The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty

00:00:02.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:13.000 Put your stuff on the floor.

00:00:14.000 It doesn't matter.

00:00:15.000 You can keep it on the table.

00:00:17.000 It's fine.

00:00:19.000 There's water there, too, in this metal cup.

00:00:22.000 And then there's coffee.

00:00:23.000 Oh, thanks so much.

00:00:24.000 Okay.

00:00:24.000 Yeah, he's ready to.

00:00:26.000 I have some notes that I'll probably never look at.

00:00:30.000 You got notes?

00:00:34.000 What's on the notes?

00:00:36.000 Just stuff like what I went through with CCR and all that.

00:00:40.000 But tell me something.

00:00:44.000 Did you read up on me or anything?

00:00:46.000 I'm a huge fan.

00:00:47.000 I don't have to read up on you.

00:00:49.000 Okay.

00:00:49.000 I 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.

00:01:00.000 Is that true?

00:01:00.000 I read that.

00:01:02.000 They lied?

00:01:02.000 No.

00:01:02.000 Is that true?

00:01:03.000 Yeah.

00:01:04.000 There was a story about you smoking a lot of weed and getting emaciated so you can get out of the army.

00:01:10.000 Well, it's not quite in that sequence, but those things did happen.

00:01:18.000 Yeah, I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right?

00:01:27.000 So I was kind of really skinny about 1967, 68.

00:01:34.000 I mean, like, I think it was 129 pounds.

00:01:37.000 Whoa.

00:01:38.000 Yeah.

00:01:40.000 And then I was going to go to the, I think it was the Presidio, and I had to meet with an army doctor, right?

00:01:49.000 And my friends gave me a couple of joints, and I stuck them in.

00:01:55.000 You know, I used to smoke in those cigarettes.

00:01:58.000 I stuck it in the cigarette, and going across the Bay Bridge, I smoked them.

00:02:05.000 I hadn't even thought about it.

00:02:06.000 So if you want, yeah, man, he, he, He went on a starvation diet, a protest diet, and then smoked a lot of weed.

00:02:13.000 That's what I heard.

00:02:14.000 That's what I heard.

00:02:14.000 But yeah, okay.

00:02:15.000 But it's essentially some truth.

00:02:19.000 Some truth to it.

00:02:21.000 You had a legendary career, my friend.

00:02:23.000 Legendary.

00:02:25.000 Thank you.

00:02:25.000 Still working on it.

00:02:26.000 It's incredible, man.

00:02:28.000 You are like one of the main voices of rock and roll in America, if you really think about it.

00:02:33.000 Your songs, I mean, you have so many gigantic hits.

00:02:39.000 You know, when the UFC.

00:02:41.000 Uh, has a lot of walkout songs, you know, when fighters come out and walk out.

00:02:45.000 A lot of guys walk out to your music.

00:02:47.000 I don't even know if you're aware of it, but Fortunate Sun is a big one, yeah.

00:02:51.000 Bad Moon Rising that's another big one people walk out to.

00:02:55.000 Great, it's pretty awesome.

00:02:57.000 Wow, yeah.

00:02:59.000 I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but it, you know, everybody, whatever floats your boat.

00:03:05.000 Well, people just love your music, yeah.

00:03:07.000 You so you went through many generations, like you got your first record contract.

00:03:13.000 How old were you?

00:03:16.000 I know I signed one when I was around 19.

00:03:20.000 Of course, it would have been unenforceable.

00:03:23.000 It's not legal at the time, right?

00:03:25.000 You had to be 21, the deal? 0.99

00:03:27.000 I believe so.

00:03:28.000 Yeah.

00:03:30.000 Well, 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.

00:03:40.000 You know what I mean?

00:03:41.000 So Leonard Skidder did it, working for MCA, they did that song.

00:03:45.000 But you had Vance Can't Dance.

00:03:48.000 It was actually Zance Can't Dance.

00:03:49.000 But you had to change it, right?

00:03:51.000 Yeah, the name of the person was Zance.

00:03:55.000 It 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.

00:04:10.000 Yep.

00:04:11.000 Because the guy's name was Zance.

00:04:13.000 Zance, yeah.

00:04:14.000 It was screwing up.

00:04:16.000 That's right in the middle of.

00:04:19.000 That whole thing was a mess.

00:04:21.000 I got sued for sounding like myself.

00:04:25.000 What?

00:04:26.000 Yeah.

00:04:27.000 How'd that happen?

00:04:29.000 I'll tell you.

00:04:31.000 So, and I didn't find this out.

00:04:33.000 And there was eventually a trial.

00:04:35.000 So it's not, many people think that that's funny.

00:04:41.000 You got sued for sounding like yourself.

00:04:43.000 Wow, that's funny.

00:04:44.000 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.

00:04:56.000 Well, anyway, ended up in a trial.

00:05:01.000 He was suing me for, at the time, an enormous amount of money $144 million for his whatever, metal anguish or something.

00:05:17.000 The logistics, I guess you'd call it, I had made a new song called The Old Man Down the Road.

00:05:22.000 It was on my album.

00:05:23.000 It was my comeback.

00:05:24.000 on center field.

00:05:26.000 And I had finally gotten away from Fantasy Records, which is where Credence was, and Saul's Ann's, who owned it.

00:05:35.000 So, you know, when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the former people tend to be jealous, I guess.

00:05:45.000 And so he was suing me.

00:05:48.000 What 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.

00:06:03.000 He went down to fantasy and saw Mr. Saul's ants and said, John is ripping off Credence.

00:06:10.000 You should sue him.

00:06:12.000 The irony in all of that is that I had taught Stu every single note that he ever played in Credence.

00:06:20.000 It was not his own create.

00:06:21.000 As we talk, you'll see.

00:06:25.000 I was the guy inventing the arrangements.

00:06:28.000 And so to.

00:06:29.000 Take possession of credence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top.

00:06:35.000 Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and that Saul had unlimited funds.

00:06:42.000 And so it, you know, went to a trial.

00:06:44.000 I prevailed at trial and got that over with.

00:06:50.000 But they torture you during the process because it takes years and it costs an enormous amount of money to fight yourself.

00:06:56.000 Yeah, all that stuff.

00:06:58.000 That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you.

00:07:03.000 Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed.

00:07:07.000 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.

00:07:18.000 And so you start creating whatever your art is.

00:07:21.000 You're an actor or you're a painter or, in my case, a musician.

00:07:26.000 And people start liking the style.

00:07:29.000 Well, 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.

00:07:41.000 You know, it's just that would be really difficult.

00:07:43.000 Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style having to, you know, reinvent and change to something else.

00:07:53.000 Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that.

00:07:57.000 It'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.

00:08:06.000 There's a lot of people that sound like people.

00:08:08.000 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.

00:08:19.000 I can't believe that didn't get thrown out immediately.

00:08:21.000 Immediately, right.

00:08:23.000 Well, that shows the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people want to have.

00:08:33.000 You know, I had written a new song and he didn't want me to, he wanted to own the new stuff.

00:08:37.000 He wanted to own me, basically.

00:08:39.000 That was the idea.

00:08:41.000 You can never do anything unless you do it for me.

00:08:48.000 But not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists, it was kind of a major ruling.

00:08:54.000 And thank God it went that way.

00:08:56.000 Well, thank God it also was public, like with that song and the lawsuit around the song, you having to change the name of the song.

00:09:04.000 Because back then, at least at the time, this was probably what, the 80s?

00:09:09.000 Yep.

00:09:10.000 Most people had no idea how evil the music business can be.

00:09:16.000 Unless they were told they had no idea.

00:09:19.000 They bought the albums, they loved the musicians, and they just liked the music.

00:09:23.000 They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.

00:09:26.000 They didn't know how these people own your catalog, they own the music, they own the publishing.

00:09:31.000 They try to just get as much money out of you as humanly possible, own your name, own your likeness.

00:09:39.000 Most fans had no idea.

00:09:42.000 And that's probably the way it really should be.

00:09:44.000 When I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his guitar player.

00:09:48.000 You know, I didn't want to know all.

00:09:50.000 I didn't even know there was stuff behind it.

00:09:52.000 The Colonel.

00:09:53.000 To know.

00:09:53.000 Yeah.

00:09:54.000 Yeah.

00:09:55.000 Oh my God.

00:09:56.000 Right, I picked a good one there, didn't I? 0.87

00:09:58.000 And the Colonel was evil.

00:09:58.000 Yeah, that's a real good one.

00:09:59.000 That's just too bad.

00:10:01.000 Another similar situation.

00:10:02.000 Like, there's a lot of these great artists get.

00:10:05.000 Like, Prince.

00:10:06.000 He got wrapped up to the point where he had to change his name to a symbol because he didn't own his name anymore.

00:10:12.000 Prince.

00:10:13.000 Yeah, I remember going, well, if he doesn't want to use it, I'll take it.

00:10:20.000 Yeah, it's just the business itself.

00:10:22.000 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.

00:10:36.000 And to the average fan like myself, that's abhorrent.

00:10:39.000 That's disgusting. 0.87

00:10:41.000 You see that, it just drives you nuts.

00:10:44.000 Well, also, the creative people are special.

00:10:51.000 I mean, you know, look around.

00:10:52.000 There's way more of other types of people than there are creative people.

00:10:57.000 And to douse that, you know, or own that, which is what was going to happen, is just an onerous thing.

00:11:10.000 I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff.

00:11:12.000 I'm a lot older.

00:11:14.000 I can't say wiser.

00:11:15.000 It's more like I came out on the good side of it.

00:11:20.000 I try not to worry about it too much.

00:11:23.000 It's great.

00:11:24.000 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.

00:11:38.000 Yeah, 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.

00:11:52.000 I get such a joy out of music, you know, I mean, I just, it started that way when I was a little kid.

00:11:59.000 I mean, didn't even know what I was doing or what that was.

00:12:03.000 I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it and I just kind of went with it.

00:12:08.000 I didn't try to analyze it too much.

00:12:11.000 And 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.

00:12:27.000 I mean, I just, I'm just so glad.

00:12:30.000 You know, a lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife, Julie.

00:12:36.000 If I hadn't met her, I probably would be dead.

00:12:40.000 Simple as that.

00:12:41.000 Really?

00:12:41.000 Yeah.

00:12:42.000 Wow.

00:12:44.000 Why do you think you'd be dead?

00:12:47.000 I didn't see any way out.

00:12:49.000 You know, I was really abusing myself, alcohol mostly.

00:12:56.000 I really felt.

00:12:58.000 Bad inside.

00:12:59.000 I 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.

00:13:10.000 You walk into a market or something, look around, and probably most of the people are kind of normal, whatever we call that.

00:13:18.000 But when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me.

00:13:30.000 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.

00:13:42.000 You just stay there, right?

00:13:44.000 And so you're not really enjoying the sunshine and the love that's around you and all the rest of it. 0.99

00:13:51.000 You become kind of a pathetic person, sad, certainly. 0.98

00:13:57.000 So that, you know, that was the deal. 0.99

00:13:59.000 When Julie met me, I was that guy.

00:14:04.000 There was sort of a certainly anger, I mean, but a bitterness too.

00:14:11.000 Almost like a self fulfilling prophecy where you look for something to go wrong and then it goes wrong.

00:14:21.000 And you go, See, I told you.

00:14:24.000 I mean, it's a terrible mental place to be, and I was there.

00:14:28.000 Do you think this was a loop that you got in because of the lawsuits?

00:14:31.000 Oh, yeah.

00:14:33.000 It really just got you that hard.

00:14:35.000 Well, there was more than one lawsuit, but the betrayal by the people in my band, you know.

00:14:43.000 I just told you about a very evil man, right?

00:14:45.000 Yeah.

00:14:46.000 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 this same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend.

00:15:03.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:15:04.000 It was just really hard to deal with. 0.54

00:15:08.000 The other two guys in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it.

00:15:14.000 They just never spoke up.

00:15:15.000 Just kind of, give me the money. 0.98

00:15:18.000 How the fuck was your brother saying that guy was your best friend while he was suing you? 0.97

00:15:26.000 He was signed, re-signed after the breakup of Credence. 0.99

00:15:32.000 He kind of shopped around and didn't have much success finding a label.

00:15:38.000 And so he went right about the time that this trial was going to happen, he re-signed with Fantasy.

00:15:46.000 I'm talking about the first trial.

00:15:49.000 Which was the first trial?

00:15:50.000 The first trial was about basically the band had lost its life savings.

00:15:57.000 All of us in Credence.

00:16:00.000 The record company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan.

00:16:07.000 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.

00:16:18.000 Hey, buddy, you know, you're probably going to avoid that guy.

00:16:22.000 But the record company was in this tax thing.

00:16:28.000 And for all we knew, we were going to be paying.

00:16:33.000 90% income tax, right?

00:16:35.000 I mean, the tax laws are pretty stringent and pretty high.

00:16:42.000 And 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.

00:17:03.000 So it was a huge financial savings for us.

00:17:08.000 I can tell you that the name of this particular thing was a bank in the Bahamas called Castle Bank.

00:17:17.000 And we had it checked out, I mean, the people on our side in the band had it checked out by our people.

00:17:25.000 Our own accountant, the bass player's father was an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm.

00:17:35.000 They, among other people, represented the Oakland Raiders, so we thought they were pretty solid.

00:17:41.000 And they checked it all out and said that it was okay, it was legit.

00:17:45.000 So we did it.

00:17:47.000 But 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.

00:18:02.000 So we sued.

00:18:05.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:18:07.000 Yep.

00:18:08.000 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.

00:18:08.000 So here it is.

00:18:19.000 So they were stealing your money.

00:18:24.000 How?

00:18:24.000 I just found that.

00:18:25.000 I don't know.

00:18:26.000 I just typed it in and went to the Wikipedia and I was like, whoa.

00:18:28.000 That's interesting.

00:18:30.000 So insane.

00:18:31.000 See, I didn't know any of that.

00:18:32.000 You didn't know until now?

00:18:34.000 Oh, I knew that now.

00:18:35.000 Or I suspect, yeah.

00:18:38.000 Did you know that up until now or did you just find it out just now?

00:18:43.000 You could tell me a lot of things right now and I'd say, oh, yeah, I guess assumed all that stuff was kind of happening.

00:18:50.000 But I didn't know it at the time in the early 70s when we.

00:18:55.000 Or late 60s when we got into this thing.

00:18:57.000 It was actually.

00:18:58.000 Do you know how anti American that is?

00:19:00.000 The CIA stole from Credence Clearwater Revival. 0.99

00:19:05.000 You know how fucking crazy that is? 1.00

00:19:07.000 That is so wild. 1.00

00:19:10.000 No, I didn't know that part.

00:19:15.000 The funny thing is, I had decided to get out of that plan, right?

00:19:22.000 And I'd gone down to see my own people, my accountant, my attorney in Oakland.

00:19:29.000 And told them, I just want out of this thing.

00:19:32.000 I 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.

00:19:49.000 And it was starting to smell.

00:19:51.000 It was starting to, and now we're talking 1975, 76.

00:20:00.000 And so I actually had the meeting and I said, I want to be out of this plan.

00:20:06.000 I don't want to.

00:20:06.000 Oh, 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.

00:20:24.000 Because I didn't know.

00:20:25.000 It was just going straight into this fund, right?

00:20:29.000 Into this Castle Bank.

00:20:30.000 But they couldn't tell me. 0.99

00:20:33.000 So 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.

00:20:47.000 Because 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. 0.51

00:20:57.000 I realized they could weasel some more time until I actually pointed.

00:21:02.000 So the next week, I showed up and did that.

00:21:06.000 I'm ordering you get me out, okay, out of the plan, right?

00:21:12.000 Um, Pretty quickly after that, a week or two, we hear that the bank has closed.

00:21:25.000 There's a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day, and the bank president has died.

00:21:34.000 He died in a sauna.

00:21:37.000 Whoa.

00:21:39.000 I've seen that movie, you know, where Abbott and Costello, and the mob comes in and they're in those.

00:21:46.000 Heat things that are up here, and the guy sticks a broom in the door so you can't get out.

00:21:53.000 I mean, except that this was serious, and there will be no more withdrawals until this thing is resolved.

00:22:04.000 A bank president dies, you don't close the Bank of America.

00:22:07.000 You still can go get your money.

00:22:10.000 And so, pretty quick after that, it all just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

00:22:15.000 They just stole the money.

00:22:16.000 Yep.

00:22:16.000 Done.

00:22:17.000 And it was the fucking CIA. 1.00

00:22:19.000 That is. 1.00

00:22:20.000 Crazy.

00:22:22.000 That is so crazy.

00:22:23.000 How much money was involved with all the different people that lost their money?

00:22:27.000 Like, how much money was this bank holding?

00:22:29.000 Oh, well, there were other names that I never saw in those days.

00:22:29.000 Do you know?

00:22:35.000 A lot of sort of mobby kind of sounding names.

00:22:39.000 Yeah.

00:22:42.000 I will tell you, after the thing closed and we got the telegram that the president, I started, I literally started checking under my cars.

00:22:53.000 looking for wires and what, you know, something funny.

00:22:56.000 I did that for about three months.

00:22:58.000 Whoa.

00:22:59.000 I finally just, well, I was scared.

00:23:01.000 Yeah, I would be scared.

00:23:02.000 Because I was the guy who said, I want to get out of this thing, and suddenly it goes, kaboom, and the president dies.

00:23:07.000 Right.

00:23:08.000 Right?

00:23:09.000 And I just figured that I was some kind of whistleblower to them or something, and, you know, I'm in their way.

00:23:17.000 Wow.

00:23:18.000 I guarantee you're the reason why it happened.

00:23:21.000 I don't think, no, I don't believe that's true.

00:23:23.000 Well, no, I mean, you probably caused the whole thing to close down.

00:23:27.000 I mean, it's not a coincidence that it closed down right after you asked for your money back.

00:23:30.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:23:32.000 You're a big public name and a big voice.

00:23:35.000 You get out, you take your money out.

00:23:37.000 After that point in time, I really never wanted to talk too loudly about stuff anymore.

00:23:43.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:23:46.000 So there eventually was our lawsuit.

00:23:50.000 Well, actually, it was my lawsuit.

00:23:53.000 I started.

00:23:54.000 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 rest, right?

00:24:11.000 But I was the only one in the band that did that.

00:24:15.000 The rest of the guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves.

00:24:20.000 And I was pretty adamant.

00:24:24.000 I'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.

00:24:39.000 And then the other guys asked to join my lawsuit because the statute of limitations had run out on them being able to sue anyone.

00:24:51.000 Because they literally tried to stay in the plan. 0.97

00:24:57.000 I was willing to take the penalty, whatever it was, for being the dumbass that let himself get into some financial thing like this, right? 0.99

00:25:09.000 I felt like Joe Lewis. 0.96

00:25:11.000 I thought I was going to need an act of Congress to forgive the debt.

00:25:17.000 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.

00:25:37.000 In other words, you're going to go in the hole.

00:25:39.000 Yeah.

00:25:39.000 Yeah, for receiving it all at once, right?

00:25:42.000 That sounds insane.

00:25:43.000 That's why I felt like Joe Lewis.

00:25:45.000 That's the most insane thing I've ever heard of.

00:25:47.000 Well, they were trying to intimidate me.

00:25:49.000 Of course.

00:25:50.000 Sure.

00:25:50.000 Yeah.

00:25:52.000 How much money were you talking about?

00:25:53.000 How much money did they steal from you?

00:25:54.000 When 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.

00:26:08.000 That was our entire take for everybody in the band.

00:26:12.000 Each guy had a little bit different amount, but, you know, those numbers, I mean, I don't know.

00:26:19.000 Dion once made a joke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about Bruce.

00:26:23.000 And Dion says, Well, I sold $40 million, meaning, you know, you sue me.

00:26:31.000 Well, Bruce has that on him.

00:26:37.000 It was pretty funny.

00:26:38.000 Yeah, I mean, $8 million was that was it.

00:26:41.000 That was our take from all the sales of Credence.

00:26:44.000 So, was that the amount of money that was in the bank that they stole from you?

00:26:49.000 That was what we got.

00:26:50.000 Returned to us.

00:26:51.000 So you did get the money back?

00:26:53.000 Mm hmm.

00:26:53.000 Oh, okay.

00:26:55.000 I figured they would just vanish.

00:27:00.000 The money didn't come back from Saul's Ants or Castle Bank or any of those people.

00:27:09.000 What had happened was.

00:27:12.000 Fantasy was let out of the lawsuit by the local judge in the Bay Area.

00:27:17.000 I don't know why, because they're the ones that got us into the plan.

00:27:20.000 But anyway, they were let out of the whole thing.

00:27:23.000 So, who was left was this guy named Bert Cantor in Chicago who designed the plan, and our own accountant and lawyers.

00:27:34.000 And so, what most of them did was settle for pennies on the dollar.

00:27:43.000 A million dollars or whatever, and they settled for like ten thousand dollars, really, right?

00:27:49.000 Rather than go to trial.

00:27:50.000 But our own accountants' legal team said, Ah, we got these guys, they can never win this.

00:27:58.000 So, I mean, ironically, they wanted to go to trial and put the poor accountant, you know, who was an old guy, through a whole trial.

00:28:09.000 And credence got we retained the money.

00:28:14.000 We had lost in that plan the $8 million I just mentioned from the law firm, the insurance firm.

00:28:23.000 It was his insurance company's lawyers that were representing him.

00:28:27.000 And they had to pay.

00:28:29.000 Nobody else had to pay.

00:28:31.000 Interesting.

00:28:31.000 And the CIA or whoever you're talking about got away with it.

00:28:35.000 Of course they did.

00:28:36.000 Yeah. 0.89

00:28:36.000 They know how to do that. 0.89

00:28:38.000 It's kind of crazy, too, that it's only $8 million when you think about how much money you probably made the record companies.

00:28:43.000 Yep.

00:28:44.000 Well, there was 100 million records plus.

00:28:47.000 Right.

00:28:47.000 Do the math.

00:28:48.000 How much was an album back then?

00:28:50.000 Four bucks.

00:28:51.000 So, 400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff.

00:28:51.000 Yeah.

00:28:58.000 You know, you guys got a small percentage.

00:29:02.000 That's how it works, though.

00:29:03.000 That's why the business is so dirty.

00:29:05.000 That's what's so, you know, the idea is that they help you and they bring you up.

00:29:08.000 But the reality is they sell art.

00:29:11.000 And if they don't have artists, they have nothing.

00:29:14.000 The artists are what fund their very existence and they make the majority of the money.

00:29:18.000 It's It's pretty dark when you really think about it.

00:29:22.000 Yeah, and Joe, I got to tell you, I love making music and I don't do it for the money.

00:29:30.000 I mean, I know that sounds a little naive, but just the happiness in my heart from doing this is from the music.

00:29:39.000 I believe you.

00:29:40.000 I believe you. 0.92

00:29:41.000 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. 0.93

00:29:48.000 When you find out that there was money, But somebody else got it, then that kind of gets your attention. 0.94

00:29:54.000 Right.

00:29:54.000 You know, but for me at least, it wasn't even about being famous, literally, if you could believe that.

00:30:04.000 It was the joy of understanding, you know, what the music from other people that you loved.

00:30:12.000 And as you grew up from that little first inspiration, you began to kind of understand what it was you liked about what they did.

00:30:22.000 And at some point, then started to try and do it yourself.

00:30:26.000 But that was a long, long time after the initial joy of just enjoying what they did.

00:30:35.000 Yeah, it's kind of sad that money always does kind of distort things.

00:30:40.000 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.

00:30:49.000 It's like that has to come from a real place.

00:30:51.000 It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment.

00:30:55.000 Yeah.

00:30:55.000 100%.

00:30:56.000 100%.

00:30:57.000 You know?

00:30:59.000 Well, for me it did.

00:31:00.000 I just, it, and also the prospect of creating something new tomorrow, you know, and the, what's the word?

00:31:10.000 You get certain feelings.

00:31:12.000 Well, we all do, but I've learned to, how can I say it?

00:31:18.000 Sort 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.

00:31:33.000 You know, express it in different ways.

00:31:35.000 Yeah.

00:31:36.000 Well, you did it, man.

00:31:37.000 It's just, it's a long story with all these different artists that have had to deal with all these horrific managers.

00:31:45.000 And I was reading this article about Jimi Hendrix's manager.

00:31:49.000 So one of his bodyguards wrote a book where he's blaming Hendrix's manager for his death.

00:31:56.000 And he was essentially saying that Hendrix was murdered and Hendrix was about to leave his manager.

00:32:02.000 And that's why he killed him.

00:32:03.000 And I don't know if you know the story about Hendrix, but his girlfriend.

00:32:07.000 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.

00:32:16.000 Was this the one with kind of a funny foreign name?

00:32:20.000 Yes.

00:32:22.000 Yes.

00:32:23.000 Yeah.

00:32:24.000 I read a couple of Jimmy biographies, but you know, yeah.

00:32:28.000 So many of these guys had mobbed up managers.

00:32:32.000 Yeah, I do know that there was some manager of his.

00:32:36.000 I mean, Jimmy owned his masters.

00:32:38.000 That was remarkable.

00:32:40.000 That's why his family has the masters, his estate.

00:32:45.000 They're the ones that decide, because every so often a new Jimmy album would come out, that sort of thing.

00:32:52.000 I didn't know any of this way back then.

00:32:54.000 I just wondered who was driving the bus.

00:32:57.000 So, I mean, that part was pretty good.

00:33:01.000 He had to talk to somebody at Reprise Records, and some of those people were Reprise Warner Brothers.

00:33:08.000 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 the 60s.

00:33:19.000 I guess I was a little envious because I sure didn't own my Masters, that's for sure.

00:33:23.000 How many people owned their own Masters back then?

00:33:26.000 Nobody.

00:33:26.000 That's crazy.

00:33:27.000 How do you think he got that deal?

00:33:30.000 That I don't know.

00:33:31.000 I don't know how it came about that he was able to have that much influence.

00:33:37.000 I mean, that's the part.

00:33:42.000 I did get the inference from at least one of the books I read about Jimmy that they didn't try too hard to save him.

00:33:54.000 Jimmy, I guess, was just really effed up for a couple of weeks there.

00:34:00.000 And no one tried.

00:34:04.000 I mean, I almost got the sense that somebody took a bottle of wine and just poured it in him.

00:34:09.000 Yeah, that's what I heard.

00:34:11.000 That was what the bodyguard was inferring that they poured pills and alcohol down his mouth.

00:34:16.000 Yeah.

00:34:17.000 Terrible.

00:34:17.000 Yeah.

00:34:18.000 Well, I hope to never be in such a state that I can't protest something like that.

00:34:24.000 Right.

00:34:25.000 Well, yeah.

00:34:26.000 Yeah.

00:34:28.000 It's dark because apparently he was ready to leave.

00:34:31.000 He wanted to leave his manager.

00:34:33.000 And obviously, Jimmy was a gigantic star.

00:34:37.000 And that guy saw all the money.

00:34:38.000 Well, he still is.

00:34:39.000 He still is.

00:34:40.000 Every single guitar survey that ever comes out.

00:34:43.000 You know, it changed all the other numbers after two.

00:34:48.000 Right.

00:34:49.000 Keep changing with fashion and all that.

00:34:51.000 But it's always number one is Jimi Hendrix.

00:34:54.000 Yeah.

00:34:54.000 Always.

00:34:54.000 Kind of extraordinary when you think about it.

00:34:56.000 The guy died at 27 years old, you know, and was already just from another planet. 0.98

00:35:03.000 Like you listen to his, like you listen to Voodoo Child, Slight Latourn. 0.95

00:35:07.000 You listen to that song, you're like, is this guy from Earth?

00:35:11.000 Like this was so different than any other guitar playing that had ever taken place before him.

00:35:16.000 He was a complete revolutionary, just a completely new creative artist.

00:35:22.000 And one of my favorite musicians, absolutely, of all time.

00:35:25.000 That's why I named the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:35:28.000 I wondered about that.

00:35:29.000 Well, there it is.

00:35:30.000 That's it.

00:35:31.000 Stop the show.

00:35:31.000 All good for you.

00:35:31.000 Yep.

00:35:32.000 Yep.

00:35:35.000 I should have named it The John Fogarty Experience instead of Credence.

00:35:41.000 Well, I did create that name.

00:35:44.000 What was the crazy name that the record company called one of your first bands?

00:35:51.000 Well, it was the same people.

00:35:53.000 Yeah, I mean the same individual musicians.

00:35:53.000 Same people.

00:35:58.000 In high school, or junior high actually, I started a band and called it the Blue Velvets.

00:36:06.000 Not all that earth shaking, but kind of a cool vibe.

00:36:13.000 And we were really the Blue Velvets.

00:36:16.000 I mean, this was really a trio.

00:36:19.000 But my brother was older.

00:36:20.000 He was in another orbit.

00:36:24.000 So we kind of went through high school, seeing each other every once in a while.

00:36:29.000 It wasn't like we were all tromping around playing gig after gig.

00:36:32.000 It was more like, you know, every few months there might be a sock hop or something like that.

00:36:40.000 And then after high school, and Tom would come and sing.

00:36:46.000 He was my older brother.

00:36:47.000 come and sing once in a while with us.

00:36:50.000 We made a couple of recordings during that time with real record companies, but it was always kind of just haphazard.

00:36:59.000 And finally, around the age of 19, I went over and knocked on Fantasy Records' door.

00:37:06.000 They had done this special about Vince Giraldi, and they were in the Bay Area, so I went over there and introduced myself.

00:37:14.000 Anyway, one thing led to another.

00:37:17.000 Finally, we're recording.

00:37:20.000 And at that time, I think we made a record with only three of us, me and Tom and Doug, the drummer.

00:37:27.000 And I overdubbed a bass part.

00:37:30.000 And this is early, or this was in 1964.

00:37:34.000 When they finally pressed the single, one side was called Little Girl.

00:37:39.000 It's kind of a four-chord doo-wop song.

00:37:43.000 The other side was sort of a English or a British invasion.

00:37:50.000 Answer kind of thing, mod music.

00:37:53.000 It was called Don't Tell Me No Lies.

00:37:56.000 Anyway, we excitedly go over to San Francisco to their warehouse and open up the package and it says the Gollywogs. 0.91

00:38:04.000 And we look at each other and go, What the hell? 0.65

00:38:08.000 No, no, no.

00:38:09.000 I think we had chosen our name to be the Visions.

00:38:12.000 It was just something at the last minute because we weren't really the Blue Bubblets anymore, but that was it.

00:38:19.000 We thought it was going to say Visions.

00:38:23.000 But the record company had decided they wanted to get in on the British invasion mod, whatever, and named us the Gollywogs. 0.62

00:38:32.000 It sounds like Pollywog. 0.55

00:38:34.000 Yeah.

00:38:35.000 He 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.

00:38:46.000 And so that's all we knew about it.

00:38:49.000 As 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.

00:39:03.000 This was the British soldiers calling the people. 0.70

00:39:08.000 Whoa. 0.99

00:39:09.000 Wogs or Gollywogs, yeah. 1.00

00:39:10.000 That's a Gollywog? 1.00

00:39:11.000 Yeah, Sambo, right? 1.00

00:39:12.000 Wow. 0.98

00:39:13.000 Same sort of.

00:39:14.000 Yep.

00:39:14.000 Wow.

00:39:15.000 And they didn't know this either, obviously.

00:39:17.000 There was no Wikipedia back then.

00:39:19.000 I don't know, no.

00:39:20.000 I don't know.

00:39:21.000 I didn't know that.

00:39:22.000 That's crazy that they could just change the name of your band without you having any knowledge of it at all.

00:39:27.000 You open up the record and it's right there.

00:39:30.000 And they kind of insisted, you know, it's that same thing that, well, we're going to own the publishing to your song.

00:39:30.000 Yep.

00:39:36.000 No, no, I should own it.

00:39:38.000 Well, then we're not going to make any records.

00:39:40.000 Oh, okay.

00:39:43.000 Yeah.

00:39:43.000 You're 19.

00:39:44.000 Yeah.

00:39:44.000 Yeah, that's how they get you.

00:39:46.000 You don't know any.

00:39:47.000 Well, and you kind of want to make a record.

00:39:49.000 Yeah, you want to make a record.

00:39:50.000 It's right there.

00:39:52.000 You taste it.

00:39:52.000 Oh my God, I'm going to be signed to a record label.

00:39:55.000 I'm going to be a rock star.

00:39:57.000 And then they come to you with a shady contract.

00:39:59.000 And that's their modus operandi.

00:40:01.000 That's what they do with everybody.

00:40:04.000 And for.

00:40:06.000 I know they call it business.

00:40:10.000 Funny term.

00:40:11.000 Yeah.

00:40:13.000 Most of those people.

00:40:16.000 I mean, it's like lottery to them.

00:40:18.000 It's like gambling.

00:40:21.000 They don't have a clue what creativity is.

00:40:24.000 And at that age, the young are, I mean, I guess I'm looking at you and saying, if I only, no, what's that line?

00:40:30.000 If I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

00:40:35.000 You're a young artist.

00:40:36.000 You don't even know what you got.

00:40:39.000 Right?

00:40:39.000 Right.

00:40:41.000 You know, you have feelings about music, but you don't.

00:40:46.000 You know, you're less than a rookie.

00:40:48.000 You know, maybe you were good in junior high, but that doesn't mean you're Willie Mays.

00:40:48.000 Right.

00:40:53.000 Right.

00:40:53.000 You know?

00:40:54.000 So that's sort of how that works.

00:40:56.000 And they sign you up before any of that self realization happens.

00:41:02.000 And then you're messed.

00:41:05.000 Yeah.

00:41:06.000 Again, that's what happened to Prince.

00:41:07.000 That's what happened to Skinner.

00:41:10.000 That's what happened to most bands.

00:41:12.000 I mean, they're very clever in how they do it.

00:41:14.000 They sign a bunch of people that are emerging.

00:41:17.000 And some of them are going to hit.

00:41:18.000 Yep.

00:41:19.000 And they bankroll it, and then they make the majority of the money when those people hit.

00:41:24.000 Well, in our case, Credence was the only thing that ever happened.

00:41:29.000 Fantasy became a very wealthy record company.

00:41:36.000 Saul eventually went into making movies.

00:41:39.000 So that money that I had made for him at the record company turned into one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

00:41:48.000 Oh, wow.

00:41:49.000 Some other saul even had, in those times, had bought the movie rights for Lord of the Rings.

00:42:00.000 So, you know, his ticket got punched way up high.

00:42:07.000 That's crazy.

00:42:08.000 We never got a dime, of course, of any of that.

00:42:11.000 It's crazy how bad people can get ahead like that.

00:42:14.000 Well, see, that's, yeah.

00:42:15.000 That's what's disturbing.

00:42:16.000 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.

00:42:29.000 But boy, you can sure look in different.

00:42:32.000 Parts of entertainment or business in general, and see some really bad people have made a lot of money.

00:42:40.000 Well, it takes the good people to create things, though.

00:42:44.000 The creative people make the things, and there's always just going to be people taking advantage of people being naive about business.

00:42:51.000 I choose to believe that, at least it works for me.

00:42:56.000 I choose to believe that you've got to have a good heart, you've got to try to.

00:43:04.000 Use the golden rule basically, you know, don't do something bad to him that you wouldn't want to have done to you.

00:43:12.000 So, do unto others as you would have them do to you.

00:43:16.000 Yes.

00:43:19.000 I believe in God, and I believe God is watching me all the time, you know, all of us.

00:43:25.000 So, that part helps me to feel like there's a reason, you know, to try and be a good person.

00:43:36.000 The 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.

00:43:49.000 Yeah.

00:43:51.000 You know, don't get me wrong.

00:43:52.000 I'm not running around the world with a thumping a Bible or something.

00:43:55.000 I just think it's. common sense about how ultimately you want to exist in the universe, right?

00:44:09.000 Yeah.

00:44:12.000 So, you know, that's how I operate.

00:44:14.000 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, gee, that's not fair.

00:44:23.000 I should get the, I don't see it that way now.

00:44:27.000 I just look at that poor sap who's being so evil and go, You know, he's going to get his comeuppance someday.

00:44:34.000 Well, it's a horrible existence because no one loves you when you're like that. 0.99

00:44:38.000 If you're doing that and fucking people over, all your relationships are adversarial. 0.99

00:44:42.000 It's a bad way to exist. 0.98

00:44:44.000 You're on a very bad frequency the way you exist with the people in your circle.

00:44:50.000 I think that's true.

00:44:51.000 I believe that.

00:44:52.000 There's a lot of people that choose that life just for financial benefit. 0.99

00:44:56.000 They choose to just fuck people over and be in that bad frequency all the time. 0.98

00:45:02.000 But that's not a good life. 0.99

00:45:04.000 And I agree with you.

00:45:05.000 I think if you live your life like God exists, you'll have a much better life.

00:45:10.000 And the golden rule is just it's provable.

00:45:13.000 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.

00:45:27.000 It carries on to other people that they encounter too.

00:45:30.000 They're inspired by how kind and friendly and generous you are.

00:45:33.000 And it's good for everybody.

00:45:35.000 It's good for you, it's good for the people that you're.

00:45:38.000 Generous and friendly, too.

00:45:39.000 It's good for the other people that they encounter because they're inspired by it.

00:45:43.000 It's just good for everyone.

00:45:44.000 That's how people should exist.

00:45:46.000 Yeah, I literally believe everything you have just said and literally have sometimes asked God for a.

00:45:56.000 You know, I never sat around and asked for money or a hit record.

00:46:01.000 I always thought that's kind of poor.

00:46:03.000 That's bad.

00:46:04.000 Yeah.

00:46:04.000 You know?

00:46:05.000 I mean, that's selfish or greedy or something.

00:46:08.000 But I would ask for clarity.

00:46:11.000 Or, you know, I would ask God to help me figure something out.

00:46:15.000 And 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.

00:46:31.000 And 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.

00:46:45.000 So for me, to me, there's evidence that it all works that way.

00:46:50.000 Did you always have a belief in God?

00:46:53.000 Yeah, I think there was times, yeah, because I was just brought up that way.

00:47:02.000 Again, I don't believe my, I was just taught in a kind of nice and simple way about God.

00:47:10.000 It wasn't beat over my head or anything.

00:47:12.000 I was raised Catholic, so in some sense you can't avoid having it beat over your head, I suppose.

00:47:18.000 And some of that I resisted. 0.87

00:47:22.000 But I went through the normal things.

00:47:23.000 I did my first communion, my first confession.

00:47:28.000 I did, what do you call that when you're 12 years old, confirmation.

00:47:35.000 I chose the name for St. Jerome basically because there's a song by Bo Diddley called Bring It To Jerome.

00:47:45.000 And Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his maraca player.

00:47:50.000 And I really liked the vibe of that.

00:47:51.000 I'm going to be Jerome.

00:47:53.000 That's my confirmation name.

00:47:57.000 Yeah, it was there in those ways.

00:47:59.000 There was times I was boy, you've opened a can of worms here.

00:48:06.000 Because 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.

00:48:22.000 And then I tried, my mom had me start again in ninth grade at St. Mary's High School, and they kicked me out again.

00:48:31.000 But it wasn't my fault.

00:48:33.000 Anyway, the one that happened is funny.

00:48:37.000 I mean, it's just the one that happened in the first grade, I had to take a bus to get there.

00:48:43.000 I lived in El Cerrito and it was the School of the Madeline in Berkeley.

00:48:48.000 And I'm in the first grade, I'm six years old.

00:48:52.000 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 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.

00:49:12.000 The school of the Madeline, Catholic school, you get off the train and go on down into school.

00:49:19.000 Now, 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.

00:49:32.000 So she's out of the house before me.

00:49:35.000 And so it's up to me to get myself together and get to the bus stop on time.

00:49:40.000 Many, many times I was late.

00:49:43.000 I missed it.

00:49:44.000 So I had to get the next bus, so I'm late.

00:49:47.000 So 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.

00:50:02.000 And I get there now, I'm late.

00:50:05.000 The schoolyard is empty.

00:50:07.000 I literally have to climb over the fence because they've locked the fence at boom, 8 o'clock or whatever it was.

00:50:14.000 And I have to scale the fence, run into class without.

00:50:17.000 going to the bathroom.

00:50:19.000 This was my first great experience.

00:50:22.000 Sat down in my chair.

00:50:24.000 Within an hour, I really got to pee.

00:50:27.000 And Sister Damien would not answer me.

00:50:31.000 I got it. 0.88

00:50:35.000 And so she would, one day, I peed in my seat.

00:50:42.000 It happened again.

00:50:43.000 It became a habit.

00:50:47.000 Sister Damien, John Fogarty has a puddle under his chair.

00:50:52.000 Oh, no.

00:50:54.000 So you've been saying that.

00:50:54.000 Right.

00:50:55.000 That was so traumatizing to me.

00:50:57.000 Yeah.

00:50:57.000 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?

00:51:13.000 Going over there, and I mean, I certainly never let my six year olds do anything like that.

00:51:20.000 I know it is kind of crazy how kids were just able to just leave the house and do anything back then.

00:51:27.000 I think about that.

00:51:28.000 When I was a little kid, I used to just leave my house.

00:51:30.000 Yep.

00:51:31.000 Seven years old, just leave the house. 0.67

00:51:33.000 As long as you were home for dinner time.

00:51:34.000 Yeah.

00:51:35.000 It's kind of crazy.

00:51:36.000 I mean, it's kind of amazing.

00:51:37.000 We all lived.

00:51:38.000 If you stop and think about it.

00:51:38.000 Yeah.

00:51:40.000 But to have to take a bus and then a train and go to school when you're six years old, that's nuts.

00:51:46.000 So I went to Catholic school too for first grade only.

00:51:50.000 And that screwed me off of religion for a long time.

00:51:55.000 Because I thought of God back when I was a little kid before I went to Catholic school as.

00:52:01.000 You know, God is all knowing and God is love, and God created the universe, and God is looking out for you.

00:52:07.000 He's just got some rules you have to follow.

00:52:09.000 Made sense to me.

00:52:10.000 And 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.

00:52:17.000 She was so mean. 0.98

00:52:19.000 She was just a mean lady. 1.00

00:52:21.000 She 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. 1.00

00:52:29.000 Like, just evil. 0.99

00:52:31.000 Like, wanted you to cry.

00:52:32.000 And when I would cry, she'd call me a crybaby.

00:52:35.000 And I remember thinking after that, like, I don't want to have nothing to do with religion ever again.

00:52:40.000 Right when I left first grade.

00:52:42.000 Yep.

00:52:43.000 I hated it.

00:52:44.000 And I was like, whatever God is, this is not God.

00:52:47.000 Like, these people have nothing to do with God.

00:52:49.000 There's no way this lady is the messenger of God. 1.00

00:52:51.000 This lady's mean. 0.88

00:52:53.000 That took a whole lifetime to figure out, to realize, well, this is just a man made thing. 1.00

00:53:01.000 You know, God's there.

00:53:02.000 Right. 0.68

00:53:03.000 And some man made thing over here, you know, they became Mormons and some. 0.95

00:53:07.000 Man made thing over there, they became Muslims, you know, and it's just all man made, it isn't actually God, right? 0.94

00:53:16.000 And so, you and man is fallible, of course, yeah, he's not infinite and he's not infallible. 1.00

00:53:24.000 And so, all these things were that, but that took a lifetime for me.

00:53:28.000 I'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.

00:53:41.000 It isn't God's fault that you peed at your desk when you were in the first grade, etc. 0.82

00:53:48.000 It's the mean nun. 0.80

00:53:50.000 Yeah.

00:53:51.000 I have a similar perspective.

00:53:55.000 I think all religious scriptures are trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which is the one I've paid the most attention to.

00:54:05.000 I think they're trying to document a real thing.

00:54:08.000 But the hand of man is clearly all over it.

00:54:12.000 That's the problem.

00:54:13.000 The 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.

00:54:24.000 There were rabbis that kept the book of Enoch out of the Old Testament.

00:54:27.000 There's a lot of this weird stuff to it that you go, Well, why do people have any say?

00:54:32.000 Why does a human have any say in what the word of God is?

00:54:38.000 That sounds crazy. 0.62

00:54:39.000 And when you read the scriptures, you're like, Somebody wrote that down and someone told that story for.

00:54:45.000 Who knows how many years before it was ever written down?

00:54:48.000 But I think the origins of it, there's truth to it.

00:54:52.000 It'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?

00:55:04.000 Who got it?

00:55:06.000 How did it even get relayed?

00:55:08.000 What was the original event that led to this oral tradition that led to it being written down?

00:55:15.000 I'm smiling because.

00:55:17.000 This sounds exactly like a young musician has come to see this more learned person and tell him about his experience.

00:55:27.000 And the more learned person turns into the manager or the record company and he says, I want to own this.

00:55:35.000 Right.

00:55:35.000 And, you know, they take all that good intentions and faith, and somebody ends up owning it.

00:55:44.000 Certainly.

00:55:44.000 And you end up paying a tithe, you know, into a plate.

00:55:49.000 And you make a lot of money in organized religion, especially when it gets to like these huge mega churches and preachers.

00:55:55.000 Like, that's exactly what it is.

00:55:57.000 It's someone taking advantage of this good thing and profiting off of it immensely.

00:56:03.000 Yeah.

00:56:04.000 But the thing, I think the point of like, if you live your life like God's real, it'll be a better life.

00:56:10.000 I agree with that.

00:56:11.000 But I think you also know.

00:56:13.000 I think you can just.

00:56:14.000 There's something there.

00:56:16.000 It's sensible that you try to share, that you try not to be greedy.

00:56:21.000 Yes. 0.98

00:56:22.000 You know, I don't mean you have to be a fool. 0.95

00:56:24.000 I just mean that you don't have to be overtly always taking way more than your share.

00:56:30.000 Yeah, just be kind.

00:56:31.000 Be kind and be fair.

00:56:34.000 How old were you when you first started playing music?

00:56:37.000 You mean as an instrument?

00:56:39.000 Yeah, just messing around.

00:56:40.000 Like, how did you get into it?

00:56:42.000 Right.

00:56:42.000 Well,.

00:56:43.000 I was actually, I was given a snare drum.

00:56:48.000 I think I was about four years old.

00:56:51.000 That was a really cheap paper one.

00:56:53.000 Was your family musicians?

00:56:55.000 Not really, but they were musical, both of them, my mom and dad.

00:57:03.000 One of my finest and favorite memories is we lived in the Bay Area of the East Bay from San Francisco.

00:57:14.000 And my parents would go up to this place in Northern California near Winters, California.

00:57:20.000 That's up toward Sacramento.

00:57:23.000 And there was this creek, this body of water called the Puta Creek.

00:57:29.000 Eventually, they dammed that up and made Lake Berryessa.

00:57:33.000 But anyway, back then it was just running water, and there were some people who could camp there.

00:57:42.000 At this one place, they took me.

00:57:46.000 Reputedly was owned by a man named Cody, and he was a direct descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody.

00:57:54.000 I actually met him one day when I was about four, and he was probably coming to collect the payment for the cabin and a little space.

00:58:04.000 Anyway, I remember looking at him and going, wow.

00:58:09.000 So I was told that story, and he would have been about 75.

00:58:13.000 He literally could have been a son of.

00:58:16.000 Buffalo Bill.

00:58:17.000 He would have been born at that point, it was probably 1949, the story I'm relating, and he would have been born in 1875.

00:58:27.000 I mean, it's mind boggling to think that.

00:58:32.000 But 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.

00:58:42.000 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.

00:58:50.000 I guess they were more happy or something there.

00:58:53.000 And I remember sitting between them, you know, it was just a big couch, the front seat, and they were singing songs in the dark.

00:59:02.000 And they were singing like by the light of the silvery moon or baby face and harmonizing.

00:59:11.000 One was taking the melody and the other was harmonizing.

00:59:15.000 The reason I know is because I'd sat there and I'm.

00:59:18.000 Probably three, four, five years old, right in there.

00:59:22.000 I said, What are you guys doing?

00:59:24.000 Because I knew the melody, but I hear two notes.

00:59:28.000 What are you doing?

00:59:29.000 And they explained they were harmonizing.

00:59:31.000 And it was just the coolest thing.

00:59:34.000 And it was so, such a happy time.

00:59:36.000 I mean, I really, I felt, what's that, bonded to that, I guess?

00:59:42.000 Like that, I really like this, whatever it is.

00:59:45.000 So that was the initial spark.

00:59:47.000 Well, they began to notice that I was musical.

00:59:50.000 So at some point I know, again, at my fourth birthday, somebody gave me, or I had a little toy harmonica.

00:59:58.000 And my dad, you know, those little plastic kind of things.

01:00:01.000 My dad picked it up, and he played Oh Susanna in the cowboy style.

01:00:06.000 In other words, it was probably a C harmonica.

01:00:08.000 He played in C, not like blues players do bending notes.

01:00:13.000 He played that thing you see in the cowboy movies when they're sitting around the campfire.

01:00:19.000 Yeah, that sort of thing.

01:00:21.000 I was just shocked.

01:00:22.000 I'd never seen my dad do anything like that.

01:00:24.000 Wow.

01:00:26.000 And then on top of that, my mom could play piano, what we now call stride piano. 0.74

01:00:32.000 She would hit the boom and then play a chord, like an octave of bass notes, and then a chord above it. 0.99

01:00:40.000 Keep that going as the drummer in the thing, and then play melody and high notes up above.

01:00:47.000 And it was, you know, she would.

01:00:51.000 One of my favorite ones was Harvest Moon, Shine On Harvest Moon, which is a great song.

01:00:58.000 And it just was magical to me.

01:01:00.000 So that kind of opened the door to let me know that, oh, why?

01:01:07.000 We can do this in our own house.

01:01:11.000 So the piano was around.

01:01:12.000 And then we also, I don't know whose it was, but we had an old Stella acoustic guitar.

01:01:20.000 Stella is a name going back into the 30s, 20s.

01:01:24.000 And this thing was built like a tank. 1.00

01:01:29.000 It was hard to play.

01:01:30.000 The strings were like way high and all that.

01:01:33.000 Eventually, my brother Bob told me at some point, yeah, we used to play baseball with that guitar.

01:01:39.000 We'd hit balls.

01:01:42.000 That's how sturdy it was.

01:01:44.000 But that was around so that I would every once in a while mess with it.

01:01:50.000 But somewhere literally in the seventh, Grade is where I started to really try and learn a chord and that sort of thing.

01:02:02.000 Is that when you thought, I'm going to be a musician?

01:02:09.000 I think that moment was a little bit earlier.

01:02:12.000 It was, again, up at this place, Winters.

01:02:17.000 My dad had driven into the town from our little cabin, our little campsite, and I was with him, and he'd gone to this general store.

01:02:26.000 And the general store had everything, had food and stuff, but it also had fishing tackle and various weird things.

01:02:33.000 So I'm standing there, sort of near the counter, and my dad's doing some kind of business.

01:02:38.000 I'm just looking, and suddenly I hear music.

01:02:42.000 And I'm like, what the heck is that?

01:02:45.000 Well, I didn't even know they had a jukebox in this place, right?

01:02:48.000 And somebody had started the jukebox.

01:02:51.000 So it's playing music that I really like.

01:02:55.000 It's rock and roll.

01:02:56.000 And I'm, you know, I'm about 10 years old.

01:02:59.000 Man, that's good.

01:03:00.000 And I don't know who it is.

01:03:02.000 It's just got a really bluesy sound, but it's fast.

01:03:06.000 It's rock and roll.

01:03:07.000 I run over and I finally determined it's Elvis Presley.

01:03:12.000 I never heard this.

01:03:13.000 I knew of Elvis, of course, on TV.

01:03:15.000 He had done.

01:03:16.000 Heartbreak Hotel.

01:03:18.000 I had seen the Tommy Jimmy Dorsey show that he'd been on three times.

01:03:24.000 He was on there, I think, five times.

01:03:26.000 Anyway, and so, wow, Elvis did this?

01:03:30.000 What is this?

01:03:31.000 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.

01:03:38.000 This was a song called My Baby Left Me.

01:03:41.000 And this was basically classic Sun Records vibe, even though he was now on RCA.

01:03:48.000 It was that thing they did on.

01:03:51.000 Sun Records, just that kind of country whale with guitar that was more country than blues.

01:03:59.000 And the guitar, especially, just, what is that?

01:04:02.000 I'm watching, and this Scotty Moore, who I didn't know his name at the time, but he's just playing this otherworldly stuff.

01:04:11.000 And that was, I looked at that, and I mean, literally, my head made, I don't know, I said this to myself, I don't know what they're doing.

01:04:21.000 But that's what I want to do.

01:04:23.000 And I made up my mind right there in that three minutes of that song.

01:04:23.000 Wow.

01:04:27.000 That's amazing.

01:04:28.000 Yeah.

01:04:29.000 Well, it was transformative.

01:04:29.000 Wow.

01:04:31.000 It still is.

01:04:32.000 It's just a pretty unique slice of American music.

01:04:37.000 I don't think I'm aware of that song.

01:04:39.000 I'm going to listen to it after the podcast.

01:04:41.000 You probably know his song, Elvis's song, That's All Right, Mama.

01:04:45.000 Right.

01:04:45.000 Sure.

01:04:46.000 Well, this is in that vein.

01:04:47.000 It's actually the same writer, Arthur Crutup.

01:04:53.000 Arthur Big Boy cried up.

01:04:56.000 So, your family was musical, but you didn't know any musicians.

01:04:59.000 So, what did you think you were going to do?

01:05:01.000 Like, how did you think you were going to eventually become a musician?

01:05:04.000 Did you have a plan?

01:05:09.000 At some point, you know what?

01:05:15.000 At some point, a little earlier than that, but right around that time, it was the era of doo-wop, right?

01:05:24.000 This is the way, I mean, a kid can, you can just go anywhere in your mind, right?

01:05:31.000 And I suppose the Corvette automobile, of course, had come out.

01:05:37.000 So, In a very young mind, but one of those cool, I guess we call them mashups, I was going to have a group, but it was all singing.

01:05:50.000 I was going to have a group, and it was going to be called Johnny Corvette and the Corvettes.

01:05:59.000 Right?

01:06:00.000 And there were four, I'm Johnny, and three other guys, and we're all in sparkle jackets, you know, the showbiz, right?

01:06:11.000 And we're black.

01:06:13.000 All of us.

01:06:16.000 That was your idea?

01:06:18.000 That's what I saw.

01:06:20.000 I was referring to what I was seeing to be Johnny Corbett in the Corvettes.

01:06:26.000 That was one of the ingredients. 1.00

01:06:29.000 How are you going to be black? 1.00

01:06:30.000 I don't know. 0.94

01:06:31.000 I didn't have to worry about that.

01:06:35.000 I mean, the funny thing is that's so similar here is, like when I was little, I wanted to be a baseball player, right?

01:06:43.000 But some kids dream of being in the NBA.

01:06:47.000 But you got to be 9117.

01:06:49.000 You know, I mean, so how's that going to happen?

01:06:49.000 Right.

01:06:54.000 I mean, you just said it in a really innocent way, but a kid just, I'll eat spinach or something, you know? 0.94

01:07:00.000 You eat spinach and become black.

01:07:02.000 And tall.

01:07:03.000 And tall.

01:07:04.000 You know, I don't know, but it worked for me.

01:07:07.000 I mean, literally, when I, you know, one of my dreams as a kid really was I wanted to, I love baseball, still do.

01:07:13.000 I wanted to, you know, okay, what do I got to do?

01:07:17.000 And I'd start throwing a, I was throwing a ball against the side of the house.

01:07:21.000 I'd made a big, like a target, you know, bullseye, and I don't know why I did it that way.

01:07:27.000 And my mom caught me.

01:07:28.000 I was throwing an actual hardball, and it was dinting the clapboard, you know, the wood.

01:07:35.000 I was tearing the house down, so she got me a tennis ball, and that was okay.

01:07:41.000 I was no good.

01:07:42.000 You know, I wasn't, that dream was never going to happen.

01:07:46.000 Is that what inspired, put me in coach?

01:07:48.000 Of course.

01:07:49.000 Yeah.

01:07:50.000 Oh, yeah.

01:07:50.000 What a great anthem.

01:07:52.000 It's amazing.

01:07:52.000 Thank you.

01:07:53.000 Thank you.

01:07:54.000 Yeah.

01:07:54.000 Well, I mean, how many baseball games have played that song?

01:07:58.000 My God.

01:07:59.000 I 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.

01:08:12.000 Right.

01:08:13.000 Of course.

01:08:14.000 And 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.

01:08:33.000 But I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the universe.

01:08:38.000 Okay, I didn't get to play, but I wrote a song and my song's there all the time.

01:08:46.000 It's just the coolest feeling.

01:08:49.000 That song's in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

01:08:51.000 That's amazing.

01:08:52.000 It is amazing. 0.98

01:08:53.000 It's ridiculous. 0.54

01:08:54.000 It's so cool. 0.95

01:08:55.000 But it's just like that happened to me.

01:08:58.000 You know, it's like, God, I could cry over that.

01:09:01.000 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?

01:09:09.000 Jeez.

01:09:10.000 Yeah, it was so good.

01:09:12.000 That's amazing.

01:09:13.000 So, when did you start writing your own songs?

01:09:16.000 I was eight years old.

01:09:18.000 Wow.

01:09:19.000 Do you remember your first song?

01:09:21.000 Yes.

01:09:21.000 Or at least the one I remember is, I call it the best one I can remember.

01:09:29.000 It was morning.

01:09:31.000 I was getting ready to go to school.

01:09:33.000 I could walk to school, it was like two and a half blocks from my house, something like that.

01:09:40.000 I lived on Ramona.

01:09:41.000 You go past Pomona, and then the next street was Ashberry.

01:09:48.000 And the school was on Ashberry, up about two blocks, Harding School.

01:09:55.000 It was a grammar school.

01:09:56.000 Anyway, I'm getting ready to go to school, got my lunch.

01:10:00.000 About to turn off the radio and this commercial comes on.

01:10:03.000 I was listening to R&B, the Rhythm and Blues channel from Oakland.

01:10:09.000 And the DJ suddenly says, do you have the wash day blues?

01:10:15.000 Is this day going to be drudgery?

01:10:17.000 Well, maybe you're using the wrong and they went off talking about laundry soap.

01:10:23.000 I don't know if there was a song involved in the commercial.

01:10:26.000 I think it was just a red because it was probably live, right there on old-time radio.

01:10:33.000 So I went out the door carrying my little sack with the lunch in it.

01:10:37.000 It's a wash day blues.

01:10:39.000 Wow.

01:10:40.000 I get kind of to the end of the street.

01:10:42.000 I think that's Lynn.

01:10:43.000 I've got to go down three streets.

01:10:46.000 I'm walking along.

01:10:47.000 I said, Wow, what is it?

01:10:50.000 I got the wash day blues.

01:10:53.000 I'm making that noise.

01:10:54.000 It's Muddy Waters.

01:10:55.000 It's the riff from probably Hoochie Coochie Man.

01:11:02.000 And it all comes together.

01:11:04.000 I'm just walking down the street singing about all the stuff that.

01:11:07.000 Because it's blues.

01:11:09.000 And I'm hearing all these guys on this channel I listen to sing the blues and about blues.

01:11:15.000 So I got Wash Day Blues.

01:11:17.000 That's my song.

01:11:19.000 You know, for years and years I thought I was embarrassed about that story.

01:11:24.000 God, John, why couldn't you have a great story about the sinking of the Titanic or something?

01:11:31.000 Wash Day Blues.

01:11:33.000 Because it just seems so mundane.

01:11:36.000 But now I kind of recognize because of the The two elements I had put together, it's just kind of natural.

01:11:45.000 It's really the process of writing songs.

01:11:48.000 That's amazing.

01:11:50.000 And so when you wrote songs, like I saw this video clip where you're talking about, I think it was Old Man Down the Road.

01:11:58.000 Is that the beginning riff?

01:12:01.000 You had it.

01:12:02.000 Yeah.

01:12:02.000 And you were talking about how that riff just hit you.

01:12:05.000 Yep.

01:12:07.000 Is that?

01:12:09.000 Yeah, I had this place.

01:12:13.000 It was my studio.

01:12:14.000 It was basically the garage of a house that I had bought to be my office and my place.

01:12:22.000 So it was a size of a garage.

01:12:25.000 I would go there every day.

01:12:27.000 So in the morning I'd get in, I'd turn on my tape recorder and various pieces of equipment and stuff.

01:12:35.000 That was my process, certainly every weekday morning, sometimes on Saturday, Sunday, whatever.

01:12:42.000 certainly the five days a week.

01:12:45.000 And I'd walk in there and work on music.

01:12:49.000 I did this every day for, I mean, years and years, from 74 until Center Field came out, basically, which was 11 years later.

01:13:01.000 And so one morning I walk in and I haven't even turned on the stuff yet.

01:13:07.000 I 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.

01:13:17.000 A lot of my songs have started this way, but suddenly just played and it really had that sound to it.

01:13:26.000 And I got my attention because I knew that it wasn't anything else.

01:13:31.000 And I also, I mean, this is like in a, this is how quick our brains can work.

01:13:36.000 You know, it's taken me way longer to tell it than the actual thing.

01:13:41.000 But so I've played the and I realized.

01:13:46.000 It's not complete.

01:13:48.000 It needs an answer.

01:13:50.000 And I'm also aware that it's like being on a tightrope or something over Niagara Falls.

01:13:56.000 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.

01:14:08.000 Right.

01:14:08.000 You know, it'd be lame.

01:14:10.000 You're there, it's precarious, it's hanging in the air.

01:14:16.000 And you got to.

01:14:17.000 come back with the thing to make it complete, and it has to be the right thing.

01:14:25.000 Yeah!

01:14:28.000 Yes!

01:14:31.000 And so I.

01:14:36.000 Oh my God, yeah!

01:14:37.000 And I play it over and over, probably for five minutes.

01:14:41.000 I just tend to do that.

01:14:43.000 That's the joy of music.

01:14:45.000 That's the joy right there.

01:14:48.000 Because I knew it wasn't anything else.

01:14:49.000 There was no question in my mind that, well, is this coming from the Beatles or Howlin' Wolf or something?

01:14:56.000 Right.

01:14:58.000 So immediately, I had kept this little songbook that's only about that big with titles in it.

01:15:07.000 And I go flipping through the book, and I think I see something that's somewhere down the road.

01:15:16.000 Okay, that for some reason appealed to me, and I stuck with, okay, that's what it's called.

01:15:21.000 This song's going to be somewhere down the road.

01:15:25.000 And that day, I start, so now I turn on my tape recorder and all that.

01:15:29.000 I play some, because I had to play real drums then.

01:15:33.000 That's what took me so long, folks.

01:15:36.000 Anyway, 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?

01:15:52.000 What's somewhere down the road?

01:15:54.000 And of course, I start talking about he gets the thunder from the mountain, he brings the lightning from the sky, you know, and all that.

01:16:04.000 And these things are going on.

01:16:07.000 And so you got to shoot forward probably a few weeks.

01:16:11.000 I realize I'm starting to write a song, but the title somewhere down the road to me just seems lame.

01:16:18.000 It seems undefined, not cool enough, not focused, and probably not going to remember it because it sounds like just what it is.

01:16:30.000 You won't remember that.

01:16:31.000 Right.

01:16:31.000 Right?

01:16:32.000 You know, if you say, I've got a polka dot Chevy sitting on top of a.

01:16:41.000 Bull Moose, or whatever, and that's your title, you probably get a picture in your head.

01:16:46.000 Right. 0.82

01:16:46.000 It's going to stick. 0.82

01:16:48.000 So I'm hunting around.

01:16:49.000 Well, what are you doing here?

01:16:50.000 What are you talking about in this song?

01:16:52.000 We're talking about this guy. 0.96

01:16:54.000 He's evil. 0.99

01:16:55.000 He's the old man. 0.97

01:16:57.000 He's the old man down the road.

01:17:01.000 That's way better.

01:17:02.000 So the song became that.

01:17:05.000 The 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.

01:17:18.000 And I went cover to cover, and it's not in there.

01:17:24.000 There is no place where I've written somewhere down the road.

01:17:29.000 I just thought I saw it.

01:17:32.000 And that led me to a really cool song.

01:17:36.000 Wow.

01:17:37.000 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 L.A., and I would go in there all the time and write, have some keyboards and stuff.

01:17:54.000 And one day I thought I needed a break.

01:17:57.000 I 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.

01:18:11.000 And I thumbed through the book and I saw Change in the Weather.

01:18:16.000 I said, man, I like that.

01:18:19.000 And I look up and it's kind of a cloudy, gloomy sky, you know.

01:18:25.000 Yeah, changing the, yeah.

01:18:27.000 So I ran back in my room and I started, I went off.

01:18:30.000 I was inspired and I wrote a song called Change in the Weather.

01:18:35.000 Well, Same deal.

01:18:37.000 After that album came out, I decided to check my.

01:18:41.000 It ain't in there.

01:18:42.000 It's nowhere in my book where it says Change in the Weather.

01:18:47.000 So I nowadays tell people, you know, maybe it's a shape shifter.

01:18:53.000 And there's stuff in there, it can just kind of go, John, listen to this.

01:18:58.000 I got an idea for you.

01:18:59.000 Right.

01:19:00.000 Well, the creative process is so mysterious.

01:19:02.000 Yes.

01:19:02.000 Because 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.

01:19:13.000 That's how you feel?

01:19:13.000 For certain.

01:19:15.000 Yep.

01:19:15.000 To me, it's like tuning in a radio.

01:19:18.000 Yeah.

01:19:19.000 Right?

01:19:22.000 And a lot of it, there's, I guess it's the way I was raised, you kind of have to be worthy.

01:19:28.000 Right.

01:19:29.000 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.

01:19:29.000 You know?

01:19:40.000 I'm not sending you nothing.

01:19:41.000 I think that too.

01:19:42.000 Yeah.

01:19:43.000 I think that too.

01:19:44.000 You've got to be receptive and honor this process that we're going through here.

01:19:49.000 And if you're in that frame of mind and some humility about this whole thing, maybe I'll send you something.

01:19:57.000 The Muse.

01:19:58.000 Yeah.

01:19:59.000 Yeah.

01:20:00.000 Have you ever heard of Stephen Pressfield?

01:20:02.000 Huh?

01:20:02.000 Stephen Pressfield, he's an author.

01:20:04.000 He wrote a great book called The War of Art.

01:20:09.000 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, about writing.

01:20:17.000 And 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.

01:20:26.000 That if you treat it like it's a real thing, it will provide you.

01:20:29.000 If you show up every day and you put in the work, the muse will give you these ideas.

01:20:34.000 But they do feel like to everybody that I talk to that's really creative, they feel like they're coming from somewhere.

01:20:41.000 Yeah, and it feels like it's always been there.

01:20:45.000 Right.

01:20:46.000 And it's just up to you to be able to actually be able to see it or hear it.

01:20:50.000 Yeah.

01:20:51.000 Right?

01:20:51.000 Yeah.

01:20:52.000 So I do a lot of, I get ideas in my head.

01:20:54.000 I'm just walking around and it'll play to me the same as if you're listening to the radio.

01:21:01.000 It just gets in the head.

01:21:02.000 You start feeling it.

01:21:02.000 Right.

01:21:04.000 But I do believe you have to be doing it all the time.

01:21:13.000 For me, it was a process to actually sit down, be ready, and a lot of times nothing happens.

01:21:18.000 You know, you got a blank sheet of paper and it stays blank.

01:21:25.000 But if you do that enough times, at certain times, you'll get a really good inspiration.

01:21:35.000 You'll be allowed to receive it.

01:21:37.000 Yeah.

01:21:38.000 Right?

01:21:38.000 But it really isn't you.

01:21:41.000 That's the way I think of it.

01:21:43.000 What it is is you have talent.

01:21:45.000 You're supposed to honor your talent.

01:21:48.000 And so I'm going to give you something if you're worthy.

01:21:52.000 And now it's up to you to honor, you know, use yourself.

01:21:55.000 Don't just go, I got it, we're done.

01:21:57.000 No, you got to work it now.

01:22:00.000 Publish it, you know, make it.

01:22:02.000 Yeah.

01:22:03.000 Yeah.

01:22:04.000 I feel the exact same way.

01:22:06.000 I think there's truth to what you're saying.

01:22:09.000 I want to ask you about Fortunate Son.

01:22:12.000 How did you write that?

01:22:13.000 Like, how did that come about?

01:22:15.000 That is like, One of the greatest rebellion songs of all time.

01:22:20.000 It's an amazing song.

01:22:22.000 I love it.

01:22:23.000 It's also a fantastic workout song, by the way.

01:22:26.000 That song gets you jazzed up. 0.97

01:22:27.000 If you're doing like a treadmill or something like that, you're starting to get tired, crank that sucker up. 0.79

01:22:33.000 Well, 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.

01:22:47.000 Was well and was on active duty and all the rest, so I well understood the position of, you might say, the military mindset, right?

01:23:02.000 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.

01:23:17.000 That was something you know.

01:23:19.000 I don't want to do that, right?

01:23:22.000 So I got my draft notice.

01:23:27.000 Got into the Army Reserves, so I understood that side of the coin and that side of fate, you might say.

01:23:38.000 The deal, I think the deal being okay, I'm in the military, so now I got to play by the rules.

01:23:45.000 I got to do everything that's this is what I am, right?

01:23:49.000 Yeah.

01:23:52.000 There's a little bit of the whole idea of being American and serving your country.

01:23:58.000 I'm trying not to say, oh yeah, now I'm gung-ho and I'm John Wayne and I'm going to take on Iwo Jima or something.

01:24:06.000 It was more like, yeah, but you've got to do this right.

01:24:10.000 You can't just be some guy that's on AWOL all the time and being a mess.

01:24:17.000 I wanted to do it right.

01:24:18.000 So I went through all of that.

01:24:25.000 It's another story, but eventually got my honorable discharge, which led to another song, but it's a different song.

01:24:34.000 And that was just before, just as the Credence career was getting started.

01:24:40.000 But anyhow, during the Vietnam time, you began to, you know, there was a lot of unrest, civil unrest in America and around the world.

01:24:55.000 Those times were very volatile.

01:24:57.000 But especially in America, there was a lot of protests and discussion about The war itself.

01:25:05.000 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.

01:25:16.000 How's that?

01:25:20.000 And 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.

01:25:37.000 And you kind of saw it a few times.

01:25:39.000 These guys were, the fix was in, you know?

01:25:42.000 Right.

01:25:43.000 And that just really didn't seem fair.

01:25:48.000 Not just in my own case, but I'm more identified with. the people that were protesting the war.

01:25:54.000 No one had ever really explained why we were having that war.

01:26:00.000 To my mind, we still don't know. 0.84

01:26:02.000 Right.

01:26:03.000 You know, it just somebody's ego decided they wanted to have a war and they had a war.

01:26:08.000 So most of these things that have cropped up ever since have always ended kind of miserably.

01:26:17.000 And they never were won.

01:26:20.000 They just sort of dissolved.

01:26:23.000 So there was no marching band and all that stuff to get to, you know, like World War II ended with a decisive victory.

01:26:31.000 Anyhow, that angst and anger within me about that situation was fueling my thoughts about the current times.

01:26:47.000 This was 1969.

01:26:49.000 So I started showing the band all the songs that the band learned and played throughout the Credence career.

01:26:59.000 They literally learned them as instrumentals.

01:27:02.000 They didn't hear the song.

01:27:04.000 I didn't show them the song.

01:27:07.000 So they, in other words, I would show the bass player his part.

01:27:11.000 Here's how your part goes.

01:27:13.000 Here's how the drums will be.

01:27:15.000 Here's the rhythm guitar part.

01:27:17.000 And the band wouldn't actually hear the whole song until I had gone into the studio.

01:27:23.000 Studio after that recording process and added my vocal, sang the background vocal parts.

01:27:29.000 Oh, wow.

01:27:30.000 Played the conga drum or the shakers or tambourine or piano, you know, all the other stuff.

01:27:37.000 Then they heard how the song went.

01:27:40.000 So they learned their parts as instrumentals.

01:27:45.000 And this was exactly that way.

01:27:48.000 I showed them how to play what was the form of the song.

01:27:53.000 And at I didn't even, I don't think I had told them the name of the song yet.

01:27:57.000 I 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.

01:28:21.000 All I saw was big black limousines.

01:28:25.000 That was my entire impression of the presidential thing and politics.

01:28:30.000 So after that, I kind of would watch parts of the conventions in the summer.

01:28:37.000 You know, there'd be these gigantic, you know, I didn't know what they were then, but these big rooms full of smoke.

01:28:46.000 And every once in a while, somebody, Your Honor, the great state of Texas would like to nominate.

01:28:55.000 Her favorite son, Billy Saul Estes, or whatever.

01:29:00.000 Right.

01:29:01.000 And they all said that.

01:29:03.000 You know, the state of Vermont would like to nominate her favorite son.

01:29:07.000 And so I had written that one down in my book.

01:29:10.000 And I thought I was going to write a kind of a political song.

01:29:15.000 So the band was getting pretty solid in the backing track.

01:29:21.000 And that told me, you know, I was driving a career.

01:29:25.000 I mean, there wasn't someone else telling me.

01:29:29.000 I was the one deciding and pushing and I think pushing pretty hard.

01:29:33.000 I just, I wanted a new single to be ready.

01:29:36.000 And this seemed like it might be it.

01:29:39.000 So at one point after the band had been rehearsing the music for that song, Unfortunate Son, for a few weeks, it was getting pretty good.

01:29:49.000 I said, all right.

01:29:50.000 I got to write the words.

01:29:51.000 I got to get the whole song together.

01:29:54.000 I 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?

01:30:16.000 And I said, how do I get that?

01:30:19.000 Well, they're waving the flag.

01:30:19.000 How do I get that?

01:30:21.000 Yeah, but what's going on now?

01:30:24.000 They're pointing the cannon at you, right?

01:30:28.000 Yeah, but it ain't me.

01:30:30.000 And I realized, oh, wow, that's something I can repeat.

01:30:33.000 It ain't me.

01:30:34.000 I ain't no, you know. 0.90

01:30:36.000 And.

01:30:38.000 Literally, I mean, I just sort of did it in front of you, almost the way it played out of me sitting on that bed.

01:30:45.000 Literally walked in and 20 minutes later walked out with the whole song.

01:30:51.000 Wow.

01:30:52.000 Coming from the, I didn't have anything other than favorite son.

01:30:56.000 The rest was just the stuff that was boiling in my head at the time, of course.

01:31:03.000 Basically, because of well healed people getting out of the draft, which Kind of pissed me off.

01:31:11.000 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.

01:31:21.000 I didn't grow up that I wanted to be a soldier and go do that.

01:31:24.000 It was just fate that made that happen.

01:31:27.000 So the unfairness of the situation made me want to talk about that.

01:31:34.000 Boy, you nailed it.

01:31:36.000 It's such a great song.

01:31:38.000 So did you have the music all settled out when you went to the musicians and explained to them how the song was going?

01:31:44.000 To play out.

01:31:45.000 Did you have that before the lyrics?

01:31:47.000 Yes.

01:31:48.000 Almost always.

01:31:49.000 So, what did you think the song was going to be about when you just brought them to music?

01:31:55.000 Well, as I said, I thought it was going to be Favorite Son.

01:31:58.000 So, you kind of still had the theme in your head of how it was.

01:32:02.000 It was something around that stuff.

01:32:04.000 I just didn't know what it would.

01:32:05.000 And I also, you know, there's a t shirt, the older I get, the better I was.

01:32:14.000 I was pretty good then.

01:32:16.000 I guess what I'm trying to say is.

01:32:18.000 I didn't know what the song was going to be.

01:32:21.000 But I mean, now I would certainly have a little trepidation.

01:32:25.000 I'd go in a room with a blank.

01:32:27.000 I'm probably going to come out of there with a smiley face that I doodled or something.

01:32:33.000 And no words, meaning somehow I was counting on myself to do it.

01:32:39.000 But that's pretty precocious.

01:32:44.000 Yeah, but that's also that divine intervention of the muse.

01:32:48.000 Like you put in the work and you called.

01:32:52.000 You called upon it for inspiration and your mind started lighting up.

01:32:55.000 Yeah.

01:32:56.000 And then you started putting the pieces together.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:32:59.000 Oh, that's a wonderful, Joe, that's an amazing process when, because that's what I do.

01:33:06.000 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.

01:33:14.000 Right.

01:33:14.000 You know, or something that you could.

01:33:16.000 I'm not those things, but I am a songwriter.

01:33:22.000 It plays out over some time, it isn't just once, you know, it plays out over some time.

01:33:28.000 And 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.

01:33:48.000 And suddenly it, wow, this is really cool.

01:33:51.000 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 instant replay.

01:34:11.000 It was so fast that you, or at least I did, I could, man, this is really good.

01:34:17.000 I mean, and you just like a minute ago, I was taking a breath, hoping that something would happen.

01:34:23.000 Yeah, well, that's what's amazing about great songs sometimes.

01:34:27.000 Like, John Mellencamp was telling me a story about I Need a Lover That Won't Drive Me Crazy.

01:34:33.000 Like, that song he wrote in the shower.

01:34:36.000 Oh.

01:34:37.000 Like all together.

01:34:38.000 You mean in one shower?

01:34:38.000 In one shower.

01:34:40.000 He was just taking a shower and all of a sudden, I need a lover that won't drive me crazy.

01:34:45.000 Right.

01:34:46.000 And then next thing you know, he's got it.

01:34:49.000 And it's an all time classic.

01:34:49.000 Yep.

01:34:51.000 It's amazing.

01:34:51.000 Yep.

01:34:52.000 Well, that.

01:34:56.000 The songwriter, and especially when he's on his game, he knows.

01:35:04.000 And it relates to your own personality, whatever it is you like, the stuff you.

01:35:09.000 Have gravitated towards.

01:35:12.000 And so when one of those comes along, it really makes you smile because you're going, Yeah, this sounds like me.

01:35:19.000 This is the stuff I like.

01:35:21.000 And you go with it.

01:35:22.000 Because, I mean, I am, I would say, notoriously corny.

01:35:29.000 At least I think I am.

01:35:32.000 It's like they make all these jokes nowadays about dad bod and all those kind of things.

01:35:37.000 Yeah.

01:35:38.000 I mean, I literally think.

01:35:40.000 That's me, right?

01:35:42.000 And some of this, I mean, Centerfield is the corniest thing that was ever invented.

01:35:48.000 I mean, I love it.

01:35:49.000 I unashamedly want to be corny.

01:35:52.000 That's who I am.

01:35:53.000 I'm corny, right?

01:35:55.000 But it, I mean, in that song, it just resonates with.

01:36:02.000 I'm glad I'm happy.

01:36:04.000 I'm happy to be happy.

01:36:06.000 I want to be happy.

01:36:07.000 Right?

01:36:08.000 In 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.

01:36:16.000 And that scowl, you know, the elbows would all that stuff.

01:36:20.000 That's good.

01:36:21.000 I mean, you know, but I like, you know, well, it seems to be me.

01:36:28.000 I can just be unashamedly happy.

01:36:31.000 And I'm glad, you know, like center field is so optimistic and just great.

01:36:35.000 It's an awesome song.

01:36:36.000 Yeah.

01:36:37.000 I don't think rock and roll is all dark.

01:36:39.000 I think there are aspects of rock and roll that people like that are dark because it's mysterious and these guys are rock stars.

01:36:45.000 But, you know, rock's everything.

01:36:47.000 It's like there are so many layers to it, there are so many different types of personality.

01:36:52.000 And you happy to be happy is also an awesome part of rock.

01:36:56.000 Yeah.

01:36:57.000 Clearly.

01:36:57.000 Yeah.

01:36:58.000 Well, because actually, real people, all as humans, sort of have all those different parts, right?

01:37:04.000 Yeah.

01:37:05.000 Yeah.

01:37:05.000 That's why we identify with it.

01:37:07.000 I think the brooding dark rock star is like, it's a fantasy idea that people want to believe that there's that part of them.

01:37:17.000 You know, there's this, just, you know what I mean?

01:37:20.000 I'm going to say, it's absolutely, and, you know, Marlon Brando on the motorcycle in the Wild Ones, I guess?

01:37:31.000 Yeah.

01:37:31.000 Yeah, I think so.

01:37:33.000 You know, that he's just so.

01:37:37.000 Yeah.

01:37:37.000 Bad.

01:37:38.000 And 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.

01:37:52.000 Yeah.

01:37:52.000 This is my uniform.

01:37:54.000 You know, I sleep in this.

01:37:55.000 Yeah.

01:37:57.000 I mean, and so, you know, I've got a big chain and a leather jacket.

01:38:02.000 You know, now, I mean, it got more and more violent or dark.

01:38:05.000 Right. 1.00

01:38:06.000 Hoodoo, voodoo, you know, and all that.

01:38:09.000 But, and it's, it's, Funny because it's basically, I'm all this all the time.

01:38:15.000 Yeah.

01:38:16.000 This one picture does it.

01:38:18.000 And I kind of, my wife and I joke about it because she'll kind of say something like, Well, you don't dress like a rock star.

01:38:26.000 And then, of course, I'll say, Because I'm not.

01:38:29.000 Right.

01:38:32.000 I always sort of, I mean, I have a leather jacket somewhere, right?

01:38:37.000 Or two, even.

01:38:40.000 And it, how can I say it?

01:38:43.000 To me, it was a uniform.

01:38:46.000 To me, it was a pose.

01:38:48.000 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, got to take my kids to school.

01:38:57.000 You know, I didn't put on the whole like, just got off the stage.

01:39:01.000 It, uh, I don't know, name some place at the whiskey.

01:39:05.000 Right.

01:39:05.000 You know, and now I'm bringing my kids to school.

01:39:08.000 Hey, Mrs., how are you doing?

01:39:11.000 Flip my cigarette over into the.

01:39:14.000 I guess I could be a sitcom or something, but that wasn't me.

01:39:19.000 I just, I kind of was normal dad to my.

01:39:22.000 And I'm glad they saw me that way, to tell you the truth.

01:39:25.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:39:26.000 Look, the idea is silly that everybody has to be one way. 0.98

01:39:29.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

01:39:30.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

01:39:31.000 Yep. 0.97

01:39:32.000 Well, clearly, when you look at what you produced, like you clearly are a rock star.

01:39:36.000 And you did it by being yourself.

01:39:39.000 Actually, I think you nailed it there.

01:39:44.000 Here's a real truism.

01:39:46.000 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.

01:39:55.000 That's probably going to be really good.

01:39:57.000 It's comfortable.

01:39:58.000 Sounds like you.

01:40:00.000 You relate.

01:40:01.000 It's great.

01:40:02.000 If you ever get yourself as a songwriter, singer, whatever, well, so and so is going to really like.

01:40:09.000 That I did this, and you're off on some weird thing trying to, you know, be a change or different or something.

01:40:16.000 That's not going to work.

01:40:19.000 Absolutely 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.

01:40:33.000 You probably are just out of your element, off the rails, you might say.

01:40:38.000 And guys do get off the rails.

01:40:40.000 No, I've done it myself.

01:40:41.000 Yeah.

01:40:42.000 Oh, yeah, especially being preachy and that kind of thing. 0.69

01:40:45.000 You know, there's some songs that you, oh, God, God, shut up, Jay.

01:40:50.000 Where does that come from?

01:40:51.000 Does that come from just you have a big audience and all these people look up to you and you just start feeling you're important?

01:41:02.000 I think some of it, I don't know all the answers, who does?

01:41:06.000 But you're in a mood where you're, or a mode, you want to get some material together.

01:41:15.000 You want to make a record.

01:41:16.000 You want to have some stuff finished, and maybe you're not so inspired, right?

01:41:23.000 So, okay, well, I'm going to, how about if I talk about whatever, and you start trying, it's almost like a square peg in a round hole.

01:41:32.000 Well, yeah, I got to do something because there is some credence to that.

01:41:41.000 Just start working.

01:41:42.000 Just start moving.

01:41:43.000 Don't just sit there.

01:41:44.000 Do something.

01:41:46.000 And keep grinding, and maybe eventually it'll get to where it's natural, the good part.

01:41:46.000 Sorry.

01:41:52.000 Because just sitting and doing nothing, which I've certainly been accused of, that's nothing for no one.

01:42:01.000 So you start moving your feet and trying to get the juices to flow and all that.

01:42:07.000 But like I said, yeah, I wrote some songs, a whole album really, called Eye of the Zombie.

01:42:12.000 It was the follow-up to Center Field.

01:42:16.000 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.

01:42:30.000 I'll get there in a minute.

01:42:32.000 But anyway, the album as a whole is pretty dark and pretty, Not doesn't ring true to me.

01:42:41.000 I think it's kind of Misses the mark.

01:42:44.000 It's off That's a that album and that period of my life is a really interesting Really interesting phenomenon.

01:42:58.000 I think that I'm not the only one.

01:43:00.000 It's just that I consider myself lucky.

01:43:04.000 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 newspaper saying nasty things about me, etc.

01:43:24.000 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.

01:43:32.000 And I somehow managed to get through all that, and it's 15 years after.

01:43:41.000 Credence breaking up basically.

01:43:43.000 Finally, come out with an album called Centerfield.

01:43:46.000 There's happy, joyful music on it.

01:43:48.000 It goes to number one.

01:43:50.000 It's acclaimed, which is a wonderful thing.

01:43:54.000 And it's a hit.

01:43:58.000 I think what happened is the story I tell about it.

01:44:01.000 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!

01:44:15.000 You're right.

01:44:15.000 We made a mistake.

01:44:17.000 You're free because you didn't commit any crimes.

01:44:20.000 We're going to let you free.

01:44:22.000 And you're so happy, you walk out the door.

01:44:25.000 That's center field coming out.

01:44:28.000 And you come out into this big meadow where, you know, green grass and bluebirds.

01:44:33.000 You know, it's a Disney cartoon, right?

01:44:34.000 Right.

01:44:35.000 And then you turn around and you see freaking San Quentin, the prison that you were in.

01:44:41.000 And now you're angry.

01:44:43.000 You look at that and you're just that's what happened.

01:44:50.000 You know, when Centerfield came out.

01:44:54.000 I should have, and was a success.

01:44:56.000 In other words, I was exonerated or vindicated.

01:45:00.000 I should have immediately gone to therapy, right?

01:45:03.000 Seen a shrink.

01:45:04.000 But that's kind of not my, I wasn't raised anywhere near any of that kind of stuff.

01:45:10.000 So I didn't know to do that.

01:45:13.000 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.

01:45:26.000 Bitter and it happened all at once, it didn't like develop it, it was bam!

01:45:32.000 And 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.

01:45:51.000 Um, and so I made that album, and that's all that stuff.

01:45:55.000 I mean, I just didn't have the sense to see that it was.

01:45:59.000 It was nothing like center field.

01:46:00.000 Right.

01:46:01.000 Not a good.

01:46:03.000 This guy's not happy.

01:46:04.000 It was not a good follow up.

01:46:07.000 How'd you bounce back?

01:46:10.000 I met Julie.

01:46:11.000 Oh.

01:46:13.000 You know, right in the middle of that tour in 86 for Eye of the Zombie, or that's what.

01:46:23.000 So I am a zombie, you know.

01:46:26.000 I met Julie.

01:46:28.000 And even though I didn't know.

01:46:33.000 I thought I was in perpetual binge mode.

01:46:38.000 Basically, okay, I'm going to go out and tour now.

01:46:41.000 I'm just going to be a rock star on the road and be everything I never got to do for 20 years, right?

01:46:49.000 Now I'm like a little kid musician again.

01:46:53.000 That's what I thought I was doing.

01:46:56.000 Obviously, that comes from some anger to talk like that.

01:46:59.000 Yeah.

01:47:00.000 And so I just thought I was going to.

01:47:04.000 Make my way through the Hollywood Hills, you might say.

01:47:06.000 I think I actually said that in those days.

01:47:10.000 And 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.

01:47:38.000 And it all changed.

01:47:41.000 That's awesome.

01:47:42.000 That's awesome.

01:47:43.000 It's great that you bounced out of that because a lot of people don't.

01:47:47.000 You know, when something bad happens to them, they just go into a spiral.

01:47:52.000 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.

01:48:00.000 Well, you said a spiral, and that's just what it felt like.

01:48:02.000 You're just kind of getting worse and worse, not better.

01:48:06.000 Alcohol as well, right?

01:48:08.000 Yep.

01:48:08.000 Yeah.

01:48:09.000 And boy, you know, they call it, it takes you a long time to figure out.

01:48:14.000 It's a depressant.

01:48:15.000 Yeah.

01:48:15.000 You are, you're drinking, you think you're drinking to forget stuff, but you're getting more and more depressed.

01:48:22.000 Yeah.

01:48:22.000 Right.

01:48:23.000 And it's weakening your resolve, your body.

01:48:27.000 It's weakening your vitality.

01:48:28.000 So you're tired and you're angry.

01:48:30.000 That too.

01:48:32.000 And your mindset. 0.88

01:48:33.000 You're just in a miserable mood. 0.76

01:48:33.000 Yeah. 0.76

01:48:37.000 And it's also, that's also in the rock and roll stereotype, you know?

01:48:42.000 The drinking, hard partying.

01:48:44.000 Like one of my favorite songs when I was a kid.

01:48:47.000 Was a bad company shooting star.

01:48:50.000 And every kid that used to listen to that thought they were Johnny.

01:48:54.000 Like, Johnny was a schoolboy when he heard his first Beatles song.

01:48:57.000 It's a sad song.

01:48:58.000 The guy dies young, becomes a rock star, and winds up dead.

01:49:01.000 And everybody was romanticizing this song of this terrible lifestyle that this guy lived.

01:49:08.000 This guy was super talented and had the gift.

01:49:12.000 Well, it's based on some reality there, of course.

01:49:15.000 Sure.

01:49:17.000 Yeah.

01:49:19.000 Unfortunately, yeah, we really.

01:49:22.000 Romanticize the idea of dying young, burn bright, die young.

01:49:27.000 And it's all cool until they're pointing at you and you're the one that's going to die.

01:49:33.000 I mean, at that moment in life, most people, no, I don't want to die.

01:49:33.000 Yeah.

01:49:38.000 Yeah.

01:49:38.000 Up until then, it's just sort of a vague idea out there somewhere.

01:49:43.000 Right, right, right.

01:49:45.000 But weird that it's a romantic, vague idea.

01:49:47.000 You know, Johnny died one night, died in his bed, bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head.

01:49:53.000 Like, we just, like, Assumed, like this is how it goes.

01:49:57.000 You know, like this is the rock and roll romantic story.

01:50:01.000 Well, 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.

01:50:10.000 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.

01:50:10.000 Yeah.

01:50:20.000 It's just sort of a statement of fact, right?

01:50:23.000 Yeah.

01:50:24.000 I mean, there's a.

01:50:26.000 I'm sitting here now, you know, talking about some parts of me that are certainly embarrassed about and probably ashamed of.

01:50:36.000 I've let the shame part go.

01:50:38.000 It just happened, right?

01:50:40.000 I mean, I don't encourage anyone, and I try to tell them, no, stay away from, don't do what I did.

01:50:48.000 But I used to beat myself up a lot with the shame part.

01:50:51.000 And I think that might be part of the healing, part of the getting out the other end.

01:50:59.000 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 the shame dissipates.

01:51:12.000 It's not tenuous anymore, like, oh, I might fall back.

01:51:16.000 You're not so scared that that could happen anymore.

01:51:19.000 I think the shame is an important element.

01:51:21.000 I think the shame of your past and the mistakes that you've made motivates you to never make them again.

01:51:27.000 Yes.

01:51:27.000 As long as you don't think you're still that person.

01:51:30.000 That's the problem with some people, they'll do something in high school and they carry that for the rest of their life. 0.98

01:51:35.000 Like that, whatever it is, whatever stupid mistakes they made, whatever behavior they think that's them forever. 0.99

01:51:41.000 And that's what's crazy. 1.00

01:51:43.000 Oh, we should be able to grow up and, I mean, you know, kids.

01:51:49.000 I got married the first time at 20.

01:51:52.000 I mean, there just should be a law.

01:51:56.000 You know, you're just too young.

01:51:59.000 You don't know what you're doing.

01:52:01.000 You don't know what all this really means.

01:52:06.000 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.

01:52:19.000 I was committed, but the marriage part scared me.

01:52:24.000 You know, it just, oh my goodness.

01:52:26.000 And then one day I realized I was sort of, well, wait a minute.

01:52:30.000 Go back to square one.

01:52:32.000 What's the most joyful, happy thing you can do?

01:52:35.000 Well, I want to marry her.

01:52:37.000 Right.

01:52:37.000 And have children and have a white picket fence and a house.

01:52:41.000 And we go to kindergarten and all those things.

01:52:44.000 You know, we bake cookies at the PTA.

01:52:46.000 I want all that.

01:52:47.000 Yeah.

01:52:48.000 So, sure.

01:52:49.000 It's crazy because that's not what anybody thinks of when you think of a rock and roll life.

01:52:54.000 Uh oh.

01:52:56.000 Right?

01:52:57.000 See, I'm corny again.

01:52:57.000 I suppose.

01:52:59.000 It's not corny.

01:53:00.000 I think it's authentic.

01:53:01.000 I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you think at all.

01:53:04.000 I think it's healthy.

01:53:07.000 You know, I just really, even though my mom, I mean, she was a warrior.

01:53:13.000 You know, think of it, there were five boys.

01:53:16.000 That was my family.

01:53:18.000 My parents split up when I was, it was kind of a long ongoing thing, but somewhere around eight years old.

01:53:25.000 And so it was my mom's job to raise these five boys.

01:53:29.000 And 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.

01:53:36.000 You know, I mean, somehow she had enough of her.

01:53:40.000 She gave enough of her to inspire us, all of us really, to be good people.

01:53:48.000 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.

01:53:59.000 And 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.

01:54:09.000 So that was a big goal to me, a big inspiration to want that.

01:54:09.000 Yeah.

01:54:18.000 Well, it's a beautiful thing.

01:54:19.000 There's nothing wrong with that idea.

01:54:21.000 Not at all.

01:54:22.000 Not at all.

01:54:23.000 It's just the idea that there's something wrong with it.

01:54:25.000 That's the fake rock and roll vision.

01:54:29.000 That's the vision of the dark artist. 0.95

01:54:31.000 You know? 0.96

01:54:32.000 I think.

01:54:35.000 I don't know if I talked with Julie about this.

01:54:37.000 Sometimes we show up at stuff and there'll be a lot of characters.

01:54:41.000 I'm talking about musical things.

01:54:42.000 A lot of characters roaming around.

01:54:45.000 And, you know, I kind of look like.

01:54:50.000 Ward 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?

01:55:03.000 Yeah, maybe.

01:55:04.000 And I'm just not bothered.

01:55:06.000 I mean, it is kind of funny, though.

01:55:10.000 Actually, I've worn some cool clothes at some of the stuff.

01:55:13.000 That would all be Julie's doing, of course.

01:55:19.000 Yeah, 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.

01:55:35.000 Oh, yeah, I got busted for me.

01:55:37.000 And everybody would have a rap sheet.

01:55:41.000 Yeah.

01:55:43.000 I mean, it would be a badge of honor, but I suppose to me, I'm just really glad that it wasn't like that.

01:55:49.000 Well, it's just you being authentic.

01:55:52.000 Powerful thing.

01:55:54.000 It's great too because the influence is to not.

01:55:57.000 The influence is to create an image, you know, and a lot of people cultivated that image.

01:56:03.000 Of course.

01:56:03.000 And they get kind of captured by it.

01:56:05.000 Yeah.

01:56:06.000 And then you have to be that person forever.

01:56:07.000 You can't like switch.

01:56:10.000 Letterman to Pee Wee Herman on his show.

01:56:14.000 Just think, Pee Wee, you're going to have to dress like that for the rest of your life.

01:56:19.000 That's true.

01:56:21.000 Right?

01:56:22.000 You become a character.

01:56:22.000 Yeah.

01:56:24.000 And then that's what people love.

01:56:25.000 They don't love you, they love this fake thing that you've just said.

01:56:29.000 Well, you know, it's the cowboy thing, the motorcycle, whatever.

01:56:35.000 Look, I like all those too, actually.

01:56:35.000 Yeah.

01:56:37.000 Yeah.

01:56:37.000 I, you know, I love the, I like keeping it as a fantasy.

01:56:44.000 I watch some TV shows, and my favorites are the modern, like Yellowstone and all the other ones.

01:56:53.000 After that, there's probably a lot of, what do you call that, literary license, you know?

01:57:00.000 Sure.

01:57:01.000 For imagery.

01:57:02.000 But I love the imagery.

01:57:04.000 Yeah.

01:57:04.000 I 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.

01:57:12.000 And the stoic cowboys living this rough life.

01:57:16.000 I like all that.

01:57:17.000 Of course, everybody does.

01:57:18.000 It's very romantic when you're looking at it from the outside, especially.

01:57:22.000 I mean, how many people moved to Montana because of that show?

01:57:25.000 They're hoping not so many.

01:57:27.000 I bet a lot did, though.

01:57:28.000 A lot did, and I think a lot left.

01:57:31.000 Yeah, I think they realize how hard the winters are.

01:57:33.000 They're like, all right, this ain't my romantic idea.

01:57:38.000 Yeah, and it's a long winter up there.

01:57:40.000 Yeah.

01:57:40.000 Oh, boy.

01:57:41.000 Yeah.

01:57:42.000 Music is one of the most powerful things in American culture because a great song like Fortunate Son.

01:57:50.000 Can inspire people to change their lives.

01:57:52.000 It can inspire people to make decisions.

01:57:55.000 It does things to people.

01:57:57.000 It gives you fuel.

01:57:58.000 Like I was saying, if I listen to that song when I'm working out, it's like I took an energy pill.

01:58:03.000 All of a sudden I have more energy.

01:58:05.000 That's real.

01:58:07.000 It's a powerful thing that you've created.

01:58:09.000 It really is.

01:58:11.000 And the fact that you did it out of love and enjoyment speaks to why the music resonates so much with people.

01:58:19.000 Well, you know, especially with that song.

01:58:23.000 At that point in the career of my band, remember I was writing all the songs.

01:58:31.000 I'll talk about that after this, I guess, in a minute.

01:58:35.000 But I wanted to have just an all-out screaming rocker, which we didn't have yet.

01:58:45.000 You know, the career was about a year and a half old.

01:58:48.000 And so, I mean, I commissioned myself to, I want to have that.

01:58:56.000 That absolutely loud screaming song with the guitars and all.

01:59:00.000 And so that was sort of the commission I gave myself to create.

01:59:06.000 As opposed to something like Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

01:59:08.000 Yeah.

01:59:09.000 Or even Down on the Corner, which is a different vibe.

01:59:12.000 You know, I wanted to, because I like that.

01:59:12.000 Right.

01:59:15.000 I like when bands, you know, the Beatles, actually, I want to hold your hand, or She Was Just 17 and saw her standing there, I guess.

01:59:25.000 You know, when, or.

01:59:29.000 It's not really fast, but it certainly had that vibe, you know, the instrumental rumble by Link Ray.

01:59:37.000 I see, I've missed you.

01:59:38.000 Cool.

01:59:38.000 Yeah, I don't know that song.

01:59:40.000 Can you put that one up?

01:59:41.000 Yeah, pull that one up. 0.86

01:59:44.000 We'll get flagged. 0.91

01:59:45.000 We'll remove it.

01:59:46.000 Do you do that?

01:59:47.000 Do you play little snippets of music?

01:59:48.000 We can play snippets, but the problem is.

01:59:50.000 You know everything we've just been talking about?

01:59:52.000 Yeah.

01:59:53.000 Everything, including the guy.

01:59:55.000 If there's a clip of him playing that.

01:59:58.000 The only problem is we can't put it on the podcast itself or we'll get flagged.

02:00:02.000 But we can listen to it right now.

02:00:03.000 Oh, you mean you can?

02:00:04.000 And then we just cut that part out.

02:00:06.000 That was the musical scale right there.

02:00:08.000 Yeah.

02:00:09.000 What is that?

02:00:10.000 I took so much out of that.

02:00:12.000 But anyway, he was.

02:00:13.000 Rumble, it's a song.

02:00:15.000 Who's the guy?

02:00:16.000 Link Ray.

02:00:18.000 Oh, God, that's so cool.

02:00:20.000 And when you saw him, black leather jacket, skinny as a rail, probably had a.

02:00:25.000 Yeah.

02:00:26.000 Probably a motorcycle.

02:00:27.000 I mean, it was the entire thing in one little two and a half minute song.

02:00:32.000 Wow.

02:00:33.000 Look at him there.

02:00:34.000 Yeah, he's a little older there, but it's.

02:00:34.000 God, is he older?

02:00:36.000 Yeah.

02:00:38.000 He's bad.

02:00:40.000 Wow.

02:00:41.000 He looks cool as hell.

02:00:44.000 It's always fascinating to me where artists had like one incredible song and then never made it.

02:00:54.000 Like, and you'll find out about that song and you go, this is incredible.

02:00:58.000 How did this guy never make it?

02:01:00.000 Do you know what Johnny Thunder is?

02:01:02.000 I've heard the name.

02:01:03.000 Okay.

02:01:04.000 Play I'm Alive for him.

02:01:06.000 There's a song that my friend Brian Simpson told me about, God, it must have been like a couple years ago now.

02:01:12.000 And he played it for us in the mothership, the comedy club, the green room.

02:01:16.000 And he goes, You're going to love this song.

02:01:18.000 And I went, Who is this?

02:01:20.000 We had to figure out who it was.

02:01:21.000 It's a song from 1969 by this guy, Johnny Thunder.

02:01:26.000 1969?

02:01:27.000 1969. 0.99

02:01:27.000 And it's fucking incredible. 0.99

02:01:29.000 It's such a good song. 0.97

02:01:31.000 And I'm like, This, if I didn't know any better, I'm like, Oh, this guy must have been a huge star.

02:01:36.000 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, it sounds like a huge star?

02:01:44.000 Like, this guy's fantastic.

02:01:45.000 Listen to this.

02:01:46.000 Listen to this.

02:01:47.000 How good is that?

02:01:48.000 It's great.

02:01:49.000 How good is that?

02:01:50.000 Song's phenomenal, right?

02:01:52.000 Did he ever, like, under a different name or anything, have?

02:01:52.000 Yeah.

02:01:55.000 Oh, my goodness.

02:01:55.000 Nope.

02:01:56.000 Nope.

02:01:58.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:02:00.000 Now we started playing that song.

02:02:01.000 The attitude's great.

02:02:02.000 He's saying a lot of great stuff.

02:02:04.000 The game's great.

02:02:05.000 It's incredible.

02:02:06.000 Yeah.

02:02:07.000 The voice is incredible.

02:02:08.000 The sound's incredible.

02:02:09.000 We played that song on the podcast a couple years ago, and now the song's in commercials and all these different things.

02:02:15.000 Oh, is that true?

02:02:16.000 Oh, cool.

02:02:16.000 Yeah.

02:02:17.000 But he's dead now.

02:02:18.000 He's dead.

02:02:19.000 He died.

02:02:20.000 I think he died in 2019 or something like that.

02:02:23.000 He died in 2024.

02:02:24.000 2024.

02:02:24.000 Wow.

02:02:25.000 Oh, wow.

02:02:27.000 So he probably died like right after we discovered him.

02:02:31.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:02:33.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:02:34.000 I mean, you hear that, you're like, how did that guy not be one of the biggest artists in the world?

02:02:41.000 Or at least have that song be a big thing.

02:02:44.000 That song wasn't even a big hit.

02:02:46.000 Right.

02:02:46.000 It's crazy.

02:02:47.000 It's just, you realize the slippery nature of success, especially with art.

02:02:58.000 Like sometimes guys just catch lightning, they got that one.

02:03:02.000 Yep.

02:03:03.000 And that's it.

02:03:05.000 You know, I think any artist that's been around a while.

02:03:08.000 Yeah, that was his biggest hit.

02:03:08.000 He had another hit?

02:03:10.000 DeLoop.

02:03:11.000 Oh, I know that song.

02:03:12.000 Oh, Johnny Thunder featuring the Bobettes.

02:03:16.000 That's 1963.

02:03:16.000 When did this come out?

02:03:19.000 Oh, that's the song I know.

02:03:21.000 I know that one.

02:03:22.000 I didn't know who the name.

02:03:22.000 Wow.

02:03:25.000 Here we go, Loop de Loop.

02:03:27.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:03:28.000 That song was Johnny Thunder's only top 40 hit.

02:03:31.000 That's incredible.

02:03:33.000 How high did it say it got?

02:03:35.000 It said number four.

02:03:36.000 Number four of the U.S. pop charts.

02:03:37.000 Wow.

02:03:38.000 Number six of the U.S. RB charts.

02:03:41.000 Wow.

02:03:41.000 And the album in Canada reached number 14 in two separate weeks.

02:03:47.000 It's incredible because if you hear that other song, Like that other song is, that should be gigantic.

02:03:54.000 I'm alive.

02:03:55.000 It should be a huge hit.

02:03:57.000 Right.

02:03:58.000 Mean weird.

02:03:58.000 It's a statement of, you know, it's like I'm a man or something.

02:04:02.000 I played that for so many musicians and they listened to it and they'd never heard it before.

02:04:06.000 Right.

02:04:06.000 And so many guys, like, oh, oh my God.

02:04:10.000 You hear him hit, like, oh, baby.

02:04:12.000 It just cracks.

02:04:13.000 It's a perfect song.

02:04:15.000 It's an amazing song.

02:04:17.000 But it's like the slippery nature of art.

02:04:21.000 You know, it's just like sometimes.

02:04:22.000 Yeah, so why would something that good.

02:04:26.000 Just, you know, there's something.

02:04:28.000 I don't know.

02:04:29.000 The week it came out was 9 11 or something.

02:04:33.000 Well, you know what my fear is?

02:04:34.000 My fear is that he got trapped up in the music business side of it.

02:04:41.000 And they just decided not to promote him or something.

02:04:44.000 You know, he ran a foul with the music company or something.

02:04:48.000 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.

02:04:54.000 You would think so.

02:04:55.000 Yeah, you just need the right people with you.

02:04:57.000 Yeah, because he had the voice.

02:04:58.000 Yeah, you always do that.

02:05:00.000 The voice, the sound, the soul to his music, the way he sang.

02:05:06.000 I'm a man.

02:05:07.000 Yeah, hey.

02:05:08.000 Oh my God, it's so good.

02:05:10.000 It's so good.

02:05:12.000 It just, it's, it is, it's a very difficult thing to capture.

02:05:20.000 And even capturing it only once doesn't ensure a long career of getting it right.

02:05:27.000 Finding that thing.

02:05:29.000 Well, yeah, we were talking about that a little bit a while ago.

02:05:34.000 You know, that first blush when you realize you can do it because you've never done it before.

02:05:40.000 You know, when you cross that particular threshold, that's an amazing transformation, I guess, in an artist's the way he grows.

02:05:40.000 Yeah.

02:05:54.000 Because Until you actually do it, it's all just a dream.

02:06:01.000 I mean, I had grown up writing songs.

02:06:06.000 They weren't great songs.

02:06:07.000 I mean, I kind of knew it.

02:06:09.000 I was watching all the people I loved.

02:06:12.000 I'm talking about from being four or five years old all the way through growing up.

02:06:18.000 And things happen Elvis, Motown, and Beatles, and all these things happen.

02:06:24.000 And wow, you really like all that.

02:06:26.000 And meanwhile, you're having the dream of.

02:06:30.000 Being in music somehow, but you never really know if you're going to be able to do that or not.

02:06:38.000 Right.

02:06:39.000 I mean, this sort of spreads out in a lot of strange ways in entertainment.

02:06:47.000 I mean, I kind of make it similar to what if you're a baseball player and you dream of growing up and getting to the major leagues, right?

02:07:00.000 Somebody becomes Willie Mays, right?

02:07:04.000 And a lot of people don't, you know.

02:07:07.000 And there's you just don't know, there's that realization.

02:07:11.000 I mean, for Willie, actually, he was it was slow if you read about him.

02:07:16.000 Him and DeRosher were kind of you know, DeRosher could see it, and Willie's kind of yeah, um.

02:07:24.000 So if you're lucky enough and you become Willie Mays, I mean, God bless you, right?

02:07:29.000 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.

02:07:40.000 Right.

02:07:40.000 Right?

02:07:41.000 And that just happens a lot.

02:07:43.000 In music, there were people like me.

02:07:47.000 Well, 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.

02:08:03.000 Yeah, okay, we'll have a democracy.

02:08:05.000 Yeah, we'll vote on everything.

02:08:08.000 Yeah, we'll all write songs and everything.

02:08:11.000 Right.

02:08:13.000 One of the things that happened going along those lines, I would show up at the rehearsal.

02:08:22.000 At that point, we said, we've got to do this all the time if we're ever going to get any good.

02:08:27.000 Every 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?

02:08:43.000 And people started looking down here, all right well look, I got something and we'd work on my song, right?

02:08:51.000 I mean, we're just sort of getting organized.

02:08:53.000 I've just come off active duty, i've been away from the world.

02:08:56.000 You might say uh, Then next day, same thing, you know.

02:09:01.000 At home, I'd work on some stuff.

02:09:04.000 Anyone got any songs?

02:09:07.000 Kind of every I mean, it was the weirdest quiet a week later, you know, same thing.

02:09:13.000 And finally, I just well, look, I've been, you know, I began to feel this thing inside that I gotta push.

02:09:20.000 I mean, I got, I think I can do this.

02:09:24.000 And so, eventually, I got the idea the songs I'm working on aren't quite there.

02:09:32.000 How about?

02:09:33.000 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 is good.

02:09:44.000 It's got good stuff in it.

02:09:46.000 And that's what I did with Suzy Q.

02:09:48.000 I just kind of really arranged it and had all this cool stuff going on.

02:09:52.000 It wasn't something I wrote.

02:09:54.000 It kind of relieved me of the pressure of having to do that and was able to just, hey, just that blank page turned into a.

02:10:06.000 Different rainbow, full of all.

02:10:08.000 Nobody can fault me because it's not my song, right?

02:10:11.000 Did all this great stuff, this cool musical stuff to it.

02:10:16.000 Um.

02:10:18.000 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.

02:10:31.000 The 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.

02:10:43.000 It was done in their kitchen.

02:10:46.000 And so it was just a, Amateur, unauthorized thing, but they played it on this one station.

02:10:53.000 It became a hit on that station.

02:10:55.000 People requested it.

02:10:56.000 There were a couple other bands that had tapes like that.

02:10:58.000 And you could hear the typewriter in the background?

02:11:00.000 Yeah, going, yeah, yeah. 0.84

02:11:03.000 She's singing Hesitation Blues. 0.75

02:11:05.000 Wow.

02:11:06.000 So that became the let's do that.

02:11:09.000 Let's do an end run around record companies and just bring the thing straight to the station. 0.53

02:11:15.000 Well, they loved Suzy Q.

02:11:17.000 They started playing it probably eight times a day.

02:11:19.000 Each different disc jockey would play it.

02:11:22.000 It's eight minutes and 20 seconds long, or whatever, right?

02:11:26.000 And that was really the true beginning.

02:11:30.000 Finished that album.

02:11:33.000 My songwriting was, you know, wasn't great.

02:11:39.000 It was competent.

02:11:42.000 But somewhere right after the album came out, oh, I wanted to make that point that everybody had ample opportunity to write a song.

02:11:58.000 And it just kind of wasn't coming.

02:12:00.000 I would show up at the rehearsals.

02:12:03.000 Well, anybody got a song, you know, and everybody got real quiet.

02:12:09.000 And so I said, well, look, okay, let's work on this.

02:12:12.000 And I began to realize inside that it was going to be up to me.

02:12:20.000 It wasn't, I want to control everything.

02:12:25.000 It was, I got to start rolling this boat or we're going to sink in the middle of the ocean.

02:12:31.000 So I started pushing myself harder and harder.

02:12:36.000 The first album comes out on my birthday, 1968.

02:12:41.000 I'm 23 years old.

02:12:44.000 And within, sometime shortly after that, I can't really pin down the.

02:12:49.000 I'm still in the Army, right?

02:12:51.000 But I'm working on getting released, getting out.

02:12:56.000 Somewhere, I think in June or July, I don't exactly know, my honorable discharge shows up.

02:13:04.000 I opened this package that's been sitting there for a couple of days because it said official government discharge.

02:13:10.000 Business, who's that for?

02:13:13.000 It was for me.

02:13:14.000 It was an apartment house.

02:13:16.000 I'm overjoyed. 0.97

02:13:18.000 I mean, this is the biggest struggle of my life.

02:13:21.000 Wow!

02:13:24.000 I 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.

02:13:46.000 Oh, I start strumming this beat.

02:13:50.000 I start hearing this chorus.

02:13:56.000 See, the first thing I said was left a good job in the city.

02:14:00.000 That was getting out of the army.

02:14:03.000 Wow, working for the man every night and day.

02:14:06.000 Wow, what is this?

02:14:08.000 Eventually, I arrive at this thing where I say, Roland, Roland.

02:14:13.000 Oh, I like that.

02:14:14.000 Roland.

02:14:16.000 rolling on the river.

02:14:21.000 That's starting to be beyond me, out of me, right?

02:14:28.000 I look in my book because I said, what is this thing about?

02:14:30.000 What am I doing here?

02:14:32.000 The very first thing I had written in my little book of song titles was Proud Mary.

02:14:39.000 It's the actual first line, first thing.

02:14:43.000 I looked at that and I said, wow, this is about Proud Mary's a river boat.

02:14:50.000 This is a boat named Proud Mary.

02:14:52.000 That's what we're doing here.

02:14:54.000 And I finished the song, right?

02:14:56.000 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.

02:15:12.000 Wow.

02:15:14.000 When 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.

02:15:28.000 I said, John, you've written the classic.

02:15:31.000 I realized that this song was.

02:15:35.000 I had evolved.

02:15:36.000 It was way better than anything I'd ever done before.

02:15:40.000 You 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.

02:16:00.000 Just doing it, right?

02:16:02.000 And the knowledge, I mean, I had, I was self-aware.

02:16:06.000 I'm looking at this thing, Proud Mary, and it's got Americana in it, although I don't think I had a word then.

02:16:12.000 It's got, I knew it was Mark Twain and the river and all this soulful stuff.

02:16:19.000 And wow, this for sure is the best thing I'd ever done.

02:16:24.000 I knew it was a great song.

02:16:25.000 And then the next, God, I hope I get to do this again.

02:16:33.000 Because you just don't know.

02:16:34.000 Right.

02:16:37.000 That was a bolt of lightning and inspiration charged up from the discharge.

02:16:42.000 Yep.

02:16:44.000 Right.

02:16:44.000 Yeah.

02:16:45.000 But, yes, and something led me to be better than I was.

02:16:51.000 I mean, I think my point was it was kind of the Willie Mays thing.

02:16:51.000 Wow.

02:16:56.000 I never knew if I would be able to do that or not.

02:17:00.000 Right.

02:17:00.000 Right?

02:17:01.000 You're going along, you're just plunking along clubs, whatever, learning a chord here and there, learning something off a record.

02:17:10.000 Hoping you have a career in music because you like music.

02:17:14.000 Me, because my mother had focused, had kind of pointed out songwriters, it put me in that realm.

02:17:28.000 It made me at least realize that that was one of the functions of music.

02:17:35.000 That's another story I could tell you.

02:17:37.000 I don't know if you want to hear that.

02:17:38.000 I want to hear every story.

02:17:40.000 That's a fantastic story, though, because.

02:17:44.000 That 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.

02:17:59.000 Yep.

02:18:00.000 Or at least the greatest song to that moment and realize this can be, this can happen.

02:18:06.000 You really have it.

02:18:07.000 You really have it because you don't know until you try.

02:18:10.000 You don't know until it happens.

02:18:11.000 Yeah.

02:18:12.000 You don't know.

02:18:13.000 You know, until Willie May's.

02:18:15.000 One day, he did something on the field.

02:18:17.000 Right.

02:18:18.000 He didn't know.

02:18:18.000 Right.

02:18:19.000 And there was a point, as I alluded to, I've read about it.

02:18:22.000 DeRosier knew when he saw him, and Willie wasn't so sure yet.

02:18:27.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

02:18:28.000 That's crazy.

02:18:29.000 Bad Moon Rising is another great, fantastic song, another huge favorite of mine.

02:18:35.000 But also because it's in one of my all time favorite movies, American Werewolf in London.

02:18:41.000 That scene, where that song's like, that must have been cool to have that song play in that movie.

02:18:41.000 Yeah.

02:18:48.000 It's very cool to me now.

02:18:51.000 I don't even know if I saw the movie at the time it came out.

02:18:57.000 That was during the time I was still, you know, away from music and kind of angry and pissed off about my situation.

02:19:06.000 So when something would get done with my music, it kind of made me mad because nobody asked me.

02:19:13.000 Oh, really?

02:19:14.000 Yeah.

02:19:14.000 Oh, right, because you didn't have the rights to it.

02:19:16.000 Oh, wow.

02:19:16.000 Yep.

02:19:18.000 Still, phenomenal song.

02:19:20.000 Phenomenal song.

02:19:22.000 So.

02:19:23.000 Did you write all the songs?

02:19:24.000 I wrote all the songs from Credence.

02:19:27.000 Until 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.

02:19:27.000 Wow.

02:19:45.000 So you guys have been resisting that because I just, I thought it was going to really, I literally thought it would be career suicide.

02:19:56.000 Change everything now.

02:19:57.000 Right.

02:19:58.000 Yeah, because, well, here's another part of it.

02:20:02.000 You're struggling in the early days of your career and all your life getting to that point.

02:20:08.000 You're trying to figure out what works.

02:20:10.000 Right?

02:20:10.000 Right.

02:20:11.000 I mean, it's just everyone goes through that because clearly you don't know what works yet.

02:20:15.000 I haven't figured it out.

02:20:16.000 And one day when some stuff starts happening, well, that's how you do it.

02:20:21.000 This and this and this.

02:20:23.000 This works.

02:20:24.000 And I got very good at that.

02:20:26.000 And you had put in that work and they hadn't.

02:20:29.000 So, they weren't really contributing.

02:20:32.000 And they must have gotten resentful that you were the one who wrote all these big hits.

02:20:35.000 And eventually they're like, we want to try.

02:20:37.000 We're Credence 2.

02:20:39.000 Well, especially because two of them had never written a song in their life.

02:20:43.000 Oh, that's crazy.

02:20:44.000 And then they wanted to write a song for Credence while Credence was huge.

02:20:49.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a bit of what's the word? Boulder Dash into that.

02:20:55.000 I mean, it's wow.

02:20:57.000 Maybe you should, you know, rehearse a little first.

02:21:01.000 I mean, I've been writing songs since I was eight.

02:21:04.000 They could have jumped in.

02:21:05.000 They could have jumped in in the beginning.

02:21:08.000 Yeah.

02:21:09.000 When you were writing all the songs and they weren't coming up with anything.

02:21:12.000 If they did, you probably would have done their songs as well if they went on a similar path.

02:21:17.000 It would have been like, yeah.

02:21:20.000 My songs weren't that good at that time, but they were, how can I say, they were maybe better than average.

02:21:27.000 They weren't great songs yet.

02:21:30.000 They were album songs or something, right?

02:21:32.000 Right.

02:21:33.000 But what I'm getting at is that the other guys, there was no songs.

02:21:37.000 So that's that thing in, I keep using the Muli Mays, you know, metaphor, if that's what it is.

02:21:49.000 You 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.

02:22:05.000 And then comes the time when you actually make something that's good, right?

02:22:10.000 And 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?

02:22:19.000 Right.

02:22:20.000 It's, you know.

02:22:22.000 So, I just thought it was a journey.

02:22:26.000 And I mean, I have been on the journey myself and seen it come.

02:22:30.000 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.

02:22:38.000 Yeah.

02:22:40.000 I mean, I, that was my motivation the whole time since I was a child.

02:22:48.000 I just loved it and wanted to do that, whatever it was.

02:22:51.000 Well, that's why it worked.

02:22:53.000 Yeah.

02:22:54.000 You put in the work and you loved it.

02:22:56.000 And you worked at it and you tried to get it better and you also got inspiration.

02:23:00.000 You were also open to that inspiration.

02:23:03.000 It's just funny that the band members didn't contribute until the seventh album and they wanted to jump in.

02:23:10.000 It's kind of crazy.

02:23:12.000 But understandable.

02:23:13.000 I 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.

02:23:22.000 Yeah, well, I walked around for.

02:23:27.000 Many months, you know, mulling over this whole thing.

02:23:30.000 Because right after that meeting, shortly after that, my brother Tom decided he just left.

02:23:38.000 You know, even though I kind of gave in to all the demands, okay, we'll do it that way.

02:23:43.000 I could see that the band was going to disintegrate unless I acquiesced, right?

02:23:49.000 I mean, up until then, I'd managed to keep it, don't do that.

02:23:54.000 Don't do that.

02:23:54.000 It's going to wreck us.

02:23:56.000 So when I agreed, I mean, it was literally a couple months later.

02:24:00.000 Tom left.

02:24:02.000 And so now, oh God, what's going to happen now?

02:24:05.000 So I didn't know if I was just going to call it quits or.

02:24:11.000 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 them in a lurch, you might say.

02:24:22.000 That's the way it looked to me.

02:24:24.000 It's like Elvis got all new guys.

02:24:27.000 And 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.

02:24:46.000 JD Fontana or DJD Fontana.

02:24:52.000 And it was just apparent that that was the best thing.

02:24:54.000 Everybody loved that part of his special.

02:24:57.000 Most people, you just forget that anything else was on that thing other than Elvis singing those songs.

02:25:03.000 And that sort of was in the back of my mind, well, maybe they deserve a shot.

02:25:09.000 Maybe I should do this.

02:25:11.000 And so that's kind of why I went forward with it.

02:25:15.000 It's almost like flipping a coin, like, well, the.

02:25:17.000 The odds, I think my own sense tells me this isn't going to work, but maybe they deserve a chance.

02:25:27.000 So I kind of went at it blindly that way.

02:25:30.000 What was it like in the studio when they started bringing the songs?

02:25:36.000 Well, that's it.

02:25:37.000 I mean, everyone can hear that.

02:25:39.000 All of us can, you know, you just.

02:25:42.000 The album's called Mardi Gras.

02:25:44.000 And in the press, it was murdered.

02:25:49.000 Rolling Stone said, This is the worst album ever made by a major group.

02:25:55.000 And I read that and I said, I know.

02:25:58.000 I mean, I literally felt that it wasn't like I was trying to defend it.

02:26:02.000 It was, you know, it was just.

02:26:06.000 How did the band react to that?

02:26:09.000 Here's the deal.

02:26:11.000 Instead of going, Yeah, that was a mistake, instead they said, He made me do it.

02:26:17.000 And so.

02:26:19.000 Yeah, they said I made them do it, whereas it was their idea, of course.

02:26:25.000 I didn't want to do that.

02:26:29.000 And after that, I just, you know, I think we did a tour.

02:26:36.000 Oh, right, we did a tour.

02:26:43.000 One by one, their songs dropped out of the set.

02:26:46.000 The songs that they had done on Mardi Gras, the other two guys.

02:26:50.000 Yeah, I don't want to sing that anymore.

02:26:52.000 And so we, of course, went back to Proud Mary and Fortunate Son and all that.

02:26:57.000 And there was a point that I could tell that the fans were kind of upset with this whole premise.

02:27:07.000 Which whole premise?

02:27:09.000 Of them singing songs and kind of struggling along with equal time for everybody.

02:27:16.000 Yeah.

02:27:16.000 Oh, I see.

02:27:17.000 Right.

02:27:18.000 Yeah.

02:27:18.000 And so finally it was time that there wasn't enough, there wasn't any way to put it back together that I could see.

02:27:27.000 Right.

02:27:29.000 It was beyond me.

02:27:31.000 Now, in later, later, later years, you know, I'm a much older guy.

02:27:36.000 I mean, there were, you know, there's some decisions that I made.

02:27:41.000 One of them was the decision to not be in the movie Woodstock.

02:27:47.000 They sent a tape of the band doing Bad Moon Rising.

02:27:54.000 It was okay.

02:27:56.000 But what had happened at Woodstock was the Grateful Dead was on before us.

02:28:01.000 Grateful Dead had all taken LSD.

02:28:04.000 It's we were supposed to be on at 8 o'clock, but it's now 2 o'clock, 2 30 in the morning by the time we get.

02:28:12.000 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.

02:28:21.000 So that poor audience that's been through rain and all the rest and muddy, they just crashed.

02:28:28.000 A half a million, just boom, you know.

02:28:32.000 And that's what I get, right?

02:28:33.000 We come running out on stage and then we.

02:28:36.000 Playing a few songs, all I see is sleeping people.

02:28:41.000 And eventually, the last, I think, 20 minutes of our set finally got them up.

02:28:47.000 We warmed them up for Janice.

02:28:49.000 That's the way I always say it.

02:28:50.000 You know, they got going again.

02:28:51.000 But that was a struggle all through that.

02:28:55.000 So I get sent, and it was a bad taste in my mouth about that evening because we'd gone to so much trouble.

02:29:04.000 And at that moment, we were certainly the number one band in the U.S. and probably on our way to.

02:29:11.000 Being number one in the world.

02:29:13.000 And 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.

02:29:26.000 Nah, I'm going to pass.

02:29:28.000 By the way, the Grateful Dead is not in Woodstock either.

02:29:31.000 I didn't really see that until about a year ago.

02:29:35.000 You know, I mean, I just assumed the Grateful Dead was in Woodstock, right?

02:29:40.000 That's probably unusable.

02:29:42.000 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 might have said, Hey, you know, your version of Susie Q Live, even though those people were sleeping, the band was cooking.

02:30:00.000 You know, you guys played good. 0.94

02:30:02.000 You can't hardly see anything anyway, the crappy old.

02:30:06.000 He said, But that recording's good.

02:30:09.000 Maybe we should demand that, look, you put us in the movie and give us eight minutes, not two minutes.

02:30:16.000 Or by then it was probably 15 minutes long.

02:30:20.000 I think that was a decision that could probably reassess if it was someone else, but that's not what was on my plate at the time.

02:30:31.000 I was only offered bad moves.

02:30:34.000 And at the time I felt I was right because we went on and did great.

02:30:40.000 And by the way, the band broke up before Woodstock came out, anyhow.

02:30:44.000 So it kind of was a mute point.

02:30:47.000 Did it feel better for you when you were on your own?

02:30:50.000 Did you like that better?

02:30:51.000 Or it was just the John Frogarty band? 0.99

02:30:54.000 You didn't have to have all those guys and all the bullshit? 0.95

02:30:59.000 Well, you're asking, you know, we're all human beings and we've got a lot of years behind us. 0.99

02:31:06.000 If you're asking me right now, yeah.

02:31:10.000 Because I play in a band with my sons.

02:31:13.000 Oh, that's awesome.

02:31:14.000 You know, and, yep.

02:31:15.000 That's awesome.

02:31:16.000 And I don't know, there might be a picture of that somewhere.

02:31:23.000 And so, and all the other guys in the band are their age.

02:31:28.000 Oh, wow.

02:31:29.000 And so, how can I say it?

02:31:34.000 You 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.

02:31:46.000 Well, after Credence, I didn't play for a long time.

02:31:50.000 But the first band, huh?

02:31:50.000 How long?

02:31:52.000 How long did you not play for?

02:31:52.000 How long?

02:31:55.000 I went on tour in 86 with a bunch of hired hands, they call it, right?

02:32:04.000 Studio guys.

02:32:05.000 And that was, that was, it was behind number one, I didn't play any Credence era songs.

02:32:13.000 I was so mad at my situation, I just played new songs.

02:32:20.000 Wow.

02:32:22.000 Everyone on the left, that's Shane.

02:32:25.000 That's me.

02:32:26.000 That's my son Tyler.

02:32:27.000 That's my daughter.

02:32:29.000 Kelsey, and then that's Jesse Wilson back there, our bass player.

02:32:33.000 That's awesome.

02:32:34.000 And 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.

02:32:46.000 That's amazing.

02:32:47.000 So, yeah, I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, the beginnings of Credence was magical and wonderful, right?

02:32:55.000 I mean, it truly, look, it's what you waited and planned for your whole life.

02:33:01.000 And it stayed that way for about a year, I think.

02:33:05.000 And then other stuff that I never understood.

02:33:08.000 I mean, it was beyond, it was unpleasant, and I didn't understand why.

02:33:15.000 So after that, it was, that was difficult.

02:33:19.000 Then 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.

02:33:40.000 So it kind of never really was one solidified thing.

02:33:45.000 And you would find that a lot of people had personal agendas, you might say.

02:33:54.000 They were working on their own career and all that.

02:33:56.000 And there was sort of, believe it or not, even at that level, different jealousies and things.

02:34:03.000 Again, there I was.

02:34:05.000 I could sense it sometimes.

02:34:06.000 People were.

02:34:07.000 Jealous, you know, oh my god, when you see that fix, there's no jealous, right?

02:34:12.000 See, I mean, this is really fun for me now.

02:34:15.000 Well, that is the problem with so many bands the conflicting personalities.

02:34:19.000 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.

02:34:29.000 The stones are a lesson in how everyone should be.

02:34:34.000 Because we've all heard the stories about the stones.

02:34:37.000 We know there's problems here and there and everywhere and all that.

02:34:41.000 Yet they rose above that.

02:34:43.000 They just decided that, you know what?

02:34:45.000 Yeah, okay.

02:34:46.000 I don't like that guy over there tonight, but I'm just going to do this.

02:34:51.000 And they're all brothers when they're out there doing that.

02:34:54.000 And that's great.

02:34:57.000 I mean, there's times, let's say in war or whatever, where you have to kind of.

02:35:02.000 Subjugate your personal stuff for the greater good.

02:35:05.000 Yeah.

02:35:06.000 And that kind of what they do, the stones, God bless them.

02:35:06.000 Right?

02:35:10.000 I just think the thing is everybody wants to be the man.

02:35:14.000 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.

02:35:24.000 Yep.

02:35:26.000 I think that's pretty normal human nature.

02:35:29.000 And then that has to be dealt with.

02:35:32.000 Yeah.

02:35:34.000 Sometimes you can't, though.

02:35:36.000 Some people can't be reasoned with.

02:35:38.000 Some people just are not rational.

02:35:40.000 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.

02:35:48.000 They don't feel like they're getting what they deserve.

02:35:50.000 That's what it seems like.

02:35:51.000 I wanted to tell you a story about how I got into this in the first place.

02:35:55.000 Okay.

02:35:57.000 I told you about my mom noticing the music coming out of me.

02:36:03.000 One day she brought me home from.

02:36:06.000 Nursery school, where she was one of the helper teachers, I guess, one of the moms, you know, of the staff.

02:36:13.000 She brought me home and sat me down on a little chair.

02:36:17.000 Now I look back, it was a little ceremony.

02:36:19.000 She had a little yellow record, a kid's record, and it basically what she did was she played both sides of this little record.

02:36:29.000 One side was Oh Susanna, and the other side was Camp Town Races.

02:36:35.000 Do da, do da, you know, that one.

02:36:38.000 And then She asked me, Well, do you like this music?

02:36:42.000 I said, Yeah, Mom, these are cool songs, or whatever a kid says.

02:36:46.000 I really like these.

02:36:47.000 She says, Well, I'm going to play them again, Johnny.

02:36:49.000 She plays both songs, and she says, Do you know that Stephen Foster is the man that wrote both of these songs?

02:36:59.000 What do you mean, Ma?

02:37:00.000 She said, Well, Stephen Foster is a real person that wrote this music.

02:37:06.000 And I wanted you to know that these are his wonderful songs and that people do write songs.

02:37:14.000 And then she gave me the record that kind of became my little possession, right?

02:37:19.000 And I have reflected on that moment in my life for, I mean, I used to tell people, Why did she do that?

02:37:25.000 What in the world was she thinking, right?

02:37:28.000 And all through the years, That I was living at home with my mom, there'd be somebody on TV, there's Irving Berlin.

02:37:36.000 And I'd go, yeah, mom, hey, he's a songwriter.

02:37:39.000 Or she'd let me know Hoagie Carmichael was one of her favorites.

02:37:43.000 So he became one of my favorites, right?

02:37:46.000 And of course, on into the rock and roll era, as you notice, the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney, were writing these songs.

02:37:53.000 I mean, it just became a thing, a part of me.

02:37:57.000 And it all started back there with my mom and Stephen Foster.

02:38:04.000 Number one, he was a great songwriter.

02:38:06.000 So that lilt, that sort of kind of songwriting, he's also very corny.

02:38:15.000 I 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.

02:38:34.000 And those songs just sort of got infiltrated into my personality.

02:38:41.000 I mean, my mom, put it this way, I think I even talked it over with mom.

02:38:46.000 I feel like Stephen Foster could have written Proud Mary.

02:38:50.000 It seems like that territory.

02:38:53.000 Yeah.

02:38:54.000 Wow.

02:38:55.000 That's awesome.

02:38:56.000 I 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.

02:38:56.000 Right.

02:39:08.000 That's awesome.

02:39:09.000 That's awesome.

02:39:11.000 Listen, John, it's been an honor having you on.

02:39:13.000 Thank you very much.

02:39:14.000 I'm a gigantic fan.

02:39:15.000 So, for me, it was a real pleasure to get to talk to you.

02:39:18.000 Same here.

02:39:19.000 The story's fantastic.

02:39:20.000 Thank you very much.

02:39:21.000 And you're on tour.

02:39:23.000 Tell everybody where they can see you.

02:39:25.000 Oh, wow.

02:39:26.000 Well, you know, we are the Legacy Tour.

02:39:29.000 You may know I've just re recorded a lot of my old songs from the Credence time.

02:39:35.000 And I'm having a ball.

02:39:36.000 We're just all over.

02:39:37.000 Look at that.

02:39:38.000 Oh, there you go.

02:39:40.000 Wow.

02:39:40.000 That's awesome.

02:39:41.000 That's a picture from back in the day, of course.

02:39:43.000 What a cool album, too.

02:39:44.000 Does it really look like that?

02:39:45.000 Yeah.

02:39:46.000 Oh, nice.

02:39:49.000 That's sick.

02:39:50.000 I love it.

02:39:51.000 Beautiful.

02:39:52.000 Thank you, sir.

02:39:53.000 Really.

02:39:53.000 It was awesome.

02:39:53.000 Thank you very much.

02:39:54.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 17, 2026

Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript