Fortunate Son

by John Fogerty

  And these were the guys who were going to be hearing my new songs.

  I remember writing “The Old Man Down the Road” like it was yesterday. I was in my little room in Albany, playing this Washburn Falcon guitar. I had special-ordered it. Later I got a couple more and they weren’t the same. This one was exactly right. It’s the guitar on the album.

  The first time you pick up the guitar on any given day, you’re not all warmed up. Your brain is off somewhere else. You’re in standby mode. So you noodle. I had the guitar plugged into a cool little tube amp that had a slightly overdriven sound. And I’m doing my swamp stuff. Suddenly I went dear dear dernt dernt dernt. There are lots and lots of guitar players and writers in the world. Great ones. I’ve always thought one thing that sets me apart is that I can recognize a good riff, a good line, or a good melody from just a little snippet.

  Let’s say I’m off somewhere jamming. You play something—and you recognize that it’s something you can sink your teeth into. You know it’s strong enough to do again. It’s a statement. You restate it, to let everybody know that you know. (Albert King was the master of this.) If you play it a third time, you alter it a bit to let everybody know that you can edit yourself on the fly. In a nanosecond you make the decision: “Yeah, that’s not the whole thing—that’s the beginning of the thing.” It needs the comeback, the response, the answer. Are you going to play the same notes or something new? All the while you know you’re never going to feel like this again. There’s only one time that’s the first time.

  You’re also hoping the next thing you do on that guitar is the right move. The wrong thing and you’re probably going to have to come back tomorrow. You lose the immediacy of the moment, and maybe the whole thing.

  When I came up with “The Old Man Down the Road,” my brain was cooking before I said a word. The first thing I played might’ve been an accident, but my brain knew immediately that it was crying out for that something extra to make it a great riff. I’m suspended there. I’m waiting, hoping that the next thing I do will be the answer, the one-in-a-million group of notes that is just right to complete the riff. And suddenly it comes, I play… dernt dernt dear dear dear dear. I’ve got it! It’s a riff! Finally I played a little rhythm on my special E7 chord and I thought, Okay, maybe this could be a song.

  My title notebook was right there—I’d never stopped jotting ideas in it—and I thumbed through it and saw “Somewhere Down the Road.” I don’t know how quickly I went away from that one after I’d first seen it written it down—was it right then? Five minutes later? A day?

  Coming back to it, something in my brain still said that it was a little lame. That it seemed too generic. Vague. Not ominous. So, what was somewhere down the road? The old man doesn’t have to be human. It can be the devil, it can be evil, it can just be a bad wind. The old man. And he’s down the road, for sure. So I was off and running.

  The curious thing about it is, I went back to my notebook months later, and “Somewhere Down the Road” is not written in there. I went through it page by page. It’s just not there. So weird. Same with another song, “Change in the Weather.” Maybe I have one of these notebooks full of shape-shifters, where whatever I need to see, it’s there. Then I close the book and it’s gone! That certainly blew my mind. How else to explain it?

  People thought “Old Man” was about Saul Zaentz. Not when I wrote it, though there were times when I sang it later that I thought of Saul—but not the way you might think. One day I was driving down the freeway and “The Old Man Down the Road” came on the Top 40 radio station for the first time. There are no words to describe how I felt besides overjoyed. After being chained to the rack in Saul’s dungeon for so many years, I was so happy, like a little kid. The song ended and I said, “Ha! Take that, old man!” Okay, it wasn’t as clean as that. “Take that, you fuckin’ old man!” It was a catharsis. As I told one writer at the time who asked, “This is more than a comeback. This is a triumph over evil!”

  “Rock and Roll Girls” was inspired by watching my twelve-year-old daughter, Laurie, and her best friend hanging out. That’s what I’d call them—the Rock and Roll Girls. I was writing about teenagers, how they have their own world that they’re not telling Pop about. It was all fairly innocent. I’m quite sure people thought of that other vision of rock and roll girls, the ones you might find in a Mötley Crüe video, but for me it never was. Musically, I was referring to “Wild Weekend” by the Rockin’ Rebels. I don’t think of it as stealing—more a case of honoring. I still had to make a real song out of it. I’m a sucker for that sound. At the end of “Wild Weekend” the drummer gets lost—he’s hitting the backbeat on the downbeat. That poor, unfortunate drummer. Maybe he got better later.

  “Searchlight” came from a trip to Lake Havasu on the Arizona-California border. Driving down the highway, I saw a road sign: “Searchlight nine miles.” So I wrote that down in the book. It was also one of those first-thing-in-the-morning inspirations. I remember playing it on guitar in my studio and going to that place where you concentrate and relax at the same time. I hit this swampy, mournful chord: “Oh, the midnight / Need a searchlight.” Mo Ostin liked how I pronounced it “soichlight.” He got a big kick out of that. I liked how that sounded. I didn’t know what it meant. Still don’t. In “Searchlight” there are lyrical and emotional references to one of my favorite songs, “Endless Sleep.” But my song, it’s about being lost. The metaphor was me.

  The one-man band was so difficult to do. There were times when it felt literally impossible. Once I’d finally nail an arrangement, I’d really have to know how long the parts were going to be. I couldn’t just nod at some other guy and go, “Take it!” Nowadays, with digital recording, you can edit very quickly. In those days, you were stuck. If you were wrong or changed your mind, you had to start all over again—which I did many times. It was so unwieldy. Cumbersome. In the back of my mind I was still hoping that somebody would just walk in with a great producer, and boom, it would all be done for me. I’d be like Sinatra and I wouldn’t have to do anything but open my mouth and sing.

  There were a total of nine songs on Centerfield, and at one point I had six pretty much done. I was really having trouble with the song “Centerfield.” The drums weren’t good, which was always the sticking point. I had gone so far as to use a drum machine but have my real snare vibrate along with it so it sounded more lively and real than a stinkin’ machine. I went through that process, made a drum track that way, played a guitar to it, and in the end I listened and said, “Ouch… that sucks.”

  At that point I thought, I’ve got to go down to Burbank and see Lenny. I need to know if I’m on the right track or not. Is this one-man band going to work when I get it done, or is it… stupid? So I took working tapes of six songs, leaving out the three songs I didn’t feel were finished. I know that “Centerfield” and “Zanz Kant Danz” were two of them.

  That trip was nerve-racking. I still remember that I flew out of San Francisco from gate 35—a lucky number for me. I thought, Wow, okay—it’s an omen. I was hanging on to any glimmer of hope. Turns out I really did have my game together, though I didn’t know it quite yet.

  I went to Warners with my hat in my hand. I didn’t know what the reaction would be. I was ready to get kicked in the teeth again, like the Hoodoo rejection.

  Lenny was the perfect guy for me to see that day. He’s very demonstrative, and he really liked what I played for him. You could see it in his reaction. He let you know! And at some point at the end of the meeting, Lenny said, “Oh man, this is really in the ballpark.” At that point he didn’t even know the album was going to be called Centerfield!

  Centerfield was okay after that. I went back home with happy vibes and got it done. I recorded the album tracks at the Record Plant in Sausalito. They gave me a rate because I was in this room they really didn’t use a lot. It had been Sly Stone’s. They called it the Pit. The cost of making that whole album was $35,000.

  Jeffrey Norma
n (or Norton, as we called him) was an incredibly great engineer. We had the room set up like a band was actually there—bass, drums, guitar—but I was the only one playing. I’d go in each day to make a basic track, and they just fell down one at a time, just like if a real band had walked in. I had two different kick drums, each for a specific kind of song. I had tried every drumhead I could find on each of those drums, searching for the best sound. No, I wasn’t a great drummer, but I sure was into tone. I realize now that I was probably over-anal about everything, but God, so much was at stake then.

  Recording that album went by in a whoosh. I was so prepared, down to having notes on the different amp settings I used. I had gone through all that in my studio in Albany so I wouldn’t have to worry. I knew each part that needed to be played. On “Searchlight” I was the horn section. We set ’em all up and I played ’em. As I laid down the third horn, Norton said, “Man, this is awesome—you could hire out as a horn section!” At least to his ears it was sounding good, which made me feel fantastic. I wasn’t a great horn player or a great drummer. I got good enough to carry the song—but that’s all. It never went past that, y’know?

  Making a record the one-man-band way is like slow-motion photography. It takes thirty-seven days to get two seconds of film. I don’t want to do that anymore. I really don’t. I wouldn’t play drums now either. Although I got very good at tuning them.

  There was a time in the seventies and eighties when recording in the studio, with all the layering and overdubbing, became almost scientific. The records people made then sounded perfect. As a one-man band I was always thinking, Oh, it’s got to be precise. That was the approach then by everyone. When I play Centerfield songs with my band now, they’re looser, have more personality. I like that better, since to me that’s the songs coming alive.

  I thought I was really tempting fate by doing a rock and roll song about baseball. It hadn’t happened before. Okay, there was a song called “Say Hey (the Willie Mays Song)” by the Treniers, but that really wasn’t about baseball. It was about Willie. The two don’t fit, never did. I wanted to do it anyway. I deeply love both. I love the way that old times are revered in baseball, all the record keeping.… The first book I ever read was Lou Gehrig: Boy of the Sandlots. Because I could run, I was an athletic kid, but I didn’t hit the ball a long way. And I couldn’t throw a lick. In the third grade we had to write an essay on what we would do if we were president. At the end of mine, I said that I wasn’t just going to throw out the first ball at the World Series: I was going to pitch the first three innings!

  The fact that “Centerfield” became an actual radio hit was great, but watching the song get adopted by baseball fans and Little Leagues was incredible. When my boys were in Little League, we got to hear it during our warm-ups. Awesome. I remember being up in Troy on a hunting trip in the fall of 1985. There’s only one commercial business there, a little café, and I was sitting there pretty much anonymous in my hunting garb, getting a burger. The World Series was on the TV, and as it went into the commercials they played “Centerfield.” More than once. I was looking around, kind of happy and kind of hiding at the same time. The waitress came up and said, “John, isn’t that your song?” And I whispered, “Pretty cool, huh?” Nobody knew but us. I could hardly contain myself.

  And then in 2010, to have the song honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown? Unbelievable. I didn’t want to look like an interloper when I was onstage with all those guys. I was so unworthy! My family got to meet Willie Mays, who I mention in the song. And Mr. October, Reggie Jackson—to actually meet him? He was so nice! For a day I’d gotten to live the dream. I even loaned Slugger, my baseball bat guitar, to the hall of fame. It’s been such an amazing journey for that song, that album—and for me.

  I was vehemently against music videos then. It’s still all so weird to me now. I was like the guy standing in the doorway, trying to keep computers out—“No! No!” I just felt that a music video told people what the pictures in the song are. They have no chance to imagine. Now, most musicians like me would kill to have millions of people watching a video of my song. It’s what you call a marketing tool.

  I’ve only made a handful of videos—I kind of missed the wave. The video for “The Old Man Down the Road” was just one shot following my very long guitar cord through the woods, past all these various characters. You didn’t see me until the very end, and then only briefly. Pretty cool.

  Jeff Ayeroff was the guy at Warners in charge of that project. I could never quite figure out what he did. Jeff was an idea guy. I actually told Jeff that making a music video was like polishing a turd. He didn’t love that comment. What a smart-ass I was then.

  John Fogerty’s All-Stars, the special I did for Showtime in 1985, was really my first concert since Creedence. We did that in front of a small, invited audience. I handpicked the band, utilizing some of my favorite players: Booker T. Jones, Duck Dunn, Prairie Prince, Albert Lee, and Steve Douglas. It was so great bouncing ideas back and forth with Lenny.

  Doing the zydeco song “My Toot Toot” with its author, Rockin’ Sidney, down in Crowley, Louisiana, was my idea. That was absolutely wonderful. Sidney was cool. He was really a keyboard player, not an accordion player. He had made that song (and that album) in his bedroom with a drum machine. He did it just like I did it—“Okay, I need an accordion part.” Necessity is the mother of invention.

  I remember walking into a Safeway grocery store in Bullhead City, Arizona, after Centerfield came out, and they had a little sign taped up. Instead of “Rutabagas, ninety-nine cents,” it was a homemade blurb for Centerfield: “It’s a wonderful thing that John Fogerty has been able to make this album after many years of struggles.” I was reading this and thinking, Where did this person… find out about all that? A lot of people seemed to understand what it had taken to get across the finish line. Centerfield was a wonderful vindication, and a big success. The album went to number one, which is unbelievable. There were three hits on that album and it was critically acclaimed. It was one of those moments, like the Boston Red Sox finally winning the World Series after a hundred years.

  I enjoyed the Centerfield euphoria, and then, out of nowhere, I started to get really… angry. Instead of being happy and overjoyed, I was pissed off and sad. Disturbed. And unhappy. To the point where somebody could say some little thing to me and I would break down in tears. Have a meltdown.

  I thought to myself, I should be enjoying this. Everything I have prayed for, I finally accomplished. I didn’t even understand it myself. Imagine you were wrongly imprisoned for years and years and years, wasting your life away. Then one day they discover the mistake and set you free. You walk out into a beautiful, enchanted meadow. The birds are singing, the little animals are frolicking, sweet music is playing. But then you turn around and see the horrible dungeon that kept you imprisoned for so long. And you think about the people responsible. The anger is almost overwhelming. Because the whole imprisonment thing was just so wrong.

  Looking back, I think the obvious thing that triggered my unhappiness was that Saul was suing me. Not once, but twice. I found out about it one day at Warner Bros. By that time I had set up a little rehearsal space there. Lenny said to me, “That guy at your old record company is making waves about ‘The Old Man Down the Road.’ They’re saying it’s too much like ‘Green River.’” (At first they were comparing it to “Green River,” not “Run Through the Jungle,” as they did later.) Since Saul owned the copyrights on the Creedence songs, he was suing me for plagiarizing myself. Lame. Yeah, it’s swamp rock and has the same feel, but it’s a different song! Most people liked the fact that “The Old Man Down the Road” reminded them of Creedence. Fantasy just wanted to own anything I did that was successful, period. I didn’t take it seriously at first. I just thought that Saul was being vindictive.

  Saul was also suing me for $140 million over defamation of character, due to the last song on Centerfield: “Zanz Kant Danz,” about a “lit
tle pig” named Zanz. The lyrics go, “Zanz can’t dance / But he’ll steal your money.”

  I actually wrote it in the aftermath of Hoodoo. Joe Smith had called to check on me days after rejecting the album. I was telling him about my troubles with Fantasy, and he mentioned how the Kinks had written a song about some guy who screwed them, and they got it out of their system that way. We said good-bye, and as I went to hang up the phone, the words “Zanz Kant Danz” popped into my head. I ran to my studio and wrote it down. It was as instantaneous as that. Thanks, Joe. It was therapeutic. Warners actually made a Claymation video for the song (done by Will Vinton, who did the California Raisins commercials). This video featured dancing pigs.

  Warner Bros. seemed to be taking the suit seriously—to the extent that they wanted me to change the song. Saul was demanding that we remove it from the album. No way was I going to do that. Warners felt that by changing the song slightly I’d be avoiding a major headache; otherwise, a court might prevent any more copies from being sold before the suit was settled. You never know how some judge is going to rule, and I’d had enough of that crap in my life, so I listened to the lawyers. I can be bullheaded at times when I really think I’m right. Stubborn. But there’s times when I’m also easygoing—“Yeah, you guys are probably right.”

  Now the first 250,000 copies of the album, which have “Zanz,” are collector’s items, since I went back and rerecorded the vocal parts so it was “Vanz Kant Danz” instead of “Zanz.”

  After Centerfield, I began feeling the urge to write new songs and make a new record. My office at Warners was downstairs in the basement, where I wouldn’t bother anybody. It was a little room, and I brought in some recording equipment, had a guitar and a couple of synthesizers. At night, after everybody went home, I could make all the noise I wanted. It was very liberating. I wrote an awful lot of the music for Eye of the Zombie right there. Strange location, but creative.