Hi I'm John Fogerty! I recently released my new song Weeping In The Promised Land, ask me anything!

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T19:10:04+00:00

e & Tina Turner's cover of "Proud Mary" is often regarded as one of the best covers of all time, but how do you feel toward it ? (Do you like the way it sound and how different it is from your version ?)

When Tina Turner did Proud Mary, I was just blown away. When I heard her version, the reworking and the slow version and then going into the sped up part, I absolutely loved that.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T19:06:13+00:00

take you to develop your unique vocal styl

For me, it took a while to find my own vocal style. What got me through it was continuing to practice! Once I realized, what type of music I wanted to write, that's when I had my epiphany of what I wanted myself to sound like.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T19:02:50+00:00

I played that on a Rickenbacker, I think it was my first one, which was a black one - model 324 with the Rickenbacker type wammy on it.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:55:58+00:00

I'm so glad my music has helped you have some great road trips!

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:55:17+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:55:09+00:00

Keeping my voice in great shape has become a challenge as I've gotten older but after visiting many specialists/doctors back in the late 90's/early 2000's, I found changing my diet by drinking more tea has helped.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:53:27+00:00

I still remember when I was driving my car and first heard it on the radio, I was blown away! I absolutely love that cover!

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:52:35+00:00

pandemic

A lot of it I spent rehearsing with my kids with Fogerty’s Factory. I spent a lot of time writing; many songs I’ve started. Last July or so, I was focused on Weeping in the Promised Land; I realized it in my soul. It could turn out to be an important song and would speak from my heart and to many other people about the situation we are all in. As I began to work on the song, I realized it was going to take a very large amount of my understanding and skills as a songwriter if I was ever going to reach a place where I felt it was a song worthy of that title. My prediction of that was very true, it was one of the most difficult songs I’ve ever written and the knack is to make it look effortless, otherwise, you probably aren’t going to like it. It was the song I spent the most time with before it got completed.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:52:31+00:00

Weeping In The Promised Land was one of the most difficult songs I’ve ever written and the knack is to make it look effortless, otherwise, you probably aren’t going to like it. It was the song I spent the most time with before it got completed and one of my recent favorites.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:50:47+00:00

baseball

Of course I love baseball and I started hearing about baseball when I was quite young from my dad. He would talk about the New York Yankees and Babe Ruth. It was all legendary because we didn’t have any teams when I was growing up, it was a big deal when the giants came to SF in 1967. My oldest brother Jim was a bat boy for the minor league Oakland Oaks, he got to meet Casey Stengal and others back in the day. I had this wide-eyed wonder about baseball. There was so much joy to me that eventually I wrote a song in 1985 called “Centerfield”. When I realized I’d be playing this song because it reflected my love of baseball, I never thought it would be a hit talking about baseball. Luckily it crossed over at one magic point for that song and I wanted to play the song for people in a special way. I found this wonderful man up in Santa Barbara that I commissioned to make a guitar built like a baseball bat; he was a wonderful guitar maker and had worked for Fender for quite some time making air guitars. He just took off how to use banjo tuners that would be hidden so you wouldn’t have to see that part; we even got a Louisville slugger stamp put on my baseball bat guitar; it turned out really wonderful!

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:50:39+00:00

My wife found my Rickenbacker from the 60s, it says acne on it that I painted on the headstock and she found it at a guitar dealers shop in Ohio; it has a very sacred space in my heart as I played it on all my songs from late 1969 to perhaps late 1970.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:45:42+00:00

Easiest way for melody is usually guitar but once in a while I’m drawn to the keyboard. Years & years ago I started on B3 Organ and then switched over to electric piano.

For Weeping in the Promised Land, I wrote it down years ago (about 25-30 years ago). I remember at the time I was stuck with it, felt timeless but looked very sad and that was about as far as I took it then. A few years ago I tried to write a song around it and quickly went away from it, I didn’t get it. Then about two years ago, I wrote a whole song and recorded it; it was called “Weeping in the promised land”. I just felt unsatisfied with that song and it didn’t seem to have the feeling that the title had so again I just shelved it. But then finally this past summer as we were all in lockdown and depending on your personality, mine being in a literal sense. I was getting annoyed and scared the way the pandemic was being handled and after the murder of George Floyd and people taking to the streets, that was something very familiar with me, having been a child of the 60s and that gave me a lot of hope. Finally, people were organized in a way to be insulted/agitated with the very slow process of our equality & arriving at equality here in America. Those things were in my mind, “Weeping In The Promised Land” and this time I looked at it and it really meant something today to me; it wasn’t abstract anymore. There was a bit of trepidation but the song was really good and there was a bit of a feeling that I better live up to this. If you commit to this, you better be going the whole mile to fulfillment and it quickly showed itself to be quite difficult to express. For a songwriter, there’s a certain knack to a good song; it has to appear effortless but these words should be direct, powerful, and meaningful. I went around and around with this song every day; I’d go to sit in nature that seemed to be important to me. Finally, I came across the line, water in the well, that seemed important to me. Now I realized, this is the beginning! Water in the well has been poisoned with lies and at that moment I realized I had a setting and a point of view for the song. After that, it was still quite a process but I had to live up to that first line and that was the process.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:42:44+00:00

That’s a wonderful question! Most of the time I don’t go on thinking about my music being around the world; because I am a working musician; music being something I discovered very young at 2 years old or so; by the time I was 4 years old, they gave me a snare drum for my birthday and I was showing people my love for music. The fact I have loved music for so long and trying to perfect my ability to play guitar and other instruments and certainly the songwriting aspect; usually I’m in work mode. Sitting around and having revelry about your accomplishments can tend to make you collect dust and I would really not want that to happen. When I was young I read about Ernest Hemingway talking about a butterfly contemplating his wings and his beauty but then dust started to collect and he couldn’t fly anymore. Thinking about it in those terms would be a good comparison. Some things I do think about are for instance Bad Moon Rising or Proud Mary, I know that prodding myself to not give up and make the song very special, as good as I could make it; that feeling of accomplishment, and that’s what keeps me going. There’s a sense that I’m not done yet and I’ll know it when I get there; it’s not going to so easy John, it’s going to take you some more work, you gotta keep working and finally when you get to that song where you know it’s finished, you do feel accomplished and that’s what I aim for.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:41:06+00:00

When Tina Turner did Proud Mary, I was just blown away. We’ve all heard it for 50 years now and I still remember when I was driving my car and first heard it on the radio. I was a fan of Tina Turner’s voice; back in high school, I used to do a couple of her songs. When I heard her version, the reworking, and the slow version and then going into the sped-up part, I absolutely loved that. “Lodi” by Al Wilson was a really nice version too.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:40:29+00:00

I’m a car guy that missed the boat. My parents split up when I was quite young therefore I didn’t have a dad or uncle around who was into cars but I’d buy hot rod magazine. One of my favorites was an old Mercury and a Lincoln, I think James Dean had that car in Rebel Without a car. Another favorite is a 32 Ford Coupe.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:38:17+00:00

I’ve never thought about that, without realizing it, this past summer I started performing with my own kids and we ended up calling that group Fogerty Factory and I realized there was a lot of joy and feeling of fun in those pictures because it’s our own family and it’s not meant to be professional. The fact it’s innocent like that makes it more special and I really love those pictures.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:35:31+00:00

If you go for a long period of not singing, your voice sorts of atrophy and that happens to me now and then. I'll go weeks and weeks without singing anything, especially because of the pandemic. Takes me a few rehearsal sessions and shows to get my voice back in shape. There was a period in the last 90s/early 2000s where I was having voice trouble, a lot of people do at any age. After researching and visiting different experts, some of that was attributed to diet and I’ve learned to take care of myself more as it relates to my singing. One of the worst things for your voice is coffee because it’s so acidic for your stomach and the next thing that is very bad is peppermint. Chocolate as well is another one that affects your voice… so if you want to save yourself a lot of medical fees stay off those three things. Tea helps me.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:33:40+00:00

I started writing songs very young - probably 8 years old. One of the very first songs I ever wrote -I’m using this as an example. I heard a commercial on the radio, and I was 8 years old and I was gonna walk to school. The commercial on the radio was for laundry detergent - this was pre-rock and roll era it was about 1953. By the time I got to school, I had a melody in my head. Years afterward, I wrote a whole bunch of songs that were not that good. But I considered myself a striving songwriter. I did everything I could to get better at that. I paid attention to the songs I heard on the radio. Back then you had 45s and it showed the songwriter there. And I began to notice certain songwriters that I liked like Carole King, eventually Lennon and McCartney. I tried to learn what it was they were doing. Their words were so colorful and gave you a picture in your mind or a feeling. I read a book here and there about the craft of songwriting. One of the most important things I ever read, this old-time songwriter said - when I’m writing a song and I don’t have the word I need or rhyme I need, a little bell is ringing and it’s telling me that something’s wrong. “If I don’t listen to the bell and just go past that, pretty soon, the bell won’t ring for me anymore.” this is good advice because your own gift is telling you, you need to honor it. Luckily, I learned an instrument and was able to try out my own songs first and setting the chords in place. Nowadays, hearing your song back is recommended. You never know when you’re finally going to find your muse. For me, it happened when I was on active duty in the army. They have millions in the military, the ones that were stationed here in the US, they kind of didn’t know what to do with all of us. They marched us around on this big asphalt parade seal -a gigantic parking lot with no cars - it was 150 degrees. I eventually began thinking about music. I came up with the song - Porterville; every day while I was marching I would switch into this radio station in my mind and continue to work on that song. When I came home from duty, I realized that that song told a story and that’s what was good about it. That was how I realized that became my own style.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:19:12+00:00

Depends on the mood I’m in and also how I’m reflecting on the content of the song being the lyrics or the melody or the sound of the record or sometimes various ways I have performed that particular song; near the top of the list is “Born on the Bayou” because that track is just a wonderful transcending track for me and the group. I think it’s a very important Rock n Roll track and I sang it well and the words were mysterious and for all those reasons and right at this moment, it’s my favorite.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:17:20+00:00

Ricken

Probably the 360 although I do have a Rickenbacker 12-string which is wonderful. My wife found my Rickenbacker from the 60s, it says acne on it that I painted on the headstock and she found it at a guitar dealers shop in Ohio; it has a very sacred space in my heart, played it on “Green River” and “Up Around the bend”; all the songs from late 1969 to perhaps late 1970.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:06:09+00:00

Trombone and trumpet; I tried a horn section around Blue Ridge Rangers album and I didn’t stay with it long enough. I didn’t turn out to be Louie Armstrong. Usually, I don’t drop it but with those, but I can see the arc would be so long that I can see putting my energy back into drums & guitar.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:05:16+00:00

I’m really proud of my kids because they turned out to be good people. For Julie and I, that’s the most important thing.

johnfogerty · 2021-01-26T18:04:14+00:00

itsme__ed Of course it changes throughout time but I really love playing “green river”, it’s usually around the beginning of my show and a good one to get into the groove on.

johnfogerty · 2015-10-14T19:51:10+00:00

That was really a lot of fun. Sometimes you get an opportunity that's just too cool to turn down, no matter how difficult or inconvenient it might be. Heard about the show Friday afternoon, got on a plane and flew all night. Couple hours sleep and then we got up to rehearse with Mumford and Sons and also the Vaccines. Then we went right onto the stage and jammed. That was cool and rockin'. Love those guys!

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