SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
When John Fogerty came to NPR's Tiny Desk, right off the bat, he struck one of the most iconic guitar chords in rock music history.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
JOHN FOGERTY: One, two, three, four.
You know, "Proud Mary" was the first good song I wrote.
(LAUGHTER)
FOGERTY: (Singing) Left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day.
DETROW: Fogerty told the crowd he wrote the song in less than an hour.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
FOGERTY: One day, I found my honorable discharge on the stairs to my apartment house. Remember, this is probably June or July of 1968, right in the height of the Vietnam War. And phew. Boy, that's a whole 'nother thing. But anyway, I opened the - my discharge up, and I was really, really, really happy, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
FOGERTY: So I'd been in the Reserves for about three years. And I went right in the house, picked up my Rickenbacker guitar, started strumming, and the very first line that came out of me was, left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day.
DETROW: After Fogerty and his band finished playing, we sat down to talk more about "Proud Mary" and the songwriting process. Fogerty told me the song's memorable title had come first, all on its own. No lyrics or music.
FOGERTY: When I got off of active duty, came home to Bay Area, San Francisco, and decided I needed to get more organized, more professional in my approach to songwriting. So I went and got a little binder and started. The job was I thought I was going to write songs in there. And one day, the words proud Mary came to me. I didn't even know what it meant, but that was the very first entry in the book.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
JOHN FOGERTY AND UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.
DETROW: A year later, when he got that honorable discharge, inspiration struck.
FOGERTY: When I was singing in that little burst of energy, rolling, rolling, rolling on the river, I knew that was pretty good thing to have in a song. It just felt really good to do. So I - wow. What is this song going to be about? I went - for the first time, I went to the book, opened it up, and there on the first page, it was proud Mary.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: And I saw that, and I went, oh, proud Mary sounds like the name of a river boat. Wow. Proud - OK, this song's about a river boat.
DETROW: That's it.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN FOGERTY SONG, "CHANGE IN THE WEATHER")
DETROW: I had wanted to keep talking to Fogerty after his Tiny Desk, which is out now, because so many of his songs had become intertwined with American culture and American history. You can't think of the '60s or '70s - the Vietnam War, specifically - without hearing a little bit of the band he fronted, Creedence Clearwater Revival, in your mind. After a decades-long battle over ownership of those songs, Fogerty finally won. He rerecorded many of them and released them in a new album last summer.
You said during the Tiny Desk that you had a unique legal strategy of outliving everybody else in the conflict. How did it feel to have that resolved and to have these back in your full rights possession?
FOGERTY: It was a shocking bit of freedom to my - I'm sure I don't quite understand it all, even yet. It's been a few years. But I do know there's such a pride within my soul and my wife, especially, because we did this together. She really is the one that made this happen, my dear Julie. But the feeling - you know, I was proud of the songs I wrote, but I didn't own them. I felt like a sucker. So owning, let's say "Proud Mary," which, you know, I'm very proud of that song. I think it's a great song. And it just has sort of opened things in my spirit that are very freeing now.
DETROW: And then at that moment, you decide to rerecord many of them. I'm wondering if any of them felt fundamentally different to you after decades of life, after decades of playing them, after decades of the way that some of this music has become totally ingrained in our pop culture and even our understanding of the 1960s. Does any of that make its way into your relationship with the songs?
FOGERTY: I probably don't understand the impact in the way that you're talking about it.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: My relationship to my songs is I remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I was writing them.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: And I get to sing them every night, and I get to sing them with my family, which is - that is the most awesome feeling I could ever tell you about.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
FOGERTY: (Singing) Way out here in the cotton, sun beating down so hard. Sweat rolling off of this shovel, digging in the devil's boneyard. Sure like a cool drink of water...
DETROW: So what's next for you? Are you going to keep working your way through your catalog? Have you figured out what comes next?
FOGERTY: That's a possibility. The coolest thing that happened that I never realized what happened was the intense pride I got recreating these songs with my children, with Tyler and Shane and even the other kids in my family, because they would show up at the studio and help out. And the part that was sort of a mystery is, you know, long time ago, when I was 23 or so, I recorded these songs just trying to make them the best that I knew how at the time. Now, all these years later, they not only had to be the best I could do, but they also had to live up to or sound like the original. That was the way we chose to go.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: Rather than doing, you know, Hawaiian folk versions of...
DETROW: (Laughter).
FOGERTY: ...I don't know, "Fortunate Son" or something, you know?
DETROW: With a ukulele.
FOGERTY: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So that taskmaster of trying to really sound like the original was quite a mysterious thing to bring about. In many cases, it meant actually using the very same equipment.
DETROW: Oh, wow. Was that easier or harder with all the ways that recording has changed and gotten more digital over the years, compared to...
FOGERTY: Oh, boy. I run away from...
DETROW: ...You know, the first time you were doing those?
FOGERTY: I run away from digital...
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: ...You know? I think in some ways it certainly helped - it helped you keep something that maybe wasn't an entire take that was great, that maybe...
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: You know, those kind of things. Or it helped you more easily do a fix musically. But that wasn't the point, really. To me, looking back now, the point was showing my own kids, my family what it takes, you know? I mean, like, I'm like the old shoemaker, the cobbler. This nail goes here, you see? And then you put a stitch there, you know, and that kind of thing.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: And that I feel very proud of because that doesn't get talked about a lot. And with very good DNA running in my family...
DETROW: Yeah.
FOGERTY: ...It was a joy to be part of that particular effort because we all - we just - we all learned a lot. It was really nice.
DETROW: Yeah. Well, John Fogerty, thank you for playing the Tiny Desk and thank you for talking to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. We really appreciate it.
FOGERTY: Thank you, Scott. Great to be here. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
FOGERTY: (Singing) I want to know, have you ever seen the rain? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
