The American songbook would be incomplete without John Fogerty.
Over just a four-year span from 1968 to 1972 with Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fogerty had one of the most legendary runs in music history, amassing a collection of hits it’d take many songwriters a lifetime to write. Among the iconic songs he wrote during that period are “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Down on the Corner,” “Fortunate Son,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “Someday Never Comes,” to name just a few.
It’s a catalog so prolific that as of this week, CCR’s greatest hits album has spent its 800th week on Billboard’s 200 albums chart, a record for the fifth longest run in the chart’s history. With that resume in mind, Fogerty was arguably the most notable snub from The New York Times’ 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters list, up there with the likes of Billy Joel, Tom Waits and Randy Newman. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to bother Fogerty all that much.
“I mean, I would’ve been shocked but a lot of people weren’t mentioned,” Fogerty says with a disarming calmness when asked about the snub on a recent phone call. “There’s only 30, and you have to be alive. It’s pretty tough.”
It’s a refreshingly even-keeled answer in a business practically built on legacy and ego. But Fogerty is at peace with his career at this point.
It also doesn’t hurt that he’s about to be honored with about as prestigious award a songwriter could possibly get this week, as the Songwriters Hall of Fame will bestow Fogerty with the Johnny Mercer award, the Hall’s biggest honor and a distinction that all but confirms him as one of the most important songwriters of all time.
Ahead of that honor on Thursday, which will also induct the likes of Taylor Swift, Alanis Morissette and Kenny Loggins and more, Fogerty spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how Swift inspired him to re-record his songs, pop’s lack of protest songs today and why after his decades-long fight to win back the rights to his music, he may be willing to sell.
So let’s start with the Johnny Mercer award. Congrats. I know you’ve received many honors in your time but I often hear recipients consider this one to be particularly special, it basically calls you one of the greatest songwriters ever. It’s a prestigious award.
I didn’t know there were any more awards. When they called, I happened to be on the tour bus, I was sitting at a little table looking straight at my wife. The Songwriters Hall of Fame told me about this highest honor, the Johnny Mercer award. It’s everything, it’s my whole life, it’s all of it that I’ve ever dreamed about, and they’re giving me this award, basically saying “you did a good job.” I admit that I looked at Julie, my wife, and my eyes started to tear up, I was really taken aback. It took my breath away.
I grew up learning about all the songwriters that have come before me. Some people call it standing on the shoulders of giants, my mother had pointed songwriters out to me as a very young kid. We’d talk about songwriters like Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael. Then of course in my teen years I’d learn about Lennon and McCartney, Carole King.
I’m sure getting an honor like this forces you to be introspective and look back on your work. What do you think is the best lyric you ever wrote?
There’s one I quote in my family, especially to my wife sometimes, I wrote a song called “Mystic Highway.” It’s all about the idea of a mystical highway out in the universe we’re all traveling on. I picture a man on his family kind of weary. They’re on this highway that leads you probably to the great light we’re all seeking.
Anyway, this wasn’t a big hit song or something, but it was an idea I’d thought about for a long time and I finally put it on an album with I Wrote a Song For Everyone. The lyric on the song is “without knowing where I’m going, probably get there anyway.” I just love that. I still see it that way, and it makes me chuckle.
What do you think is your most overlooked song?
Probably “Weeping in the Promised Land.” I wrote the title to that song years and years ago in a song book I’ve kept from the ’60s, I wrote the title back then somewhere. It sounded really biblical to me, and it sounded really sad. I didn’t know what to do with it until Covid and the lockdown and Trump-dot-one.
It’s a protest song, you reference George Floyd and “I Can’t Breathe” there. A lot of folks ask these days why there aren’t more protest songs anymore. I’m curious your thoughts given you’re responsible for a lot of the most iconic protest songs in pop culture.
That’s a very good question. I mean, obviously Bruce [Springsteen] is still doing it. But the way Donald Trump has handled his insecurities or deficiencies is he turns it into a big fear game. Instead of working on things like policy and maybe fixing the economy — healthcare, civil rights all that good stuff that needs repair — he punishes his enemies.
It puts people in fear of their job, I guess. I think there should be more young songwriters kind of expressing a carefree attitude about such things, you know, when you’re young, you’ve got a whole lifetime to make mistakes and still catch up. I don’t know, maybe their record companies don’t like them to, I don’t really have an answer.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. Clearly you and Bruce have still felt you can. Those were the defining songs of a generation, I can’t think of protest track that has been similarly defining now.
It doesn’t get embraced by society as a whole but the kids still know. I’ll mention one aspect that ticks me off. When the Israeli government started really having pretty harsh treatment to the Palestinians in Gaza, the kids, the young people in our country, reacted. It was wonderful to see. It’s great. Instinctively, they understood and they were filling spaces on college campuses where they could protest. This happened during the Biden administration of all things. I suppose we have a pretty ongoing connection with Israel, and our government chose to try to squelch the protests.
I think of the protest songs of the ’60s and ’70s and of course would think of “Ohio” and Kent State if we talk about protests on college campuses. Thankfully no one was killed this time.
The kids could see something that was just really wrong. I’m sure the young people in Israel probably felt the same way. The kids were right all along. Just because the leader of Israel chooses to use his government in a way that probably isn’t reflective of his own population … I don’t like our guy either.
Going back to the songs, I was surprised you weren’t listed on the New York Times‘ list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. It was one of the most notable omissions. Do you have any thoughts?
The funny thing is that everybody sees this through their own lens. There were all kinds of other really deserving people that weren’t on that list either. It happens. Rolling Stone releases a list of the greatest records of all time. As time goes on, the records that I love or the artists that I love, more and more of them would be dropped away for newer things because the voters get younger and they vote for what they like. It’s kind of a natural progression.
Speaking further your peers, it’s still so interesting that while so many hitmakers sold their catalogs, you bought yours. Obviously you had turmoil for years with your songs. When you see others selling for $200 million, does it make you wonder if you’d sell now?
Yeah, when you find out there’s a number attached to something you have. Gosh, $200 million buys a lot of rice and beans. I had to live so much of my life not owning my own songs. It was of course a tragedy but it was a part of me. It was like a plaid shirt I had to wear. It was horrible. I felt so bad about that for so long, that I was hoodwinked. I felt like a fool. There was a big dishonest cheater at the center of it.
Now that I do own it, people started calling me right away asking if I’d sell. It was like “No! I’d tried so hard to own it all these years!” I think Bob Dylan had a really good take on it, he seemed to not want his kids fighting over a song. It’s too awful to have your kids struggling over. It’s a lot simpler to cash it out and put the money somewhere, hopefully some estate planning. It’s hard enough for the guy who wrote it himself.
So in your lifetime, is that what you see yourself doing too?
Yeah, and that’d be the main motivation. Also, I have a very good life, don’t get me wrong. I ended up with a golden ticket, I have no right to complain. But it’d probably be a good idea for me as a family man to sell the stuff while I still have time to enjoy the benefits of such a big nest egg.
And this time you can choose who a good steward for the music would be instead of that decision being made for you.
Exactly. You can tell by the way I talk about it, it’s rather professorial, it’s kind of an academic exercise. I’m not running around having a fire sale. “Proud Mary” is still very personal to me, but having watched other very famous and great songwriters sell their catalogs and to see them go on with their life, they still sing their songs, they still enjoy them.
Those songs are still attached emotionally to them, that sort of gives you the model of how it goes.
Going back to the ceremony, you’re getting your honor the same night as Taylor Swift’s induction. I know that the tactics with Taylor’s versions have played at least some influence on you doing the re-records last year, she had the drama with her catalog too. Have you ever spoken to her about all this? Would you want to when you’re both in New York?
I have felt very close to Taylor for years and years because I have a daughter, Kelsey, who was, 7, 8, 9 years old early in in Taylor’s career. Taylor is something I shared with my daughter, countless hours of listening and marveling over the wonderful songs. Every time a new album would come, we would listen and I’d shake my head, so many great songs.
We’ve gone to a few Taylor concerts together and got to meet her together at a meet and greet. We’ve talked about music that way, but I wasn’t specific with Taylor Swift. I didn’t talk it with over with her. But I sure understood her re-records, and I also felt her pain and the motivation for doing them in the first place. She was quite able to purchase the ownership of the masters, and somebody very capriciously sold them to someone else, and that was terrible. I understand. It’s great she got them back. Doing my re-records now was a pretty wonderful thing for me, and of course, the inspiration was certainly partly because of what Taylor did.
You sounded great on the re-records by the way. Replicating ’60s John Fogerty isn’t easy but I thought it was impressive.
The blessed thing about this was that I got to do it with my two boys. It was a whole family affair, my daughters were around and of course Julie was in the studio watching this. My son Shane, who’s an awesome guitar player, I had him play the iconic licks I had done way back when. It was a sharing thing.
Especially after all the drama, I’m sure that’s relieving. It’s like you get to see the end of your own biopic in a way with this Hollywood ending. You couldn’t write a better coda.
That’s very perceptive. Julie was really the instigator in all that. She understood somehow way down instinctively what would come if we did this. It certainly gave me a much happier and mellower frame of reference now for all these songs. Hearing them on the radio and understanding their place in culture I suppose. I certainly feel really good about it now. When I look at her, I just think “did she know this all along?” It’s one of those mystical things that comes about in a marriage.
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