00:00:49.000I read up on you a little bit just to catch up about how you got out of the military service, but you got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating.
00:03:30.000Well, you're also one of the first rock and roll artists that wrote songs that became very popular about how you're getting screwed over by the record business.
00:03:51.000Yeah, the name of the person was Zance.
00:03:55.000It sold about a half a million copies as Zance, but the record company Warner Brothers, in their way of settling somewhat, had me change it to Vance.
00:04:44.000Well, 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.
00:05:48.000What had happened, though, I found out in the trial, the bass player from Credence, Was another one of those people, I guess, that couldn't stand that I'd now had success in a later life.
00:06:03.000He went down to fantasy and saw Mr. Saul's ants and said, John is ripping off Credence.
00:06:58.000That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you.
00:07:03.000Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed.
00:07:07.000I 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.
00:07:18.000And so you start creating whatever your art is.
00:07:21.000You're an actor or you're a painter or, in my case, a musician.
00:07:29.000Well, how unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes ownership of your style, and now say you have to go back and invent some other style, be some other person.
00:07:41.000You know, it's just that would be really difficult.
00:07:43.000Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style having to, you know, reinvent and change to something else.
00:07:53.000Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that.
00:07:57.000It's insane because, look, so many artists sound like other artists anyway, and no one has a problem with that as long as they're not ripping off the notes and the lyrics.
00:08:06.000There's a lot of people that sound like people.
00:08:08.000But 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.
00:08:19.000I can't believe that didn't get thrown out immediately.
00:10:22.000I 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.
00:10:36.000And to the average fan like myself, that's abhorrent.
00:11:24.000That 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.
00:11:38.000Yeah, and there's all kinds of you know, um, bad people around just waiting for you to slip up and sign something that will give your rights away, that sort of thing.
00:11:52.000I get such a joy out of music, you know, I mean, I just, it started that way when I was a little kid.
00:11:59.000I mean, didn't even know what I was doing or what that was.
00:12:03.000I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it and I just kind of went with it.
00:12:11.000And of course, later with all the things, you know, the different roads you go through trying to get to someplace, Happily, I still get that same joy.
00:12:59.000I mean, when you get like that, Joe, you're not really operating on the same plane in the world that all the other people that you see.
00:13:10.000You walk into a market or something, look around, and probably most of the people are kind of normal, whatever we call that.
00:13:18.000But when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me.
00:13:30.000But, you know, however you get there and then you start abusing yourself with drugs, alcohol, whatever, you just kind of, it becomes a habit.
00:14:46.000And 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 this same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend.
00:16:00.000The record company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan.
00:16:07.000And 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.
00:16:18.000Hey, buddy, you know, you're probably going to avoid that guy.
00:16:22.000But the record company was in this tax thing.
00:16:28.000And for all we knew, we were going to be paying.
00:16:35.000I mean, the tax laws are pretty stringent and pretty high.
00:16:42.000And so they offered us, or basically kind of ushered us into this plan, an offshore tax plan, and it would allow us to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10 and 20%, something like that.
00:17:03.000So it was a huge financial savings for us.
00:17:08.000I can tell you that the name of this particular thing was a bank in the Bahamas called Castle Bank.
00:17:17.000And we had it checked out, I mean, the people on our side in the band had it checked out by our people.
00:17:25.000Our own accountant, the bass player's father was an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm.
00:17:35.000They, among other people, represented the Oakland Raiders, so we thought they were pretty solid.
00:17:41.000And they checked it all out and said that it was okay, it was legit.
00:17:47.000But time went on and it seemed to be not legit to the point that somewhere in the 70s, the bank disappeared and all our money in it disappeared.
00:18:08.000The 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.
00:19:15.000The funny thing is, I had decided to get out of that plan, right?
00:19:22.000And I'd gone down to see my own people, my accountant, my attorney in Oakland.
00:19:29.000And told them, I just want out of this thing.
00:19:32.000I don't like the idea that you got to call, you know, whenever I want some money, like an allowance, you got to call up some bank account somewhere over there, and it takes, you know, some time, some few days before I actually receive my money.
00:20:06.000Oh, I said, one of the things I said to the meeting of professionals look, take a shoebox, put all the money I've ever earned into the shoebox, and now hand me the shoebox so I can see how much money I have earned.
00:20:33.000So I leave, I get down to the parking lot in the basement of this tall building in Oakland, and I'm with the guy that runs my office, and I say, shit, we're going to have to have another meeting.
00:20:47.000Because even though I told him I want to get out of the plan, I didn't stand up like on the table and say, I'm ordering you and you and you get me out of the plan.
00:20:57.000I realized they could weasel some more time until I actually pointed.
00:21:02.000So the next week, I showed up and did that.
00:21:06.000I'm ordering you get me out, okay, out of the plan, right?
00:21:12.000Um, Pretty quickly after that, a week or two, we hear that the bank has closed.
00:21:25.000There's a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day, and the bank president has died.
00:23:54.000Got 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 rest, right?
00:24:11.000But I was the only one in the band that did that.
00:24:15.000The rest of the guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves.
00:24:24.000I'm telling you this because at some point, Later, more than a year had passed, maybe a year and a half, my lawsuit had been rolling along a while.
00:24:39.000And then the other guys asked to join my lawsuit because the statute of limitations had run out on them being able to sue anyone.
00:24:51.000Because they literally tried to stay in the plan.
00:24:57.000I was willing to take the penalty, whatever it was, for being the dumbass that let himself get into some financial thing like this, right?
00:25:11.000I thought I was going to need an act of Congress to forgive the debt.
00:25:17.000These 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.
00:25:37.000In other words, you're going to go in the hole.
00:25:52.000How much money were you talking about?
00:25:53.000How much money did they steal from you?
00:25:54.000When it finally was over, the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle I mean, you're going to laugh at this Rock Band Victorious wins 8.1 million.
00:26:08.000That was our entire take for everybody in the band.
00:26:12.000Each guy had a little bit different amount, but, you know, those numbers, I mean, I don't know.
00:26:19.000Dion once made a joke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about Bruce.
00:26:23.000And Dion says, Well, I sold $40 million, meaning, you know, you sue me.
00:29:54.000You know, but for me at least, it wasn't even about being famous, literally, if you could believe that.
00:30:04.000It was the joy of understanding, you know, what the music from other people that you loved.
00:30:12.000And as you grew up from that little first inspiration, you began to kind of understand what it was you liked about what they did.
00:30:22.000And at some point, then started to try and do it yourself.
00:30:26.000But that was a long, long time after the initial joy of just enjoying what they did.
00:30:35.000Yeah, it's kind of sad that money always does kind of distort things.
00:30:40.000But 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.
00:30:49.000It's like that has to come from a real place.
00:30:51.000It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment.
00:31:12.000Well, we all do, but I've learned to, how can I say it?
00:31:18.000Sort of, it's 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.
00:31:33.000You know, express it in different ways.
00:32:03.000And I don't know if you know the story about Hendrix, but his girlfriend.
00:32:07.000Fell 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.
00:32:16.000Was this the one with kind of a funny foreign name?
00:32:40.000That's why his family has the masters, his estate.
00:32:45.000They're the ones that decide, because every so often a new Jimmy album would come out, that sort of thing.
00:32:52.000I didn't know any of this way back then.
00:32:54.000I just wondered who was driving the bus.
00:32:57.000So, I mean, that part was pretty good.
00:33:01.000He had to talk to somebody at Reprise Records, and some of those people were Reprise Warner Brothers.
00:33:08.000In 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 the 60s.
00:33:19.000I guess I was a little envious because I sure didn't own my Masters, that's for sure.
00:33:23.000How many people owned their own Masters back then?
00:38:35.000He said, well, a Gollywog, you see, is this doll that when the British soldiers were in India, the kids would have this little doll called a Gollywog.
00:38:49.000As time went on, I mean, years and years later, long after I had been renamed the band, or I'd renamed the band Credence, found out that Gollywog was a, this was a very racial thing.
00:39:03.000This was the British soldiers calling the people.
00:42:16.000It'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.
00:42:29.000But boy, you can sure look in different.
00:42:32.000Parts of entertainment or business in general, and see some really bad people have made a lot of money.
00:42:40.000Well, it takes the good people to create things, though.
00:42:44.000The creative people make the things, and there's always just going to be people taking advantage of people being naive about business.
00:42:51.000I choose to believe that, at least it works for me.
00:42:56.000I choose to believe that you've got to have a good heart, you've got to try to.
00:43:04.000Use the golden rule basically, you know, don't do something bad to him that you wouldn't want to have done to you.
00:43:12.000So, do unto others as you would have them do to you.
00:43:19.000I believe in God, and I believe God is watching me all the time, you know, all of us.
00:43:25.000So, that part helps me to feel like there's a reason, you know, to try and be a good person.
00:43:36.000The reason being you're in God's grace if you do those things, if you try to live a good life, honest and I guess we call it transparent nowadays.
00:44:14.000And 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, gee, that's not fair.
00:44:23.000I should get the, I don't see it that way now.
00:44:27.000I just look at that poor sap who's being so evil and go, You know, he's going to get his comeuppance someday.
00:44:34.000Well, it's a horrible existence because no one loves you when you're like that.
00:44:38.000If you're doing that and fucking people over, all your relationships are adversarial.
00:45:05.000I think if you live your life like God exists, you'll have a much better life.
00:45:10.000And the golden rule is just it's provable.
00:45:13.000Like 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.
00:45:27.000It carries on to other people that they encounter too.
00:45:30.000They're inspired by how kind and friendly and generous you are.
00:46:11.000Or, you know, I would ask God to help me figure something out.
00:46:15.000And amazingly, there would be through a relation, you know, somebody I was dealing with, there would be something, it was like karma, good karma coming back.
00:46:31.000And I could see the, you know, to me, it was a result of my prayer or my openness of wanting to help get a situation resolved.
00:46:45.000So for me, to me, there's evidence that it all works that way.
00:47:59.000There was times I was boy, you've opened a can of worms here.
00:48:06.000Because I was so invested in being a Catholic, even though my parents tried to have me go to parochial school, Catholic school, I was in the first grade, and then I want to say they kicked me out.
00:48:22.000And then I tried, my mom had me start again in ninth grade at St. Mary's High School, and they kicked me out again.
00:48:33.000Anyway, the one that happened is funny.
00:48:37.000I mean, it's just the one that happened in the first grade, I had to take a bus to get there.
00:48:43.000I lived in El Cerrito and it was the School of the Madeline in Berkeley.
00:48:48.000And I'm in the first grade, I'm six years old.
00:48:52.000So 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 transferred in other words, got on the train and that went another mile or so into Berkeley and at a certain stop right behind the school.
00:49:12.000The school of the Madeline, Catholic school, you get off the train and go on down into school.
00:49:19.000Now, what happened, my mom was a, my parents had split up, so it was only my mom in the house, and she's leaving early because she's got a job as a teacher.
00:49:44.000So I had to get the next bus, so I'm late.
00:49:47.000So I'm rushing to school, but I get there after they've already, they would march every morning to John Philip Souza, and they, you know, all that, and go on into school.
00:50:57.000But 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?
00:51:13.000Going over there, and I mean, I certainly never let my six year olds do anything like that.
00:51:20.000I know it is kind of crazy how kids were just able to just leave the house and do anything back then.
00:52:10.000And then when I went to Catholic school, there was a lady, and I don't remember anybody's name from back then, but I remember her, Sister Mary Josephine.
00:52:21.000She did the whole thing, the whacking people with rulers, telling you you're going to have to stay overnight and you're going to have to sleep on a nail in the closet.
00:53:03.000And some man made thing over here, you know, they became Mormons and some.
00:53:07.000Man made thing over there, they became Muslims, you know, and it's just all man made, it isn't actually God, right?
00:53:16.000And so, you and man is fallible, of course, yeah, he's not infinite and he's not infallible.
00:53:24.000And so, all these things were that, but that took a lifetime for me.
00:53:28.000I'm sure I was in my 40s still working on that, yeah, that God's okay, John, you don't have to resist when somebody wants to make a prayer or so, you know.
00:53:41.000It isn't God's fault that you peed at your desk when you were in the first grade, etc.
00:53:55.000I think all religious scriptures are trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which is the one I've paid the most attention to.
00:54:05.000I think they're trying to document a real thing.
00:54:08.000But the hand of man is clearly all over it.
00:54:13.000The problem with anything that's written down, we know that just in the religious canon, the books that were included in the Bible, human beings had a decision on what goes in and what doesn't go in.
00:54:24.000There were rabbis that kept the book of Enoch out of the Old Testament.
00:54:27.000There's a lot of this weird stuff to it that you go, Well, why do people have any say?
00:54:32.000Why does a human have any say in what the word of God is?
00:54:39.000And when you read the scriptures, you're like, Somebody wrote that down and someone told that story for.
00:54:45.000Who knows how many years before it was ever written down?
00:54:48.000But I think the origins of it, there's truth to it.
00:54:52.000It's just you have to get through all these many layers of confusion to try to decipher what God's original message was and how it was received?
00:58:17.000He would have been born at that point, it was probably 1949, the story I'm relating, and he would have been born in 1875.
00:58:27.000I mean, it's mind boggling to think that.
00:58:32.000But my favorite memory thing, other than the fact that that whole place inspired my song Green River, all the little parts are in Green River.
00:58:42.000But 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.
00:58:50.000I guess they were more happy or something there.
00:58:53.000And I remember sitting between them, you know, it was just a big couch, the front seat, and they were singing songs in the dark.
00:59:02.000And they were singing like by the light of the silvery moon or baby face and harmonizing.
00:59:11.000One was taking the melody and the other was harmonizing.
00:59:15.000The reason I know is because I'd sat there and I'm.
00:59:18.000Probably three, four, five years old, right in there.
01:07:59.000I mean, at least, you know, I mean, there's a lot of us semi nerds, I guess, that, you know, wanted to play ball, wanted to be a jock, and just really, at some point, you know, the ones that really have it pass you by.
01:08:14.000And you just kind of, but in your mind, everybody got their scorecard and, you know, and they're following the game and all that, and that vicarious joy of, watching Otani or Aaron Judge or whoever it is you love, you get to have that in your heart anyway.
01:08:33.000But I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the universe.
01:08:38.000Okay, I didn't get to play, but I wrote a song and my song's there all the time.
01:12:45.000And I'd walk in there and work on music.
01:12:49.000I did this every day for, I mean, years and years, from 74 until Center Field came out, basically, which was 11 years later.
01:13:01.000And so one morning I walk in and I haven't even turned on the stuff yet.
01:13:07.000I just, for some reason, I went right to the guitar and I've turned on the amp and picked up the guitar and I'm just kind of noodling because I like to do that.
01:13:17.000A lot of my songs have started this way, but suddenly just played and it really had that sound to it.
01:13:26.000And I got my attention because I knew that it wasn't anything else.
01:13:31.000And I also, I mean, this is like in a, this is how quick our brains can work.
01:13:36.000You know, it's taken me way longer to tell it than the actual thing.
01:13:41.000But so I've played the and I realized.
01:13:50.000And I'm also aware that it's like being on a tightrope or something over Niagara Falls.
01:13:56.000You 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.
01:15:36.000Anyway, so I make a little thing that's just the riff and then make a space of just the drums playing and nothing else so I can kind of listen to it and improvise what's going on after this riff?
01:17:05.000The deal is, with my little songbook, 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 came.
01:17:18.000And I went cover to cover, and it's not in there.
01:17:24.000There is no place where I've written somewhere down the road.
01:17:37.000The 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 L.A., and I would go in there all the time and write, have some keyboards and stuff.
01:17:54.000And one day I thought I needed a break.
01:17:57.000I took my book and I went out and sat, it was Warner Brothers parking lot, my car is, I went out to my car and sat down because I was, trying to give myself some, you know, get going, do something.
01:18:11.000And I thumbed through the book and I saw Change in the Weather.
01:19:02.000Because everybody that I talk to, whether it's comedians or authors or writers, Musicians, they say the ideas almost don't feel like they're theirs, like they're receiving them from somewhere.
01:20:04.000He wrote a great book called The War of Art.
01:20:09.000I 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, about writing.
01:20:17.000And one of the things that he talks about is the muse, about giving honor to the muse and sitting there and calling upon the muse for these ideas.
01:20:26.000That if you treat it like it's a real thing, it will provide you.
01:20:29.000If you show up every day and you put in the work, the muse will give you these ideas.
01:20:34.000But they do feel like to everybody that I talk to that's really creative, they feel like they're coming from somewhere.
01:20:41.000Yeah, and it feels like it's always been there.
01:22:27.000If you're doing like a treadmill or something like that, you're starting to get tired, crank that sucker up.
01:22:33.000Well, first of all, I think the first thing I got to say about it is I was drafted, so I was in the military, and I've gotten the Army reserves, but.
01:22:47.000Was well and was on active duty and all the rest, so I well understood the position of, you might say, the military mindset, right?
01:23:02.000Even 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.
01:24:57.000But especially in America, there was a lot of protests and discussion about The war itself.
01:25:05.000Remember, 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.
01:25:20.000And in some instances, you would see on the news, you know, some senator who had the political clout that he could keep his teenage son from being drafted or get his teenage son into some cushy job.
01:27:48.000I showed them how to play what was the form of the song.
01:27:53.000And at I didn't even, I don't think I had told them the name of the song yet.
01:27:57.000I thought I was writing a song called Favorite Son 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 all, you know, we had a tiny little TV.
01:29:54.000I took a little yellow tablet like that, went into my bedroom, sat on the bed, and instead of what I thought it was going to be, the first thing I said, this idea of the red, white, and blue, and they're always super patriots, you know, all this stuff, bluster and all that, blah, blah, blah, right?
01:30:52.000Coming from the, I didn't have anything other than favorite son.
01:30:56.000The rest was just the stuff that was boiling in my head at the time, of course.
01:31:03.000Basically, because of well healed people getting out of the draft, which Kind of pissed me off.
01:31:11.000You 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.
01:31:21.000I didn't grow up that I wanted to be a soldier and go do that.
01:31:24.000It was just fate that made that happen.
01:31:27.000So the unfairness of the situation made me want to talk about that.
01:33:14.000You know, or something that you could.
01:33:16.000I'm not those things, but I am a songwriter.
01:33:22.000It plays out over some time, it isn't just once, you know, it plays out over some time.
01:33:28.000And that incidence where you suddenly get a hook into an idea, and then the gods, the muse, they let you continue forward with something that's way better than you ever dreamed was going to be it.
01:33:48.000And suddenly it, wow, this is really cool.
01:33:51.000And 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 instant replay.
01:34:11.000It was so fast that you, or at least I did, I could, man, this is really good.
01:34:17.000I mean, and you just like a minute ago, I was taking a breath, hoping that something would happen.
01:34:23.000Yeah, well, that's what's amazing about great songs sometimes.
01:34:27.000Like, John Mellencamp was telling me a story about I Need a Lover That Won't Drive Me Crazy.
01:34:33.000Like, that song he wrote in the shower.
01:36:08.000In other words, I don't have to feel, because rock and roll is all about dark colors and leather jackets and piercing and, you know, tats and everything.
01:36:16.000And that scowl, you know, the elbows would all that stuff.
01:37:38.000And so rock stars, well, other, I guess, but rock stars, because it was right in that era, they invented or gravitated to, in other words, one picture defines me.
01:38:48.000And so, you know, I tend to actually just put on clothes you can buy in the store when I get up in the morning, got to take my kids to school.
01:38:57.000You know, I didn't put on the whole like, just got off the stage.
01:39:01.000It, uh, I don't know, name some place at the whiskey.
01:40:19.000Absolutely not going to work because 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.
01:40:33.000You probably are just out of your element, off the rails, you might say.
01:43:00.000It's just that I consider myself lucky.
01:43:04.000So 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 newspaper saying nasty things about me, etc.
01:43:24.000I'm held kind of in a dungeon by the record company, and I got to either give them my music or no one else.
01:43:32.000And I somehow managed to get through all that, and it's 15 years after.
01:43:58.000I think what happened is the story I tell about it.
01:44:01.000It'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!
01:45:13.000Instead, 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.
01:45:26.000Bitter and it happened all at once, it didn't like develop it, it was bam!
01:45:32.000And for like two years, it was like you could say Saul's name, and I'm my I would implode like the werewolf in uh in uh werewolves of London or something, you know, or the what's that guy, uh, the Hulk, yeah.
01:45:51.000Um, and so I made that album, and that's all that stuff.
01:45:55.000I mean, I just didn't have the sense to see that it was.
01:47:04.000Make my way through the Hollywood Hills, you might say.
01:47:06.000I think I actually said that in those days.
01:47:10.000And one day, just suddenly met Julie, not expecting to meet the love of my life, the person I feel that I was destined to meet, and the person that would, through her good graces, help me find myself and help me enjoy and find the joy of life again.
01:47:43.000It's great that you bounced out of that because a lot of people don't.
01:47:47.000You know, when something bad happens to them, they just go into a spiral.
01:47:52.000It's kind of amazing that you were joyful at first, but then you started getting resentful and thinking about it, which is totally understandable.
01:48:00.000Well, you said a spiral, and that's just what it felt like.
01:48:02.000You're just kind of getting worse and worse, not better.
01:49:45.000But weird that it's a romantic, vague idea.
01:49:47.000You know, Johnny died one night, died in his bed, bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head.
01:49:53.000Like, we just, like, Assumed, like this is how it goes.
01:49:57.000You know, like this is the rock and roll romantic story.
01:50:01.000Well, you hear those words when you're young, of course, and right, that actually sounds kind of positive, you know, because rock and roll, man.
01:50:10.000When you're older, you can hear the same words and you say, yes, that's real, but it's not a positive thing anymore.
01:50:40.000I mean, I don't encourage anyone, and I try to tell them, no, stay away from, don't do what I did.
01:50:48.000But I used to beat myself up a lot with the shame part.
01:50:51.000And I think that might be part of the healing, part of the getting out the other end.
01:50:59.000Because 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 the shame dissipates.
01:51:12.000It's not tenuous anymore, like, oh, I might fall back.
01:51:16.000You're not so scared that that could happen anymore.
01:51:19.000I think the shame is an important element.
01:51:21.000I think the shame of your past and the mistakes that you've made motivates you to never make them again.
01:52:01.000You don't know what all this really means.
01:52:06.000Certainly 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.
01:52:19.000I was committed, but the marriage part scared me.
01:53:18.000My parents split up when I was, it was kind of a long ongoing thing, but somewhere around eight years old.
01:53:25.000And so it was my mom's job to raise these five boys.
01:53:29.000And I, you know, at some point, being a teenager, a little later, I said, It's a wonder we're not all in San Quentin.
01:53:36.000You know, I mean, somehow she had enough of her.
01:53:40.000She gave enough of her to inspire us, all of us really, to be good people.
01:53:48.000I 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.
01:53:59.000And that was because our family wasn't, in some sense, to try and have a Normal family, you know, leave it to Beaver and all that sort of thing.
01:54:09.000So that was a big goal to me, a big inspiration to want that.
01:54:50.000Ward Cleaver, Beaver's dad, you know, Mr. Boy Scout or something walking around, you know, and she's looking at me like, couldn't you have worn something a little more rock and roll?
01:55:10.000Actually, I've worn some cool clothes at some of the stuff.
01:55:13.000That would all be Julie's doing, of course.
01:55:19.000Yeah, I mean, it's almost like, you know, could you show up at a reunion of rock guys, you know, in their 50s or something, everybody pull out their blotter, you know, their police blotter.
01:57:04.000I mean, I can sit there and watch that river flowing past those rocks and the pine trees forever and some cows going over the, that's okay.
01:57:12.000And the stoic cowboys living this rough life.
02:01:31.000And I'm like, This, if I didn't know any better, I'm like, Oh, this guy must have been a huge star.
02:01:36.000Like, 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, it sounds like a huge star?
02:07:47.000Well, 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.
02:08:13.000One of the things that happened going along those lines, I would show up at the rehearsal.
02:08:22.000At that point, we said, we've got to do this all the time if we're ever going to get any good.
02:08:27.000Every day during the week we'd meet at noon, or actually a little before that, maybe 11, and sit and talk, and then noon was rehearsal time um, and so i'd say okay, anybody got any songs?
02:08:43.000And people started looking down here, all right well look, I got something and we'd work on my song, right?
02:08:51.000I mean, we're just sort of getting organized.
02:08:53.000I've just come off active duty, i've been away from the world.
02:08:56.000You might say uh, Then next day, same thing, you know.
02:10:18.000It 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.
02:10:31.000The most famous one you ever heard about, 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.
02:13:24.000I turned a little cartwheel on the lawn because I want to remember that I turned the cartwheel and ran in the house and picked up my guitar and started playing these chords that are somewhat like Beethoven.
02:14:56.000I 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.
02:15:14.000When I got done, which was about an hour, I was about an hour from when I'd opened my honorable discharge, I'm actually holding the little yellow tablet I've been writing on.
02:15:28.000I said, John, you've written the classic.
02:15:36.000It was way better than anything I'd ever done before.
02:15:40.000You know, and so those meetings I'd been having, going to see the band, and 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 led, how can I say it, to the confidence to do something really great by.
02:17:40.000That's a fantastic story, though, because.
02:17:44.000That you just getting that notice that you've been relieved and you're no longer in 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.
02:19:27.000Until 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 to write the songs and sing the songs and make up our own musical parts.
02:21:33.000But what I'm getting at is that the other guys, there was no songs.
02:21:37.000So that's that thing in, I keep using the Muli Mays, you know, metaphor, if that's what it is.
02:21:49.000You know, that example, at some point, you're, you're, You are 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.
02:22:05.000And then comes the time when you actually make something that's good, right?
02:22:10.000And I mean, but that, oh, I can't think of anyone that the first song they ever wrote, boom, was Ave Maria or something, you know?
02:23:13.000I mean, it's human nature to be resentful, especially if you've got a huge band and one guy is the lead singer and that guy's also writing all the songs.
02:24:02.000And so now, oh God, what's going to happen now?
02:24:05.000So I didn't know if I was just going to call it quits or.
02:24:11.000The 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 them in a lurch, you might say.
02:24:27.000And it was readily apparent because I had already seen what the Elvis comeback special, the part where they sat around in a circle and did the old songs, and he had the old guys, Scotty and Bill, or maybe Bill was gone by then.
02:29:13.000And so I just, 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, doesn't further us at all.
02:29:42.000If 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 might have said, Hey, you know, your version of Susie Q Live, even though those people were sleeping, the band was cooking.
02:31:34.000You don't have a whole bunch of people trying to prove something like their record deal or, you know, because you asked the question kind of caught me by surprise.
02:31:46.000Well, after Credence, I didn't play for a long time.
02:32:34.000And so, yeah, and there's a, right then that might be a moment in Chuglin where we all do a riff together and all that, and it's just so cool to all be standing there.
02:32:47.000So, yeah, I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, the beginnings of Credence was magical and wonderful, right?
02:32:55.000I mean, it truly, look, it's what you waited and planned for your whole life.
02:33:01.000And it stayed that way for about a year, I think.
02:33:05.000And then other stuff that I never understood.
02:33:08.000I mean, it was beyond, it was unpleasant, and I didn't understand why.
02:33:15.000So after that, it was, that was difficult.
02:33:19.000Then when I first started playing again in 86, 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.
02:33:40.000So it kind of never really was one solidified thing.
02:33:45.000And you would find that a lot of people had personal agendas, you might say.
02:33:54.000They were working on their own career and all that.
02:33:56.000And there was sort of, believe it or not, even at that level, different jealousies and things.
02:34:07.000Jealous, you know, oh my god, when you see that fix, there's no jealous, right?
02:34:12.000See, I mean, this is really fun for me now.
02:34:15.000Well, that is the problem with so many bands the conflicting personalities.
02:34:19.000It'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.
02:34:29.000The stones are a lesson in how everyone should be.
02:34:34.000Because we've all heard the stories about the stones.
02:34:37.000We know there's problems here and there and everywhere and all that.
02:35:10.000I just think the thing is everybody wants to be the man.
02:35:14.000And 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.
02:35:40.000They 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.
02:35:48.000They don't feel like they're getting what they deserve.
02:37:00.000She said, Well, Stephen Foster is a real person that wrote this music.
02:37:06.000And I wanted you to know that these are his wonderful songs and that people do write songs.
02:37:14.000And then she gave me the record that kind of became my little possession, right?
02:37:19.000And I have reflected on that moment in my life for, I mean, I used to tell people, Why did she do that?
02:37:25.000What in the world was she thinking, right?
02:37:28.000And all through the years, That I was living at home with my mom, there'd be somebody on TV, there's Irving Berlin.
02:37:36.000And I'd go, yeah, mom, hey, he's a songwriter.
02:37:39.000Or she'd let me know Hoagie Carmichael was one of her favorites.
02:37:43.000So he became one of my favorites, right?
02:37:46.000And of course, on into the rock and roll era, as you notice, the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney, were writing these songs.
02:37:53.000I mean, it just became a thing, a part of me.
02:37:57.000And it all started back there with my mom and Stephen Foster.
02:38:04.000Number one, he was a great songwriter.
02:38:06.000So that lilt, that sort of kind of songwriting, he's also very corny.
02:38:15.000I mean, that voice, that personality certainly became, it got contributed, it got lent to me through the records, the recordings, as Stephen didn't make any records, as far as I know.
02:38:34.000And those songs just sort of got infiltrated into my personality.
02:38:41.000I mean, my mom, put it this way, I think I even talked it over with mom.
02:38:46.000I feel like Stephen Foster could have written Proud Mary.
02:38:56.000I don't know what my mom was giving me a gift, you know, in that you just never know how powerful those little moments with your kids are, but that was a big one for me.