49
  found out in the trial, the bass player from Creedence
• 5:55
  was another one of those people. I guess it couldn't
• 5:57
  stand that I'd now had success in a later life.
• 6:03
  He went down to Fantasy and saw Mr. Saul's ants
• 6:06
  and said, John is ripping off Creedence. You should sue him.
• 6:12
  The irony in all of that is that I had
• 6:15
  taught Stu every single note that he ever played in Creedence.
• 6:20
  It was not his own creation. As we talk, you'll see.
• 6:25
  I was the guy inventing the arrangements. And so to
• 6:29
  take possession of Creedence was pretty ironic and pretty over
• 6:34
  the top. Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and
• 6:39
  Saul had unlimited funds. And so it went to a trial.
• 6:45
  I prevailed that trial and got that over with.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: But they torture you during the process because it takes
• 6:53
  years and it costs an enormous amount of money to
• 6:55
  fight yourself.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all that stuff.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: That is so crazy that they can sue you for
• 7:00
  sounding like you.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that
• 7:06
  I prevailed. I mean, you know, what we're really talking
• 7:09
  about is when you come into the consciousness of the world,
• 7:14
  I guess, and you have a certain style, if you're lucky.
• 7:18
  And so you start creating whatever your art is. You're
• 7:21
  an actor or you're a painter or, in my case,
• 7:24
  a musician. And people start liking the style. Well, how
• 7:31
  unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes
• 7:34
  ownership of your style and now says, you have to
• 7:37
  go back and invent some other style. Be some other person.
• 7:41
  You know, it's just That would be really difficult. Imagine
• 7:44
  Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have
• 7:48
  their own style having to reinvent and change to something else.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to
• 7:56
  do that. It's insane because, look, so many artists sound
• 8:00
  like other artists anyway and no one has a problem
• 8:03
  with that as long as they're not ripping off the
• 8:05
  notes and the lyrics. There's a lot of people that
• 8:06
  sound like people. But the idea that you– could get
• 8:10
  sued for sounding like you with new music and new
• 8:15
  lyrics is, that's one of the most insane things I've
• 8:18
  ever heard of. I can't believe that didn't get thrown
• 8:20
  out immediately.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Right. Um, well that shows the, the, I guess the
• 8:26
  ego and the possessiveness that people want to have. Um,
• 8:33
  You know, I had written a new song and he
• 8:34
  didn't want me to. He wanted to own the new stuff.
• 8:37
  He wanted to own me, basically. That was the idea.
• 8:41
  You can never do anything unless you do it for me,
• 8:43
  you know. So I was. But not just for myself,
• 8:49
  for everyone, for all artists. It was kind of a
• 8:52
  major ruling. And thank God it went that way.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Well, thank God it also was public, like with that
• 9:00
  song and the lawsuit around the song, you having to
• 9:03
  change the name of the song. Because back then, at
• 9:06
  least at the time, like this was probably, what, the 80s?
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Most people had no idea how evil the music business
• 9:14
  can be. Unless they were told they had no idea.
• 9:19
  They bought the albums. They loved the musicians. And they
• 9:22
  just liked the music. They didn't know what was going
• 9:25
  on behind the scenes. They didn't know how these people
• 9:27
  own your catalog. They own the music. They own the publishing.
• 9:31
  They try to just get as much money out of
• 9:34
  you as humanly possible. Own your name. Own your likeness.
• 9:39
  Most fans had no idea.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And that's probably the way it really should be. When
• 9:44
  I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his
• 9:47
  guitar player. I didn't want to know all. I didn't
• 9:50
  even know there was stuff. behind it to know. The Colonel. Yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I picked a good one there, didn't I?
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good one.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, the kernel was evil. That's just too bad.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Another similar situation. Like, there's a lot of these great
• 10:04
  artists get, like Prince. He got wrapped up to the
• 10:07
  point where he had to change his name to a
• 10:09
  symbol because he didn't own his name anymore. Prince!
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember going, well, if he doesn't want to
• 10:15
  use it, I'll take it.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, it's just the business itself. I mean,
• 10:23
  you have these creative artists that make this music that
• 10:27
  everybody loves. And then you have these hyenas that work
• 10:30
  behind the scenes that are the ones that are collecting
• 10:32
  the majority of the money from it. And they're not
• 10:35
  making any music. And to the average fan like myself, like,
• 10:38
  that's abhorrent. That's disgusting. Like, you see that. It just
• 10:42
  drives you nuts.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Well, also, you know, the creative people are special. And,
• 10:50
  I mean, you know, look around. There's way more of
• 10:54
  other types of people than there are creative people. And
• 10:58
  to douse that, you know, or own that, which is
• 11:02
  what was going to happen, is just an onerous thing.
• 11:10
  I used to be a lot more angry about all
• 11:12
  this stuff. I'm a lot older. I can't say wiser.
• 11:15
  It's more like.
• 11:18
  I came out on the good side of it. I
• 11:20
  try not to worry about it too much.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It's great that you came out on the good side
• 11:25
  of it, but it's also great for people to know.
• 11:28
  And it's really great for young artists to be aware
• 11:31
  as they're coming up, especially as they're beginning their journey,
• 11:35
  that this could happen to them.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's all kinds of, you know, bad people
• 11:42
  around just waiting for you to slip up and sign
• 11:46
  something that will give your rights away, that sort of thing.
• 11:52
  I get such a joy out of music, you know,
• 11:55
  I mean, I just, I started that way when I
• 11:58
  was a little kid. I mean, didn't even know what
• 12:01
  I was doing or what that was. I was hearing
• 12:03
  this sound and, you know, and I liked it and
• 12:07
  I just kind of went with it. I didn't try
• 12:08
  to analyze it too much. And of course, later with
• 12:13
  all the things, you know, the, different roads you go
• 12:18
  through trying to get to some place. Happily, I still
• 12:26
  get that same joy. I mean, I just, I'm just
• 12:29
  so glad. You know, a lot of this, of course,
• 12:32
  is from the care of my wife, Julie. If I
• 12:37
  hadn't have met her, I probably would be dead. Simple
• 12:40
  as that.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Wow. Why do you think you'd be dead?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I didn't see any way out. I was really abusing myself,
• 12:54
  alcohol mostly. I really felt bad inside. When you get
• 13:01
  like that, Joe, you're not really operating on the same
• 13:07
  plane in the world that all the other people that
• 13:09
  you see. You walk into a market or something, look
• 13:13
  around and Probably most of the people are kind of normal,
• 13:16
  you know, whatever we call that. But when you're really
• 13:21
  hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case,
• 13:25
  something really unjust had been done to me. But, you know,
• 13:31
  however you get there and then you start abusing yourself
• 13:35
  with drugs, alcohol, whatever, you just kind of– it becomes
• 13:42
  a habit. You just stay there, right? And so you're
• 13:45
  not really enjoying the sunshine and the love that's around
• 13:49
  you and all the rest of it. You become kind
• 13:52
  of a pathetic person, sad, certainly. So that, you know,
• 13:57
  that was the deal. When Julie met me, I was
• 14:02
  that guy. There was sort of a, certainly an anger,
• 14:07
  I mean, but a bitterness, too. Almost like a self-fulfilling...
• 14:15
  prophecy where you look for something to go wrong and
• 14:19
  then it goes wrong. And you go, see, I told you.
• 14:23
  I mean, it's a terrible mental place to be. And
• 14:27
  I was there.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Do you think this was a loop that you got
• 14:29
  in because of the lawsuits?
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: It really just got you that hard?
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Well, there was more than one lawsuit, but The betrayal
• 14:39
  by the people in my band, you know. I just
• 14:43
  told you about a very evil man, right?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm the only guy from Credence who's ever actually
• 14:49
  mentioned that he's an evil person to the extent that
• 14:55
  quite publicly my brother Tom, right during this same time,
• 15:00
  was saying that Saul was his best friend.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, Jesus.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It was just really hard to deal with. The other
• 15:09
  two guys in the band were kind of just more
• 15:12
  cowardly about it. They just never spoke up. Just kind of,
• 15:16
  give me the money.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: How the fuck was your brother saying that guy was
• 15:21
  your best friend while he was suing you?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: He was signed, re-signed after the breakup of Credence. He
• 15:33
  kind of shopped around and didn't have much success finding
• 15:37
  a label. And so he went right about the time
• 15:40
  that this trial was going to happen. He resigned with fantasy.
• 15:46
  I'm talking about the first trial.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Which was the first trial?
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: The first trial was about basically the band had lost
• 15:55
  its life savings. All of us in Creedence. The record
• 16:00
  company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan. And
• 16:08
  I'm saying this with a smile because nowadays it just
• 16:11
  sounds so... You know, if some guy comes walking up
• 16:14
  to you and got a trench coat on a corner
• 16:17
  in New York City, hey, buddy, you know, you're probably
• 16:21
  going to avoid that guy. But the record company was
• 16:25
  in this tax thing. And for all we knew, we
• 16:30
  were going to be paying 90% income tax, right? I mean,
• 16:36
  the tax... are pretty stringent and pretty high. And so
• 16:43
  they offered us or basically kind of ushered us into
• 16:49
  this plan, offshore tax plan, and it would allow us
• 16:55
  to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10%
• 17:00
  and 20%, something like that. So it was a huge
• 17:05
  financial savings for us I can tell you that the
• 17:11
  name of this particular thing was a bank in the
• 17:13
  Bahamas called Castle Bank. And we had it checked out.
• 17:19
  I mean, the people on our side in the band
• 17:22
  had it checked out by our people, our own accountant.
• 17:29
  The bass player's father was an entertainment lawyer and had
• 17:33
  a big firm. They, among other people, represented the Oakland Raiders.
• 17:39
  So we thought they were pretty solid. And they checked
• 17:42
  it all out and said that it was okay. It
• 17:44
  was legit. So we did it. But time went on
• 17:48
  and it seemed to be not legit to the point
• 17:54
  that somewhere in the 70s, the bank disappeared and all
• 17:59
  our money in it disappeared. So we sued. Oh, Jesus. Yep.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: So here it is. The bank was being used by
• 18:09
  the CIA to funnel money for covert military operations, including
• 18:14
  those at Andros Island, a staging area for anti-Castro activities.
• 18:19
  So they were stealing your money. How? I just found that.
• 18:25
  I don't know. I just typed it in and went
• 18:27
  to the Wikipedia and I was like, well, that's interesting.
• 18:30
  So insane.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: See, I didn't know any of that.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: You didn't know until now?
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I knew that now. Or I suspect.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you know that up until now or did
• 18:40
  you just find it out just now?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: You could tell me a lot of things right now
• 18:45
  and I'd say, oh, yeah, I guess assumed all that
• 18:48
  stuff was kind of happening. But I didn't know it
• 18:51
  at the time in the early 70s when we or
• 18:55
  late 60s when we got into this thing. It was actually.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Do you know how anti-American that is? The CIA stole
• 19:02
  from Creedence Clearwater Revival. You know how fucking crazy that is?
• 19:07
  That is so wild.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't know that part. The funny thing is
• 19:16
  I had decided to get out of that plan, right?
• 19:22
  And I had gone down to see my own people,
• 19:25
  my accountant, my attorney in Oakland and and told them,
• 19:30
  I just want out of this thing. I don't like
• 19:32
  the idea that whenever I want some money, like an allowance,
• 19:38
  you got to call up some bank account somewhere over there,
• 19:42
  and it takes some time, some few days before I
• 19:46
  actually receive my money. And it was starting to just smell.
• 19:51
  It was starting this. And now we're talking 1975, 76.
• 19:54
  And so I actually had the meeting and I said,
• 20:00
  I want to be out of this plan. I don't want, oh,
• 20:07
  I said, one of the things I said to the
• 20:09
  meeting of professionals, look, take a shoebox, put all the
• 20:15
  money I've ever earned into the shoebox, and now hand
• 20:20
  me the shoebox so I can see how much money
• 20:22
  have I earned. Because I didn't know. It was just
• 20:26
  going straight into this fund, right, into this Castle Bank.
• 20:30
  But they couldn't tell me. So I leave, I get
• 20:34
  down to the parking lot in the basement of this
• 20:38
  tall building in Oakland and I'm with the guy that
• 20:41
  runs my office and I say, we're going to have
• 20:45
  to have another meeting because even though I told him
• 20:48
  I want to get out of the plane, I didn't
• 20:50
  stand up like on the table and go, I'm ordering
• 20:53
  you and you and you get me out of the plane.
• 20:56
  I realized they could weasel some more time until I
• 21:01
  actually pointed so the next week I showed up and
• 21:05
  did that I'm ordering you get me out okay out
• 21:09
  of the plan right pretty quickly after that a week
• 21:18
  or two we hear that the bank has closed there's
• 21:25
  a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day And
• 21:30
  the bank president has died. He died in a sauna. Whoa.
• 21:39
  I've seen that movie, you know, where Abbott and Costello,
• 21:43
  and the mob comes in and they're in those heat
• 21:46
  things that are up here. And the guy sticks a
• 21:48
  broom in the door so you can't get out. I mean,
• 21:53
  except that this was serious and there will be no
• 21:56
  more withdrawals until– Until this thing is understood. A bank
• 22:04
  president dies, you don't close the Bank of America.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: You still can go get your money. And so pretty
• 22:10
  quick after that, it all just disappeared in a pop
• 22:14
  of smoke.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: They just stole the money.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Done. Yep.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: And it was the fucking CIA. That is crazy. That
• 22:22
  is so crazy. How much money was involved with all
• 22:25
  the different people that lost their money? Like how much
• 22:27
  money was this bank holding? Do you know?
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. Well, there were other names that I never
• 22:33
  saw in those days, a lot of sort of mobby
• 22:38
  kind of sounding names. I will tell you, after the
• 22:44
  thing closed and we got the telegram that the president–
• 22:48
  I started– I literally started checking under my car's. looking
• 22:53
  for wires and something funny. I did that for about
• 22:57
  three months.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I finally just, well, I was scared.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would be too.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Because I was the guy who said, I want to
• 23:03
  get out of this thing. And suddenly it goes kaboom
• 23:06
  and the president dies.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Right. And I just figured that I was some kind
• 23:12
  of whistleblower to them or something. And, you know, I'm
• 23:15
  in their way. Wow.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I guarantee you're the reason why it happened.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think. No, I don't believe that's true.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I mean, you're, you probably caused the whole
• 23:26
  thing to close down. I mean, it's not a coincidence
• 23:28
  that it closed down right after you asked for your
• 23:29
  money back.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: You're a big public name and a big voice. You
• 23:35
  get out, you take your money out.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: After that point in time, I really never wanted to
• 23:41
  talk too loudly about stuff anymore. Oh, my goodness. Um,
• 23:46
  so there eventually was our lawsuit. Um, Well, actually, it
• 23:51
  was my lawsuit. I got with a tall building, I
• 23:56
  call it, and proceeded to start proceedings against this fantasy,
• 24:04
  our own attorneys and experts, the people that designed this plan,
• 24:10
  all the rest, right? But I was the only one
• 24:12
  in the band that did that. The rest of the
• 24:15
  guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves.
• 24:20
  And I, you know, I was pretty adamant. I'm telling
• 24:24
  you this because at some point later, more than a
• 24:29
  year had passed, maybe a year and a half, my
• 24:35
  lawsuit had been rolling along a while. And then the
• 24:40
  other guys asked to join my lawsuit because the statute
• 24:46
  of limitations had run out on them being able to
• 24:50
  sue anyone because they literally tried to stay in the plan.
• 24:55
  I was, I was, I was willing to take the penalty,
• 25:00
  whatever it was for being the dumb ass that let
• 25:03
  himself get into some financial thing like this. Right. I
• 25:08
  felt like I used to say, I felt like Joe Lewis.
• 25:11
  I thought I was going to need an act of
• 25:12
  Congress to forgive the debt, uh, These experts in the
• 25:19
  meeting that I talked about who were trying to dissuade
• 25:22
  me from making a noise and trying to get out
• 25:25
  of the plan told me eventually, John, if you receive
• 25:29
  all the money at once, you will pay more than
• 25:32
  110% in taxes of what you have earned.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: What?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I was going to go in the hole. Yeah. Yeah,
• 25:40
  for receiving it all at once, right?
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: That sounds insane.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: That's why I felt like Joe Louis.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: That's the most insane thing I've ever heard.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Well, they were trying to intimidate me.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. How much money were you talking about? How much
• 25:53
  money did they steal from you?
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: When it finally was over, the headline in the San
• 25:57
  Francisco Chronicle, I mean, you're going to laugh at this.
• 26:01
  Rock band Victorious wins $ 8. 1 million. That was our entire
• 26:09
  take for everybody in the band. Each guy had a
• 26:12
  little bit different amount. But, you know, those numbers, I mean,
• 26:18
  I don't know. Dion once made a joke at the
• 26:21
  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about Bruce. And Dion says, well,
• 26:27
  I sold $ 40 million. Meaning, you know, you sue me. Well,
• 26:31
  Bruce has that on him. It was bad. It was
• 26:37
  pretty funny. Yeah. I mean, $ 8 million, that was it.
• 26:41
  That was our take from all the sales of Creedence.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So was that the amount of money that was in
• 26:48
  the bank that they stole from you?
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: That was what we got returned to us.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: So you did get the money back?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. I figured they would just vanish.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: The money didn't come back from Saul's Ants or Castle
• 27:05
  Bank or any of those people. What had happened was
• 27:12
  fantasy was let out of the lawsuit by the local
• 27:15
  judge in the Bay Area. I don't know why, because
• 27:19
  they're the ones that got us into the plan. But anyway,
• 27:21
  they were let out of the whole thing. So who
• 27:24
  was left was this guy named Bert Cantor in Chicago
• 27:27
  who designed the plan and our own accountant and lawyers.
• 27:34
  And so what Most of them did was settle for
• 27:38
  pennies on the dollar. You know, we said that you
• 27:41
  owe us a million dollars or whatever, and they settled
• 27:46
  for like $ 10, 000.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Right? Rather than go to trial. But our own accountant's
• 27:54
  legal team said, ah, we got these guys. They can
• 27:57
  never win this. So, I mean, ironically, they wanted to
• 28:01
  go to trial. And put the poor accountant, you know,
• 28:05
  who was an old guy, through a whole trial. And
• 28:10
  Creedence got, we retained the money we had lost in
• 28:14
  that plan, the $ 8 million I just mentioned, from the
• 28:20
  law firm, the insurance firm. It was his insurance company's
• 28:25
  lawyers that were representing him. And they had to pay.
• 28:29
  Nobody else had to pay.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And then CIA or whoever you're talking about got away
• 28:34
  with it.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Of course they did.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: They know how to do that. It's kind of crazy
• 28:38
  too that it's only $ 8 million. You think about how
• 28:41
  much money you probably made the record companies.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yep. Well, there was 100 million records plus. Right.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Do the math. How much was an album back then?
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Four bucks.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So 400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff.
• 28:58
  You guys got a small percentage. That's how it works though.
• 29:03
  That's why the business is so dirty. That's what's so–
• 29:06
  the idea is that they help you and they bring
• 29:08
  you up. But the reality is they sell art and
• 29:11
  if they don't have artists, they have nothing. The artists
• 29:14
  are what fund their very existence and they make the
• 29:17
  majority of the money. It's pretty dark when you really
• 29:21
  think about it.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Joe, I got to tell you. I love
• 29:26
  making music and I don't do it for the money.
• 29:29
  I mean– I know that sounds a little naive but
• 29:32
  just the happiness in my heart from doing this is
• 29:37
  from the music. I believe you. From the joy. I
• 29:40
  believe you because– The only thing is when you– I
• 29:43
  mean I'll say– I'm not like– well, maybe I'm an
• 29:46
  idiot but probably not about this. When you find out
• 29:49
  that there was money but somebody else got it, then
• 29:52
  that kind of gets your attention. Right. But the– for
• 29:58
  me at least it wasn't even about being famous literally
• 30:02
  if you can believe that it was the joy of
• 30:07
  understanding you know what the music from other people that
• 30:11
  you loved and as you grew up from that little
• 30:15
  first inspiration you began to kind of understand what it
• 30:19
  was you liked about what they did and at some
• 30:23
  point then started to try and do it yourself but
• 30:26
  that was all That was a long, long time after
• 30:30
  the initial joy of just enjoying what they did.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of sad that money always does kind
• 30:38
  of distort things. But if you were only interested in
• 30:42
  money and only interested in fame or if that was
• 30:44
  your primary concern, there's no way the music would be
• 30:47
  that good. It's like that has to come from a
• 30:51
  real place. It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment, 100%.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Well, for me, it did. And also the prospect of
• 31:04
  creating something new tomorrow. What's the word? You get certain feelings. Well,
• 31:13
  we all do, but I've learned to... How can I
• 31:17
  say it? It's like being in a big swimming pool
• 31:21
  or something. It just surrounds you. Letting yourself... Enjoy that
• 31:28
  feeling and then try to figure out a way to
• 31:31
  put that into the music. Express it. Yeah.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Well, you did it, man. It's a long story with
• 31:41
  all these different artists that have had to deal with
• 31:43
  all these horrific managers. I was reading this article about
• 31:47
  Jimi Hendrix's manager. So one of his bodyguards wrote a
• 31:52
  book where he's blaming Hendrix's manager for his death. And
• 31:57
  he was essentially saying that Hendrix was murdered and Hendrix
• 32:00
  was about to leave his manager. And that's why he
• 32:02
  killed him. And I don't know if you know the
• 32:04
  story about Hendrix, but his girlfriend fell from a roof
• 32:08
  or jumped off a roof shortly after Hendrix died. And
• 32:12
  apparently they were trying to get rid of her as
• 32:14
  well because they knew that she knew the whole deal
• 32:15
  behind it.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Was this the one with kind of a funny foreign name?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I read a couple of Jimmy's. biographies but you know
• 32:26
  it's yeah um.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: So many of these guys had mobbed up managers.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah i do know that there was some manager of
• 32:35
  his i mean jimmy owned his masters that was remarkable
• 32:40
  that's why that's why his family has the masters his
• 32:44
  estate you know they're the ones that decide because every
• 32:48
  so often a new jimmy album would come out that
• 32:50
  sort of thing um I didn't know any of this
• 32:53
  way back then. I just wondered, you know, who was
• 32:56
  driving the bus. So, I mean, that part was, was
• 33:00
  pretty good. Uh, he had to talk to somebody at
• 33:03
  reprise records and some of those people were reprise, uh,
• 33:08
  Warner brothers. In other words, about the time I was
• 33:11
  at Warner brothers, it must've been a couple of them,
• 33:14
  you know, that decided that way back in the sixties. Um,
• 33:19
  I guess I was a little envious because I sure
• 33:21
  didn't own my masters. That's for sure.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: How many people owned their own masters back then? Nobody.
• 33:27
  That's crazy. How do you think he got that deal?
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: That I don't know. I don't know how it came
• 33:33
  about that he was able to have that much influence.
• 33:37
  I mean, that's the part. I did get the inference
• 33:43
  from at least one of the books I read about
• 33:46
  Jimmy that he had They didn't try too hard to
• 33:51
  save him.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Jimmy was– I guess was just really effed up for
• 33:57
  a couple of weeks there and no one tried– they
• 34:02
  were almost– I mean I almost got the sense that
• 34:05
  somebody took a bottle of wine and just poured it
• 34:08
  in him.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what I heard.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: That was the– what the bodyguard was inferring that they
• 34:14
  poured pills and alcohol down his mouth.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Terrible. Well– I hope to never be in such a
• 34:22
  state that I can't protest something like that.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, yeah.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: It's dark because apparently he was ready to leave. He
• 34:31
  wanted to leave his manager. And obviously Jimmy was a
• 34:35
  gigantic star. Huge. That guy saw all the money.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Well, he still is.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Still is to this day.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Every single guitar survey that ever comes out, you know,
• 34:44
  it changed all the other numbers after two. Right.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: He changed.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Changing with fashion and all that, but it's always, number
• 34:52
  one is Jimi Hendrix.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Always.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Kind of extraordinary when you think about it. The guy
• 34:57
  died at 27 years old, you know, and was already
• 35:01
  just from another planet. Like you'd listen to his, like
• 35:05
  you listen to Voodoo Child, Slight Latern. You listen to
• 35:08
  that song and you're like, is this guy from earth?
• 35:11
  Like this was so different than any other guitar playing
• 35:14
  that had ever taken place before him. He was a
• 35:17
  complete revolutionary, like just a completely new creative artist, you know,
• 35:22
  and one of my favorite musicians, absolutely of all time.
• 35:25
  That's why I named the podcast, the Joe Rogan experience.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I wondered about that. Well, there it is.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I'll go for you.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Yep. I should have named it the John Fogerty experience.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Instead of Creedence.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I did create that name.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Um, What was the crazy name that the record company
• 35:48
  called one of your first bands?
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Well, it was the same people.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Same people.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the same individual musicians. In high school,
• 35:59
  or junior high, actually, I started a band and called
• 36:04
  it the Blue Velvets. Not all that, you know, earth-shaking,
• 36:08
  but kind of a cool vibe.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: And we were really the Blue Velvets. I mean, this
• 36:17
  was really a trio. But my brother was older. He
• 36:20
  was in another orbit. So we kind of went through
• 36:25
  high school, seeing each other every once in a while.
• 36:29
  It wasn't like we were all tromping around playing gig
• 36:32
  after gig. It was more like, you know, every few
• 36:35
  months there might be a sock hop or something like that.
• 36:41
  And then.
• 36:43
  After high school, and Tom would come and sing. He
• 36:46
  was my older brother. He'd come and sing once in
• 36:48
  a while with us. We made a couple of recordings
• 36:53
  during that time with real record companies, but it was
• 36:56
  always kind of just haphazard. And finally, around the age
• 37:01
  of 19, I went over and knocked on Fantasy Records' door.
• 37:06
  They had done this special about Vince Tiroldi, and they
• 37:09
  were in the Bay Area, so I went over there
• 37:12
  and Introduced myself. Anyway, one thing led to another. Finally,
• 37:17
  we're recording. And at that time, I think we made
• 37:21
  a record with only three of us, me and Tom
• 37:25
  and Doug, the drummer. And I overdubbed a bass part.
• 37:30
  And this was early, or this was in 1964. When
• 37:34
  they finally pressed the single, one side was called Little Girl.
• 37:39
  It's kind of a four-chord doo-wop song. The other side
• 37:44
  was sort of a English or a British invasion answer
• 37:51
  kind of thing. Mod music. It was called Don't Tell
• 37:55
  Me No Lies. Anyway, we excitedly go over to San
• 37:58
  Francisco to their warehouse and open up the package and
• 38:01
  it says The Gollywogs. And we look at each other
• 38:05
  and go, what the hell? No, no, no. I think
• 38:09
  we had chosen our name to be The Visions. It
• 38:13
  was just something at the last minute because we weren't
• 38:17
  really the Blue Belvets anymore. But that was it. We
• 38:20
  thought it was going to say Visions. But the record
• 38:24
  company had decided they wanted to get in on the
• 38:27
  British invasion mod, whatever, and named us the Gollywogs. It
• 38:32
  sounds like Pollywog.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: He said, well, a Gollywog, you see, is this doll
• 38:38
  that when the British soldiers were in India– the kids
• 38:42
  would have this little doll called a gollywog. And so
• 38:46
  that's all we knew about it. As time went on,
• 38:50
  I mean, years and years later, long after I had been,
• 38:55
  we renamed the band, or I'd renamed the band Credence,
• 39:00
  found out that gollywog was, this was a very racial thing.
• 39:03
  This was the British soldiers calling the people, People.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Wogs or gollywogs, yeah.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: That's a gollywog?
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Sambo, right?
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Same sort of, yep.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: And they didn't know this either, obviously. There was no
• 39:18
  Wikipedia back then.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, no. I don't know. I didn't know that.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: That's crazy that they could just change the name of
• 39:24
  your band without you having any knowledge of it at all.
• 39:27
  You open up the record and it's right there.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Yep. And they kind of insisted, you know, it's that
• 39:32
  same thing that, well, we're going to own the publishing
• 39:35
  to your song. No, no, I should own it. Well,
• 39:38
  then we're not going to make any records. Oh, okay.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: You're 19. Yeah.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: That's how they get you. You don't know anything.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Well, and you kind of want to make a record.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to make a record. It's right there.
• 39:51
  You taste it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be
• 39:53
  signed to a record label. I'm going to be a
• 39:55
  rock star. And then they come to you with a
• 39:58
  shady contract, and that's their modus operandi. That's what they
• 40:02
  do with everybody.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: And for– I know they call it business.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Funny term.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Most of those people– I mean it's like lottery
• 40:17
  to them. It's like gambling. They don't have a clue
• 40:22
  what creativity is. And at that age, the young– I
• 40:26
  mean I guess I'm looking at you and saying if
• 40:29
  I only– no, what's that line? If I didn't know
• 40:31
  now what I didn't know then. You're a young artist.
• 40:36
  You don't even know what you got.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Right?
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: You know you have feelings about music and– but you don't.
• 40:46
  You know, you're less than a rookie. Right. You know,
• 40:49
  maybe you were good in junior high, but that doesn't
• 40:51
  mean you're Willie Mays. Right. You know? So that's sort
• 40:55
  of how that works. And they sign you up before
• 40:59
  any of that self-realization happens. And then you're messed.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, that's what happened to Prince. That's what happened
• 41:08
  to Skinner. That's what happened to most bands. I mean,
• 41:12
  they're very clever in how they do it. They sign
• 41:15
  a bunch of people that are emerging and some of
• 41:17
  them are going to hit.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: And they bankroll it and then they make the majority
• 41:22
  of the money when those people hit.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Well, in our case, Credence was the only thing that
• 41:27
  ever happened. Fantasy became a very wealthy record company. Saul
• 41:37
  eventually went into making movies, so that money that I
• 41:41
  had made for him at The record company turned into
• 41:46
  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Some other– Saul even had– in those times had bought
• 41:56
  the movie rights for Lord of the Rings. So his
• 42:03
  ticket got punched way up high. It's crazy. And we
• 42:09
  never got a dime, of course, of any of that.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: It's crazy how bad people can get ahead like that.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Well, see, that's– yeah.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: That's what's disturbing.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: It's a different– that's why I had a little hesitation
• 42:22
  when you were talking about that you thought the music
• 42:25
  came from a– or creativity came from a joyful, good place.
• 42:29
  But boy, you can sure look in different parts of
• 42:32
  entertainment or business in general and see some really bad
• 42:38
  people have made a lot of money.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Well– It takes the good people to create things though.
• 42:44
  The creative people make the things and there's always just
• 42:46
  going to be people taking advantage of people being naive
• 42:49
  about business.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I choose to believe that– at least it works for me.
• 42:57
  I choose to believe that you've got to have a
• 42:59
  good heart. You've got to try to use the golden
• 43:05
  rule basically. Don't do something bad to him necessarily. That
• 43:10
  you wouldn't want to have done to you. So to
• 43:13
  do unto others as you would have them do to you. Yes.
• 43:19
  I believe in God and I believe God is watching
• 43:22
  me all the time. You know, all of us. So
• 43:26
  that that part helps me to feel like there's a reason,
• 43:32
  you know, to try and be a good person. The
• 43:36
  reason being.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: You're in.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: God's grace if you do those things, if you try
• 43:44
  to live a good life, honest and I guess we
• 43:47
  call it transparent nowadays.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You know, don't get me wrong. I'm not running around
• 43:53
  the world with a thumping a Bible or something. I
• 43:56
  just think it's common sense about how ultimately you want
• 44:05
  to exist in the universe, right?
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: So, you know, that's how I operate. And so when I,
• 44:15
  certainly now at my age, when I see other people
• 44:18
  really getting away with stuff, I just, it isn't like I, gee,
• 44:22
  that's not fair. I should get the, I don't see
• 44:25
  it that way now. I just look at that poor
• 44:28
  sap who's being so evil and go, you know, he's
• 44:32
  going to get his comeuppance some day.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a horrible existence because nobody loves you when
• 44:37
  you're like that. If you're doing that and fucking people over,
• 44:40
  all your relationships are adversarial. It's a bad way to exist.
• 44:44
  You're on a very bad frequency, the way you exist
• 44:48
  with the people in your circle.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: I think that's true. I believe that.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of people that choose that life just
• 44:55
  for financial benefit. They choose to just fuck people over
• 44:59
  and be in that bad frequency all the time. But
• 45:02
  that's not a good life and I agree with you.
• 45:05
  I think if you live your life like God exists,
• 45:08
  you'll have a much better life. And the golden rule
• 45:11
  is just– it's provable. Like if you're a nice person
• 45:15
  and you treat people well and it spreads a lot
• 45:18
  of good energy around you and positive momentum with all
• 45:25
  these other people, it's the butterfly effect. It carries on
• 45:28
  to other people that they encounter too. They're inspired by
• 45:31
  how kind and friendly and generous you are and it's
• 45:34
  good for everybody. It's good for you. It's good for
• 45:36
  the people that you're generous and friendly to. It's good
• 45:39
  for the other people that they encounter because they're inspired
• 45:42
  by it. It's just good for everyone. That's how people
• 45:44
  should exist.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I literally– I believe everything you have just said
• 45:51
  and literally have sometimes asked God for a– or a
• 46:00
  hit record. I always thought that's kind of poor. That's bad.
• 46:05
  I mean, that's selfish or greedy or something. But I
• 46:08
  would ask for clarity, or I would ask God to
• 46:12
  help me figure something out. And amazingly, there would be,
• 46:20
  through a relation, somebody I was dealing with, there would
• 46:26
  be something, it was like karma, good karma coming And
• 46:31
  I could see the– to me, it was a result
• 46:36
  of my prayer or my openness of wanting to help
• 46:40
  get a situation resolved. So for me– to me, there's
• 46:47
  evidence that it all works that way.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Did you always have a belief in God?
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there was times– yeah, because I was
• 46:59
  just brought.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Up that way.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Again, I don't believe my, I was just taught in
• 47:06
  a kind of nice and simple way about God. It
• 47:10
  wasn't beat over my head or anything. I was raised Catholic.
• 47:14
  So in some sense, you can't avoid having it beat
• 47:16
  over your head, I suppose. And some of that I resisted.
• 47:22
  But I went to the normal things. I did my
• 47:24
  first communion, my first confession. I did, uh, what do
• 47:30
  you call that when you're 12 years old? Confirmation. Um,
• 47:35
  I chose the name for St. Jerome basically because there's
• 47:40
  a song by Bo Diddley called bring it to Jerome. And, uh,
• 47:46
  Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his Morocco player.
• 47:50
  And I really liked the vibe of that. I'm going
• 47:52
  to be Jerome. That's my confirmation name. Um, Yeah, it
• 47:58
  was there in those ways. There was times I was— boy,
• 48:02
  you've opened a can of worms here. Because I was
• 48:07
  so invested in being a Catholic, even though my parents
• 48:12
  tried to have me go to parochial school, Catholic school,
• 48:17
  I was in the first grade, and then I want
• 48:20
  to say they kicked me out. And then my mom
• 48:24
  had me start again in ninth grade at St. Mary's
• 48:27
  High School, and they kicked me out again. But it
• 48:32
  wasn't my fault. Anyway, the one that happened is funny.
• 48:37
  I mean, it's just the one that happened in the
• 48:39
  first grade, I had to take a bus to get there.
• 48:43
  I lived in El Cerrito, and it was the School
• 48:46
  of the Madeline in Berkeley. And I'm in the first grade.
• 48:50
  I'm six years old. So you had to go to
• 48:53
  the bus stop, get on a bus, get a transfer
• 48:57
  so that then when the bus came to a certain
• 48:59
  stop over in Albany, you then got on a train,
• 49:02
  you know, transferred in other words, got on the train
• 49:05
  and that went another mile or so into Berkeley and
• 49:09
  at a certain stop right behind the school, the school
• 49:13
  of the Madeleine, Catholic school, you get off the train
• 49:17
  and go on down into school. Now what happened, my
• 49:23
  parents had split up, so it was only my mom
• 49:26
  in the house. And she's leaving early because she's got
• 49:30
  a job as a teacher. So she's out of the
• 49:33
  house before me. And so it's up to me to
• 49:36
  get myself together and get to the bus stop on time. Many,
• 49:41
  many times I was late. I missed it. So I
• 49:44
  had to get the next bus, so I'm late. So
• 49:47
  I'm rushing to school, but I get there after they've already,
• 49:52
  they would march every morning to John Philip Sousa, and they,
• 49:55
  you know, all that, and go on into school. And
• 49:57
  I get there now, I'm late, The schoolyard is empty.
• 50:07
  I literally have to climb over the fence because they've
• 50:10
  locked the fence at, boom, 8 o'clock or whatever it was.
• 50:14
  And I have to scale the fence, run in the
• 50:16
  class without going to the bathroom. This was my first
• 50:20
  great experience. Sat down in my chair. Within an hour,
• 50:25
  I really got to pee. And Sister Damien would not
• 50:30
  answer me. I got to, I got to, I got to.
• 50:35
  And so she would, one day, I peed in my seat.
• 50:42
  It happened again. It became a habit. Sister Damien, John
• 50:48
  Fogarty has a puddle under his chair.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. Right. So you became the kid that pees.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: That was so traumatizing to me. Yeah. But ask yourself,
• 50:59
  how is a six-year-old getting on a bus all by himself?
• 51:05
  Traveling three or four miles, then getting out of the bus,
• 51:09
  going over to where the train station thing is, getting
• 51:12
  on a train, going over there. I mean, I certainly
• 51:16
  never let my six-year-olds do anything like that.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: I know it is kind of crazy how kids were
• 51:23
  just able to just leave the house and do anything
• 51:26
  back then. I think about that. When I was a
• 51:28
  little kid, I used to just leave my house. Seven
• 51:31
  years old, just leave the house, wander around.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: As long as you were home for dinner time. Yeah.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's kind of amazing.
• 51:37
  We all lived.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: If you stop and think about it. But to have
• 51:41
  to take a bus and then a train and go
• 51:42
  to school when you're six years old, that's nuts. So
• 51:47
  I went to Catholic school too for first grade only.
• 51:50
  And that screwed me off of religion for a long time.
• 51:54
  Because I thought of God back when I was a
• 51:58
  little kid before I went to Catholic school as– you know,
• 52:01
  God is all knowing and God is love and God
• 52:04
  created the universe and God is, God's looking out for you.
• 52:07
  It's just got some rules you have to follow. Made
• 52:09
  sense to me. And then when I went to Catholic school,
• 52:11
  there was a lady, I don't remember anybody's name from
• 52:13
  back then, but I remember her, Sister Mary Josephine. She
• 52:17
  was so mean. She was just a mean lady. She
• 52:21
  did the whole thing, the whacking people with rulers, tell
• 52:25
  you you're going to have to stay overnight and you're
• 52:27
  going to have to sleep on a nail in the closet. Like,
• 52:30
  Just evil. Like wanted you to cry. When I would cry,
• 52:33
  she'd call me a crybaby. And I remember thinking after that, like,
• 52:36
  I don't want to have nothing to do with religion
• 52:39
  ever again. Right when I left first grade.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: I hated it. And I was like, whatever God is,
• 52:46
  this is not God. Like these people have nothing to
• 52:48
  do with God. There's no way this lady is the
• 52:50
  messenger of God. This lady is mean.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: That took a whole lifetime to figure out, to realize that. Well,
• 52:59
  this is just a man-made thing. God's there. And some
• 53:03
  man-made thing over here, they became Mormons. And some man-made
• 53:08
  thing over there, they became Muslims. And it's just all man-made.
• 53:13
  It isn't actually God. And man is fallible, of course.
• 53:20
  He's not infinite and he's not infallible. And so all
• 53:25
  these things were– but that took a lifetime for me.
• 53:28
  I'm sure I was in my 40s still working on that.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: That God's okay, John. You don't have to resist when
• 53:37
  somebody wants to make a prayer or– it isn't God's
• 53:42
  fault that you peed at your desk when you were
• 53:45
  in the first grade. etc.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: It's the mean nun.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: I have a similar perspective. I think all religious scriptures,
• 53:58
  they're trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which
• 54:03
  is the one I've paid the most attention to. I
• 54:05
  think they're trying to document a real thing. But the
• 54:09
  hand of man is clearly all over it. That's the problem.
• 54:13
  The problem with anything that's written down We know that
• 54:15
  just in like the religious canon, the books that were
• 54:18
  included in the Bible, human beings had a decision on
• 54:21
  what goes in and what doesn't go in. There was
• 54:24
  rabbis that kept the book of Enoch out of the
• 54:26
  Old Testament. There's a lot of this weird stuff to
• 54:29
  it that you go like, well, why do people have
• 54:31
  any say? Why does a human have any say in
• 54:36
  what the word of God is? That sounds crazy. And
• 54:39
  when you read the scriptures, you're like, Somebody wrote that
• 54:42
  down and someone told that story for who knows how
• 54:46
  many years before it was ever written down. But I
• 54:49
  think the origins of it, there's truth to it. It's
• 54:52
  just you have to get through all these many layers
• 54:56
  of confusion to try to decipher what God's original message
• 55:01
  was and like what– how was it received? Who got it?
• 55:05
  How did it even get relayed? Like what was the
• 55:09
  original event that led to this oral tradition that led
• 55:13
  to it being written down?
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: I'm smiling because this sounds exactly like a young musician
• 55:21
  has come to see this more learned person and tell
• 55:25
  him about his experience. And the more learned person turns
• 55:30
  into the manager or the record company and he says,
• 55:33
  I want to own this. Right. And, you know, they
• 55:37
  take all that. All that good intentions and faith and
• 55:41
  somebody ends up owning it.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Certainly.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: And you end up paying a tithe into a plate
• 55:47
  and they make a lot of money. That's certainly what.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: You see in organized religion, especially when it gets to
• 55:53
  like these huge megachurches and preachers. That's exactly what it is.
• 55:57
  It's someone taking advantage of this good thing and profiting
• 56:01
  off of it immensely.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: But the thing I think. The point of like if
• 56:06
  you live your life like God's real, it will be
• 56:08
  a better life.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I agree with that. But I think you also know.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I think you can just– There's something there.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: It's sensible that you try to share, that you try
• 56:20
  not to be greedy.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: I don't mean you have to be a fool. I
• 56:24
  just mean that you don't have to be overtly always
• 56:28
  taking way more than your share.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just be kind. Be kind and be fair.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: How old were you when you first started playing music?
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: You mean as an instrument?
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Messing around. How did you get into it?
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, I was actually, I was given a snare drum.
• 56:48
  I think I was about four years old. That was
• 56:51
  a really cheap paper one.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Was your family musicians?
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Not really, but they were musical. Both of them, my
• 56:59
  mom and dad. One of my, one of my Finest
• 57:05
  and favorite memories is we lived in the Bay Area,
• 57:11
  the East Bay from San Francisco. And my parents would
• 57:16
  go up to this place in Northern California near Winters, California.
• 57:20
  That's like toward Sacramento. And there was this creek, this
• 57:26
  body of water called the Pouda Creek. Eventually, they dammed
• 57:30
  that up and made Lake Berryessa. But anyway, back then
• 57:34
  it was just a running water and there was some
• 57:40
  people could camp there. There was at this one place
• 57:43
  they took me, reputedly was owned by a man named Cody.
• 57:51
  And he was a direct descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody.
• 57:54
  I actually met him one day when I was about
• 57:56
  four and, He was probably coming to collect the payment
• 58:01
  for the cabin and the space. Anyway, I remember looking
• 58:07
  at him and going, wow. So I was told that
• 58:10
  story and he would have been about 75. He literally
• 58:14
  could have been a son of Buffalo Bill. He would
• 58:17
  have been born at that point. It was probably 1949.
• 58:20
  The story I'm relating and he would have been born
• 58:26
  in 1875. I mean, it's mind-boggling to think that. But
• 58:32
  my favorite memory thing, other than the fact that that
• 58:35
  whole place inspired my song, Green River. All the little
• 58:39
  parts are in Green River. But one of the things,
• 58:43
  my parents had this old Ford, old green Ford, and
• 58:47
  they'd be driving along at night up there. I guess
• 58:50
  they were more happy or something there. And I remember
• 58:54
  sitting between them, it was just a big couch, And
• 58:59
  they were singing songs in the dark and they were
• 59:03
  singing like by the light of the silvery moon or
• 59:06
  baby face and harmonizing. One was taking the melody and
• 59:13
  the other was harmonizing. The reason I know is because
• 59:16
  I'd sat there and I'm probably three, four, five years
• 59:20
  old right in there. I said, what are you guys doing?
• 59:24
  Because I knew the melody, but I hear two notes.
• 59:28
  What are you doing? And they explained they were harmonizing.
• 59:31
  And it was just the coolest thing. And it was
• 59:35
  such a happy time. I mean, I really felt bonded
• 59:41
  to that, I guess. Like, I really like this, whatever
• 59:44
  it is.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: So that was the initial spark.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Well, they began to notice that I was musical. So
• 59:51
  at some point, I know, again, at my fourth birthday,
• 59:54
  somebody gave me or I had a little toy harmonica.
• 59:58
  And my dad, you know, those little plastic kind of things.
• 1:00:01
  My dad picked it up and he played Oh Susanna
• 1:00:04
  in the cowboy style. In other words, it's probably a
• 1:00:07
  C harmonica. He played in C, not like blues players
• 1:00:11
  do bending notes. He played that thing you see in
• 1:00:14
  the cowboy movies when they're sitting around the campfire. That
• 1:00:20
  sort of thing. I was just shocked. I'd never seen
• 1:00:22
  my dad do anything like that.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Wow. And then.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: On top of that, my mom could play piano, what
• 1:00:30
  we now call stride piano. She would hit the– and
• 1:00:34
  then play a chord, like an octave of bass notes
• 1:00:37
  and then a chord above it. Keep that going as
• 1:00:41
  like the drummer in the thing and then play melody
• 1:00:45
  and high notes up above. And it was– she would–
• 1:00:51
  one of my favorite ones was Harvest Moon, Shine On
• 1:00:55
  Harvest Moon, which is a great song. And it just
• 1:00:58
  was magical to me. So that kind of opened the
• 1:01:03
  door to let me know that, oh, why, we can
• 1:01:07
  do this in our own house. So the piano was around.
• 1:01:12
  And then we also, I don't know whose it was,
• 1:01:15
  but we had an old Stella acoustic guitar. Stella is
• 1:01:20
  a name going back into the 30s, 20s. And this
• 1:01:24
  thing was built like a tank. It was hard to play.
• 1:01:30
  The strings were like way high and all that. Eventually,
• 1:01:33
  Brother Bob told me at some point, yeah, we used
• 1:01:37
  to play baseball with that guitar. We'd hit the ball.
• 1:01:42
  That's how sturdy it was. But that was around so
• 1:01:45
  that I would every once in a while mess with it.
• 1:01:50
  But somewhere literally in the 7th, is where I started
• 1:01:57
  to really try and learn a chord and that sort
• 1:02:00
  of thing.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Is that when you thought, I'm going to be a musician?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I think that moment was a little bit earlier. It was, again,
• 1:02:13
  up at this place, Winters. My dad had driven into
• 1:02:18
  the town from our little cabin, our little campsite, And
• 1:02:23
  I was with him, and he'd gone to this general store.
• 1:02:26
  And the general store had everything. It had food and stuff,
• 1:02:29
  but it also had fishing tackle and various weird things.
• 1:02:34
  So I'm standing there sort of near the counter, and
• 1:02:36
  my dad's doing some kind of business. I'm just looking,
• 1:02:40
  and suddenly I hear music. And I'm, what the heck
• 1:02:44
  is that? Well, I didn't even know. They had a
• 1:02:46
  jukebox in this place, right? And somebody had started the jukebox.
• 1:02:51
  So it's playing... music that I really like. It's rock
• 1:02:55
  and roll. I'm about 10 years old. Man, that's good.
• 1:03:00
  And I don't know who it is. It's just got
• 1:03:02
  a really bluesy sound, but it's fast. It's rock and roll.
• 1:03:08
  I run over and I finally determined it's Elvis Presley.
• 1:03:12
  I never heard this. I knew of Elvis, of course,
• 1:03:15
  on TV. He had done Heartbreak Hotel. I had seen
• 1:03:18
  the the Tommy Jimmy Dorsey show that he'd been on
• 1:03:23
  three times. He was on there, I think, five times. Anyway,
• 1:03:28
  and so, wow, Elvis did this? What is this? Well,
• 1:03:31
  it turned out it was the other side of his
• 1:03:33
  second big million seller, which was I Want You, I
• 1:03:37
  Need You, I Love You. This was a song called
• 1:03:39
  My Baby Left Me. And this was basically classic Sun
• 1:03:45
  Records vibe, even though he was now on RCA. It
• 1:03:48
  was that thing they did on Sun Records that just
• 1:03:52
  that kind of country wail with guitar that was more
• 1:03:57
  country than blues and the guitar especially just what is
• 1:04:02
  that I'm watching and this Scotty Moore who I didn't
• 1:04:05
  know his name at the time but he's just playing
• 1:04:07
  this otherworldly stuff and that was I looked at that
• 1:04:13
  I mean literally my head made I don't know I
• 1:04:16
  said this to myself I don't know what they're doing,
• 1:04:21
  but that's what I want to do. Wow. And I
• 1:04:23
  made up my mind right there in that three minutes
• 1:04:26
  of that song.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Well, it was transformative. It still is. It's just a
• 1:04:33
  pretty unique slice of American music.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm aware of that song. I'm going
• 1:04:40
  to listen to it after the podcast.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: You probably know Elvis' song, That's All Right, Mama? Sure. Right. Well,
• 1:04:46
  this is in that vein. It's actually the same writer.
• 1:04:51
  Arthur Crudup. Arthur Big Boy Crudup.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: So your family was musical, but you didn't know any musicians.
• 1:04:59
  So what did you think you were going to do?
• 1:05:01
  How did you think you were going to eventually become
• 1:05:03
  a musician? Did you have a plan?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: At some point, you know what? At some point, a
• 1:05:16
  little earlier than that, but right around that time, It
• 1:05:20
  was the era of doo-wop, right? This is the way,
• 1:05:25
  I mean, a kid can, you can just go anywhere
• 1:05:29
  in your mind, right? And I suppose the Corvette automobile,
• 1:05:35
  of course, had come out. So in a very young mind,
• 1:05:41
  but one of those cool, I guess we call them mashups,
• 1:05:45
  I was going to have a group, but it was
• 1:05:48
  all singing, right? I was going to have a group,
• 1:05:51
  and it was going to be called Johnny Corvette and
• 1:05:56
  the Corvettes.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: And there was four. I'm Johnny and three other guys,
• 1:06:05
  and we're all in sparkle jackets, you know, the show business, right?
• 1:06:11
  And we're black, all of us.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: That was your idea?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: That's what I saw. I was referring to what I
• 1:06:21
  was seeing to be Johnny Corvette in the Corvettes. That
• 1:06:27
  was one of the ingredients.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: How were you going to be black?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't have to worry about that.
• 1:06:35
  I mean, the funny thing is that's so similar here
• 1:06:38
  is like when I was little, I wanted to be
• 1:06:41
  a baseball player, right? But some kids dream of being
• 1:06:45
  in the NBA, right? But you got to be 97. Right.
• 1:06:49
  You know, I mean, so how's that going to happen?
• 1:06:54
  I mean, you just said it in a really innocent way.
• 1:06:56
  But a kid just eats spinach or something, you know.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: You eat spinach and become black. And tall. And tall.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. But it worked for me.
• 1:07:07
  I mean, literally when I, you know, one of my
• 1:07:09
  dreams as a kid really was I wanted to, I
• 1:07:11
  love baseball. I still do. I wanted to, you know, okay,
• 1:07:15
  what do I got to do? And I'd start throwing,
• 1:07:18
  I was throwing a ball against the side of the house.
• 1:07:21
  I'd made a big, like a target, you know, bullseye.
• 1:07:24
  And I don't know why I did it that way.
• 1:07:27
  And my mom caught me. I was throwing an actual
• 1:07:30
  hard ball. And it was getting the clapboard, you know,
• 1:07:33
  the wood. I was tearing the house down. So she
• 1:07:38
  got me a tennis ball and that was okay. I
• 1:07:41
  was no good. You know, I wasn't. That dream was
• 1:07:45
  never going to happen.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Is that what inspired Put Me In, Coach?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: What a great anthem.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, well.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, how many baseball games have played that song?
• 1:07:58
  My God.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, at least, you know, I mean, there's a
• 1:08:02
  lot of us semi-nerds, I guess, you know, wanted to
• 1:08:05
  play ball, wanted to be a jock, and just really
• 1:08:08
  at some point, you know, the ones that really have
• 1:08:11
  it pass you by.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Right. Of course.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: And you just kind of, but in your mind, everybody
• 1:08:16
  got their scorecard and, you know, and they're following the
• 1:08:20
  game and all that. And that, that vicarious joy of
• 1:08:24
  watching Ohtani or Aaron Judge or whoever it is you love,
• 1:08:30
  you get to have that in your heart anyway. But
• 1:08:34
  I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the universe.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Okay. Okay.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: I didn't get to play, but I wrote a song,
• 1:08:43
  and my song's there all the time. It's just the
• 1:08:47
  coolest feeling. That song's in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It is amazing. It's ridiculous.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: But it's just like, that happened to me. It's like, God,
• 1:08:59
  I could cry. over that. When they had sent a
• 1:09:02
  letter to me and they were going to put the
• 1:09:04
  music in the hall, I just was, God, who do
• 1:09:08
  I tell? Jeez. Yeah, it was so good.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. That's amazing. So when did you start writing
• 1:09:15
  your own songs?
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: I was eight years old. Wow.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: Do you remember your first song?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Yes. Or at least the one I remember is, I
• 1:09:24
  call it the best, the one I can remember. It
• 1:09:29
  was morning. I was getting ready to go to school.
• 1:09:33
  I could walk to school. It was like two and
• 1:09:37
  a half blocks from my house, something like that. I
• 1:09:40
  lived on Ramona. You go past Pomona. And then the
• 1:09:44
  next street was Ashbury. Ashbury. And the school was on
• 1:09:49
  Ashbury up about two blocks, Harding School. It was a
• 1:09:56
  grammar school. Anyway, I'm getting ready to go to school,
• 1:09:58
  got my lunch. I'm about to turn off the radio
• 1:10:01
  and this commercial comes on. I was listening to R
• 1:10:04
  & B, the Rhythm and Blues Channel from Oakland. And
• 1:10:10
  the DJ suddenly says, do you have the Wash Day Blues?
• 1:10:15
  is this day going to be drudgery? Well, maybe you're
• 1:10:18
  using the wrong, and they went off talking about laundry soap, right?
• 1:10:24
  I don't know if there was a song involved in
• 1:10:26
  the commercial. I think it was just a red, because
• 1:10:28
  it was probably live, you know, right there on old
• 1:10:31
  time radio. So I went out the door with, you know,
• 1:10:34
  carrying my little sack with the lunch in it. It's
• 1:10:38
  a wash day blues. Wow. I get kind of to
• 1:10:41
  the end of the street. I think that's Lynn. I
• 1:10:43
  got to go down, you know, three streets i'm walking
• 1:10:46
  along i said wow i got the white tape blue
• 1:10:53
  i'm making that noise it's muddy waters it's the riff
• 1:10:56
  from uh probably hoochie coochie man you know right uh
• 1:11:02
  and it all comes together and just walking down the
• 1:11:05
  street singing about all the stuff that because it's blues
• 1:11:09
  And I'm hearing all these guys on this channel I
• 1:11:11
  listen to singing the blues and about blues. So I
• 1:11:15
  got Wash Day Blues. That's my song. You know, for
• 1:11:20
  years and years, I thought I was embarrassed about that story. God, John,
• 1:11:25
  why couldn't you have a great story about the sinking
• 1:11:29
  of the Titanic or something? Wash Day Blues. Because it
• 1:11:33
  just seems so mundane. But now I kind of recognize
• 1:11:37
  because of the The two elements I had put together,
• 1:11:40
  it's just kind of natural. It's really the process of
• 1:11:46
  writing songs.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. And so when you wrote songs, like I
• 1:11:53
  saw this video clip where you're talking about, I think
• 1:11:56
  it was Old Man Down the Road. Is that the
• 1:11:59
  beginning riff? You got it.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: And you were talking about how that riff just hit you.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Is that it?
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had this place. It was my studio. It
• 1:12:14
  was basically the garage of a house that I had
• 1:12:20
  bought to be my office and my place. So it
• 1:12:22
  was the size of a garage. I would go there
• 1:12:26
  every day. So in the morning I'd get in, I'd
• 1:12:29
  turn on my tape recorder and various things. pieces of
• 1:12:33
  equipment and stuff. I did. That was my process. Certainly
• 1:12:37
  every weekday morning, sometimes on Saturday, Sunday, whatever, but certainly
• 1:12:42
  the five days a week. Um, and I'd walk in
• 1:12:46
  there and, uh, work on music. I did this every
• 1:12:49
  day for, I mean, years and years from 74 until
• 1:12:55
  center field came out basically, which was 11 years later. Um,
• 1:13:01
  And so one morning I walk in and I haven't
• 1:13:04
  even turned on the stuff yet. I just, for some reason,
• 1:13:08
  I went right to the guitar and I turned on
• 1:13:13
  the amp and picked up the guitar and just kind
• 1:13:16
  of noodling because I like to do that. A lot
• 1:13:18
  of my songs have started this way, but suddenly just
• 1:13:21
  played and it really had that sound to it. And
• 1:13:26
  I got my attention because I knew that it wasn't
• 1:13:30
  anything else. And I also, I mean, this is like
• 1:13:33
  in a, this is how quick our brains can work.
• 1:13:36
  You know, it's taken me way longer to tell it
• 1:13:39
  than the actual thing. But so I played the, and
• 1:13:45
  I realized it's not complete. It needs an answer. And
• 1:13:50
  I'm also aware that it's like being on a tightrope
• 1:13:54
  or something over Niagara Falls. You know, you got to
• 1:13:58
  have the right answer. And there's probably only one. Because
• 1:14:02
  all the other ones are going to kill it, and
• 1:14:04
  you'll never remember this again. Because that happens all the time. Right.
• 1:14:08
  You know, it'd be lame. There, it's precarious. It's hanging
• 1:14:13
  in the air. And you've got to come back with
• 1:14:18
  the thing to make it complete, and it has to
• 1:14:21
  be the right thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And so I,
• 1:14:36
  oh my God. Yeah. And I, you know, I play
• 1:14:38
  it over and over probably for five minutes. I just
• 1:14:41
  tend to do that. That's, that's the joy of music.
• 1:14:45
  That's the joy right there. Cause I knew it wasn't
• 1:14:48
  anything else. There was no question in my mind that, well,
• 1:14:51
  is this coming from, you know, the Beatles or Howlin'
• 1:14:55
  Wolf or something? Right. Um, So immediately, I had kept
• 1:15:01
  this little songbook that's only about that big with titles
• 1:15:06
  in it. And I go flipping through the book, and
• 1:15:11
  I think I see something that's somewhere down the road. Okay,
• 1:15:17
  that for some reason appealed to me, and I stuck
• 1:15:19
  with it. Okay, that's what it's called. This song is
• 1:15:21
  going to be somewhere down the road. And that day
• 1:15:26
  I started– so now I turn on my tape recorder
• 1:15:28
  and all that. I play some– because I had to
• 1:15:30
  play real drums then. That's what took me so long, folks. Anyway,
• 1:15:38
  so I make a little thing that's just the riff
• 1:15:41
  and then make a space of just the drums playing
• 1:15:45
  and nothing else so I can kind of listen to
• 1:15:48
  it and improvise what's going on after this riff. What's
• 1:15:53
  somewhere down the road? And, of course, I start talking
• 1:15:56
  about he'd get the thunder from the mountain, he'd bring
• 1:16:02
  the lightning from the sky, you know, and all that.
• 1:16:04
  And these things are going on. And so you've got
• 1:16:09
  to shoot forward probably a few weeks. I realize I'm
• 1:16:12
  starting to write a song, but the title somewhere down
• 1:16:16
  the road to me just seems lame. It seems undefined,
• 1:16:21
  not cool enough, not focused. And probably not going to
• 1:16:26
  remember it because it sounds like just what it is.
• 1:16:30
  You won't remember that. Right. Right. You know, if you say,
• 1:16:34
  I've got a polka dot Chevy sitting on top of
• 1:16:38
  a bull moose or whatever, and that's your title, you
• 1:16:43
  probably get a picture in your head. Right. It's going
• 1:16:46
  to stick. So I'm hunting around. What are you doing here?
• 1:16:50
  What are you talking about in this song? We're talking
• 1:16:52
  about this guy. He's, Evil, he's the old man. He's
• 1:16:57
  the old man down the road. That's way better. So
• 1:17:02
  the song became that. The deal is, with my little
• 1:17:07
  song book, probably two years later, after that album had
• 1:17:12
  come out, I said, you know what, I want to
• 1:17:15
  check on where somewhere down the road came. And I
• 1:17:18
  went cover to cover, and it's not in there. There
• 1:17:24
  is no place where I've written somewhere down the road.
• 1:17:29
  I just thought I saw it. And that led me
• 1:17:34
  to a really cool song.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: The reason I'm telling you this is there was a
• 1:17:39
  time I had an office in Warner Brothers when I
• 1:17:43
  was staying down in L.A. And I would go in
• 1:17:48
  there all the time and write, have some keyboards and stuff.
• 1:17:54
  And one day I thought I needed a break. I
• 1:17:57
  took my book and I went out and sat. It
• 1:17:59
  was Warner Brothers parking lot. I went out to my
• 1:18:02
  car and sat down because I was trying to give
• 1:18:05
  myself some, you know, get going, do something. And I
• 1:18:11
  thumbed through the book and I saw changing the weather.
• 1:18:16
  I said, man, I like that. And I look up
• 1:18:20
  and it's kind of a cloudy, gloomy sky, you know. Yeah.
• 1:18:27
  So I ran back in my room and I went off.
• 1:18:30
  I was inspired and I wrote a song called Changing
• 1:18:33
  the Weather. Well, same deal. After that album came out,
• 1:18:38
  I decided to check my book. It ain't in there.
• 1:18:42
  It's nowhere in my book where it says change in
• 1:18:46
  the weather. So I nowadays tell people, you know, maybe
• 1:18:51
  it's a shapeshifter. And there's stuff in there. It can
• 1:18:55
  just kind of go, John, listen to this. I got
• 1:18:58
  an idea for you. Right.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Well, the creative process is so mysterious.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: Because everybody that I talk to, whether it's comedians or
• 1:19:06
  authors or musicians, they They say the ideas almost don't
• 1:19:10
  feel like they're theirs, like they're receiving them from somewhere.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: For certain.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: That's how you feel? Yep.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: To me, it's like tuning in a radio. Yeah. Right?
• 1:19:22
  And a lot of it, I guess it's the way
• 1:19:25
  I was raised. You kind of have to be worthy.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: You know? I mean, there's a big dose of, if
• 1:19:33
  you're all angry and treating people mean and doing all that,
• 1:19:38
  I'm closing the book. Yeah. I'm not sending you nothing.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: I think that too.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: I think that too.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: You got to be receptive and honor this process that
• 1:19:48
  we're going through here. And if you are in that
• 1:19:51
  frame of mind and some humility about this whole thing,
• 1:19:56
  maybe I'll send you something.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: The muse.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of Steven Pressfield?
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: Huh?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: Steven Pressfield. He's an author. He wrote a great book
• 1:20:05
  called The War of Art. And I give this– I
• 1:20:09
  have boxes of this book out front and I give
• 1:20:11
  it to comedians and artists all the time because it's
• 1:20:14
  just a book about the creative process, about writing. One
• 1:20:17
  of the things that he talks about is the muse,
• 1:20:20
  about giving honor to the muse and sitting there and
• 1:20:24
  calling upon the muse for these ideas. That if you
• 1:20:27
  treat it like it's a real thing, it will provide you.
• 1:20:29
  If you show up every day and you put in
• 1:20:31
  the work, the muse will give you these ideas.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: But they do feel– like to everybody that I talk
• 1:20:37
  to that's really creative, they feel like they're coming from somewhere.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it feels like it's always been there.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: And it's just up to you to be able to
• 1:20:49
  actually be able to see it or hear it. Right?
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: So I do a lot of– I get ideas in
• 1:20:54
  my head. I'm just walking around and it will play
• 1:20:58
  to me the same as if you're listening to the radio.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: It just gets in the head.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: You start feeling it.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: But– I, I do believe you have to, you have
• 1:21:11
  to be doing it all the time. Like for me,
• 1:21:13
  it was a process to actually sit down, be ready.
• 1:21:17
  And a lot of times nothing happens, you know, you
• 1:21:19
  got a blank sheet of paper and it stays blank. Right.
• 1:21:25
  But if you do that enough times at certain times, you'll,
• 1:21:31
  Get a really good inspiration. You'll be allowed to receive it.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Right? But it really isn't you. Right. That's the way
• 1:21:42
  I think of it. What it is is you have talent.
• 1:21:45
  You're supposed to honor your talent. And so I'm going
• 1:21:49
  to give you something if you're worthy. Okay. And now
• 1:21:52
  it's up to you to honor, you know, use yourself.
• 1:21:55
  Don't just go, I got it. We're done. No, you
• 1:21:58
  got to work it now. Polish it, you know, make it. Yeah.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel the exact same way. I think there's
• 1:22:07
  truth to what you're saying. I want to ask you
• 1:22:10
  about Fortunate Son. How did you write that? Like, how
• 1:22:14
  did that come about? That is like one of the
• 1:22:16
  greatest rebellion songs of all time.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: It's an amazing song. I love it. It's also a
• 1:22:24
  fantastic workout song, by the way. That song gets you
• 1:22:26
  jazzed up. If you're doing like a treadmill or something
• 1:22:29
  like that, you start to get tired, crank that sucker up.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think the first thing I
• 1:22:37
  got to say about it is I was drafted. So
• 1:22:40
  I was in the military and I got in the
• 1:22:44
  army reserves, but was well and was on active duty
• 1:22:50
  and all the rest. So I've well understood the position of,
• 1:22:59
  you might say, the military mindset, right? Even though I
• 1:23:04
  was a young person, and this is right during the
• 1:23:06
  Vietnam era, and I think I really need to say
• 1:23:10
  that almost no one my age wanted to be in
• 1:23:14
  the army and go to Vietnam. I just that was
• 1:23:18
  something you, no, I don't want to do that. Right.
• 1:23:21
  So I got my draft notice, um, was, got into
• 1:23:27
  the army reserves. So I understood that side of the
• 1:23:32
  coin and that side of fate, you might say. Um,
• 1:23:38
  the deal, I think the deal being, okay, I'm in
• 1:23:41
  the military. So now I got to play by the rules.
• 1:23:45
  I got to do everything that's, This is what I am, right?
• 1:23:51
  There's a little bit of the whole idea of being
• 1:23:54
  American and serving your country. I'm trying not to say, oh, yeah,
• 1:24:00
  now I'm gung-ho and I'm John Wayne and I'm going
• 1:24:03
  to take on Iwo Jima or something. It was more like, yeah,
• 1:24:08
  but you've got to do this right. You can't just
• 1:24:11
  be some guy that's on– AWOL all the time and
• 1:24:16
  being a mess, you know, I wanted to do it right. So, um, I,
• 1:24:21
  I went through all of that and it's another story,
• 1:24:26
  but eventually got my honorable discharge, which led to another song,
• 1:24:31
  but it's a different song. Um, and that was just before,
• 1:24:36
  just as the Creedence career was getting started. But anyhow, um,
• 1:24:45
  During the Vietnam time, there was a lot of unrest,
• 1:24:52
  civil unrest in America and around the world. Those times
• 1:24:55
  were very volatile. But especially in America, there was a
• 1:25:00
  lot of protests and discussion about the war itself. Remember,
• 1:25:05
  there was a draft, so young people kind of by
• 1:25:08
  nature were against the war and against the draft because
• 1:25:13
  it seemed to be sort of, Not logical as that.
• 1:25:19
  And in some instances, you would see on the news,
• 1:25:23
  you know, some senator who had the political clout that
• 1:25:27
  he could keep his teenage son from being drafted or
• 1:25:33
  get his teenage son into some cushy job. And you
• 1:25:37
  kind of saw it a few times. These guys were
• 1:25:41
  the fix was in, you know.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: And that just really didn't seem fair, not just in
• 1:25:48
  my own case, but I'm more identified with the people
• 1:25:52
  that were protesting the war. No one had ever really
• 1:25:57
  explained why we were having that war. To my mind,
• 1:26:01
  we still don't know. You know, it's just somebody's ego
• 1:26:05
  decided they wanted to have a war and they had
• 1:26:07
  a war. So most of these things that have cropped
• 1:26:11
  up ever since have always ended kind of miserably. And
• 1:26:17
  we never, they never were one. They just sort of dissolved. Right.
• 1:26:23
  So there was no marching band and all that stuff
• 1:26:26
  to get to, you know, like World War II ended
• 1:26:29
  with a decisive victory. Anyhow, that angst and anger within
• 1:26:36
  me about that situation was felt fueling my thoughts about
• 1:26:46
  the current times. This was 1969. So I started showing
• 1:26:50
  the band, all the songs that the band learned and
• 1:26:55
  played throughout the Creedence career, they literally learned them as instrumentals.
• 1:27:02
  They didn't hear the song. I didn't show them the song.
• 1:27:07
  So in other words, I would show the bass player
• 1:27:10
  his part. Here's how... your part goes. Here's how the
• 1:27:14
  drums will be. Here's the rhythm guitar part. And the
• 1:27:18
  band wouldn't actually hear the whole song until I had
• 1:27:21
  gone into the studio after that recording process and added
• 1:27:26
  my vocal, sang the background vocal parts.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: Played the conga drum or the shakers or tambourine or piano,
• 1:27:36
  you know, all the other stuff. Then they heard how
• 1:27:38
  the song went. So they learned their parts as instrumentals.
• 1:27:45
  And this was exactly that way. I showed them how
• 1:27:49
  to play, what was the form of the song. And
• 1:27:53
  that I didn't even, I don't think I had told
• 1:27:56
  them the name of the song yet. I thought I
• 1:27:58
  was writing a song called favorite son because, um, starting
• 1:28:04
  in 1952, when they sent my second grade class, I
• 1:28:08
  think home to watch, um, to watch the inauguration, I believe,
• 1:28:14
  of Eisenhower. I think that's what it was. We had
• 1:28:19
  a tiny little TV. All I saw was big black limousines.
• 1:28:24
  That was my entire impression of the presidential thing and politics.
• 1:28:30
  So after that, I kind of would watch parts of
• 1:28:34
  the conventions in the summer. There'd be these gigantic I
• 1:28:40
  didn't know what they were then, but these big rooms
• 1:28:44
  full of smoke. And every once in a while, somebody,
• 1:28:49
  your honor, the great state of Texas would like to
• 1:28:54
  nominate her favorite son, Billy Saul Estes, or whatever, right?
• 1:29:01
  And they all said that, you know, the state of
• 1:29:04
  Vermont would like to nominate her favorite son. And so
• 1:29:08
  I had written that one down in my book, and
• 1:29:10
  I thought I was going to write kind of a
• 1:29:12
  political song. So the band was getting pretty solid in
• 1:29:19
  the backing track, and that told me, you know, I was...
• 1:29:23
  driving a career. I mean, there wasn't someone else telling me.
• 1:29:29
  I was the one deciding and pushing, and I think
• 1:29:32
  pushing pretty hard. I just, I wanted a new single
• 1:29:35
  to be ready, and this seemed like it might be it.
• 1:29:39
  So at one point after the band had been rehearsing
• 1:29:43
  the music for that song, Fortunate Son, for a few weeks,
• 1:29:48
  it was getting pretty good. All right, I got to
• 1:29:50
  write the words. I got to get the whole song together.
• 1:29:54
  I took a little yellow tablet like that, went in
• 1:29:57
  my bedroom, sat on the bed, and instead of what
• 1:30:02
  I thought it was going to be, the first thing
• 1:30:05
  I said, this idea of the red, white, and blue,
• 1:30:09
  they're always super patriots, all this stuff, bluster and all that, right?
• 1:30:16
  And I said, how do I get that? How do
• 1:30:19
  I get that? Well, they're waving the flag.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: What's going on now? They're pointing the cannon at you, right? Yeah,
• 1:30:28
  but it ain't me. And I realized, oh, wow, that's
• 1:30:31
  something I can repeat. It ain't me.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: I ain't no, you know.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: And literally, I mean, I just sort of did it
• 1:30:40
  in front of you, almost the way it played out
• 1:30:43
  of me sitting on that bed. Literally walked in and
• 1:30:47
  20 minutes later walked out. with the whole song. Wow.
• 1:30:51
  Coming from, I didn't have anything other than Favorite Son.
• 1:30:56
  The rest was just the stuff that was boiling in
• 1:30:59
  my head at the time, of course. Basically, because well-heeled
• 1:31:06
  people getting out of the draft, which Kind of pissed
• 1:31:10
  me off. You know, I just, you know, there were
• 1:31:13
  a lot of guys now that I was in them
• 1:31:15
  or had been in the military. And I knew there
• 1:31:17
  were a lot of other guys felt just like me. Well,
• 1:31:20
  like I didn't grow up that I wanted to be
• 1:31:22
  a soldier and go do that. It was just fate
• 1:31:25
  that made that happen. So the unfairness of the situation
• 1:31:31
  made me want to talk about that.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: Well, you nailed it. It's such a great song. So
• 1:31:38
  did you have the music all settled out when you
• 1:31:41
  went to the musicians and explained to them how the
• 1:31:43
  song was going to play out?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: Did you have that before the lyrics? Yes.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. Almost always.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: So what did you think the song was going to
• 1:31:51
  be about when you just brought them the music?
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: Well, as I said, I thought it was going to
• 1:31:56
  be Favorite Son.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: So you kind of still had the theme in your
• 1:32:01
  head of how it was.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: About people in the world. It was something around that stuff. Right.
• 1:32:04
  I just didn't know what it was. And I also.
• 1:32:08
  You know, there's a T-shirt, though. The older I get,
• 1:32:11
  the better I was. I was pretty good then. I
• 1:32:16
  guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't know
• 1:32:19
  what the song was going to be. But, I mean,
• 1:32:22
  now I would certainly have a little trepidation. I'd go
• 1:32:25
  in a room with a blank. I'm probably going to
• 1:32:28
  come out of there with a smiley face that I doodled.
• 1:32:32
  There's no words, meaning somehow I was counting on myself
• 1:32:37
  to do it. But that's pretty precocious. Yeah.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: But that's also that divine intervention of the muse. Like
• 1:32:48
  you put in the work and you called. You called
• 1:32:52
  upon it for inspiration and your mind started lighting up.
• 1:32:56
  And then you started putting the pieces together.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, that's a wonderful– that's an amazing process when–
• 1:33:05
  because that's what I do. I'm not a prize fighter,
• 1:33:08
  you know. I'm not a baseball pitcher, let's say, because
• 1:33:11
  there would be an evolution in his work. I'm not
• 1:33:17
  those things, but I am a songwriter and that it
• 1:33:22
  plays out over some... It isn't just once. It plays
• 1:33:26
  out over some time and that incidence where you suddenly
• 1:33:33
  get a hook into an idea and then the the gods,
• 1:33:40
  the muse, they let you continue forward with something that
• 1:33:44
  was way better than you ever dreamed was going to
• 1:33:48
  be it. And suddenly, wow, this is really cool. And
• 1:33:51
  you're excited and you're happy and it's coming to be.
• 1:33:56
  And you realize, as I said, that was, by the way,
• 1:33:59
  by far the quickest I ever wrote a song. And
• 1:34:03
  that's so quick, so fast that, I mean, it's almost
• 1:34:08
  like instant replay that was so fast that you, or
• 1:34:13
  at least I did, I go, man, this is really good.
• 1:34:16
  I mean, and just like a minute ago, I was
• 1:34:20
  taking a breath hoping that something would happen.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's what's amazing about great songs sometimes. Like
• 1:34:27
  John Mellencamp was telling me a story about I Need
• 1:34:31
  a Lover That Won't Drive Me Crazy. Like that song
• 1:34:34
  he wrote in the shower. Oh. Like all together.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: You mean in one shower?
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: In one shower. He was just taking a shower and
• 1:34:41
  all of a sudden, I need a lover that won't
• 1:34:44
  drive me crazy.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: And then next thing you know, he's got it.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: And it's an all-time classic.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the songwriter, and especially when he's on his game,
• 1:35:01
  he knows, and it relates to your own personality, whatever
• 1:35:07
  it is you like, the stuff you like. have gravitated towards.
• 1:35:12
  And so when one of those comes along, it really
• 1:35:15
  makes you smile because you're going, yeah, this is, this
• 1:35:18
  sounds like me. This is the stuff I like. And you,
• 1:35:21
  you go with it. Cause I mean, you know, I,
• 1:35:25
  I am, I would say notoriously corny, you know, at
• 1:35:30
  least I think I am, you know, it's like they
• 1:35:33
  make all these jokes nowadays about dad bod and all
• 1:35:36
  those kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, I, literally think
• 1:35:40
  that's me, right? And some of this, I mean, Cinefield
• 1:35:44
  is the corniest thing that was ever invented. I mean,
• 1:35:49
  I love it. I unashamedly want to be corny. That's
• 1:35:52
  who I am. I'm corny, right? But it, I mean,
• 1:35:56
  in that song, it just, that resonates with, I'm glad
• 1:36:02
  I'm happy. I'm happy to be happy. I want to
• 1:36:06
  be happy. Right. In other words, I don't have to
• 1:36:09
  feel because rock and roll is all about dark colors
• 1:36:11
  and leather jackets and piercing and, you know, tats and
• 1:36:16
  a scowl. You know, Elvis would all that stuff. That's good.
• 1:36:21
  I mean, you know, but I like, you know, well,
• 1:36:26
  it seems to be me. I can just be unashamedly. Happy.
• 1:36:31
  And I'm glad I'm, you know, like Centerfield is so
• 1:36:33
  optimistic and just great.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: It's an awesome song.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: I don't think rock and roll is all dark. I
• 1:36:39
  think there's aspects of rock and roll that people like
• 1:36:42
  that are dark because it's mysterious. These guys are rock stars. But,
• 1:36:46
  you know, rock's everything. It's like there's so many layers
• 1:36:49
  to it. There's so many different types of personality. And
• 1:36:52
  you happy to be happy is also an awesome part
• 1:36:55
  of rock.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: Clearly.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, because actually real people, all those humans sort
• 1:37:02
  of have all those different.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: Parts, right?
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: That's why we identify with it. And I think the,
• 1:37:08
  the brooding dark rock star is like, it's a fantasy
• 1:37:12
  idea that people want to, they want to believe that
• 1:37:15
  there's that part of them, you know, there's this just,
• 1:37:18
  you know what I mean?
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say it's absolutely. And, um, you know,
• 1:37:26
  Marlon Brando on the motorcycle in, Is it the Wild Ones,
• 1:37:30
  I guess?
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, that he's just so bad.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: And so rock stars, well, other, I guess, but rock stars,
• 1:37:45
  because it was right in that era, they invented or
• 1:37:48
  gravitated to, in other words, one picture defines me. Yeah.
• 1:37:52
  This is my uniform.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I sleep in this.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, I've got a big chain, a
• 1:38:01
  leather jacket. I mean, it got more and more violent
• 1:38:04
  or dark. Right. Voodoo, voodoo, you know, and all that.
• 1:38:10
  And it's funny because it's basically I'm all this all
• 1:38:15
  the time. Yeah. This one picture does it. And I
• 1:38:19
  kind of– my wife and I joke about it because
• 1:38:21
  she'll kind of– Say something like, well, you don't dress
• 1:38:25
  like a rock star. And then, of course, I'll say,
• 1:38:27
  because I'm not. Right? I always sort of– I mean
• 1:38:33
  I have a leather jacket somewhere, right? Or two even.
• 1:38:40
  And it– how can I say it? To me, it
• 1:38:44
  was a uniform. To me, it was a pose. And
• 1:38:48
  so– You know, I tend to actually just put on
• 1:38:51
  clothes you can buy in the store when I get
• 1:38:54
  up in the morning. I take my kids to school.
• 1:38:57
  You know, I didn't put on the whole like, just
• 1:39:00
  got off the stage at, I don't know, name some
• 1:39:03
  place at the whiskey. Right. You know, and now I'm
• 1:39:06
  bringing my kids to school. Mrs.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: How you doing?
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: Flip my cigarette over into the. I guess I could
• 1:39:15
  be a sitcom or something, but. That wasn't me. I
• 1:39:19
  just– I kind of was normal dad to my– and
• 1:39:22
  I'm glad they saw me that way, to tell you
• 1:39:24
  the truth.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. The idea is silly that everybody has to
• 1:39:29
  be one way. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Well, clearly, when
• 1:39:33
  you look at what you produced, like you clearly are
• 1:39:35
  a rock star and you did it by being yourself.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: Actually, I think you nailed it there. Here's a real truism.
• 1:39:46
  When you're making something, and we talked about this, and
• 1:39:49
  it's resonating with you, it just seems like in your wheelhouse,
• 1:39:53
  it's you. That's probably going to be really good. It's comfortable.
• 1:39:58
  Sounds like you. You relate.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: If you ever get yourself as a songwriter, singer, whatever, well,
• 1:40:06
  so-and-so is going to really like that I did this,
• 1:40:10
  and you're off on some weird thing trying to beat.
• 1:40:14
  a change or different or something that's not going to
• 1:40:17
  work absolutely not going to work because you you think
• 1:40:23
  somebody else sees it a certain way and you're doing
• 1:40:25
  it for them and god knows whatever that is but
• 1:40:30
  it isn't you at all you you probably are just
• 1:40:35
  out of your element off the rails.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: You might say and guys do get off the.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Rails i've done it myself Oh, yeah, especially being preachy
• 1:40:44
  and that kind of thing. There's some songs that– oh, God.
• 1:40:49
  Shut up, John.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: Where does that come from? Does that come from just
• 1:40:52
  you have a big audience and you– all these people
• 1:40:55
  look up to you and you just start feeling you're important?
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: I think some of it– I don't know all the answers.
• 1:41:05
  Who does? But– You're in a mood or a mode.
• 1:41:12
  You want to get some material together. You want to
• 1:41:15
  make a record. You want to have some stuff finished.
• 1:41:20
  And maybe you're not so inspired, right? Okay, well, I'm
• 1:41:24
  going to... How about if I talk about whatever and
• 1:41:27
  you start trying... It's almost like a square peg in
• 1:41:30
  a round hole. Yeah, I got to do something because
• 1:41:34
  there is... some credence to that. Just work, just start working,
• 1:41:42
  just start moving. You know, don't just sit there, do something.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: Sorry.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: And keep grinding. And maybe eventually it'll get to where
• 1:41:50
  it's natural. You know, the good part. Yeah. Because just
• 1:41:53
  sitting and doing nothing, which I've certainly been accused of
• 1:41:56
  is that's nothing for no one. Right. So you start
• 1:42:02
  moving your feet and trying to get the juices to
• 1:42:04
  flow and all that. Um, But like I said, yeah,
• 1:42:08
  I wrote some songs, a whole album really called Eye
• 1:42:11
  of the Zombie. It was the follow-up to Centerfield. And
• 1:42:16
  I think, well, I had some other, some ulterior, not
• 1:42:25
  that I did it on purpose, but some other ingredients
• 1:42:28
  came into my mix. I'll get there in a minute.
• 1:42:32
  But anyway, the album as a whole is pretty dark.
• 1:42:35
  and pretty, and not, doesn't ring true to me, I think.
• 1:42:41
  It's kinda misses the mark, it's off. That album and
• 1:42:49
  that period of my life is a really interesting, really
• 1:42:56
  interesting phenomenon. I think that I'm not the only one,
• 1:43:00
  it's just that I consider myself lucky. I worked for,
• 1:43:05
  you know, I had this enormous band, number one in
• 1:43:08
  the world, um, get screwed by the record company, lose
• 1:43:13
  my life savings, band breaks up, bands in the, in
• 1:43:18
  the newspaper saying nasty things about me, et cetera. Uh,
• 1:43:24
  I'm held kind of in a dungeon by the record
• 1:43:26
  company and I got to either give them my music
• 1:43:29
  or no one else, you know? Um, And I somehow
• 1:43:34
  managed to get through all that. And it's 15 years
• 1:43:39
  after Creedence breaking up, basically. Finally come out with an
• 1:43:45
  album called Centerfield. There's happy, joyful music on it. It
• 1:43:49
  goes to number one. It's acclaimed, which is a wonderful thing.
• 1:43:54
  And it's a hit. I think what happened is the
• 1:44:00
  story I tell about it. It's as if you'd been
• 1:44:04
  unjustly in prison, you know, convicted of a crime, put
• 1:44:08
  in the penitentiary for a long time. And one day
• 1:44:12
  they decide, oops, you're right. We made a mistake. You're
• 1:44:17
  free because you didn't commit any crimes. We're going to
• 1:44:21
  let you free. And you're so happy. You walk out
• 1:44:24
  the door. That's center field coming out. And you come
• 1:44:29
  out into this big meadow where, you know, green grass
• 1:44:31
  and Bluebirds, you know, it's a Disney cartoon, right? And
• 1:44:35
  then you turn around and you see frickin' San Quentin,
• 1:44:39
  the prison that you were in, and now you're angry.
• 1:44:43
  You look at that and you're just, well, what the?
• 1:44:47
  That's what happened. You know, when Cinderfield came out, I
• 1:44:54
  should have, and was a success. In other words, I
• 1:44:57
  was exonerated or vindicated. I should have immediately gone to therapy, right,
• 1:45:03
  seen a shrink. But that's kind of not my– I
• 1:45:06
  wasn't raised anywhere near any of that kind of stuff.
• 1:45:10
  So I didn't know to do that. Instead, all that
• 1:45:15
  stuff that I was repressing so that I could do
• 1:45:18
  center field, it just came out like– and I was–
• 1:45:22
  instead of being overjoyed, I was miserable, bitter, sad. and
• 1:45:28
  it happened all at once. It didn't like develop. It
• 1:45:31
  was bam. And for like two years, it was like,
• 1:45:36
  you could say Saul's name. And my, I would implode
• 1:45:40
  like the werewolf in, in the werewolves of London or something,
• 1:45:45
  you know, or the what's that guy? Uh, the Hulk. Yeah. Um,
• 1:45:53
  And so I made that album, and that's all that stuff.
• 1:45:55
  I mean, I just didn't have the sense to see
• 1:45:57
  that it was nothing like Centerfield.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: Not a good– this guy's not happy. It was not
• 1:46:04
  a good follow-up. How did you bounce back? And then
• 1:46:10
  I met Julie. Oh. You know, right in the middle
• 1:46:16
  of that tour in 86 for Eye of the Zombie,
• 1:46:23
  So I am a zombie, you know. I met Julie.
• 1:46:28
  And even though I didn't know, I thought I was
• 1:46:35
  in perpetual binge mode. Basically, okay, I'm going to go
• 1:46:40
  out and tour now. I'm just going to be a
• 1:46:42
  rock star on the road and be everything I never
• 1:46:47
  got to do for 20 years, right? Now I'm like,
• 1:46:50
  I'm a little kid now. musician again. That's what I
• 1:46:55
  thought I was doing. Obviously, that comes from some anger
• 1:46:58
  to talk like that. And so I just thought I
• 1:47:01
  was going to make my way through the Hollywood Hills,
• 1:47:06
  you might say. I think I actually said that in
• 1:47:08
  those days. And one day, just suddenly met Julie, not
• 1:47:15
  expecting to meet the love of my life, the person
• 1:47:20
  I feel that was that I was destined to meet
• 1:47:24
  and the person that would, through her good graces, help
• 1:47:30
  me find myself and help me enjoy and find the
• 1:47:35
  joy of life again. And it all changed.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's awesome. It's great that you bounced out
• 1:47:45
  of that because a lot of people don't. You know,
• 1:47:47
  when something bad happens to them, they just go into
• 1:47:50
  a spiral.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: It's kind of amazing that you were joyful at first,
• 1:47:55
  but then you started getting resentful and thinking about it,
• 1:47:58
  which is totally understandable.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you said a spiral, and that's just what it
• 1:48:02
  felt like. You're just kind of getting– it's getting worse
• 1:48:05
  and worse, not better.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: Alcohol as well, right?
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: And, boy, you know, they call it– it takes you
• 1:48:12
  a long time to figure out. It's a depressant.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: You're drinking. You think you're drinking to forget stuff. but
• 1:48:20
  you're getting more and more depressed. Right.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's weakening your resolve, your body. It's weakening
• 1:48:27
  your vitality. So you're tired and you're angry.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: That too. Yeah. And your mindset.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: You're just in a– Miserable mood.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: And it's also– that's also in the rock and roll stereotype.
• 1:48:41
  The drinking, hard partying. Like one of my favorite songs
• 1:48:45
  when I was a kid was Bad Company's Shooting Star.
• 1:48:50
  And every kid that used to listen to that thought
• 1:48:53
  they were Johnny. Like Johnny was a schoolboy. When he
• 1:48:56
  heard his first Beatles song. It's a sad song. The
• 1:48:59
  guy dies young, becomes a rock star and winds up dead.
• 1:49:01
  And everybody was romanticizing this song of this terrible lifestyle
• 1:49:07
  that this guy lived. This guy was super talented and
• 1:49:11
  had the gift.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's based on some reality there, of course.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah, we really romanticized the idea of dying young,
• 1:49:24
  burn bright. die young. And it's all cool until they're
• 1:49:31
  pointing at you and you're the one that's going to die.
• 1:49:33
  I mean, at that moment in life, most people, no,
• 1:49:36
  I don't want to die. I know. Up until then,
• 1:49:40
  it's just sort of a vague idea out there somewhere.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right. But weird that it's a romantic vague idea.
• 1:49:47
  You know, Johnny died one night, died in his bed,
• 1:49:50
  bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head. Like, we just,
• 1:49:54
  just like, Like this is how it goes. You know,
• 1:49:58
  like this is the rock and roll romantic story.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: Well, you hear those words when you're young, of course. Right.
• 1:50:04
  That actually sounds kind of positive, you know, because rock
• 1:50:09
  and roll, man.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: When you're older, you can hear the same words and
• 1:50:14
  you say, yes, that's real. But it's not a positive
• 1:50:19
  thing anymore. It's just sort of a statement of fact. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:50:24
  I mean, I'm sitting here now, you know, talking about
• 1:50:29
  some parts of me that I'm certainly embarrassed about and
• 1:50:34
  probably ashamed of. I've let the shame part go. It
• 1:50:38
  just happened, right? I mean, I don't encourage anyone and
• 1:50:42
  I try to tell them, no, stay away from, don't
• 1:50:44
  do what I did. But I used to beat myself
• 1:50:49
  up a lot with the shame part. And I think
• 1:50:51
  that might be part of the Healing, part of the
• 1:50:55
  getting out the other end because the more and more
• 1:51:01
  solid you get in the resolve of the way you're
• 1:51:04
  going to really live your life and not that, the
• 1:51:08
  kind of more the shame dissipates. Right. It's not tenuous
• 1:51:13
  anymore like, oh, I might fall back, you know. You're
• 1:51:16
  not so scared that that could happen anymore.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: I think the shame is an important element.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: I think the shame of your past and the mistakes
• 1:51:24
  that you've made motivates you to never make them again.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: As long as you don't think you're still that person.
• 1:51:30
  That's the problem. Some people, they'll do something in high
• 1:51:33
  school and they carry that for the rest of their life.
• 1:51:36
  Whatever it is, whatever stupid mistakes they made, whatever behavior,
• 1:51:39
  they think that's them forever. And that's what's crazy.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, we should be able to grow up and become,
• 1:51:47
  you know, kids. I got married the first time at 20.
• 1:51:53
  I mean, there just should be a law. You know,
• 1:51:57
  you're just too young. You don't know what you're doing.
• 1:52:01
  You don't know what all this really means. Certainly by
• 1:52:06
  the time I met Julie, you know what, though, that
• 1:52:11
  experience made me shy away for a few years there
• 1:52:16
  from the whole idea of a marriage commitment. I was committed,
• 1:52:20
  but the marriage part scared me. You know, it just,
• 1:52:25
  oh my goodness. And then one day I realized I
• 1:52:28
  was sort of, well, wait a minute. Go back to
• 1:52:31
  square one. What's the most joyful, happy thing you can do? Well,
• 1:52:35
  I want to marry her.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: And have children and have a white picket fence and
• 1:52:40
  a house and we go to kindergarten and All those things,
• 1:52:44
  you know. We bake cookies at the PTA. I want
• 1:52:46
  all that. Yeah. So, sure.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: It's crazy because that's not what anybody thinks of when
• 1:52:53
  you think of a rock and roll life. Uh-oh. Right?
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: I suppose. See, I'm corny again.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: It's not corny. I think it's authentic. I don't think
• 1:53:02
  there's anything wrong with the way you think at all.
• 1:53:04
  I think it's healthy. It's healthy.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I just really– even though my mom– I mean,
• 1:53:12
  she was a warrior. Think of it. There were five boys.
• 1:53:16
  That was my family. My parents split up. It was
• 1:53:20
  kind of a long, ongoing thing, but somewhere around eight
• 1:53:24
  years old. And so it was my mom's job to
• 1:53:27
  raise these five boys. And at some point, being a teenager,
• 1:53:32
  a little later, I said, it's a wonder we're not
• 1:53:34
  all in San Quentin. I mean, somehow she had enough
• 1:53:40
  of her. She gave enough of her to inspire us,
• 1:53:44
  all of us, really, to be good people. I mean,
• 1:53:49
  you know, we all had our faults and foibles and
• 1:53:51
  fell down and all that, but yet the ideal was
• 1:53:55
  to try and reach up here and be a good person.
• 1:53:58
  And it was because our family wasn't, in some sense,
• 1:54:03
  to try and have a normal family, you know, leave
• 1:54:07
  it to Beaver and all that sort of thing. So
• 1:54:09
  that was a big goal to me a big inspiration
• 1:54:15
  to to want that.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: Well it's a beautiful thing there's nothing wrong with that
• 1:54:21
  idea not at all not at all it's just the
• 1:54:23
  idea that there's something wrong with it is that that's
• 1:54:25
  the fake rock and roll vision that's the vision of
• 1:54:30
  the dark artist you know.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: I think um I don't know if I talk with
• 1:54:36
  Julie about this. Sometimes we show up at stuff and
• 1:54:39
  there'll be a lot of characters. I'm talking about musical things.
• 1:54:42
  A lot of characters roaming around. I kind of look
• 1:54:47
  like Ward Cleaver, Beaver's dad. Mr. Boy Scout or something
• 1:54:56
  walking around. She's looking at me like, couldn't you have
• 1:55:00
  worn something a little more hotter?
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: A little more rock and roll? Yeah, maybe.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm just not bothered. I mean, it is kind
• 1:55:08
  of funny, though. Actually, I've worn some cool clothes at
• 1:55:12
  some of the stuff. That would all be Julie's doing,
• 1:55:16
  of course. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like, you know,
• 1:55:24
  could you show up at a reunion of rock guys,
• 1:55:29
  you know, in their 50s or something, and everybody pull
• 1:55:31
  out their blotter, police blotter. Oh, yeah, I got busted
• 1:55:36
  for– and everybody would have.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: A– A rap sheet.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: I mean it would be a badge of honor but
• 1:55:44
  I suppose to me I'm just really glad that it
• 1:55:48
  wasn't like that.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just you being authentic. It's a powerful thing.
• 1:55:53
  It's great too because the influence is to not– the
• 1:55:58
  influence is to create an image of You know, and
• 1:56:01
  a lot of people cultivated that image.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: And they get kind of captured by it.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: And then you have to be that person forever. You can't, like, switch.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: Letterman to Pee Wee Herman on his show. Just think,
• 1:56:14
  Pee Wee, you're going to have to dress like that
• 1:56:17
  for the rest of your life.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: That's true. Right? Right?
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: You become a character.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: And that's what people love. They don't love you. They
• 1:56:27
  love this fake thing that you've.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: Presented to the world. It's the cowboy thing, the motorcycle. Look,
• 1:56:35
  I like all those too, actually. I like keeping it
• 1:56:41
  as a fantasy. I watch some TV shows and my
• 1:56:47
  favorites are the modern, like Yellowstone and all the other ones.
• 1:56:53
  After that, there's probably a lot of A lot of–
• 1:56:58
  what do you call that? Literary license, you know?
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: For imagery. But I love the imagery. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:57:04
  I can sit there and watch that river flowing past
• 1:57:07
  those rocks and the pine trees forever and some cows
• 1:57:10
  going over the– that's okay.
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: I love it. And the stoic cowboys living this rough life.
• 1:57:15
  I like all that. Of course. Everybody does. It's very
• 1:57:18
  romantic when you're looking at it from the outside especially.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, how many people moved to Montana because of
• 1:57:24
  that show?
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: They're hoping not so many.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: I bet a lot did, though. A lot did and
• 1:57:29
  I think a lot left. Yeah, I think they realize
• 1:57:32
  how hard the winters are. This ain't my romantic idea.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a long winter up there.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy. Yeah.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: Music is one of the most powerful things in American
• 1:57:47
  culture because a great song like Fortunate Son– can inspire
• 1:57:51
  people to change their lives. It can inspire people to
• 1:57:53
  make decisions. It does things to people. It gives you fuel.
• 1:57:58
  Like I was saying, if I listen to that song
• 1:58:00
  when I'm working out, it's like I took an energy pill.
• 1:58:03
  like all of a sudden I have more energy like
• 1:58:05
  that's real it's a powerful thing that you've created it
• 1:58:09
  really is you know and the fact that you did
• 1:58:13
  it out of love and enjoyment speaks to why the
• 1:58:16
  music is so it resonates so much with people.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: Well you know especially with that song at that point
• 1:58:24
  in the career of my band remember I was writing
• 1:58:29
  all the songs. I'll talk about that after this, I guess,
• 1:58:33
  in a minute. But I wanted to have just an
• 1:58:38
  all-out screaming rocker, which we didn't have yet. You know,
• 1:58:45
  the career was about a year and a half old.
• 1:58:48
  And so, I mean, I commissioned myself to, I want
• 1:58:53
  to have that that absolutely loud screaming song with the
• 1:58:59
  guitars and all. And so that was sort of the
• 1:59:03
  commission I gave myself to create.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: As opposed to something like, have you ever seen the rain?
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or even down on the corner, which is a
• 1:59:11
  different vibe. Right. Oh, you know, I wanted to, cause
• 1:59:14
  I like that. I like when bands, you know, uh,
• 1:59:17
  the Beatles actually, I want to hold your hand or
• 1:59:20
  she was just 17. Saw her standing there, I guess. Um,
• 1:59:25
  You know, or it's not really fast, but it certainly
• 1:59:30
  had that vibe. You know, the instrumental rumble by Link Wray.
• 1:59:37
  I see I've missed you.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: Cool. Yeah, I don't know that song.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: Can you put that one up?
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pull that one up. We'll get flagged. We'll remove it.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Do you do that? Do you play little snippets of music?
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: We can play snippets, but the problem.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: Is— You know everything we've just been talking about?
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: Everything, including the guy. If there's a clip of him
• 1:59:56
  playing that.
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: The only problem is we can't put it on the
• 2:00:00
  podcast itself or we'll get flagged. But we can listen
• 2:00:03
  to it right now and then we'll just cut that
• 2:00:04
  part out.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: That was the musical scale right there. What is that?
• 2:00:10
  I took so much out of that. But anyway, he
• 2:00:12
  was the Rumble, the song. Who's the guy? Link Wray. Oh, God,
• 2:00:18
  that's so cool. And when you saw him. Black leather jacket,
• 2:00:22
  skinny as a rail, probably had a suit. Yeah. Probably
• 2:00:26
  a motorcycle. I mean, it was the entire thing in
• 2:00:30
  one little two-and-a-half-minute song.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. Look at him there. God, does he look cool.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a little older there, but he's bad. Wow.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: He looks cool as hell. It's always fascinating to me
• 2:00:47
  where artists had like one incredible song. And then never
• 2:00:52
  made it. And you'll find out about that song and
• 2:00:56
  you go, this is incredible. How did this guy never
• 2:00:59
  make it? Do you know who Johnny Thunder is?
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: I've heard the name.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: Okay. Play I'm Alive for him. There's a song that
• 2:01:07
  my friend Brian Simpson told me about. God, it must
• 2:01:10
  have been like a couple of years ago now. And
• 2:01:13
  he played it for us in the Mothership, the comedy club,
• 2:01:15
  the green room. And he goes, you're going to love
• 2:01:17
  this song. And I went, who is this? We had
• 2:01:20
  to figure out who it was. It's a song from
• 2:01:22
  1969 by this guy, Johnny Thunder.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: 69?
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: 1969. And it's fucking incredible. It's such a good song.
• 2:01:31
  And I'm like, if I didn't know any better, I'm like, oh,
• 2:01:34
  this guy must have been a huge star. I know.
• 2:01:38
  But if I heard that and someone said, this guy's
• 2:01:40
  a huge star. Have you heard this song about, oh,
• 2:01:42
  my God, it sounds like a huge star. This guy's fantastic.
• 2:01:45
  Listen to this. Listen to this. How good is that?
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: It's great.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: How good is that? The song's phenomenal, right? Yeah.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: Did he ever, like, under a different name or anything? Nope. Oh,
• 2:01:56
  my goodness.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: Nope. Isn't that crazy?
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: We started playing that song. The attitude's great. He's saying
• 2:02:03
  a lot of great stuff. The name's great.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: The voice is incredible. The sound's incredible. We played that
• 2:02:10
  song on the podcast a couple years ago, and now
• 2:02:13
  the song's in commercials and all these different things.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that true? Yeah.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, cool. But he's dead now. He's dead. He died.
• 2:02:20
  I think he died in 2019 or something like that?
• 2:02:23
  He died in 2024.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: 2024. Wow.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. So he probably died like right after we
• 2:02:29
  discovered him. Isn't that crazy?
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Yeah.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, you hear that. You're like, how did that
• 2:02:37
  guy not be one of the biggest artists in the world?
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: Or at least have that song be a big thing.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: That song wasn't even a big hit. Right. It's crazy.
• 2:02:47
  It's just you realize the slippery nature of success. Especially
• 2:02:57
  with art. Like sometimes guys just catch lightning. They got
• 2:03:01
  that one.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: And that's it.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: You know, I think any artist that's been around a while.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: He had another hit? Yeah, that was his biggest hit.
• 2:03:10
  Loop de Loop.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know that song.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, Johnny Thunder featuring the Bobettes.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: When did this come out?
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: That's 1963.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's the song. I know that one. Wow. I
• 2:03:22
  didn't know who the name was. Here we go loop-de-loo.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy? That song was Johnny Thunder's only top
• 2:03:30
  40 hit. That's incredible.
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: How high did it say it got?
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: It said number four. Number four on the U.S. pop charts.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: Number six on the U.S. R & B charts. Wow.
• 2:03:41
  And the album in Canada reached number 14 two separate weeks.
• 2:03:47
  It's incredible because if you hear that other song, like
• 2:03:51
  that other song is– that should be gigantic. I'm Alive
• 2:03:55
  should be a huge hit.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: Right. It's weird. Meaning a statement of– it's like I'm
• 2:04:00
  a man or something.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: I've played that for so many musicians and they listen
• 2:04:05
  to it and they never heard it before. Right. And
• 2:04:06
  so many guys are like, oh, oh my god. You
• 2:04:09
  hear them hit like, oh, baby. It just cracks. It's
• 2:04:14
  a perfect song. It's an amazing song. But it's like
• 2:04:19
  the slippery nature of art. You know, it's just like sometimes.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so why would something that good just, you know,
• 2:04:27
  there's something. I don't know. The week it came out
• 2:04:30
  was 9-11 or something.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what my fear is? My fear is
• 2:04:35
  that he got. trapped up in the music business side
• 2:04:40
  of it. And they just decided not to promote him
• 2:04:43
  or something. He ran afoul with the music company or something.
• 2:04:48
  It just doesn't make sense that a guy who can
• 2:04:50
  make a song that good If you can make that
• 2:04:52
  song that good, you can make a ton of songs.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: You would think so.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You just need the right people with you.
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because he had the voice.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: He had everything.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: He could always do that.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: The voice, the sound, the soul to his music, the
• 2:05:04
  way he sang. I'm a man.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Hey.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so good. It's
• 2:05:12
  a very difficult thing to capture. And even capturing it
• 2:05:21
  only once doesn't ensure a long career of getting it right,
• 2:05:27
  of finding that thing.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we were talking about that a little bit
• 2:05:32
  a while ago. You know, that first blush when you
• 2:05:36
  realize you can do it because you've never done it before. Yeah.
• 2:05:40
  You know, when you cross that particular threshold, that's an
• 2:05:45
  amazing transformation, I guess, in an artist's life. the way
• 2:05:52
  he grows. Because until you actually do it, it's all
• 2:05:58
  just a dream. You know, I mean, I had grown
• 2:06:04
  up writing songs. You know, they weren't great songs. I mean,
• 2:06:08
  I kind of knew it. I was watching all the
• 2:06:11
  people I loved. I'm talking about from being four or
• 2:06:14
  five years old all the way through growing up. And,
• 2:06:18
  you know, things happen. Elvis... Motown and Beatles and all
• 2:06:23
  these things happen. And wow, you really like all that.
• 2:06:27
  And meanwhile, you're having the dream of being in music somehow.
• 2:06:33
  But you never really know if you're going to be
• 2:06:36
  able to do that or not.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, this, this sort of spreads out in a
• 2:06:43
  lot of strange ways in entertainment. I mean, I, I,
• 2:06:49
  I kind of make it similar to what if you're
• 2:06:52
  a baseball player and you dream of growing up and
• 2:06:57
  getting to the major leagues, right? Somebody becomes Willie Mays.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people don't. And you just don't know.
• 2:07:09
  There's that realization. I mean, for Willie, actually, it was
• 2:07:14
  slow if you read about him. Him and DeRocher were
• 2:07:17
  kind of– DeRocher could see it. So if you're lucky
• 2:07:25
  enough and you become Willie Mays, I mean, God bless you, right?
• 2:07:29
  But there is that, for most of us, that moment that, well, sorry, kid,
• 2:07:35
  you know, you're average, but we don't need average. Right.
• 2:07:41
  And that just happens a lot. In music, there was
• 2:07:46
  people like me. When the Four people that became credents
• 2:07:52
  sort of got together in 1967 after I got off
• 2:07:57
  active duty. And we said, oh. we're gonna go for broke. Yeah, okay,
• 2:08:03
  we'll have a democracy. Yeah, we'll vote on everything. Yeah,
• 2:08:09
  we'll all write songs and everything, right. One of the
• 2:08:14
  things that happened going along those lines I would show
• 2:08:19
  up at the rehearsal. At that point, we said, we
• 2:08:24
  got to do this all the time if we're ever
• 2:08:25
  going to get any good. So every day during the week,
• 2:08:29
  we'd meet at noon, or actually a little before that,
• 2:08:32
  maybe 11 and sit and talk. And then noon was
• 2:08:36
  rehearsal time. And so I'd say, okay, anybody got any songs?
• 2:08:43
  And people started looking down. All right, well, look, I
• 2:08:47
  got something in We'd work on my song, right? I mean,
• 2:08:51
  we're just sort of getting organized. I've just come off
• 2:08:54
  active duty. I've been away from the world, you might say.
• 2:08:56
  Then next day, same thing. You know, at home, I'd
• 2:09:02
  work on some stuff. Anybody got any songs? I mean,
• 2:09:08
  it was the weirdest quiet. A week later, you know,
• 2:09:12
  same thing. And finally, I just, well, look, I began
• 2:09:16
  to feel this thing inside that, I got to push.
• 2:09:20
  I mean, I think I can do this. And so
• 2:09:25
  eventually I got the idea. The songs I'm working on
• 2:09:31
  aren't quite there. How about if we take an old
• 2:09:34
  song and I'll just trick it up, like psychedelicize it?
• 2:09:41
  Because I'll pick a song I already know is good.
• 2:09:44
  It's got good stuff in it. And that's what I
• 2:09:46
  did with Susie Q. I just kind of really arranged
• 2:09:50
  it and had all this cool stuff going on. It
• 2:09:53
  wasn't something I wrote. It kind of relieved me of
• 2:09:56
  the pressure of having to do that and was able
• 2:10:00
  to just, Hey, just the, that blank page turned into
• 2:10:05
  a different rainbow full of all. Nobody can fault me
• 2:10:09
  because it's not my song. Right. Did all this great stuff,
• 2:10:13
  this cool musical stuff to it. Um, The whole point
• 2:10:20
  was to get that tape on a local underground station
• 2:10:24
  that was actually playing unpublished tapes by certain bands. The
• 2:10:31
  most famous one you ever heard about, there was a
• 2:10:33
  tape of Janis Joplin singing Hesitation Blues and Jorma's playing guitar.
• 2:10:40
  But in the background, somebody's typing their term papers. It
• 2:10:44
  was done in their kitchen. And so it was just
• 2:10:48
  an amateur, unauthorized thing. But they played it on this
• 2:10:52
  one station. It became a hit on that station. People
• 2:10:55
  requested it. There were a couple other bands that had
• 2:10:57
  tapes like that.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: And you could hear the typewriter in the background?
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: She's singing hesitation blues.
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: So that became the, let's do that. Let's do an
• 2:11:10
  end run around record companies and just bring the thing
• 2:11:13
  straight to the station. Well, they loved Susie Q. They
• 2:11:17
  started playing it probably eight times a day. Each different
• 2:11:20
  disc jockey would play it. It's eight minutes and 20
• 2:11:23
  seconds long or whatever.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: And that was really the true beginning. Um, finished that album.
• 2:11:33
  My songwriting was, you know, wasn't great. It was competent.
• 2:11:42
  But somewhere right after the album came out, oh, I
• 2:11:51
  wanted to make that point. Everybody had ample opportunity to
• 2:11:56
  write a song. And it just kind of wasn't coming.
• 2:12:00
  I would show up at the rehearsals. Well, anybody got
• 2:12:04
  a song, you know, and everybody got real quiet. And
• 2:12:09
  so I said, well, look, okay, let's work on this.
• 2:12:12
  And I began to realize inside that it was going
• 2:12:17
  to be up to me. It wasn't I want to
• 2:12:23
  control everything. It was I got to start rolling this
• 2:12:27
  boat or we're going to sink in the middle of
• 2:12:29
  the ocean. So I started pushing myself harder and harder.
• 2:12:36
  The first album comes out on my birthday, 1968. I'm
• 2:12:41
  23 years old. And within, sometime shortly after that, I
• 2:12:48
  can't really pin down the, I'm still in the army, right?
• 2:12:51
  But I'm working on getting released, getting out. Somewhere, I
• 2:12:57
  think in June or July, I don't exactly know, my
• 2:13:00
  honorable discharge shows up. I open this package that's been
• 2:13:06
  sitting there for a couple of days because it said
• 2:13:09
  official government business. Who's that for? It was for me.
• 2:13:14
  It was an apartment house. I'm overjoyed. I mean, this
• 2:13:18
  is the biggest struggle has been of my life. Wow.
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: Wow!
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: I turned a little cartwheel on the lawn because I
• 2:13:27
  want to remember that I turned the cartwheel and ran
• 2:13:30
  in the house and picked up my guitar and started
• 2:13:34
  playing these chords that are somewhat like Beethoven. Oh! I
• 2:13:39
  start strumming this beat. I start hearing... This chorus. See,
• 2:13:56
  the first thing I said was, left a good job
• 2:13:58
  in the city. That was getting out of the army. Wow,
• 2:14:04
  working for the man every night and day. Wow, what
• 2:14:07
  is this? Eventually I arrive at this thing where I say.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: Rolling, rolling.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, I like that. Rolling, rolling on the river. That's
• 2:14:21
  starting to be beyond me. me, out of me, right?
• 2:14:28
  I look in my book because I said, what is
• 2:14:29
  this thing about? What am I doing here? The very
• 2:14:32
  first thing I had written in my little book of
• 2:14:36
  song titles was Proud Mary. It's the actual first line,
• 2:14:41
  first thing. I looked at that and I said, wow,
• 2:14:47
  this is about Proud Mary is a riverboat. This is
• 2:14:50
  a boat named Proud Mary. That's what we're doing here.
• 2:14:54
  And I finished the song, right? I mean, it was
• 2:14:57
  kind of Mark Twain, kind of Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper,
• 2:15:05
  you know, had a little bit of kind of gospel
• 2:15:09
  flavor and the Old South in it. Wow. When I
• 2:15:14
  got done, which was about an hour, I was about
• 2:15:17
  an hour from when I'd opened my Honorable Discharge, I'm
• 2:15:21
  actually holding the little yellow tablet I'd been writing on.
• 2:15:27
  I said, John, you've written the classic. I realized that
• 2:15:32
  this song was, I had evolved. It was way better
• 2:15:37
  than anything I'd ever done before. And so those meetings
• 2:15:41
  I'd been having, going to see the band, and was
• 2:15:44
  anybody got anything and no one ever did, and I'd
• 2:15:48
  show my little piece of something I was working on,
• 2:15:50
  that kind of led me can I say it to
• 2:15:54
  the confidence to do something really great by just doing
• 2:16:01
  it right and the knowledge I mean I had I
• 2:16:04
  was self aware I'm looking at this thing Proud Mary
• 2:16:08
  and it's got Americana in it although I don't think
• 2:16:11
  I had a word then it's got I knew it
• 2:16:14
  was Mark Twain and the river and all this soulful
• 2:16:18
  stuff and wow this for sure is the best thing
• 2:16:23
  I'd ever done. I knew it was a great song.
• 2:16:26
  The next, God, I hope I get to do this
• 2:16:30
  again because you just don't know.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: Right. But that, that was how that came about.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: Like a bolt of lightning and inspiration.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: Charged up from the discharge.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But, but yes. And, and something led me to
• 2:16:49
  be better than I was. I think what my point was,
• 2:16:53
  it was kind of the Willie Mays thing. I never
• 2:16:56
  knew if I would be able to do that or not. Right? Right.
• 2:17:01
  You're going along, you're just plunking along clubs, whatever, learning
• 2:17:06
  a chord here and there, learning something off a record,
• 2:17:09
  hoping you have a career in music because you like music. Me,
• 2:17:15
  because my mother had focused, had kind of pointed out
• 2:17:21
  It put me in that realm. It made me at
• 2:17:28
  least realize that that was one of the functions of music.
• 2:17:35
  That's another story I could tell you. I don't know
• 2:17:37
  if you want to hear that.
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 2: I want to hear every story. That's a fantastic story, though,
• 2:17:42
  because you just getting that notice that you've been relieved
• 2:17:49
  and you're no longer in active duty. You've got an
• 2:17:52
  honorable discharge. You're free and then the inspiration comes and
• 2:17:57
  you write your greatest song of all time like that.
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: Or at least the greatest song to that moment and
• 2:18:02
  realize this can be– this can happen. You really have it.
• 2:18:07
  You really have it because you don't know until you try.
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: You don't know until it happens.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't know.
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: Until Willie Mays one day did something on the field,
• 2:18:17
  he didn't know. Right. And there was a point, as
• 2:18:20
  I alluded to, I've read about it. DeRocher knew when
• 2:18:23
  he saw him, and Willie wasn't so sure yet.
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. Bad Moon Rising is another great,
• 2:18:31
  fantastic song, another huge favorite of mine. But also because
• 2:18:37
  it's in one of my all-time favorite movies, American Werewolf
• 2:18:40
  in London.
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 2: That scene.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: That song. That must have been cool to have that
• 2:18:45
  song play in that movie.
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: It's very cool to me now. I don't even know
• 2:18:52
  if I saw the movie at the time it came out.
• 2:18:57
  That was during the time I was still, you know,
• 2:19:01
  away from music and kind of angry and pissed off
• 2:19:05
  about my situation. So when something would get done with
• 2:19:08
  my music, it kind of made me mad because nobody
• 2:19:12
  asked me.
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, right. Because you didn't have the
• 2:19:15
  rights to it.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Still phenomenal song. Phenomenal song. So did you
• 2:19:23
  write all the songs?
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: I wrote all the songs from Credence.
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: Until the last album, the seventh album that was basically
• 2:19:33
  a result of the guys saying, we want to, you know,
• 2:19:36
  there was a big band meeting. We want to write
• 2:19:39
  the songs and we demand that we get to write
• 2:19:41
  the songs and sing the songs and make up our
• 2:19:43
  own musical parts.
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 2: So they got resentful.
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: Then resisting that because I just, I thought it was
• 2:19:51
  going to really, I literally thought it would be career suicide. I,
• 2:19:56
  you know, change everything now. Yeah. Cause well, here's, here's
• 2:20:00
  another part of it. You're, you're struggling and you know, the,
• 2:20:04
  the early days of your career and the, all your
• 2:20:07
  life getting to that point, you're trying to figure out
• 2:20:09
  what works.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, everyone goes through that because you clearly,
• 2:20:13
  you don't know what works yet. I haven't, haven't figured
• 2:20:16
  it out. And one day when some stuff starts happening
• 2:20:19
  and well, that's how you do it. This and this
• 2:20:22
  and this, this works. And I got very good at that.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: And you had put in that work and they hadn't,
• 2:20:29
  so they weren't really contributing. And I, They must have
• 2:20:32
  gotten resentful that you were the one who wrote all
• 2:20:34
  these big hits. And eventually they're like, we want to try.
• 2:20:37
  We're Credence too.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: Well, especially because two of them had never written a
• 2:20:41
  song in their life.
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's crazy. And then they wanted to write a
• 2:20:45
  song for Credence while Credence was huge.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's a bit of, what's the word,
• 2:20:54
  boulder dash into that. I mean, it's wow. But maybe
• 2:20:57
  you should, you know, rehearse a little bit. I mean,
• 2:21:01
  I've been writing songs since I was eight. Not that
• 2:21:04
  they were good. They could have jumped in.
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 2: They could have jumped in when– in the beginning.
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: When you were writing all the songs and they weren't
• 2:21:11
  coming up with anything. If they did, you probably would
• 2:21:14
  have did their songs as well if they went on
• 2:21:16
  a similar path to you.
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: It would have been like– yeah. My songs weren't that
• 2:21:21
  good at that time, but they were– how can I say?
• 2:21:25
  They were maybe better than average. They weren't great songs yet.
• 2:21:29
  They were– album songs or something, right? Right. But what
• 2:21:33
  I'm getting at is that the other guys, there was
• 2:21:35
  no songs. So that's that thing in– I keep using
• 2:21:44
  the Muli Mays metaphor if that's what it is. That example,
• 2:21:50
  at some point you're working with the elements in the
• 2:21:56
  field that you love and then you realize– how to
• 2:22:01
  put it together and to make it happen, if you're lucky.
• 2:22:05
  And then comes the time when you actually make something
• 2:22:08
  that's good, right? But I can't think of anyone that
• 2:22:13
  the first song they ever wrote, boom, was Ave Maria
• 2:22:18
  or something, you know? Right, right. So I just thought
• 2:22:25
  it was a journey. I mean, I had been on
• 2:22:27
  the journey myself and seen it. But I think now
• 2:22:31
  I look at it, I was probably destined. It was
• 2:22:36
  what I loved and that was what was calling me.
• 2:22:40
  I mean, that was my motivation the whole time since
• 2:22:46
  I was a child. I just loved it and wanted
• 2:22:50
  to do that, whatever it was.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why it worked.
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 2: You put in the work and you loved it. and
• 2:22:57
  you worked at it and you try to get it better.
• 2:22:59
  And you also got inspiration. You were also open to
• 2:23:01
  that inspiration. It's just funny that the band members didn't
• 2:23:06
  contribute until the seventh album and they wanted to jump in.
• 2:23:08
  It's kind of crazy, but understandable. I mean, it's human
• 2:23:13
  nature to be resentful, especially if you've got a huge
• 2:23:16
  band and one guy is the lead singer. And that
• 2:23:19
  guy's also writing all the songs.
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I, well, I walked around for, uh, many months,
• 2:23:28
  you know, mulling over this whole thing. Because right after
• 2:23:31
  that meeting, shortly after that, my brother Tom decided he
• 2:23:36
  just left. You know, even though I kind of gave
• 2:23:40
  in to all the demands, okay, we'll do it that way.
• 2:23:43
  I could see that the band was going to disintegrate
• 2:23:46
  unless I acquiesced, right? I mean, up until then, I'd
• 2:23:50
  managed to keep it, don't do that. Don't do that.
• 2:23:54
  It's going to wreck us. So when I agreed, I mean,
• 2:23:58
  it was literally a couple months later, Tom left. And
• 2:24:02
  so now, oh, God, what's going to happen now? So
• 2:24:05
  I didn't know if I was just going to call
• 2:24:08
  it quits. The image in my mind was of when
• 2:24:14
  Elvis got taken by the colonel, just kind of pulled
• 2:24:18
  out of the other guy's. And they left them an alert,
• 2:24:21
  you might say. That's the way it looked to me.
• 2:24:24
  It's like Elvis got all new guys. And it was
• 2:24:28
  readily apparent because I had already seen Elvis' comeback special,
• 2:24:34
  the part where they sat around in a circle and
• 2:24:36
  did the old songs. And he had the old guys,
• 2:24:40
  Scotty and Bill. Or maybe Bill was gone by then.
• 2:24:44
  But J.D. Fontana or D. JD Montana. Um, and it
• 2:24:52
  was just apparent that that was the best thing. Everybody
• 2:24:54
  loved that part of his special. Most people, he's just
• 2:24:58
  forget that anything else was on that thing other than
• 2:25:01
  Elvis singing those songs. And I, that sort of was
• 2:25:05
  in the back of my, well, maybe they deserve a shot.
• 2:25:08
  Maybe they should, you know, maybe I should do this.
• 2:25:11
  And so that's kind of why I went forward with it.
• 2:25:15
  It almost like flipping a coin, like, well, the, The odds,
• 2:25:19
  I think my own sense tells me this isn't going
• 2:25:23
  to work, but maybe they deserve a chance. So I
• 2:25:27
  kind of went at it blindly that way.
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: What was it like in the studio when they started
• 2:25:32
  bringing the songs?
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Well, that's, I mean, that's it. I mean, everyone can
• 2:25:38
  hear that. All of us can, you know, you just,
• 2:25:42
  the album's called Mardi Gras. And in the press, it was,
• 2:25:47
  Rolling Stone said, this is the worst album ever made
• 2:25:52
  by a major group. And I read that and I said,
• 2:25:57
  I know. I mean, I literally, I felt that it
• 2:26:00
  wasn't like I was trying to defend it. It was,
• 2:26:03
  you know, it was just.
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 2: How did the band react to that?
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: Here's the deal. Instead of going, yeah, that was a mistake. Instead,
• 2:26:14
  they said, he made me do it. And so, yeah,
• 2:26:20
  they said I made them do it, whereas it was
• 2:26:23
  their idea, of course. I didn't want to do that.
• 2:26:30
  And after that, you know, I think we did a tour.
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, right.
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: We did a tour. One by one, their songs dropped
• 2:26:45
  out of the set. The songs that they had done
• 2:26:48
  on Mardi Gras, the other two guys. Yeah, I don't
• 2:26:51
  want to sing that anymore. And so we, of course,
• 2:26:54
  went back to Proud Mary and Fortunate Son and all that.
• 2:26:57
  And there was a point that I could tell that
• 2:27:00
  the fans were kind of upset with this whole premise.
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 2: Which whole premise?
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: Of them singing songs and... kind of struggling along with equal,
• 2:27:14
  equal time for everybody.
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And so finally it was time to, there,
• 2:27:22
  there wasn't enough, there wasn't any way to put it
• 2:27:26
  back together that I could see. Right. That was, it
• 2:27:29
  was beyond me. Now in later, later, later years that I,
• 2:27:33
  you know, I'm a much older guy. I mean, there were,
• 2:27:36
  you know, there's some decisions that, uh, I made. One
• 2:27:41
  of them was the decision to not be in the
• 2:27:45
  movie Woodstock. They sent a tape of the band doing
• 2:27:52
  Bad Moon Rising. It was okay.
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: But what had happened at Woodstock was the Grateful Dead
• 2:27:59
  was on before us. Grateful Dead had all taken LSD.
• 2:28:05
  We were supposed to be on at 8 o'clock. It's
• 2:28:08
  now 2 o'clock, 2.30 in the morning by the time
• 2:28:11
  we get... Grateful Dead goes on, kind of loses their way.
• 2:28:17
  But they're on stage for an hour and a half
• 2:28:19
  or something with nothing going on. So that poor audience
• 2:28:22
  has been through rain and all the rest and muddy.
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: They just.
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: they just crashed a half a million strong just boom
• 2:28:31
  you know and that's what i get right we come
• 2:28:34
  running out on stage and then we playing a few
• 2:28:37
  songs that all i see is sleeping people and eventually
• 2:28:43
  the last i think 20 minutes of our set finally
• 2:28:46
  got them up we warmed them up for janice that's
• 2:28:49
  the way i always say you know they got going
• 2:28:51
  again but that was a That was a struggle all
• 2:28:54
  through that. So I get sent, and it was a
• 2:28:58
  bad taste in my mouth about that evening because we'd
• 2:29:02
  gone to so much trouble. And at that moment, we
• 2:29:05
  were certainly the number one band in the U.S. and
• 2:29:09
  probably on our way to being number one in the world.
• 2:29:13
  And so I just, you know, here's this kind of
• 2:29:16
  ordinary tape of Bad Moon. And I just thought, I
• 2:29:20
  don't know, this doesn't help us. It doesn't. further us
• 2:29:23
  at all. Nah, I'm going to pass. By the way,
• 2:29:28
  the Grateful Dead is not in Woodstock either. I didn't
• 2:29:32
  really see that until about a year ago. Just assume
• 2:29:37
  the Grateful Dead was in Woodstock, right?
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 2: That's probably unusable.
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: So if there'd been an older guy around us, a
• 2:29:44
  manager that was like 50 instead of me with my
• 2:29:48
  bad taste about the evening, the older guy might have said, hey,
• 2:29:53
  you know, your version of Susie Q Live, even though
• 2:29:57
  those people were sleeping, the band was cooking. You know,
• 2:30:01
  you guys played good. You can't hardly see anything anyway,
• 2:30:05
  the crappy old... He said, but that recording's good. Maybe
• 2:30:10
  we should demand that, look, you put us in the
• 2:30:12
  movie and give us eight minutes, not two minutes. Or
• 2:30:16
  by then, it was probably 15 minutes long, you know, um,
• 2:30:21
  I think that was a decision that could probably, I
• 2:30:24
  could reassess, you know, if it was someone else. But
• 2:30:28
  that's not what was on my plate at the time.
• 2:30:31
  I was only offered Bad Moon. You know, and at
• 2:30:35
  the time I felt I was right because we went
• 2:30:37
  on and did great. And by the way, the band
• 2:30:41
  broke up before Woodstock came out anyhow. So it kind
• 2:30:45
  of was a mute point.
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 2: Did it feel better for you when you were on
• 2:30:49
  your own? Did you like that better? Or it was
• 2:30:52
  just the John Fogarty band? You didn't have to have
• 2:30:56
  all those guys and all the bullshit?
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: Well, you're asking, you know, we're all human beings and
• 2:31:02
  we've got a lot of years behind us. If you're
• 2:31:06
  asking me right now, yeah. Because I play in a
• 2:31:11
  band with my sons.
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, there might be a picture of
• 2:31:18
  that somewhere. Um, and so, and all the other guys
• 2:31:25
  in the band are their age. Oh, wow. And so,
• 2:31:31
  how can I say it? You don't, you don't have
• 2:31:35
  a whole bunch of people trying to prove something like
• 2:31:39
  their record deal or, you know, because you asked the
• 2:31:43
  question kind of caught me by surprise after, well, after Credence,
• 2:31:47
  I didn't, play for a long time how long but
• 2:31:50
  the first band.
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 2: Huh how long how long did you not play for.
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: I went on tour in 86 with a bunch of
• 2:32:02
  hired hands they call it right studio guys and that
• 2:32:05
  was that was it was behind number one I didn't
• 2:32:10
  play any Credence era songs I was so mad at
• 2:32:14
  my situation I just played new songs.
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: Everyone on the left, that's Shane. That's me. That's my son, Tyler.
• 2:32:27
  That's my daughter, Kelsey. And then that's Jesse Wilson back there,
• 2:32:32
  our bass player.
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: And so, um, yeah. And there's a, right then that
• 2:32:39
  might be a moment in Chuglin where we all do
• 2:32:41
  a riff together and all that. And it's just so
• 2:32:44
  cool to all be standing there.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. Um, I mean, you know, don't get me wrong.
• 2:32:50
  The beginnings of Credence was magical and wonderful, right? I mean,
• 2:32:56
  it truly, look, what you waited and planned for your
• 2:32:59
  whole life. And it stayed that way for about a year,
• 2:33:04
  I think. And then other stuff that I never understood.
• 2:33:08
  I mean, it was beyond, it was unpleasant. And I
• 2:33:11
  didn't understand why, right? So after that, that was difficult.
• 2:33:20
  Then when I first started playing again in 86, and
• 2:33:26
  much more in 97 after Blue Moon Swamp came out,
• 2:33:30
  and I had a series of bands that were, I
• 2:33:35
  can say, trying to put people together, parts from here
• 2:33:39
  and there and there. So it kind of never really
• 2:33:41
  was one solidified thing. And you would find that a
• 2:33:48
  lot of people had personal agendas, you might say. They
• 2:33:54
  were working on their own career and all that. And
• 2:33:56
  there was sort of, believe it or not, even at
• 2:33:59
  that level, different jealousies and things. Again, there I was.
• 2:34:04
  I could sense it sometimes. People were jealous. Oh, my God.
• 2:34:09
  When you see that picture, there's no jealous. Right. See?
• 2:34:13
  I mean this is really fun for me now.
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 2: Well, that is the problem with so many bands is
• 2:34:18
  the conflicting personalities. It's always a miracle to me that
• 2:34:21
  any band stays together and that they could stay together
• 2:34:24
  like the Stones where they're still touring now after all
• 2:34:27
  these years.
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: The Stones are a lesson in how everyone should be
• 2:34:34
  because we've all heard the stories of About the stones.
• 2:34:37
  We know there's problems here and there and everywhere and
• 2:34:40
  all that. Yet they rose above that. They just decided that,
• 2:34:44
  you know what? Yeah, okay. I don't like that guy
• 2:34:48
  over there tonight, but I'm just going to do this.
• 2:34:51
  And they're all brothers when they're out there doing that.
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: And that's great. Yeah. I mean, there's times, let's say
• 2:34:59
  in war or whatever, where you have to kind of
• 2:35:02
  subjugate your personal stuff for the greater good.
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: Right? And that's kind of what they do, the Stones.
• 2:35:09
  God bless them.
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 2: I just think the thing is everybody wants to be
• 2:35:13
  the man. And when you've got so many egos and
• 2:35:16
  there's one guy like you who's writing all the songs,
• 2:35:19
  all these other people, they're just like they feel less,
• 2:35:23
  you know, and they get resentful.
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 1: Yep. I think that's pretty normal human nature. And then
• 2:35:30
  that has to be dealt with.
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sometimes you can't, though. You know, some people can't
• 2:35:37
  be reasons with. Some people just are. They're not rational.
• 2:35:40
  They see things in a distorted lens, especially if they're
• 2:35:44
  not the people that created everything. But yet they've been
• 2:35:46
  along for the ride. They don't feel like they're getting
• 2:35:49
  what they deserve. That's what it seems.
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you a story about how I
• 2:35:53
  got into this in the first place. OK. I told
• 2:35:58
  you about my mom noticing the music coming out of me.
• 2:36:03
  One day she brought me home from. nursery school where
• 2:36:07
  she was one of the helper teachers, I guess, one
• 2:36:10
  of the moms, you know, of the staff. She brought
• 2:36:13
  me home and sat me down on a little chair.
• 2:36:17
  Now I look back, it was a little ceremony. She
• 2:36:20
  had a little yellow record, a kid's record. And basically
• 2:36:25
  what she did was she played both sides of this
• 2:36:28
  little record. One side was Oh Susanna and the other
• 2:36:32
  side was Camptown Races. Do-da, do-da, you know, that one.
• 2:36:38
  And then she asked me, well, do you like this music?
• 2:36:42
  I said, yeah, Mom, these are cool songs, or whatever
• 2:36:44
  a kid says. I really like these. She says, well,
• 2:36:47
  I'm going to play them again, Johnny. She plays both songs,
• 2:36:51
  and she says, do you know that Stephen Foster is
• 2:36:56
  the man that wrote both of these songs? What do
• 2:36:59
  you mean, Mom? I said, well, Stephen Foster is a
• 2:37:03
  real person that wrote this music, and I wanted you
• 2:37:07
  to know that these are his wonderful songs and that
• 2:37:11
  people do write songs. And then she gave me the record.
• 2:37:15
  That kind of became my little possession, right? And I
• 2:37:19
  have reflected on that moment in my life. I mean,
• 2:37:23
  I used to tell people, why did she do that?
• 2:37:25
  What in the world was she thinking, right? And all
• 2:37:28
  through the years... that I was living at home with
• 2:37:32
  my mom, you know, there'd be somebody on TV, there's
• 2:37:35
  Irving Berlin. And I'd go, yeah, mom, hey, he's a songwriter.
• 2:37:39
  Or she'd let me know Hoagy Carmichael was one of
• 2:37:42
  her favorites. So he became one of my favorites, right? And,
• 2:37:46
  of course, on into the rock and roll era, as
• 2:37:49
  you notice, the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney were writing these songs.
• 2:37:53
  I mean, it just became a thing, a part of me.
• 2:37:58
  And it all started back there with my mom and
• 2:38:01
  Stephen Foster. And, number one, he was a great songwriter.
• 2:38:07
  So that lilt, that sort of kind of songwriting, he's
• 2:38:12
  also very corny.
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, that voice, that personality certainly became, it got contributed,
• 2:38:25
  it got lent to me through the records, the recordings,
• 2:38:30
  as Stephen didn't make any records as far as I know.
• 2:38:34
  And those songs just sort of got infiltrated into my personality.
• 2:38:41
  I mean, my mom, put it this way, I think
• 2:38:44
  I even talked it over with mom I feel like
• 2:38:47
  Stephen Foster could have written Proud Mary. It seems like
• 2:38:51
  that territory.
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow. That's awesome.
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: Right. I don't know what my mom was giving me
• 2:38:58
  a gift, you know, and that you just never know
• 2:39:02
  how powerful those little moments with your kids are. But
• 2:39:07
  that was a big one for me.
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's awesome. Listen, John, it's been an honor
• 2:39:12
  having you on. Thank you very much. I'm a gigantic fan.
• 2:39:15
  So for me, it was a real pleasure to get
• 2:39:18
  to talk to you. Same here. The story's fantastic. Thank
• 2:39:21
  you very much. And you're on tour. Tell everybody where
• 2:39:24
  they could see you.
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Well, you know, we are the Legacy Tour.
• 2:39:29
  You may know I've just re-recorded a lot of my
• 2:39:32
  old songs from the Creedence time. And I'm having a ball.
• 2:39:36
  We're just all over.
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 2: Look at that.
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: Well, there you go.
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 2: Wow. That's awesome.
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: That's a picture from back in the day, of course.
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 2: What a cool album, too. Does it really look like that?
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice. That's sick. I love it. Beautiful. Thank you, sir. Really,
• 2:39:53
  thank you very much. It was awesome. Bye, everybody.