Just tryin’ to catch up

Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

Who: John Fogerty

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Where: The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road

Admission: $55 general, $85 reserved seating, $150 gold circle, from The Joint's box office

Info: 693-5000 or www.hardrockhotel.com

He calls his latest album "Revival," an allusion to the '60s and his old rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival.

But for 62-year-old John Fogerty, it has deeper meaning, a reawakening, a revival of a career that has burned hot and turned cold over the past four decades, with long periods of dormancy while fighting legal battles.

Fogerty performs Sunday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.

He grew up in El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area. He and his brother Tom, Doug Clifford and Stu Cook formed a group called Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets, which eventually became Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Creedence released its first, self-titled album in 1968 and began turning out hit after hit, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary," "Fortunate Son," "Up Around the Bend," "Lodi," "Green River," "Bad Moon Rising" and "Who'll Stop the Rain."

"Revival" was released in October.

"The first song, 'Don't You Wish It Was True,' is pretty much an upbeat, hopeful song," Fogerty says from his home in Los Angeles. "Basically it has nothing to do with the current state of affairs in the world. It's a desire or wish for a better place."

Fogerty stands by his convictions. Although Creedence performed at Woodstock in 1969, he was unhappy with the band's performance and wouldn't give permission for it to be included in the documentary film "Woodstock."

The band split up in the early '70s amid a lot of turmoil among the members. Fogerty, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, launched a solo career but spent much time and money on lawsuits, including one involving the former head of Fantasy Records. Another lawsuit, which Fogerty won, involved a copyright infringement.

Fogerty dropped out of the business in 1993, but returned in '97 with "Blue Moon Swamp," which won the Grammy for Best Rock Album.

In 2004 he released "Deja Vu (All Over Again)," the title song an indictment of the Iraq war as another Vietnam. That same year he supported John Kerry for president.

Q. Creedence Clearwater Revival rose to prominence in the 60s, at a time of much turmoil in the country over the war in Vietnam. Why are people not marching in the streets today over Iraq?

The big difference, at least for right now, is there's no draft. I'm pretty sure if there were a draft, these kids would be involved. I'm not a George Bush fan, so I see things from a certain perspective. I believe that they made it their plan to avoid all the trouble by not having a draft, just taking all the National Guard and Army Reserve guys.

Do the songs in your current album have a political theme?

The second song on the album is called "Gunslinger." It has a Western theme, but it's a parable. It could have been back in the olden times, in Rome or the Middle Ages or whatever, but the story line is basically about a small Western town that used to be a decent place, filled with hardworking people. But now they've been taken over or run over by a gang - hoodlums, outlaws, whatever, I don't quite specify - so that the honest, decent people are all now hiding behind locked doors, afraid to speak their mind. The chorus is the line, "I think we need a gunslinger, somebody tough to tame this town." I'm really not taking a liberal or conservative view. I'm just saying we landed on troubled times and some bad guys have taken over and the honest folks need somebody strong and just to come in and clean up the place.

Do you see a lack of leadership?

Yeah. We've got negative leadership coming from the administration and you'd think there would be a clear response to it. I happen to be a liberal left of center myself and I'm pretty disappointed in the Democrats, especially the way they've been not doing anything about the war in Iraq when they had a perfect opportunity, at least a couple of times now. They just can't seem to get it together and send one clear message.

Maybe the message theyre sending is theyre afraid to lose their jobs?

Exactly.

Are you politically active?

I don't run around in the streets with a sign. I'm a family man with four kids under my roof and I'm much too busy. I get up at 5 o'clock to get my kids to school. My little girl will turn 6 in October. We have a couple of boys, 14 and 15, and a daughter, 23. They keep me active.

Do they like your music?

The two boys, they're in the ninth and 10th grades, they both play guitar and have friends who are musicians, so they know drummers, guitar players, bass players and they play classic rock. They all live and breathe classic rock - Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, the Beatles, the Stones, Creedence. You name it. It's so funny, that's what they love and those are the records they play.

Do you spend a lot of time discussing music with them?

Oh, sure. There have been a couple of occasions where they've had to work up a set of two or three songs and perform them in front of people, sort of a course at school they were taking and a lot of their friends took it. I would sort of help them. I didn't make their musical choices but I would help them rehearse and give them pointers, especially about being more organized and being as tight as possible musically, sounding like a band. Me and my boys will sit on a couch sometimes and they'll play me a lick that they've heard or they'll ask me to listen to something and show them how it goes, that kind of thing. But I'm not steering the ship by any means. This is their choice and their music. I don't want to wreck it by getting too involved. I think it's curious that's what they enjoy. They don't like disco or rap or current pop. They went right back to when bands were bands. I didn't do it on purpose.

Its a tough career. Would you encourage them to pursue it?

It's a very heartbreaking world ... I'm not going to fill them full of horror stories, but what I will do is make sure they go to college and have a real career to fall back on.

With all the ways to download music, how can a musician make it today?

There you go. I'm so happy for myself that at least I'm semifamous. I don't know what it would be like for an 18-year-old who loves music and just really wants to play and be in a band. Like you say, with all the file downloading and stuff it's a real good trick to figure out how you're going to earn a living.

How is your career going? Are you touring a lot these days?

I'm doing that, but for a long time I didn't, of course. It seems like since 1997 I started to pick up steam. I had an album out, "Blue Moon Swamp," and I toured for two years, in '97 and '98. Then I toured in 2000 and made a new album called "Deja Vu" in '04 and toured, really, much of 2004, 2005, 2006 and this year, mainly around the summer months. And here I am with a new album. I should tell you this new album is really, really good. When I listened to it I said, "Wow, where have you been?" It's very reminiscent of my early career.

Any regrets? Would you have done anything differently?

(Laughter) I would change everything. Are you kidding? It's been heartbreaking. The main thing is I would probably pick different people to be in a band with. Probably better advice, I would have a lawyer for my father or mother. Get all the legal advice I could, first, before I ever walked into a record company. Then I would make sure that I toured almost nonstop, toured all the time, rather than - in my life I've had these 10-year gaps a couple of times. It's been hard to keep the fan base going. They just sort of drift off to the latest and greatest when you stay away for a decade.

What did you do in the downtimes?

Much of the downtime was spent battling legal issues with the record company. That whole world - it's great that we have a legal system to have some semblance of justice, but I don't know. Gosh, all you've got to do is look at some of these celebrity cases and the way they turn out. Half the time you scratch your head and you go, "Wow, I never saw that one coming." It seems like people who are caught dead to rights get away with it. And then the reverse happens - some poor guy gets stuck in the system and goes to jail for 15 years and he didn't do it. There's not a lot of good laws to protect young musicians. It's mostly the older lawyers and the companies who kind of have that world on their side. It's tilted toward business. The poor young teenage songwriter is going to find himself overwhelmed by a bunch of shrewd cookies.

Whats in your future?

I feel like a kid with a whole lot to prove, and probably the reason I feel that way is that I was missing so long. I don't know how many records I've made in my whole career, including the Creedence time - it's only something like 14 or 15 in a 40-year career. I know people who have made 50, 60 albums in that time. I'm anxious to make a lot more music and do a lot more touring. I really get a kick out of performing for people. Because I wasn't out there for so long, there are entire continents I haven't yet been to.

archive