#2485 - John Fogerty

The child, Rogan, experience. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Think that you step on a floor.

“It doesn't matter, you keep it on the table.”

This one. There's water there too, in this middle cup. And then there's. Oh, thanks so much. Okay, yeah, thanks.

I have some notes that I'll probably never look at.

But. You got notes? Me? What's on the notes? I just stuff like what I went through with CCR and all that.

But tell me something. Did you read up on me or anything? I'm a huge fan. I don't have to read up on you. Okay.

I read up on you a little bit just to catch up about how you got out of the, well, you did do military service, but you got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating or read that. Is that true? No.

Is that true? They lied. It was a story about you smoking a lot of weed and getting amaciated, so you can get out of the army. Well, it's not quite in that sequence,

but those things did happen. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I had. I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right? So I was kind of really skinny by 1967, 68.

“I mean, like a hundred and I think it was a hundred and 29 pounds.”

Whoa. Yeah. And then I was going to go to the, think it was the procedure and I had to meet with the army doctor, right? And my friends gave me a couple of joints,

and I used to smoke and those cigarettes. I stuck it in the cigarette and go on across the beach. I smoke them. I didn't even thought about it. So if you want, yeah, man, he went on a starvation diet.

I protest diet and then smoked a lot of weed. That's what I ate. That's what I ate. Yeah, okay, but it's essentially some truth. Some truth.

Yeah. You got a legendary career, my friend. Legendary. Thank you. Still working on it. It's incredible, man.

You are like one of the main voices of rock and roll in America. If you really think about it, your songs. I mean, you have so many gigantic hits. You know, when the UFC has a lot of walk outsongs,

“you know, when fighters come out and walk out,”

a lot of guys walk out to music. I don't even know if you're aware of it. The fortunate sun is a big one. Yeah. Bad mood rising.

That's another big one. People walk out too. Great. Wow. It's pretty awesome.

Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but you know, everybody, whatever floats you boat. Well, people just love your music. Yeah.

So you went through many generations.

You got your first record contract.

How old were you? Um, I know I signed one when I was around 19. Of course it would have been an enforceable. It's not legal at the time, right?

You had to be 21. Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. Well, you're also one of the first rock and roll artists

that wrote songs that became very popular about how you get and screwed over by the record business. You know what I mean? I mean, well, so let us get her did it. Working for MCA.

They did that song. But you had fans can't dance. It was actually Zance can't dance. But you got to change it, right? Yeah.

Yeah. The name of the person was Zance.

Uh, it's, it's all about a half a million copies as Zance.

But the record company Warner Brothers in their way of settling somewhat. Uh, had me change it to Vance. Yeah. Because the guy's name was Zance. Vance.

Yeah. It was screwed. Yeah. That's right in the middle of that whole thing was a mess. I got sued for sounding like myself.

What? Yeah. How that happened? I'll tell you. So, and I didn't find this out.

And there was eventually a trial. So it's not. Many people think that that's funny. You got sued for selling like you're so what? Well, no.

You're getting a legal lawsuit that's probably going to take away a lot of your money. And you're going to go through three, four years of anguish. Well, anyway, ended up in a trial.

$144 million for his whatever metal anguish or something.

The logistics, I guess you'd call it.

“I had made a new song called The Old Man Down in the Road.”

It was on my album. It was my comeback on Center Field. And I had finally gotten away from fantasy records, which is where credence was. And so it's Anne too owned it. So, you know, when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else,

the former people tend to be jealous, I guess. And so he was suing me. What had happened though, I found out in the trial,

the base player from Credence was another one of those people.

I guess it couldn't stand that I'd now had success in a later life. He went down to fantasy and saw Mr. Saw as a Hanson said, John is ripping off Credence. You should sue him.

“The irony in all of that is that I had taught stew every single note that he ever played in Credence.”

It was not his own career as we talk, you'll see. I was the guy inventing the arrangements. And so to take possession of Credence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top. Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and that saw I had unlimited funds. And so to a trial, I prevailed that trial and that that over with.

But they torture you during the process because it takes years and it costs enormous money to fight yourself. Yeah, all that stuff. That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you. Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed. I mean, you know, what we're really talking about is when you come into the consciousness of the world,

I guess, and you have a certain style if you're lucky. And so you start creating whatever your art is, you're an actor, you're a painter, or in my case, a musician, and people start liking the style. Well, how unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes ownership of your style.

“And now it's said, you have to go back and invent some other style.”

Be some other person, you know, it's just, that would be really difficult. Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style, having to, you know, reinvent and change to something else. Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that. It's insane because look so many artists sound like art other artists anyway,

and no one has a problem with that, as long as they're not ripping off the notes in the lyrics. There's a lot of people that sound like people. But the idea that you could get sued for sounding like you with new music and new lyrics is, that's one of the most insane things I've ever heard of. I can't believe I didn't get thrown out of media.

And media, right? Well, that shows the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people want to have. You know, I had written a new song and he didn't want me to, he wanted the new stuff. He wanted to own me, basically, that was the idea.

Or you can never do anything unless you do it for me, you know.

So I was, but not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists, it was kind of a major ruling, and thank God I went that way. Lee Cronen's "The Mummy". From the register of "I Will The Dries". They were eight years away.

Come to a new vision of the Crowns. Yes, it is. What happened with Katie? I just want to take that book. Lee Cronen's "The Mummy".

"The Mummy". Well, thank God it also was public. Like with that song and the lawsuit around the song. You have a change in the name of the song. Because back then, at least at the time, like this is probably what the 80s.

Yet, most people had no idea how evil the music business can be. Unless they were told they had no idea what they did, but the albums, they loved the musicians. And they just liked the music. They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. They didn't know how these people owned your catalog.

They owned the music, they owned the publishing.

Own your name, own your likeness.

Most fans had no idea.

“And that's probably the way it really should be.”

When I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his guitar player. I didn't want to know all. I didn't even know there was stuff behind it. To know. Yeah. Oh my God.

Right, I picked a good one there, didn't I? That's a real one. That's just too bad. Another similar situation.

Like there's a lot of these great artists get like Prince.

He got wrapped up to the point where he had a change his name to a symbol. Because he didn't own his name anymore. Prince? Yeah, I remember it.

“Well, if he doesn't want to use it, I'll take it.”

Yeah, it's just the business itself. I mean, you have these creative artists that make this music that everybody loves. And then you have these hyenas that work behind the scenes that are the ones that are collecting the majority of the money from it. And they're not making any music. And to the average fan like myself, like that's a boring.

That's disgusting. Like you see that. It just drives you nuts.

Well, also, you know, the creative people are special.

And I mean, you know, look around. There's way more of other types of people than there are creative people. And to doubt that, you know, to or own that, which is what was going to happen. It's just an ownerous thing. I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff.

I'm a lot of olders. I can't see wiser. It's more like I came out on the good side of it. I try not to worry about it too much. But it's great that you came out on the good side of it.

But it's also great for people to know. And it's really great for young artists to be aware as they're coming up, especially as they're beginning their journey that this could happen to them. Yeah. And there's all kinds of, you know, bad people around just waiting for you to slip up and sign something that will give you rights away, that sort of thing. I get such a joy out of music. You know, I mean, I just started that way when I was a little kid.

I mean, didn't even know what I was doing. Or what that was. I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it. And I just kind of went with it. I didn't try to analyze it too much. And of course, later with all the things, you know, the different roads you go through, trying to get to some place. Happily, I still get that same joy.

I mean, I just, I'm just so glad. A lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife Julie. But I had to met her. I probably would be dead simply that really. Yeah. Wow.

What do you think it'd be done? I didn't see any way out. You know, I was really abusing myself, alcohol, mostly. I really felt bad inside. I mean, when you get like that at your, you're not really operating on the same plane in the world that all the other people that you see.

You know, you walk into a market or something. Look around and probably most of the people are kind of normal. You know, whatever we call that. But when you're, when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me.

But, you know, however you get there and then you start abusing yourself with drugs, alcohol, whatever. You just kind of, it becomes a habit. You just stay there, right? And so you're not really enjoying the sunshine and love that's around you and all the rest of it. You become kind of a pathetic person, sad, certainly.

So that, you know, that was the deal. When Julie met me, I was that guy. There was sort of a certainly an anger, I mean, but a bitterness too. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where you look for something to go wrong and then it goes wrong. And you go, see, I told you, I mean, it's a terrible mental place to be.

And I was there.

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

Oh, yeah.

Well, there was more than one lawsuit, but the betrayal by the people in my band.

“You know, I just told you about a very evil man, right?”

Yeah. And I'm the only guy from Credence who's ever actually mentioned that he's an evil person to the extent that quite publicly my brother Tom right during the same time was saying that Saul was his best friend. Oh, Jesus. It was just really hard to deal with. The other two guys in the bands were in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it.

They just never spoke up.

It's just kind of give me the money. You know, how the fuck was your brother saying that guy was your best friend while he was selling you? He was signed. Re-signed after the break up of Credence. He kind of shopped around and didn't have much success finding a label.

And so he went, right about the time that this trial was going to happen. He resigned with fantasy.

“I'm talking about the first trial, which was the first trial.”

The first trial was about basically the band had lost its life savings. All of us in Credence, the record company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan. And I'm saying this with a smile because nowadays it just sounds so. You know, some guy comes walking up to you and got a trench coat on a corner in New York City. Everybody, you know, you probably going to avoid that guy.

But the record company was in this tax thing. And for all we knew, we were going to be paying 90% income tax. I mean, the tax laws are pretty, pretty stringent and pretty high.

And so they offered us or basically kind of ushered us into this plan.

A tax offshore tax plan. And it would allow us to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10 and 20%. Something like that. So it was a huge financial savings for us. I can tell you that the name of this particular thing was a bank in the Bahamas called Castle Bank. And we had it checked out.

I mean, the people on our side in the band had it checked out by our people. Our own accountant, the base players father was an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm. Among other people represented Oakland Raiders. So we thought they were pretty solid. And they checked it all out and said that it was okay.

It was legit. So we did it.

But time went on and it seemed to be now legit to the point that some of us,

to the point that somewhere in the 70s, the bank disappeared and all our money in it disappeared. So we sued. Oh, Jesus. Yep. So here it is.

The bank was being used by the CIA to funnel money for covert military operations, including those at Andros Island, a staging area for anti-Castro activities. So they were stealing your money. How? I just found that.

I don't know. I just typed it in and went to the Wikipedia and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." So it didn't know any of that. You didn't know until now? Oh, I knew that now.

Or I suspect. Yeah. Did you know that up until now? Or did you just find it out just now? You could tell me a lot of things right now.

Oh, yeah, I guess the soon all that stuff was kind of happening. But I didn't know it at the time in the early 70s when we late 60s when we got into this thing. It was actually something. Do you know how anti-American that is? The CIA stole from credence clear water revival.

No fucking crazy that is. That is so wild. No, I didn't know that part.

“The funny thing, the funny thing is, I had decided to get out of that plan, right?”

And I'd gone down to see my own people, my accountant, my attorney in Oakland. And told him, "I just want out of this thing.

Whenever I want some money, like an allowance, you got to call up some bank account,

“somewhere over there, and it takes, you know, sometimes some few days before I actually receive my money.”

And I was starting to smell. I was starting this, and now we're talking in 1975, '76. And so I actually had the meeting and I said, "I want to be out of this plan. I don't want-- oh, I said one of the things they said to the meeting of professionals. Look, take a shoe box.

Put all the money I've ever earned into the shoe box. And now I hand me the shoe box so I can see how much money I've earned. Because I didn't know it was just going straight into this fund, right, into this castle bank. But they couldn't tell me. So I leave, I get down to the parking lot in the basement of this tall building in Oakland.

And I'm with my guy that runs my office, and I say it. We're going to have to have another meeting. Because even though I told him, I want to get out of the plan. I didn't stand up on the table. Okay, I'm ordering you and you and you get me out of the plan.

“And I realize they could weasel some more time until I actually pointed.”

So the next week, I showed up and did that. I'm ordering you, get me out of the plan, right? Pretty quickly after that, a week or two. We hear that the bank has closed. There's a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day.

And the bank president has died. He died in a sauna. Whoa. I see that movie. You know, we're having costello.

The mob comes in and they're in those heat things that are up here. And the guy sticks the broom in the door so you can't get out. I mean, except that this was serious. And there will be no more withdrawals until this thing is resolved. Right.

You know, a bank president dies. You don't close the bank of America. Right. Still can go get your money. And so it's pretty quick after that.

It all just disappeared in a puppet smoke. They just stole the money. Yep. And it was the fucking CIA. That is crazy.

“How much money was involved with all the different people that lost their money?”

How much money was this bank holding? Do you know? Oh.

Well, there were other names that I never saw in those days.

A lot of sort of mobby kind of sounding names. Yeah. I will tell you after the thing closed. And we got the telegram that the president. But I started, I literally started checking under my cars.

Looking for wires and what, you know, something funny. I did that for about three months. Whoa. I finally just, well, I was scared. Yeah.

Because I was the guy who said, I want to get out of this thing. And suddenly it goes, "Caboon in the president dies." Right. And I just figured that I was some kind of whistleblower to them or something. I mean, they're way...

I mean, guaranteed. You're the reason why it happened. I don't think, no, I don't believe that's true. Well, no, I mean, you probably caused the whole thing to close down. I mean, it's not a coincidence that it closed down right after you asked for your money back.

Yeah, I don't know. You're a big public name and a big voice you get out. I think you're a man.

After that point in time, I really never wanted to talk too loudly about stuff anymore.

Oh, my goodness. So, the revenge scene was our lawsuit. Well, actually it was my lawsuit. I got with a lawyer, a tall building I call it. And proceeded to start proceedings against this fantasy.

Our own attorneys and experts, the people that designed this plan all the way. But I was the only one in the band that did that. The rest of the guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves. And I was pretty adamant. I'm telling you this because at some point later, more than a year had passed, maybe a year and a half.

Because they literally tried to stay in the plan. I was willing to take the penalty whatever it was for being the dumbass.

“But let himself get into some financial thing like this, right?”

I felt like Joe Lewis. I thought I was going to need an act of Congress to forgive the debt. These experts in the meeting that I talked about who were trying to dissuade me from making a noise and trying to get out of the plan. Told me eventually, John, if you receive all the money at once, you will pay more than 110% in taxes of what you have earned. In other words, it's going to go into the hole.

Yeah. For receiving it all at once, right? That's why I felt like Joe Lewis. That's the most of the same thing I've ever heard. But they were trying to intimidate.

Of course. Yeah. How much money were talking about? One of this deal for her. When it finally was over, they had lying in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I mean, you're going to laugh at this. Rock band victorious wins 8.1 million. That was our entire take for everybody in the band. Each guy had a little bit different amount. But, you know, those numbers, I mean, I don't know.

The one once made a joke at the Rock and Roll Hall, I pay him about Bruce.

And maybe the answer is, well, I sold 40 million.

I mean, you know, you're assuming. Well, Bruce has that on him. [laughter] It was pretty funny. Yeah.

I mean, 8 million was that was it? That was our take from all the sales of Credits.

“So was that the amount of money that was in the bank that they stole from you?”

That was what we got returned to us. So, do you did get the money back? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Well, I figured they would just vanish.

The money didn't come back from Saul's aunts or capital bank or any of those people. What had happened was fantasy was let out of the lawsuit by the local judge in the Bay Area. I don't know why. Because they're the ones that got us into the plan. But anyway, they were let out of the whole thing.

So, who was left with this guy named Bert Cantor in Chicago who designed the plan? And our own, our own accountant and lawyers. So what most of them did was settle for pennies on the dollar.

You know, we said that you owe us a million dollars of whatever.

And they settled for like $10,000. Really? Right? Rather than go to trial. But our own accountants, legal teams, we got these guys.

They can never win this. I mean, ironically, they wanted to go to trial and put the poor accountant, you know, who is an old guy. Through a whole trial and credence got, we retain the money we had lost in that plan. The eight million I just mentioned from the law firm, the insurance firm. It was his insurance companies, loins, that were represented in him.

And they had to pay. Nobody else had to pay. And in CIA or whoever you're talking about, got away with it. Of course they did. Yeah.

They know how to do that. It's kind of crazy too that it's only $8 million. So you think about how much money you probably made the record companies? Yep. Well, there was a hundred million records plus.

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

Yeah. So 400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff. You know, you guys got a small percentage. That's how it works though. That's why the business is so dirty.

“That's what's so, you know, the idea is that they help you and they bring you up.”

But the reality is they sell art.

And if they don't have artists, they have nothing. The artists are what fund their very existence and they make the majority of the money. It's, it's pretty dark when you really think about it. Yeah. And Joe, I gotta tell you, I love making music and I don't do it for the money.

I mean, I know that sounds a little naive, but just the happiness in my heart from doing this is from the music.

I believe you. I believe you.

“The only thing is when you, I mean, I'll say, I'm not like, well, maybe I'm an idiot, but probably not about this.”

When you find out that there was money, but somebody else got it, then that kind of gets your attention. Right. You know? But for me, at least, it wasn't even about being famous. Literally, if you could believe that.

It was the joy of understanding, you know, what, the music from other people that you loved. And as you grew up from, you know, that little first inspiration, you began to kind of understand what it was you liked about what they did. And at some point, then started to try and do it yourself. But that was a long, long time after the initial joy of just enjoying what they did.

Yes, it's kind of sad that money always does kind of distort things.

But if you were only interested in money and only interested in fame, or if that was your primary concern, there's no way the music would be that good. It's like that has to come from a real place. It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment. 100%.

Yeah. 100%. You know? Well, for me, I just, and also the prospect of creating something new tomorrow. You know, and the, what's the word?

You get certain feelings, well, we all do.

“I've learned to, can I say it sort of like being in a big swimming pool or something?”

You know, it's all, it just surrounds you letting yourself enjoy that feeling and then try to figure out a way to put that into the music. You know, express it. Yeah. Well, you did it, man.

It's, it's a long story with all these different artists that have had to deal with all these horrific managers.

And I was reading this article about Jimmy Hendrix Manager. So one of his bodyguards wrote a book where he's blaming Hendrix Manager for his death. And he was essentially saying that Hendrix was murdered and Hendrix was about to leave his manager. And that's why he killed him. You know, if you know, story about Hendrix, but his girlfriend fell from a roof or jumped off a roof shortly after Hendrix died.

And apparently they were trying to get rid of her as well because they knew that she knew the whole deal behind it. Was this the one with kind of a funny foreign name? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a couple of Jimmy biographies, but you know, if, yeah. Somebody this guy's had bombed up managers. Yeah. I do know that there was some manager of his, I mean, Jimmy owned his masters.

That was remarkable.

“That's why that's why his family has the masters, his estate.”

You know, there are the ones that decide because every slow off in a new Jimmy album would come out that sort of thing. I didn't know any of this way back then. I just wondered, you know, who was driving the bus? So I mean, that part was was pretty good. He had to talk to somebody at repree's records and some of those people were repree's Warner Brothers.

In other words, about the time I was at Warner Brothers, it must have been a couple of them. You know, that decided that way back in his 60s. I guess I was a little invious because I sure didn't own my masters. That's for sure. How many people owned their own masters back then?

Nobody. That's crazy. How do you think you got that deal? That I don't know. I don't know how it came about that he was able to have that much influence.

I mean, that's the part. I did, I did get the inference from the, at least one of the books I read about Jimmy that he had, they didn't try too hard to save him. Jimmy was, I guess, was just really up for a couple of weeks there. And no one tried, you know, they were almost, I mean, I almost got the sense that somebody

took a bottle of wine and just poured it in him. Yeah. That's what I had heard. Yeah. That was what the bodyguard was inferring that they poured pills and alcohol down his mouth.

Yeah.

Well, I hope they never be in such a state that I can't protest something like that.

Right. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's dark. Because apparently he was ready to leave.

He wanted to leave his manager. And obviously, Jimmy was a gigantic star. That guy saw all the money there.

He still is.

“Every single guitar survey that ever comes out.”

You know, all the other numbers after two. Right. He changing with fashion and all that.

But it's always, number one is Jimmy Hendrix.

Always. Yeah. Kind of extraordinary when you think about it. The guy died at 27 years old. Mm-hmm.

You know, and was already just from another planet. Like you listen to his, like, you listen to voodoo child's slight return. Yeah. You listen to that song. You're like, is this guy from earth?

Like, this was so different than any other guitar playing that had ever taken place before him. He was a complete revolutionary. It's just a completely new creative artist. Mm-hmm. You know, and one of my favorite musicians absolutely of all time.

“That's why I named the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.”

I wondered about that. Well, there it is. That's it. Stop it, Jimmy. Yep.

Yep. Yep. I should have named it the John Foguri Experience. And instead of credence. Well, I did create that name.

Um, what was the crazy name that the record company called your, one of your first bands?

Well, it was the same people. Same people. Yeah, same, I mean, the same individual musicians. Um, in high school or junior high actually. I started a band and called it the Blue Velvet.

Not all that creek, you know, earth shaking, but kind of a cool vibe. Um, and we were really the Blue Velvet. But, you know, I mean, this, this was really a trio. But my brother was older. He was in another orbit. Uh, so kind of went through high school.

Seeing each other every once in a while. It wasn't like we were all tromping around playing gig after gig. It was more like, you know, every few months. There might be a sock hop or something like that. Um, and then after high, and Tom would come and sing.

He was my older brother. He'd come and sing once in a while with us. We made a cup of recordings during that time with real record companies.

But it was always kind of just half hazard.

Um, and finally around the age of 19, I went over and knocked on fantasy records door. They had done this special about Bensturaldi and they were in the Bay Area. So I, you know, went over there and introduced myself. Anyway, some, you know, one thing led to another. Finally, we're recording.

“Uh, and at that time, I think we made a record with only three of us.”

Me and Tom and Doug the drummer. And I, I over dubbed a bass part. And this is early, or this was in 1964. When they, by the, pressed the single, one side was called Little Girl. It was kind of a four-core do-watt song.

The other side was sort of a English or a British invasion answer kind of thing. And it was called, don't tell me no lies. Anyway, we excitedly go over it, San Francisco to their warehouse and open up the package. And it says, "The Golly Walls." And we look at each other and go, "What the hell?"

No, no, no. I think we had chosen our name to be the visions. It was just something at the last minute because we weren't really the blue public anymore. But that was it. We thought it was going to say visions.

But the record company had decided they wanted to get in on the British invasion mod, whatever, and named us the Golly Walls. It sounds like Polly Wall. Yeah. He said, "Well, a Golly Wall, you see, is this doll that, when the British soldiers were in India,

the kids would have this little doll called a Golly Wall?" And so that's all we knew about it. As time went on, I mean, years and years later, long after I had been renamed the band, or I'd renamed the band "Creadance." Found out that Golly Wall, this was a very racial thing.

This was the British soldiers calling the people. Well, "Golly Walls," or "Golly Walls," yeah. That's a Golly Wall. Yeah, it's Sambo, right? Wow.

Same sort of. Yep. And they didn't know this either, obviously. There was no wikipedia back there. I don't know, no.

I don't know. I didn't know that. That's crazy that they could just change the name of your band without you having any knowledge of it at all. You open up the record, and it's right there.

Yep. And they kind of insisted, you know, it's that same thing that, "Well, we're going to own the publishing to your song. No, no, I should own it." Well, then we're not going to make any records.

You're 19. Yeah.

Yeah, that's what they get you.

You don't know any.

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

Yeah, you want to make a record. It's right there. You can taste it. Oh, my God. I'm going to be signed to a record label.

I'm going to be a rock star. And then they come to you with a shady contract. And that's their modus operandi. So what they do with everybody. And for, I know they call it business.

Funny term. Yeah. Most of those people. I mean, it's like lottery to them. It's like gambling.

They don't have a clue what creativity is. And at that age, the young, I mean, I guess I'm looking at you and saying, "If I only..." No, what's that? If I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

You're a young artist. You don't even know what you got. Right? You know, you have feelings about music. But you don't.

You know, you're less than a rookie. Right? You know, maybe you were good in junior high. But that doesn't mean you're really amazed. Right.

You know? So that's sort of how that works. And they sign you up before any of that self-realization happens. And then you're messed. Yeah.

Again, that's what happened. That's what happened to Skinner. That's what happened to the most bands. I mean, they're very clever in how they do it. They sign a bunch of people that are emerging.

And some of them are going to hit. Yep. And they bank role it. And then they make the majority of the money when those people hit. Well, in our case,

“Credence was the only thing that ever happened.”

Fantasy became a very wealthy record company. And they saw originally went in to make it movies. So he got money that I had made for him at the record company. You know, turned into one flew over the Kukus nest. Oh, wow.

Some other. Uh. Saul even had. And in those times had bought that movie rights for Lord of the Rings. So, you know, his.

His ticket. He got punched way up high.

And we never got a dime, of course, of any of that.

It's crazy how bad people can get ahead like that. Well, that, see, that's, yeah, that's what's to stir. It's a different. That's why I had a little hesitation when you were talking about that. You thought the music came from a or creativity came from a.

Joyful good place. But boy, you can sure look in different parts of entertainment. Or business in general and see some really bad people have made a lot of money. Well, it takes the good people to create things, though. The creative people make the things.

And there's always just going to be people taking advantage of people being naive about business. I choose to believe that at least it works for me. I choose to believe that you've got to have a good heart. You've got to try to use the golden rule basically. You know, don't, don't do something bad to him that you wouldn't want to have done to you.

So the, do one to others as you would have them do to you. Yes. I, I believe in God and I believe God is watching me all the time. You know, all of us, so that that part helps me to feel like there's a reason. You know, to try and be a good person.

The reason being. You're in God's grace. If you do those things, if you try to live a good life. Right, honest and I guess we call it transparent nowadays. You know, don't get me wrong. I'm not running around the world with a thumb and a Bible or something.

I just think it's common sense about how ultimately you want to exist in the universe, right?

Yeah.

“So, you know, that's how I operate. And so when I certainly now at my age, when I see other people really getting away with stuff,”

I just, it isn't like I, that's not there. I actually get the, I don't see it that way now. I just look at that poor sap who's being so evil and go, you know, he's going to get his come up in some day. What's a horrible existence because no one loves you when you're like that. If you're, if you're doing that and fucking people over all your relationships are adversarial, it's a bad way to exist.

I think that's true. I believe that. There's a lot of people that choose that life just for financial benefit. They choose to just fuck people over and be in that bad frequency all the time. But that's not a good life and I agree with you. I think if you live your life like God exists, you'll, you'll have a much better life. And the golden rule is just, it's provable. Like if you're a nice person and you treat people well,

and it spreads a lot of good energy around you and positive momentum with all these other people. It's the butterfly effect. It carries on to other people that they encounter, too. They're inspired by how kind and friendly and generous you are. It's good for everybody. It's good for you. It's good for the people that you're generous and friendly to. It's good for the other people that they encounter because they're inspired by it.

“It's just good for everyone. That's how people should exist.”

Yeah, I literally believe everything you have just said and literally have sometimes asked God for a, you know,

I never sat around asking for money or a hit record. I always thought that's kind of poor.

That's bad. You know, I mean, a selfish or greedy or something. But I would ask for clarity or, you know, I would ask God to help me figure with something out. And amazingly, there would be through relation, you know, somebody I was dealing with. There would be something, it was like karma, good karma coming back. And I could see the, see the, you know, to me it was a result of my prayer or my openness of wanting to help get a situation resolved.

So for me, to me, there was evidence that it all works that way. Did you always have a belief in God? Yeah, I think there was times. Yeah, because I would just brought up that way. Again, I don't believe my, I would just just taught in a kind of nice and simple way about God. It wasn't beat over my head or anything.

I was raised Catholic. So in some sense, you can't avoid having it beat over your head, I suppose. And some of that I resisted.

But I went to the normal things that did my first communion, my first confession.

I did what he called that when your 12 years old, that you confirmation. I chose the name for Saint Jerome, basically, because it was a song by Doug Bow didly called "Bring it to Jerome."

“And Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his Maraka player and I really liked the vibe of that.”

I'm going to be Jerome, that's my confirmation name. Yeah, it was there in those ways. There were times, I was, well, he opened the can of worms here. Because I was so invested in being a Catholic, even though my parents tried to have me go to a Procule school, Catholic school. I was in the first grade, and then I want to say they kicked me out.

And then I tried to, my mom had me start again in ninth grade at Saint Mary's High School. And they kicked me out again. But it was my fault. Anyway, the one that happened is funny.

“I mean, it's just, the one that happened in the first grade, I had to take a bus to get there.”

I lived in El Sabrito, and it was the school of the Madeline in Berkeley.

And I mean, the first grade, I'm six years old.

So you had to go to the bus stop, get on a bus, get a transfer. So that then when the bus came to a certain stop over in Albany, you then got on a train, you had to transfer it in other words. Got on the train and that went another mile or so into Berkeley. And that a certain stop right behind the school, the school of the Madeline, Catholic school,

you get off the train and go on down into school. Now, what happened, my mom was my parents had split up. So it's only my mom in the house. And she's leaving early because she's got it in a job as a teacher. So she's out of the house before me.

And so it's up to me to get myself together and get to the bus stop on time. Many, many times I was late, I missed it.

they've already, they would march every morning to try and fill up Suza. And then they

“didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't,”

they didn't, they didn't, you know, all that. And go on in the school. And I, I get there now. I'm late. The school yard is empty. I literally have to climb over the fence because they've locked the fence at, boom, eight o'clock or whatever it was. And I have to scale the fence running the class without going to the bathroom. This was my first great experience sat down in my chair within an hour. I really got a P and sister Damian would not answer me. And so she

would, one day, I peed in my seat. It happened again. It became a habit. Sister Damian, John Fogretty has a portal under his chair. Oh, no. That was so traumatizing to me. But ask yourself, how is a six year old getting on a bus all by himself? Traveling three or four miles, then getting out of the bus going over to where the train station thing is getting on a train,

going over there. I mean, I certainly never let my six year olds do anything like that.

I know it is kind of crazy how kids were just able to just leave the house and do anything back then. I think about that. When I was a little kid, I just leave my house. Seven years old. Leave the house on your own for dinner time. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's kind of amazing. We all lived. Yeah. If you stop and think about it, but to have to take a bus, then a train and go to school when you're six years old, that's nuts. So I went to Catholic

school too for first grade only. And that screwed me off for religion for a long time. Because I thought of God back when I was a little kid before I went to Catholic school as, you know, God is all knowing and God is love and God created the universe and God is God's looking

“out for you. Just got some rolls you have to follow made sense to me. Yeah. And then when I went”

to Catholic school, there was a lady I don't remember anybody's name for back then, but I remember her sister Mary Josephine. She was so mean. She was just a mean lady. She did the whole thing, though why can't people with rulers tell you you're going to have to stay overnight and you're going to have to sleep on a nail and the closet like just evil like wanted you to cry. When I would cry, she'd call me a cry baby. And I remember thinking after that, I don't want to have nothing

to do with religion ever again. Right when I left first grade. Yep. I hated it. And I was like,

whatever God is, this is not God. Like these people have nothing to do with God. This lady, there's no way this lady is the messenger of God. This lady's mean. That took a whole lifetime to figure out, to realize, well this is just a man-made thing. God's there for some man-made thing over here. You know, they became Mormons and some man-made thing over there. They became Muslims, you know, and it's just all man-made. It isn't actually God, right? And so you

and man is fallible, of course. Yeah. Not infinite and he's not in fallible. And so all these things were, but that took a lifetime for me. I haven't sure I was in my 40s, still working on that trend. Yeah. That God's okay, John. You don't have to resist when somebody wants to make a prayer

or so, you know, it's, it isn't God's fault that you peed at your desk when you're in the first grade.

“It's federal. It's the mean none. Yeah. I have a similar perspective. I think I think all religious”

scriptures, they're trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which is the one I paid the most attention to. I think they're trying to document a real thing. But the hand of man is clearly all over it. That's the problem. The problem with anything that's written down, but we know that just didn't like the religious canon, the books that were included in the Bible. Human beings had a decision on what goes in what doesn't go in. There was rabbis that kept the

book of Enoch out of the Old Testament. There's a lot of this weird stuff to it that you go like, well, why do people of any say? Why is a human have any say in what the word of God is? That sounds crazy. And when you read the scriptures, you're like, "But somebody wrote that down and someone told that story for who knows how many years before it was ever written down." But I think the origins

to try to decipher what God's original message was. And like, what, how was it received? Who

“got it? How did it even get relayed? Like, what was the original event that led to this oral tradition”

that led to it being written down? I'm smiling because this sounds exactly like a young musician has come to see this more-learned person and tell him about his experience and the more-learned person turns into the manager or the record company. He says, "I want to own this." Right. And you know, if you take all that good intentions and faith and somebody ends up owning it and you end up paying a tithe, you know, into a slate. It's a lot of money. In organized religion, especially when it

gets to like these huge mega churches and preachers, so that's exactly what it is. It's someone taking advantage of this good thing, profiting off of it immensely. Yeah. But the thing, I think the point of like, if you live your life, like God's real, it'll be a better life. I agree with that. Yeah. But I think you also know. I think you can just- There's something there. It's sensible that you try to share that you try not to be greedy. Yes.

“You know, I don't mean you have to be a fool. I just mean that you don't have to be overtly”

always taking way more than your share. Yes, you can't. Be kind and be fair. How old were you when

you first started playing music? You mean as an instrument? Messing around like, how did you get into it? Right. Well, I was actually, I was given a snare drum. I think I was about four years old. That was a really cheap paper one. Was your family musicians? Not really, but they were musical. Both of them, my mom and dad. One of my, one of my finest in favorite memories is there was, we lived in the Bay Area of the East Bay from San Francisco. And my parents would go

up to this place in Northern California near Winters, California. That's like toward Sacramento.

And there was this creek, this body of water called the Puda Creek. Eventually, they damn that

up and made Lake Bay Area. But anyway, back then it was just a running water and there was some people could camp there. There was, at this one place they took me. Reputedly was owned by a man named Cody. And he was a direct descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. What's he met him one day when I was about four. And he was probably coming to collect the payment for the cabin and, you know,

“a little space. Anyway, you know, I mean, remember looking at him. Wow. So I was told that story.”

And he would, he would have been about 75. He literally could have been a son of Buffalo Bill. He would have been born at that point. It was probably 1949. The story I'm relating. And he, you know, would have been born in 1875. I mean, it's mind boggling to think that. But the, my favorite memory thing other than the fact that that whole place inspired my song, Green River. That's all the little parts are in Green River. But one of the things my parents had this old Ford,

old Green Ford. And they'd be driving along at night up there is what I mean, I guess they were more happy or something there. And they, I remember sitting between them, you know, it's just a big couch, the French seat. And they were singing songs in the dark. And they were singing, like, by the light of the silvery moon or baby face. And harmonizing. One was taken the melody. And the other was harmonizing the reason I know it's because I'd sat there and I'm probably three, four,

five years old right in there. And I said, what are you guys doing? Because I knew the melody, but I hear two notes. What are you doing? And they explained they were harmonizing. And it was just the coolest thing. And it was so such a happy time. I mean, I really, I felt what's that bonded to that, I guess. Like then I really liked this, whatever it is. So they began the notice that I was musical. So at some point I know, again at my fourth birthday, somebody gave me or I had a little

And he played O Susana in the cowboy style. Another was probably a C harmonica. He played in C, not like blues players do bending notes. He played that thing you see in the cowboy movies

when they're sitting around the campfire. That sort of thing. I was just shocked. I've never seen

my dad doing anything like that. Wow. And then on top of that, my mom could play piano, what we know called stride piano. And she would hit through the ball and then play a chord, like an octave of bass notes and then a chord above it. That don't. That keep that going as like the drummer in the thing. And then play melody and high notes up above. And it was, you know, she did, she would, one of my favorite ones was Harvest Moon, Shanghai and Harvest Moon,

which is a great song. And it just was magical to me. So that kind of opened the door to let me know that, oh, why we can do this in our own house. So the piano was around. And then we also, I don't know who's it was, but we had an old Stella acoustic guitar. Stella is a name going back into the 30s, 20s. And this thing was built like a tank. It was hard to play. The strings were like way high at all that. Eventually that brother Bob told me at some point. Yeah, we used it. Play baseball

“with that guitar. We'd hit ball. That's how sturdy it was. But that was around so that I would”

every once in a while mess with it. But somewhere literally in the seventh grade is where I started to really try and learn a chord in that sort of thing. Is that when you thought I'm going to be a musician? I think that moment was a little bit earlier. It was, again, up at this place, winters. My dad had driven into the town from our little cabin, our little campsite. And I was with them. And he gone to this general store. And the general store had everything. He had food and stuff.

But it also had fishing tackle and various weird things. So I'm standing there sort of near the counter and my dad's doing some kind of business. I'm just looking. And suddenly I hear music. You know, what the heck is that? Well, I didn't even know. They had a jubox in this place, right? And somebody had started the jubox. So it's playing music that I really like. It's rock and roll. And I'm, you know, I'm about 10 years old. Man, that's good. And I don't know who it is.

It's just got a really plusi sound. But it's fast. It's rock and roll. Like run over and I finally

determine it's Elvis Presley. I never heard this. I knew about this. Of course on TV, he had

done a heartbreak hotel. I had seen the Tommy Jimmy Dorsey show that he'd been on three times.

“He was on there. I think five times. Anyway. And so, wow, Elvis did this. What is this?”

Well, it turned out it was the other side of his second big million seller, which was, I want you. I need you. I love you. And this was a song called My Baby Left Me. And this was basically classic sun records by, even though he was now on RCA. It was that thing they did on sun records, that just a kind of country whale with guitar that was more country than blues. And the guitar, especially just, what is that? I'm watching. And this Scotty Moore, who I didn't

know was name at the time, but he's playing this otherworldly stuff. And that was, I looked at that. I mean, literally my head made, I don't know, I said this to myself. I don't know what they're doing.

“But that's what I want to do. Wow. And I meet up my mind right there in that three minutes of”

that song. That's amazing. Wow. Well, it was transformative. It still is. It's just a pretty

unique slice of American music. I don't think I'm aware of that song. I'm going to listen to it after the podcast. You probably know his song, Elvis's song. That's all right, Mama. Sure. Right. Well, this is in that vein. It's actually the same writer. Arthur Crudup. Arthur. Big boy, Crudup. So your family was musical, but you didn't know any musicians. So what did you think

a plan? At some point, you know what? At some point, a little earlier than that. But right around that

time, it was the era of do-wop. Right? This is the way, I mean, a kid can, you can just go anywhere in your mind, right? And I suppose the Corvette automobile, of course, had come out. So in a very young mind, but one of those cool, I guess we call a mash-ups, I was going to have a group, but it was this all singing. I was going to have a group and it was going to be called Johnny Corvette and the Corvette. Right? And there was four. I'm Johnny and three other guys and we're all in

sparkle jackets, you know, the show biscuit, right? And we're black. All of us. That was your idea.

“That's what I saw. I was referring to what I was seeing to be Johnny Corvette in the Corvette's”

that was one of the ingredients. How are you going to be black? I don't know. I didn't have to worry about that. I mean, the funny thing is that it's so similar here is like when I was little, I wanted to be a baseball player, right? But some kids dream of being in the NBA. But you got to be 90, 11, these seven. Right? You know? I mean, so how's that going to happen? I mean, you just said it in a really innocent way, but a kid just, I'll eat spinach or something, you know? You eat spinach

become black. And all at all. You know, I don't know, but it worked for me. I mean, literally, when I, you know, one of my dreams as a kid really was, I wanted, I love baseball. Still do.

“I wanted the, you know, okay, what do I got to do? And I'd start throwing a, I was throwing a ball”

against the side of the house. I'd made a big, like a target, you know, bull's eye and I don't know why I did it that way. And my mom caught me. I was throwing an actual hardball. And it was didn't the clapboard, you know, the wood. It was, I was tearing the house down. So she got me a tennis ball

and that was okay. I would know good. You know, I was, I was, that dream was never going to happen.

Is that what inspired put me in coach? Of course. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What a great anthem. Thank you. That's amazing. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I mean, how many baseball games have played that song? My God. I mean, at least, you know, I mean, there's a lot of us semi nerds, I guess. You know, one of the playball wanted to be a job and just really, at some point, you know, the ones that really have it pass you by. Right. Of course. And you just kind of, but in your mind,

everybody got through scorecard and, you know, and they're following the game and all that, and that vicarious joy of watching Otani or Aaron Judges, whoever it is you love. You get to have that in your heart anyway. What, I mean, I'm the luckyest guy in the universe. Okay, I didn't get the play, but I wrote a song and my songs there all at that. It's just, it's just the coolest feeling.

The song, my, that songs in the baseball hall of fame. That's amazing. It is amazing. If you

think of this, but it's just like, that happened to me. You know, I said, God, I could cry over that. But when they had sent a letter to me and they were going to, you know, and put the music in the hall, I just was, God, who do I tell? That's amazing. Yeah, it was so good.

“That's amazing. That's amazing. So when, when did you start writing your own songs?”

I was eight years old. Wow. Do you remember your first song? Yes, or at least the one I remember is I call it the one I can remember. He was mourning. I was getting ready to go to school. I could walk to school was like two and a half blocks from my house, something like that. I lived on Ramona. He go past Pomona. And then the next street was Ash Berry. And the school was on Ash Berry up about two blocks. Harding school. If it's a grammar school. Anyway, I'm getting

ready to go to school. Got my lunch. I got to turn off the radio and this commercial comes on.

"Do you have the wash day blues? Is this day going to be joy-jerry?" Well, maybe you are using

the role and they went off talking about laundry soap. I don't know if there was a song involved

“in the commercial. I think it was just a red cover. Because it was probably live right there”

on whole-time radio. So I went out the door with, you know, carrying my little sack with the lunch, and it's a wash day blues. Wow. I get kind of to the end of the street. I think that's a limb. I got to go down, you know, three streets. I'm walking along. So, wow, what a dang, dang, dang. Look, I got the wash day blues. I'm making that noise. It's muddy waters. It's the riff from probably Huchikuchi Man, you know. Right. And it all comes together and just walking down the street,

singing about all the stuff that, because it's blues. Right. And I'm hearing all these guys on this, you know, channel I listen to, singing the blues and about blues. So I got wash day blues. That's my song. You know, for years and years, I thought I was embarrassed about that stories.

“God, John, why couldn't you have a great story about the sinking of a Titanic or something?”

It must be blues, because it just seems so mundane. But now I kind of recognized, because of the two elements I had put together, it's just kind of natural. It's really the process of writing songs.

That's amazing. And so, when you wrote songs, I saw this video clip where you talking about,

I think it was old man down the road, is that the beginning riff down there and there and there. Yeah. Yeah. And you were talking about how that riff just hit you. Yep. Is that? Yeah. I had this place, it was my studio. It was a convert, basically the garage of a house that I had bought to be my office and my place. So it was a size of a garage. I would go there every day. So in the morning, I get in, I turn on my tape recorder and, you know,

various pieces of equipment and stuff. That was my process. Certainly every weekday morning, sometimes on Saturday, Sunday, whatever, but certainly the five days a week. And I walk in there and work on music. I did this every day for, I mean, years and years from 74 until

Center Field came out, basically, which was 11 years later. And so one morning I walk in and I

haven't even turned on the stuff yet. I just for some reason, I went right to the guitar and I turned on the amp and picked up the guitar and just kind of knew the link as I like to do that. A lot of my songs have started this way, but certainly just played fair and fair, fair and it really had that sound to it. And I got my attention because I knew that it wasn't anything else. And I also, I mean, this is like in a, this is how quick our brains can work, you know, it's

taking me way longer to tell it than the actual thing. But so I played the D&M now, now, now, and I realize it's not complete. It needs an answer. And I'm also aware that it's like being on a tight rope or something over Niagara Falls. You know, you got to have the right answer and there's

“probably only one because all the other ones are going to kill it. And you'll never remember this again,”

because that happens all the time. Right. You know, it'd be lame. There, it's precarious. It's hanging in the air. Then down, down, down, down. And you got to come back with the thing to make it complete, and it has to be the right thing. Yes. And so I didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, oh my god. Yeah. And I've, you know, I played over and over probably for five minutes. I just

tend to do that. That's the joy of music. That's the joy right there. Because I knew it wasn't anything out. There was no question in my mind that was this coming from, you know, the Beatles, were howl and wool for something. Right. So immediately, I had kept this little song book. It's only about that big with titles in it. And I go flipping through the book. And I think I see something

that's what it's called. This song is going to be somewhere down the road. And that day,

“I start, so now I turn on my tape recorder and all that. I play some, because I had to play real drums,”

and that's what took me so long, folks. Anyway, so I make a little thing that's just the riff, and then make a space of just the drum playing and nothing else. So I can kind of listen to it and improvise what's going on after this riff. What's somewhere down the road? And of course, I start talking about, he get the thunder from the mountain, he bring the lightning from the sky, you know, and all that. And these things are going on. And so you've got to shoot forward probably

a few weeks. I realize I've started to write a song, but the title somewhere down the road

to me just seems lame. It seems undefined, not cool enough, not focused, and probably not

“going to remember it, because it sounds like just what it is. You won't remember that, right?”

You know, if you say, I've got poker dot Chevy sitting on top of a bull mousse or whatever, that's your title. You probably get a picture in your head. It's going to stick. So I'm hunting around her. What are you doing here? What are you talking about in this song? We're talking about this guy. He's evil. He's the old man. He's the old man down the road.

That's way better. So the song became that, the deal is with my little song, but

probably two years later after that album had come out, I said, you know what? I want to check on where somewhere down the road. And I went cover to cover, and it's not in there. There is no place where I've written somewhere down the road. I just thought I saw it, and that led me to a really cool song. Wow. The reason I'm telling you this is there was a time I had an office in Warner Brothers, and I would when I was staying down in LA, and I would go in there all the time

and write, had some keyboards and stuff. And one day I thought I needed a break. I took my book and I went out and said it's Warner Brothers Park and I went out to my car and sat down, because I was trying to give myself some, you know, get going, do something. And I thumbed through the book, and I saw changing the weather. I said, man, I liked that. And I look up and it's kind of a cloudy gloomy sky, you know. Yeah, changing the, yeah. So I ran back in my room and I started,

I went off. I was inspired and I wrote a song called "Change in the Weather." Well, same deal. After that album came out, I decided to check my, it ain't in there. There's nowhere in my book where it says, "Change in the Weather." So I, nowadays, tell people, you know, maybe it's a shape, ship there. And there's stuff in there, it can just kind of go, "BOOM!" John, listen to this, I got an idea for you. Right. Well, the creative process is so mysterious. Yes. Because everybody that I talked to,

whether it's comedians or authors or musicians, they say the ideas almost don't feel like they're

“there. It's like they're receiving them from somewhere. For certain, that's how you feel? Yep.”

To me, it's like tuning in a radio. Yeah. And a lot of, there's, and I guess it's the way I was raised, you kind of have to be worthy. Right. I mean, there's a big dose of, if you're all angry, and treating people mean and doing all that, I'm closing the book. Yeah. I'm not saying anything. I think that too. Yeah. I think that too. You got to be receptive and honor this process that we're going through here. And if you're in that frame of mind and

some humility about this whole thing, maybe I'll send you something. The Mews. Yeah. Have you ever heard of Steven Presfield? Huh? Steven Presfield is an author. He wrote a great book called The War of Art. And I give this book, I have boxes of this book out front. And I give it to comedians and artists all the time. Because it's just a book about the creative process,

Mews and sitting there and calling upon the Mews for these ideas. That if you treat it like it's a real thing, it will provide you. If you show up every day and you put in the work, the Mews will give you these ideas. But they do feel like to everybody that I talk to that's

really creative. They feel like they're coming from somewhere. Yeah. And yeah, it feels like it's always

been there. Right. And it's just up to you to be able to actually be able to see it or yeah. Right. Yeah. So I do a lot of, I get ideas in my head. I'm just walking around and it'll play to me the same as if you're listening to the radio. It just gets in the head and start feeling it.

“But I do believe you have to, you have to be doing it all the time. Like for me, it was a process”

to actually sit down, be ready. And a lot of times nothing happened. You know, you got a blank sheet

of paper and it stays blank. Right. Right. Right. But if you do that enough times at certain times,

you'll get a really good inspiration. Yeah. You'll be a, that's the way. You'll be allowed to receive it. Yeah. Right. But it really isn't you. Right. That's the way I think of it. What it is is, you have talent. You're supposed to honor your talent. And so I'm going to give you something if you're worthy. And now it's up to you to honor, you know, use your stuff. Don't just go, I got it. We're done. No. You got to work it now. Punch it. You know, make it. Yeah. Yeah. I, I,

“I feel the exact same way. I think, I think this truth to what you're saying. I want to ask you”

about fortunate son. How did you write that? Like how did, how did that come about? That is like

one of the greatest rebellion songs of all time. It's amazing song. I love it. It's also a

fantastic workout song, by the way. That song gets jazzed up. If you're doing like a treadmill or something like that, you start to get tired. Correct that sucker up. Well, first of all, I think the first thing I got to see about it is I was drafted. So I was in the military and I got in the army reserves, but was well and was on active duty in all the rest. So I well understood the position of, you might say the military mindset, right? Even though I was a young person and this is

“right during the Vietnam era. And I think I really need to say that almost no one my age wanted”

to be in the army and go to Vietnam. That was something you didn't know. I don't want to do that. So I got my draft notice, was got into the army reserves. So I understood that side of the coin and that side of fate, you might say. The deal, I think the deal being okay, I mean the military. So now I got to play by the rules. I got to do everything that this is what I am, right? There's a little, there's a little bit of the whole idea of being American and serving

your country. I'm trying not to say, oh yeah, now I'm gun-hole and I'm John Wayne and I'm going to take on E.V. G.M. or something. It was more like, yeah, but you got to do this right. You can't just be some guy that's on A wall all the time and being a mess. You know, I wanted to do it right. So I went through all of that and it's another story, but eventually got my honorable discharge which led to another song, what is the difference? And that was just before just that the

credence career was getting started. But anyhow, during the Vietnam time, you begin, you know, there was a lot of unrest, civil unrest in America, and around the world. Those times were very volatile. But especially in America, there was a lot of protests and discussion about the war itself. Remember, there was a draft. So young people kind of by nature were against the war and against the draft because it seemed to be sort of not logical as that. And in some instances, you would see

son from being drafted or get his teenage son into some cushy job. And you kind of saw it a

“few times these guys where the fix was in, you know, and that just didn't really didn't seem fair.”

Not just in my own case, but I'm more identified with the people that were protesting the war. No one had ever really explained why we were having that war. To my mind, we still don't know, right? You know, it just somebody's ego decided they wanted to have a war and they had a war.

So most of these things that have cropped up ever since have always ended kind of miserably,

and they never were one, they just sort of dissolved. Right. So there was no marching band at all that stuff to get the, you know, like World War II ended with a decisive victory anyhow. That angst and anger within me about that situation was fueling my thoughts about the current times. This was 1969. So I started showing the band, all the songs at the band learned and played

throughout the, the credence career. They literally learned them as instrumentals. They didn't hear the song. I didn't show them the song. So in other words, the bass player, I would show the bass player his part. Here's how your part goes. Here's how the drums will be. Here's the rhythm guitar part. And the band wouldn't actually hear the whole song until I had gone into the studio after that recording process and added my vocal saying the background vocal parts. Oh wow.

Played the congregor drum or the shakers or tambourine or piano, you know, all the other stuff, then they heard how the song went. So they learned their parts as instrumentals. And this was exactly that way. I showed them how to play what was the form of the song. And I don't even, I don't think I had told them the name of the song yet. I thought I was

writing a song called "Favorite Sun" because starting in 1952 when they sent my second grade

“class, I think home to watch the inauguration, I believe, of Eisenhower. I think that's what”

it was. And we had a tiny little tea. The all-eye saw was big black limousines. That was my entire impression of the presidential thing and politics. So after that, I kind of would watch the parts of the conventions in the summer. You know, there'd be these gigantic, you know, I didn't know what they were then, but these big rooms full of smoke. And everyone's in a while somebody, you're on the great state of Texas, would like to nominate her favorite sun,

Billy saw last us or whatever, right? And they all said that. You know, the state of Vermont would like to nominate her favorite sun. And so I had written that one down in my book. And I thought I was going to write as kind of a political song. So the band was getting pretty solid in the backing track. And that told me, you know, I was driving a career. I mean, I, there wasn't

“someone else telling me I was the one deciding and pushing and I think pushing pretty hard. I just”

I wanted a new single to be ready. And this seemed like it might be it. So at one point after the band had been rehearsing the music for that song, fortunate sun for a few weeks, it was getting pretty good. All right, I got to write the words. I got to get the whole song together. I took a little yellow tablet like that, went in my bed room and sat on the bed. And instead of what I thought it was going

to be, the first thing I said, some, you know, this idea of the red, white and blue and they're

all was super patriots. You know, all this stuff, it bluster and all that. And how do I get that? How do I get that? Well, they're waving the flag. Yeah, but what's going on now? They're pointing

It ain't me. I ain't no, you know. And literally, I mean, I just sort of did it in the front of you, almost the way it played out of me sitting on that bed. Literally walked in and 20 minutes later walked out with the whole song. Wow. Coming from the, I didn't have anything other than favorite son. The rest was just the stuff that was boiling in my head at the time, of course.

Basically, because well-heeled people getting out of the draft, which kind of pissed me off,

you know, I just, you know, there were a lot of guys. Now that I was in them, or had been in the military, and I knew there were a lot of other guys felt just like me. I wasn't like they, I didn't grow up that I wanted to be a soldier and go do that. It was just fate that made that happen. So the unfairness of the situation made me want to talk about that. Oh, you nailed it. It's such a great song. So did you have the music all settled out when you

went to the musicians and explained to them how the song was going to play out? Did you have that

“before the lyrics? Yes. Almost always. So what did you think the song was going to be about?”

When you, would you just brought them to music? Well, I said, I thought it was going to be favorite son. So you kind of still have the theme in your head of how it was about that stuff. I just didn't know what it was. And I also, you know, there's a t-shirt though. The older I get, the better I was, I was pretty good then. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I didn't know what the song was going to be. But, I mean, now I would certainly have a little trepidation that I go on here for the blank.

I'm probably going to come out of there with a, you know, a smiley face that I do though. There's that no words, meaning somehow I was counting on myself to do it. But that's, that's pretty precocious. Yeah. But that's also that divine intervention of the muse. Like you put in the work and you called, you called upon it for inspiration and your mind started lighting up and then

you started putting the pieces together. Yeah. Oh, that's a wonderful joke. That's an amazing

“process when, because that's what I do. I'm not a prize fighter, you know. I'm not a baseball”

pitcher, let's say, because there would be an evolution in his work. Right. You know, there's something that you can, I'm not those things, but I am a songwriter and that it plays out over some, it isn't just once. You know, it plays out over some time and that incidents where you suddenly get a hook into an idea and then the, the gods, the muse, they let you continue forward with something that is way better than you ever dreamed was going to be it. And suddenly, wow, this is really

cool and you're excited and you're happy and it's coming to be. And you realize, as I said, that was by the way, by far the quickest I ever wrote a song. And that's so quick, so fast that, I mean, it's almost like, instead of replay, there was so fast that you, or at least I did it, like, man, this is really good. I mean, and you just, like, a minute ago, I was taking a breath,

“hoping that something would happen. Yeah. Well, that's what's amazing about great songs sometimes.”

Like, John Melanie Campus told me a story about, uh, I need a lover that won't drive me crazy. Like, that song you wrote in the shower. Oh, you mean in one shower? One shower. He was just taking a shower and all of a sudden, I need a lover that won't drive me crazy. And then next thing

you know, he's got it. Yep. And it's an all-time classic. Yep. It's amazing. Well, that,

the, the songwriter and especially when he's on his game, he, he knows, it's, and it relates to your own personality, the kind of whatever it is you like to stop you, have gravitated towards. And so when one of those comes along, it really makes you smile because you're going, yeah, this is, this sounds like me. This is the stuff I like. Right. And you, you go with it, because, I mean, you know, I am, I would say notoriously corny, you know, at least I think I am,

Yeah. I mean, I literally think that's me, right? And some of this, I mean, sooner feel is the corny is thing that was ever invented. I mean, I love it. I, unashamedly want to be corny.

“It, that's why I am. I'm corny, right? But it, I mean, in that song, it just, that resonates with,”

I'm, I'm, I'm glad I'm happy. I'm happy to be happy. I want to be happy, right? In other words, I don't have to feel, because rocking rules all about dark colors and leather jackets and piercing,

and, you know, tats and even, and that's scowl, you know, they always would, well, that's stuff.

That's good. I mean, you know, but I like, you know, well, it seems to be me. I can just be unashamedly happy. And I'm glad, you know, like, sooner feel is so optimistic and just great. It's an awesome song. Yeah. I, I don't think rock and roll is all dark. I think there's aspects of rock and roll that people like that are dark, because it's mysterious. Yes. These guys are rock stars, but, you know, rocks, everything. It's like there's so many layers

to it. There's so many different types of personality and you happy to be happy is also an awesome

part of rock. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah. Well, because actually, I've real people, all this humans,

“sort of have all those different parts. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we identify with it. I think the”

the brooding, dark rock star is like, it's a fantasy idea that people want to, they want to believe that there's that part of them. You know, there's just, you know what I mean? I'm going to say, absolutely. And, you know, Marlon Brando on the motorcycle and, is it the wild ones? Yes. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. You know, that he's just so bad. Yeah. And so rock stars in Villa, other, I guess, but rocks, because it was right in that era, they invented or gravitated

to, in other words, one picture defines me. Yeah. This is my uniform. You know, I sleep in this. Yeah. I mean, and so, you know, I've got a big chain, a leather jacket, you know, now the eminent got more and more violent or dark. Right. Who do, who do? You know, all that. But, and it's it's funny because it's basically, I'm all this all the time. Yeah. This, this one picture does it. And I kind of, my wife and I joke about it because she'll kind of say something. Well, you don't

dress like a rock star. And then of course, I'll say, 'cause I'm not. Right. I, I always sort of,

I mean, I have a leather jacket somewhere, right? Or two, even. And it, it, I can I say it. To me, it was, it was a uniform. To me, it was a pose. And so, you know, I tend to actually just put on clothes, you can buy in the store. When I get up in the morning, I got to take my kids to school. You know, I didn't put on the hole like I just got up, stayed at, uh, I don't know, name some place at the whiskey. Right. You know, and now I'm bringing my kids to school.

This is, what, how you doing? Flip my cigarette over into the, I guess I could be a sitcom or something, but that wasn't me. I just, I kind of was normal dad to my, and I'm glad they saw me that way. Tell you the truth. Yeah, absolutely. Look, the idea is silly that everybody has to be one way. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yep. Well, clearly, when you look at what you produce,

“like you clearly are a rock star and you did it by being yourself. Like, actually, I think”

you nailed it there. Um, here's a real tourism. When you're making something, and we talked about this, and it's resonating with you. It just seems like in your wheelhouse. It's you. That's probably going to be really good. It's comfortable. Sounds like this, you, you relate, you relate. It's great. If you ever get yourself as a songwriter, singer, whatever, well, someone's going to really like that I did this, and you're off on some weird thing trying to, you know, be a change or

different or something. That's not going to work. Absolutely not going to work, because you, you think somebody else sees it a certain way, and you're doing it for them, and God knows whatever that is, but it isn't you at all. You, you're probably you're just out of your element, off the rails.

especially being preachy and that kind of thing. You know, there's some songs that's, oh, God.

Shut up. Where is that come from? Does that come from just you have a big audience, and you,

“all these people look up to you and you just start feeling you're important?”

I think, I think some of it, I don't know, all the answers who does, but you're in a mood where you're, or a mode, you're, you want to get some material together. You want to make a record. You want to have some stuff finished, and maybe you're not so inspired, right? So, okay,

well, I'm going to, how about if I talk about whatever and you start trying, it's almost like a

square bag in a round hole. Well, yeah, I got to do something because there is some credence to that just work, just start working, just start moving. You know, don't just sit there, do something. I'm sorry. And keep grinding, and maybe eventually it'll get to where it's natural, you know, the good part. Yeah. Because just sitting and doing nothing, which I've certainly been accused of, is that's nothing for no one, right? So you start moving your feet and trying to

get the juices to flow and all that. But like I said, yeah, I wrote some songs, a whole album, really, called "I of the Zombie." It was the follow-up to center field. And I think, well, I had some other, some ulterior, not that I did it on purpose, but some other ingredients came into my mix. I'll get there in a minute. But anyway, the album is a whole, it's pretty dark, and pretty, and not, doesn't ring true to me. I think it's kind of,

“misses the mark. It's off. That's that album, and that period of my life is a really interesting”

phenomenon. I think that I'm not the only one, it's just that I consider myself lucky. So I worked for, you know, I had this enormous band, number one in the world, get screwed by the record company, lose my life savings, band breaks up, bands in the newspapers, and nasty things about me, et cetera. I'm held kind of in a dungeon by the record company and I got to either give them my music or no one else. And I somehow managed

to get through all that. And it's 15 years after Credence breaking up, basically,

but I need to come out with an album called Center Field. There's happy joyful music on it. It goes to number one. It's a claimed, which is a wonderful thing. And it's a hit. I think what happened this story, I tell about it. It's as if you'd been unjustly in prison, you know, convicted of a crime, put in the penitentiary for a long time. And one day, they decide, oops, you're right, we made a mistake. You're free because you

didn't commit any crimes. We're going to let you free. And you're so happy, you walk out the door. That's Center Field coming out. And you come out into this big meadow, green grass and blue birds, you know, it's a Disney cartoon, right? And then you turn around and just see Frick and San Quentin, the prison that you are in, and now you're angry. You look at that and

“you're just, well, what the, that's what happened. You know, I, when Center Field came out,”

I should have, and was a success. In other words, I was exonerated or vindicated. I should have immediately gone to therapy, right, seen a shrink. But that kind of, I wasn't raised any where near any of that kind of stuff. So I didn't know to do that. Instead, all that stuff that I was repressing, so that I could do Center Field, it just came out like, and I was, instead of being overjoyed, I was miserable, bitter, and it happened all at once. It didn't like develop,

but it was a bam. And for like two years, it was like, you could say Saul's name. I would

guy, the Hulk? Yeah. And so I made that album, and that's all that stuff. I mean, I just didn't have the sense to see that it was, it was nothing like Center Field, right, not a good, this guy's not happy. It was not a good follow up. How did you, and then back, I met Julie, you know, writing the middle of that tour in 86 for I up the zombie, or that's with, so I am a zombie, you know, I met Julie,

and even though I didn't know, I thought I was in perpetual binge mode. Basically, okay,

I'm going to go out in tour now. I'm just going to be a rock star on the road and be, be everything

“I never got to do for 20 years, right? Now, I'm like, I'm a little kid musician again. That's what”

I thought I was doing. Obviously, that comes from some anger to talk like that. Yeah. And so I just thought I was going to make my way through the Hollywood Hills, you might say. I think I actually said that in those days. And one day, just suddenly met Julie, not expecting to meet the love of my life, as the person I feel that was that I was destined to meet. And the person that would

through her good graces helped me find myself and help me enjoy and find the joy of life again.

And it all changed. That's awesome. That's awesome. It's great that you bounced out of that, because a lot of people don't, you know, when something bad happens to them, they just go into a spiral.

“Again, it's kind of amazing that you were joyful at first, but then you started getting resentful”

and thinking about it, which is totally understandable. Well, you said a spiral, and that's just what it felt like. You're just kind of getting worse and worse. That's better. Alcohol's all right. Yep. Yeah. And boy, you don't, you know, they call it, it takes you a long time to figure out it's a depressing. Yeah. You are, you're drinking, you think you're drinking to forget stuff, but you're getting more and more depressed. Right. Yeah. And it's weakening your resolve, your, your,

your body. It's weakening your vitality. So you're tired and you're angry. That too. And you're, and you're mindset. Yeah. You're just, you know, miserable mood. And it's also,

“that's also in the rock and roll stereotype, you know, the, the drick in the hard party in,”

like one of my favorite songs when I was a kid was a bad company shooting star. And every kid that used to listen to that thought they were Johnny. Like Johnny was a school boy when he heard

his first Beatles song. Yeah. It's a sad song. The guy dies young. It comes from rock star and

what's up dead. And everybody like was romanticizing this song of this terrible lifestyle that this guy lived. This guy was super talented and had the gift. Well, it's based on, you know, some reality there. Of course. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, unfortunately, yeah, we, we really romanticize the idea of dying young, burn bright, die young. And it's, it's all cool until their point night you and you're the one that's going to die. Yeah. I mean, at that moment in

life, most people know, I don't want to die. I don't know. I'll still then it's just sort of a vague idea out there somewhere. Right. Right. Right. But we're that it's a romantic, vague idea. You know, Johnny died one night died in his bed, bottle of whiskey, sleep and tablets by his head. Like we just just like assumed, like this is how it goes. You know, like this is the rock and roll romantic story. Well, you hear those words when you're young, of course. And it's right. That actually

sounds kind of positive. You know, because you could rule him in when you're older, you can hear the same words. And you say yes, that's real. But it's not a positive thing anymore. It's just sort of a statement of fact. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a, I'm sitting here now, you know, talking about some parts and either of, certainly embarrassed about and probably ashamed of, I've let the shame part go. It just happened. Right. I mean, I don't encourage anyone and I try to tell

part. And I think that might be part of the healing, part of the getting out the other in, because the more and more solid you get in the resolve of the way you're going to really live your life and not that, the kind of more of the shame dissipates. You're not so, it's not tenuous anymore. Like, oh, I might fall back, you know, you're not so scared that that could happen

“anymore. I think the shame is an important element. Yeah. I think the shame of your, your past”

and the mistakes that you've made motivates you to never make them again. Yes. As long as you

don't think you're still that person, that's the problem with some people, they'll do something in high school and they carry that for the rest of their life. Like that, whatever it is, whatever stupid mistakes they made, whatever behavior, they think that's them forever. And that's what's crazy. Oh, we should be able to grow up and, you know, kids ever, I got married the first time at 20. I mean, there just should be a law. You know, you're just too young. You don't,

you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what all this really means. Right. Certainly,

by the time I met Julie, you know, what though that experience made me shy away for a few years

there from the whole idea of a marriage commitment. I was committed, but the marriage part scared me, you know, I just, oh my goodness. And then one day I realized I was sort of, well, wait a minute, go back to square one. What's the most joyful, happy thing you can do? Well, I want to marry her, right, and have children, and have a white picket fence in a house, and we go to kindergarten and all those things, you know, we bake cookies at the PTA. I want all that. So, sure,

it's crazy because that's not what anybody thinks of when you think of a rock and roll life.

“Oh, okay. Right. I suppose, see, I'm corny again. That's not corny. I think it's authentic.”

You know, it is anything wrong with the way you think at all. I think it's, it's, it's healthy.

It's healthy. You know, I, I just really, even though my mom, I mean, she was a warrior, you know, that, I think of it, there were five boys. That was my family. My parents split up when I, it was kind of a long ongoing thing, but somewhere around eight years old. And so it was my mom's job. There is these five boys. And I, you know, at some point in the teenager, a little later, I said, it's a wonder. We're not all in seeing Quentin. You know, I mean, somehow she had enough

of her. She gave enough of her to inspire us, all of us, really, to be good people. I mean, you know, we all had our faults and foibles and fell down and all that, but yet the ideal was to try and reach up here and be a good person and, and at least because our family wasn't in, in some sense, to try and have a normal family, you know, leave it to Beaver and all that sort of thing. Yeah. So that was a, that was a big goal to me, a big inspiration to, to want that.

Well, it's a beautiful thing. There's nothing wrong with that idea. I don't know. Not at all. It's the idea that there's something wrong with it. It's that,

“that's the fake rock and roll vision. That's the vision of the dark artist, you know?”

I think, um, I don't know if I talk with Julie about this. Sometimes we show up at stuff and there'll be a lot of characters. I'm done by musical things. A lot of characters, rolling around there, you know, and, you know, I kind of look like, uh, Ward Cleaver. Beaver's dad, you know, Mr. Boy Scatter, something walking around. You know, she's looking at me like, couldn't you have worn something a little more rock and roll? Yeah, maybe. And I, I'm just not bothered.

I mean, it, it is kind of funny, though. Actually, I've worn some cool clothes at some of the stuff that would, that would all be Julie's doing, of course. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's almost like, you know, could you, could you show up at a reunion of, uh, rock, guys, you know, in their 50s or something, everybody pull out their blotter, you know, their police blotter? Oh, yeah, I got busted for me, blah, blah, blah, and everybody would have

a wrap sheet, yeah. I mean, it would be a badge of honor, but I suppose to me, I'm,

It's a powerful thing. It's, it's great too, because the influence is to not,

the influence is to create an image, you know, and a lot of people cultivated that image,

“you know, and they get kind of captured by it. Yeah. And then you have to be that person forever.”

You can't, like, switch. Letterman to P. We Herman on his show. Just think, P. We, you're going to have to dress like that for the rest of your life. That's true. Right? Right? Yeah. You become a character. And then that's what people love. They don't love you. They love this fake thing that you've... Well, you know, it's the cowboy thing, the motorcycle. Yeah. I mean, look, I like all those two. Actually, yeah. I, you know, I love the,

I like keeping it as a fantasy. I watch some TV shows and my favorites are the, the modern, you know, like yellowstone and all the other ones after that. This probably a lot of, a lot of, you know, call that literary license, you know, for imagery, but I love the imagery. Yeah. I mean, I sit there and watch that river flowing back past those rocks and the pine trees forever. And some cows going over the, that's okay. And the stoic cowboys

living this rough life. I love all that. Of course, everybody does. It's very romantic. When you're looking at it from the outside, especially. Yeah. I mean, how many people moved to Montana because of that child? They're hoping not so many. I bet a lot did, though. A lot did

“and I think a lot left. Yeah. I think they realized how hard the winters are and like, all right.”

Whoa. The same, the same, my romantic idea. Yeah. And it's a long way to have there. Yeah,

cowboy. Yeah. Music is, uh, it's one of the most powerful things in American culture,

because a great song, like, fortunate song, can inspire people to change their lives. It can inspire people to make decisions. It does, it does things to people. It gives you fuel. Like I was saying, like, if I listen to that song when I'm working out, it's like I took an energy pill. I've all said, and I have more energy. But that's real. It's a, it's a powerful thing that you've created. It really is. You know, and the fact that you did it at a love and enjoyment speaks to

why the music is so resonates so much for people. Well, you know, especially with that song,

“at that point in, in the career of my band, I remember I was writing all the songs.”

I'll talk about that after this, I guess. I mean, but I wanted to have just a all-out scream and rocker, which we didn't have yet. You know, the career was about a year and a half old. And so, I mean, I commissioned myself to, I want to have that, that absolutely loud scream and song with the guitars and all, and so that was sort of the commission I gave myself to create as opposed to something like have you ever seen the rain or even down on the corner,

which is a different vibe. Right. Oh, you know, I wanted to, because I liked that. I like when bands, you know, Beatles actually, I want to hold your hand, or she was just 17 solar standing there, I guess. You know, or it's not really fast, but it's certainly had that vibe, you know, the instrumental rumble by Link Ray. I see I've missed you. Cool. Yeah, I don't know that song. Can you put that one up? Yeah, pull that one up. Yeah. We'll get flag. We'll remove it.

Do you do that? Do you play? Let's get some music. We can play snippets for the product. You know, everything we just been talking about. Yeah. Everything, including the guy, if there's a clip of him playing that. The only problem is, well, we can't put it on the podcast itself, or we'll get flagged, but we can listen to it. Oh, you mean that we just put that part out. That was the musical scale right there. Yeah. What's, what is that? I took so much out of that.

But anyway, he was the rumble. So song, who's the guy? Link Ray. Oh, God. That's so cool. And when you saw him black leather jacket, skinny as a rail, probably had a suit. Yeah, probably a motorcycle. I mean, it was the entire thing in one little two and a half minutes song. Wow, look at them there. God is there. He's a little older there, but it's, yeah, he's bad. Wow.

He looks cool as hell. It's, it's always fascinating to me where artists had like one incredible song

How did this guy never make it? How many, do you know what Johnny Thunder is? I've heard the name.

Okay, play. I'm alive for him. There's a song that my friend Brian Simpson told me about, God, it must have been like a couple of years ago now. And he played it for us in the mother ship, the comedy club, the green room. And he goes, you're going to love this song. And I went, who is this? We had a figure out who it was. It's a song from 1969 by this guy Johnny Thunder. 1969? 1969. Yeah. And it's fucking incredible. It's such a good song. And I'm like, this,

if I didn't know any better, I might go, this guy must have been a huge star. Like, if, I know, but if I heard that, and someone said, this guy's a huge star. Have you heard this song about, oh my god, this sounds like a huge star. Like, this guy's fantastic. Listen to this. Listen to this.

“How good is that? It's great. How good is that? It sounds phenomenal, right?”

Yeah, did he ever, like, under a different name or anything? Have? Nope. Oh my goodness. Nope. That crazy? No, we started playing that song. We started playing that song. Two, it's great. He's saying a lot of great stuff. It's a great. It's incredible. Yeah. That's the voices incredible. The sounds incredible. We play that song on the podcast a couple of years ago. Now the song's in commercials and all these different things. Oh, is that true? Yeah. Yeah. But he's dead.

He's dead. He died. I think he died in 2019 or something like that? I didn't 20, 24. 2024. Wow. Wow. So he probably died right after we discovered him. That crazy? That crazy? Yeah. I mean, you hear that you're like, how did that guy not be one of the biggest artists in the world? Or at least have that song. Right. A big thing. That song wasn't even a big hit. Right. It's crazy. It's just you realize the the slippery nature of success,

especially with art. Like sometimes guys just catch lightning. They got that one. Yeah.

“And that's it. I, you know, I think any artist has been around the while. He had another hit,”

loop to loop. Oh, I know that song. Oh, Johnny Thunder featuring the Bobcat. When did this come out? 1963. Oh, that's the song. I know that one. Wow. I didn't know who the name of a name. Here we go. Loop the loop. Isn't that crazy? That song was Johnny Thunder's only top 40 hit. That's incredible. I didn't see it. Got. Said number four. Number four of the US pop charts. Wow. Number six of US R and B charts. Wow. And the album in Canada reached number 14 to several weeks.

It's incredible because if you hear that other song, like that other song is that should be a gigantic. I'm alive. Yeah. Should be a huge hit. Right. Mean we're statement of, you know, the fact I'm a man or something.

I believe that for so many musicians. And they listen to it. They never heard it before. Right. And so many guys like, oh,

“oh, my God. You hear him. He's like, oh, baby. It's just cracks. It's perfect song. It's an amazing song.”

But it's like the slippery nature of art. You know, it's just like sometime. Yeah. So why would something that good? Just, you know, there's something. I don't know. The week it came out was 9/11 or something. No. Well, you know what my fear is? My fear is that he got trapped up in the music business sent side of it. And they just decided not to promote him or something. You know, he ran a foul with the music company or something. And it just doesn't make sense that a guy who can make a song that

good. If you can make that song that good, you can make a ton of songs. You just think so. Yeah. You just need to write people with you. Yeah. Because he had the voice. Yeah. All of us do that. The voice, the sound, the the the soul to his music, the way sang. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so good. It just, it's, it is, it's a very difficult thing to capture. And even capture it only once doesn't ensure a long career of getting it right, of finding that thing. Well, yeah. We were talking

about that a little bit a while ago. You know, that that first blush when you realize you can do it.

Yeah. As you've never done it before. Yeah. You know, when you cross that particular

threshold, that's an amazing transformation, I guess, in an artist's way grows. Because

You know, they weren't great songs. I mean, I kind of knew it. I was watching all the people I

“loved and come up from being four or five years old all the way through going up. And you're, you know,”

things happen. Elvis, Motown and Beatles and all these things happen. And why you really like all that.

And meanwhile, you're having the dream of being in music somehow. But you never really know

if you're going to be able to do that or not. Right. I mean, this sort of spreads out in a lot of strange ways in entertainment. I mean, I, I, I kind of make it similar to what, what up your baseball player. And you dream of growing up and getting to the major league, right? And somebody becomes really amazed. Right. And a lot of people don't. You know, and there's, you just don't know.

“There's that realization, I mean, for Willie. Actually, he was, it was slow if you read about him,”

him and Dorosher work. You know, Dorosher could see it. And Willie's going to, yeah. So if you're

lucky enough, and you become Willie Mays, I mean, God bless you, right? But there is that for most of us that moment that, well, sorry, kid, you know, you're just, you're average, but we don't need average, right? And that just happens a lot. In music, there was people like me. When the, when the four people that became credence sort of got together in 1967, after I got off active duty. And we said, okay, we're going to go for broke. Yeah, okay, we'll have a democracy. Yeah,

we'll vote on everything. Yeah, we'll all write songs and everything, right? One of the things that happened going along those lines, I would show up at the rehearsal. You know, okay, at that point when you started, we said, we got to do this all the time if we're ever going to get any good. So every day, during the week, we'd meet at noon or actually a little before that, maybe 11 and sit and talk. Then noon was rehearsal time. And so I'd say, okay, anybody got any songs

and people started looking down here. All right, well, look, I got something and we'd work on my song, right? I mean, we're just sort of getting organized. I've just come up active duty. I've been away from the world. You might say, then next day, same thing, you know, at home, I'd work on some stuff. Anybody got any songs? I mean, it was the weirdest, quiet, a week later, you know,

same thing. And finally, I just, well, look, I've been, you know, I began to feel this thing inside

that I got a push. I mean, I, I think I can do this. And so eventually, I got the idea, the songs I'm working on aren't quite there. How about if we take an old song and I'll just trick it up, like psychedelicize it, because I'll pick a song I already know it's good. It's got

“good stuff in it. And that's what I did with Suzuki. It just kind of really arranged it and had”

all this cool stuff going on. It wasn't something my wrote. It kind of relieved me of the pressure of having to do that. And was able to just, hey, just the, that blank page turned into a different rainbow full of all. Nobody can fault because it's not my song, right? Did all this great stuff, this cool musical stuff to it? It got, the whole point was to get that tape on a local underground station that was actually playing unpublished tapes, you know, by certain bands.

The most famous one you ever heard about was there was a tape of Janice Joplin singing hesitation blues and Yorma's playing guitar, but in the background, somebody's typing their term paper. It was done in their kitchen. And so they were, it was just an amateur unauthorized thing, but they played it on this one station. It became a hit on that station. People requested it.

Yeah, go on. Yeah. Yeah. She's singing hesitation blues. Wow. So that became the, let's do that.

“Let's do an end run around record companies and just bring the things straight to the station.”

Well, they love music. They started playing it probably eight times a day. Each different this jockey would play it. It's eight minutes and 20 seconds longer, whatever, right? And that was really the true beginning. Finished that album. My song writing was, you know, it wasn't great. It was competent. But somewhere right after the album came out, oh, I wanted to make that point. But everybody had ample opportunity to write a song. And it just kind of wasn't coming.

I would show up at the rehearsals. Well, anybody got a song, you know, and everybody got real quiet. And so it's a little look. Okay. Let's work on this. And I began to realize inside that it was going to be up to me. It wasn't. It wasn't. I want to control everything. It was, I got to start rolling this boat. Or you're going to sink in the village of the ocean.

So I started pushing myself hard to reenarter. The first album comes out on my birthday

1968 and 23 years old. And within, sometimes shortly after that, I can't really pin down the, I'm still in the army, right? But I'm working on getting released, getting out. Somewhere, I think in June or July, I don't exactly know, my honorable discharge shows up. I opened this package and it's been sitting there for a couple of days because it said official government business. Who's that for? It was for me. It was a, you know, apartment house.

I'm overjoyed. I mean, this is the biggest struggle has been of my life. Wow. Wow. Wow.

“I turned a little cart wheel on the lawn because I want to remember that I turned the cart wheel”

and ran in the house and picked up my guitar and started playing these chords that are somewhat like Beethoven.

I start strumming this beat. I start hearing this chorus. Let's see, the first thing I said

with left a good job in the city. Well, that was getting out of the army. Wow. Working for the man every night and day. Wow. What is this? Eventually I arrive at this thing where I say, rolling, rolling, oh, I like that. Rolling, rolling on the river. That's starting to be beyond me. Right. Out of me. Right. I look in my book because I said, what is this thing about? What am I doing here? The very first thing I had written in my little book of song titles was

proud Mary. It's the actual first line first thing. I looked at that and I said,

“wow, this is about proud Mary is a riverboat. This is a, a bold name, proud Mary. That's what”

we're doing here. And I finished the song. I mean, it was kind of Mark Twain, kind of Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, you know, had a little bit of kind of gospel flavor and the old South in it. It's wow. When I got done, which was about an hour, I was about an hour from when I'd opened my honor of a discharge. I'm actually holding the yellow tablet I've been writing on. It's John. You've written the classic. I realized that this song was, I had evolved. It was way better than

anything I had ever done before. You know, and so those meetings I'd been having going to see the band. It was anybody got anything and no one ever did. And I'd show my little piece of something I was working on that kind of lid. Can I say it to the confidence to do something really

at this proud Mary and it's got a Maracana in it, although I don't think I had a word then. It's got, I knew it was Mark Twain in the river and all this soulful stuff. Wow, for sure,

“it's the best thing I'd ever done. I knew it was a great song. The next one, God, I hope I get to”

do this again because you just don't know. Right. Right. But that's how that's your goal of lighting and inspiration. Yeah. Charged up from the discharge. Yep. Right. Yeah, but yes, and something led me to be better than I was. Wow. I think with my point was,

you have this kind of the Willie Mays thing. I never knew if I would be able to do that or not.

Right. Right. You, you're going along. You're just plucking along clubs, whatever, learning accord here and there, learning something off a record, hoping you have a career in music because you like music. Me, because my mother had focused, it kind of pointed out songwriters. It put me in that realm. It put, it, it, it made me at least realize that that was one of the

“functions of music. That's, that's another story I could tell you. I don't know if you want to”

hear that. I want to hear every story. That's a fantastic story, though, because that you just getting that notice that you've been relieved and you're no longer an active duty, you've got an honorable discharge, you're free, and then the inspiration comes and you write your greatest song of all time like that, or at least a greatest song to that moment. And realize this can be, this can happen. You really have it. You really have it because

you don't know until you try and when you don't know till it happens, you don't know. You know, until Willie Mays one day did something on the field. Right. He didn't know. Right. And there was a point, as I alluded to, I've read a, the Rosha knew when he saw him and Willie wasn't so sure yet. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. Bad moon rising is another great fantastic song, another huge favorite of mine, but also because it's in one of my all-time favorite

movies. American Warwolf and London. Yeah. That's seen. That must have been cool to have that song play at that movie. It's very cool to me now. I don't even know if I saw the movie, I did time it came out. That was during the time I was still, you know, a way from music and kind of angry and pissed off about my situation. So when something would get done with my music, it kind of made me mad because nobody asked me. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, right, because you didn't have the rights to it.

Yep. Oh, wow. Still phenomenal song, phenomenal song. Did, so did you write all the songs? I wrote

all the songs from Credence. Wow. Until the, the last album, the seventh album that was basically

a result of the guys saying, we want to, you know, there was a big band meeting. We want to write the songs and we demand that we get the right the songs and sing the songs and make up our own musical parts. And then, then resisting that because I just, I thought it was going to really, literally thought it would be career suicide. I, you know, change everything now. Right. Yeah, because, well, here's, here's another part of it. You're, you're struggling and, you know,

the early days of your career and all your life getting to that point. You're trying to figure out what works. Right. I mean, just everyone goes through that because clearly you don't know what works yet.

“I haven't figured it out in one day when some stuff starts happening. Well, that's how you do it.”

This and this and this. This works. And I got very good at that. And you had put in that work and they hadn't. So they weren't really contributing. And I must have gotten resentful that you were the one to wrote all these big hits. And eventually they're like, we want to try. We're Credence, too.

Right. Well, especially because two of them had never written a song in their life. Oh, that's crazy.

And then they wanted to write us on four Credence while Credence was huge. Yeah, I mean, there's a bit of, what's the word, bolder dash in to that? I mean, it's, wow. Maybe you should,

They could, they were just in. They could have jumped in when in the beginning. Yeah. When you were

writing all the songs and they weren't coming up with anything, if they did, you probably would have did their songs as well. If they went on a similar path. Well, of course, it would have been like, yeah. My songs weren't that good at that time, but they were, I mean, they were maybe better than average. They weren't great songs yet. They were album songs or something, right? Right. But what I'm getting at is that the other guys, there was no songs. So that's, that's that thing in,

“I keep using the newly maize metaphor if that's what it is. That example, at some point,”

you're working with the elements in the field that you love. And then you realize how to put it together and to make it happen. If you're lucky, and then comes the time when you actually

make something that's good, right? I mean, but that, oh, I can't think of anyone that the first

song they ever wrote, boom, was Abe Maria or something, you know? Right. It's, you know, so I just thought it was a journey. And I mean, I have been on the journey myself and seen it come, but I think now I look at it, I was, excuse me, I was probably destined, you know, it was what I loved and that was what was calling me. Yeah. I mean, I, that was my motivation, the whole time,

“since I, I tried, I just loved it and wanted to do that, whatever it was. Well, that's why it”

worked. Yeah. You put in the work and you loved it and you worked out it and you tried to get it

better and you've also got inspiration. You were also open to that inspiration. It's just funny that

the band members didn't contribute until the 7th album and they wanted to jump in. It's got a crazy, but understandable. I mean, it's human nature to be resentful, especially if you got a huge band and one guy is the lead singer and that guy's also writing all the songs. Yeah, well, I, well, I walked around for many months, you know, mulling over this whole thing because right after that meeting, shortly after that, my brother Tom decided, he just left. You know, even though I kind of gave

in the all of demands, okay, we'll do it that, I could see that the band was going to disintegrate unless I acquiesce, right? I mean, it was up until then, I had managed to keep it, don't do that, don't do it's going to wreck us. So when I agreed, I mean, it was literally a couple months later, Tom left and so now, okay, what's going to happen now? So I, I didn't know if I was just going to go up neck, call it quits or the image in my mind was of when Elvis got taken by the Colonel,

just kind of pulled out of the other guys and they left him and alerts you might say, "That's the way it looked to me." Right? It's like, you know, the Elvis got all new guys and just kind of, and it was readily apparent because I had already seen what the Elvis come back special, the part where they sat around in a circle and did the old songs and he had the old guy, Scotty and Bill and or maybe Bill was gone by that, but JD Fontana or JD Fontana. And it was just apparent that

“that that was the best thing. Everybody loved that part of his special, most people, he just forget”

that anything else was on that thing, other than Elvis singing those songs. And that sort of was in the back of my, well, maybe they deserve a shot, maybe they, you know, maybe I should do this. And so that's kind of why I went forward with it. It almost like flipping a coin like, well, the odds, I think my own sense tells me this isn't going to work, but maybe they deserve a chance. So I kind of went at it blindly that way. Like, what was it like in the studio when they

started bringing the songs? Well, that's, I mean, that's it. I mean, everyone can hear that. All of us can, you know, you just, the album's called "Mardi Gras." And in the press, it was murdered, rolling stones. This is the worst album ever made by a major group. And I read that and I said, I know. I mean, I literally, I felt that it wasn't like I was trying to defend it. It was, you

that was a mistake. Instead, they said, "He made me do it." And so, they said, "I made them do it."

For as, that was their idea, of course. I didn't want to do that. And after that, I, you know,

“I think we did a, we did a tour. Oh, right. We did a tour. One by one, their songs dropped out of”

the set. The songs that they had done are "Mardi Gras." The other two guys. Yeah, I don't want to sing that anymore. And so we, of course, went back to proud Mary and fortunate son and all that. And there was a point that I could tell that the fans were kind of upset with this whole premise. And so, which whole premise? What, and what, what? Of them singing songs and kind of struggling along with equal time for everybody. Oh, I see. Yeah. And so, finally, it was time. There wasn't enough,

there wasn't any way to put it back together that I could see. Right. That was, it was beyond me.

Now, in later, later, later years that, you know, I'm a much older guy. I mean, never, you know,

there's some decisions that I made. One of them was the decision to not be in the movie Woodstock. They sent a tape of the band doing bad moon writing. It was okay. But what had happened that Woodstock was the grateful dead was on before us. grateful dead had all taken LSD. It's, we were supposed to be under eight o'clock, but it's now two o'clock, two thirty in the morning by the time we get. The grateful dead goes on kind of loses their way, but they're on stage for an hour and a half or something.

With nothing going on so that poor audience has been through rain and all the rest and muddy and

“they just, they just crashed. A half a million strut just, boom, you know. And that's what I get.”

Right, we come running out on stage and we play in a few songs that all I see is sleeping people. And eventually, the last, I think, 20 minutes of our set finally got them up. We warmed them up

for Janice. That's the way I always say, you know, they got going again. But that was a, that was a struggle

all through that. So I get sent, and it was a, it was a bad taste in my mouth about that evening, because we've gone this so much trouble. And at that moment, we were certainly the number one band in the U.S. and probably on our way to be a number one in the world. And so I, you know, here's this kind of ordinary tape of bad moon. And I just thought, I don't know, this doesn't help us. This doesn't further us at all. Now, I'm going to pass. By the way, the grateful dead is not

in Woodstock either. I didn't really, I didn't see that until about a year ago. You know,

“yeah, I mean, I just assumed the grateful dead wasn't Woodstock, right?”

It was probably unusable. So if there'd been an older guy around us, a manager that was like 50 instead of me, with my bad taste about the evening, the older guy, I might have said, hey, you know, your version of Suzy Q Live, even though those people were sleeping, the band was cooking you know, you guys played good. You can't hardly see anything anyway, the crappy old, you said, but that recordings good, maybe we should demand a look. You put us in the movie

and give us eight minutes, not two minutes. Or by then, it was probably 15 minutes long. I think that was a decision that could probably, I could reassess, you know, if it was someone else, but that's not what was on my plate at that time. I was on the offered bad mood. You know, I met the time I felt I was right, because we went on and did great by the way, the band broke up before Woodstock came out anyhow. So it kind of was a mute point.

Did it feel better for you when you were on your own? Did you like that better? Or it was just the John Frogger to be in? You didn't have to have all those guys and all the bullshit. Well, you're asking, you know, we're all human beings and we've got a lot of years

Oh, that's awesome. And yep, that's awesome. And I don't know, there might be a picture of that somewhere. And so, and all the other guys in the band are their age. Oh, wow. And so, that can I say it? You don't, you don't have a whole bunch of people trying to prove something like their record deal or their, you know, because you asked the question kind of caught

“me by surprise after, well, after Credence, I didn't play for a long time. How long?”

But the first being, how long, how long did you not play for? I went on tour in 86 with

a bunch of hired hands. They call it, right? Studio guys. And that was, that was, it was behind number one. I didn't play any Credence aerosomes. I was so mad at my situation. I just played new songs. Wow. There we went, on the left, that scene, that's me, that's my son Tyler. That's my daughter Kelsey. And then that's Jesse Wilson back there, our base player. That's awesome. And so, yeah, and there's a right then that might be a moment in

Chuklan where we all do a riff together and all that. And it's just so cool to all be standing there. That's amazing. So yeah, I mean, you know, they'll get me wrong. The beginnings of Credence was magical and wonderful, right? I mean, it truly, it looks, it's weighted and planned for your whole life.

And it stayed that way for about a year, I think. And then other stuff that I never understood,

I mean, it was beyond, it was unpleasant. And I didn't understand why, right? So after that, it was, it was, that was difficult. Then when I first started playing again in '86 and also, and much more in '97, after Blue Moon Swamp came out. And I had a series of bands that were, I can say, trying to put people together, parts from here and there and there. So it kind of never really was one solidified thing. And you'll, you would find that a lot of people had

personal agendas, you might say, you know, they were working on their own career in all that. And there was sort of, believe it or not, even at that level, different jellies and things. So again, there I was, I could, I could sense it sometimes. People were jealous, you know, and they're like, oh my God, when you see that fix, there's no jealous. Right. See, I mean, this is really fun for me now. Well, that is the problem with so many bands.

It's the conflicting personalities. It's always a miracle to me that any band stays together

and that they could stay together like the stones, where they're still touring now after all these years. The stones are a lesson in how everyone should be, because we've all heard the stories about the stones. We know there's problems here and there and everywhere and all that. Yet, they rose above that. They just decided to, you know what, but, oh yeah, okay, what I don't like that guy over there tonight. But I'm just going to do this and they're all brothers when they're

out there doing that. Yeah. And that's great. Yeah. You know, there's, I mean, there's

“times, let's say, in war or whatever, where you have to kind of subjugate your personal stuff”

for the greater good, right? And that kind of what they do, the stones, it had God bless them. I just think that the thing is, everybody wants to be the man. And when you got so many egos and there's one guy like you who's writing all the songs, all these other people, they're just like, they feel less, you know, and they get resentful. Yep. I think that's pretty normal human nature. And then that has to be dealt with. Yeah.

Sometimes you can't, though. You know, some people can't be reasons with. Some people just, they're not rational. They see things in a distorted lens. Especially if they're not the people that created everything, but yet they've been along for the ride. They don't feel like they're

“getting what they deserve. Mm-hmm. That's what it seems like. I wanted to tell you a story about”

how I got into this in the first place. Okay. Um, I toy about my mom noticing the music coming out of me. One day she brought me home from nursery school, where she was one of the

down on a little chair. It's got, now I look back. It was a little ceremony. She had a little yellow

record. A kid's record. And it basically what she did was she played both sides in this little record.

One side was Osu Zana, and the other side was camp town races. Do da, do da, you know, that one. And then she asked me, would you like this music? I said, yeah, I'm on these are cool songs or whatever a kid says. I really like these. She says, well, I'm going to play him again, Johnny. She plays

“both songs. And she says, do you know that Steven Foster is the man that wrote, both of these songs?”

What do you mean, my? Well, Steven Foster is a real person that wrote this music. And I wanted

you to know that these are his wonderful songs. And that people do write songs. And then she gave me the record that kind of became my little possession, right? And I've reflected on that moment in my life. I mean, I used to tell people, why did she do that? What in the world was she thinking, and all through the years, that I was living at home with my mom, you know, there'd be somebody

“on TV. There's Irving Berlin. And I go, yeah, Mom, hey, he's a songwriter. Or she let me know,”

hogey Carmichael was one of her favorites. So he became one of my favorites, right? And of course, on into the rock and roll air as you notice the Beatles landed in my cart and he were writing these songs. I mean, it just became a thing, a part of me. And it all started back there with my mom and Stephen Foster, and number one, he was a great songwriter. So that little, that sort of kind of songwriting, he's also very corny. I mean, that voice, that personality certainly became, it got contributed,

it got lent to me through the records, the recordings. Stephen didn't make any records, as far as I know. And those songs just sort of got infiltrated into my personality. I mean,

“my mom put it this way. I think I even talked it over with Mom. I feel like Stephen Foster could have”

written "Proud Mary." It seems like that territory. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Right.

I don't know what my mom was given me a gift. You know, and you just never know how powerful

those little moments with your kids are, but that was a big one for me. That's awesome. That's awesome. Listen, John, it's been an honor having you on. Thank you very much. I'm a gigantic fan. So for me, it was a real pleasure to get to talk to you. Same here. The story is fantastic. Thank you very much. And you're on tour. Tell everybody where they could see you. Oh, wow. Well, you know, we are the legacy tour. You may know I've just recorded a lot of my old songs from the Creedin's Time.

And I'm having a bath. Where's just all over? Look at that. Oh, there you go. Wow. That's awesome. Thank you from back in the day, of course. What a cool album, too. Is it really look like that? Yeah. Oh, nice. That's sick. I love it. Beautiful. Thanks, sir. Really. Thank you very much.