Fortunate Son

by John Fogerty

  The musical times with Tom were really magical. I remember we were in his red and white ’56 Bel Air station wagon a little later, when he was married and had a couple of kids. We’re driving along and the riff for “When Will I Be Loved” by the Everly Brothers came on the radio, and we just looked at each other with that I-just-died-and-went-to-heaven look. We did that exact same move the first time we heard “Satisfaction.” We’re in the car and along comes that riff: daaah daaah da da daaaa… There was a lot of that sort of thing.

  Tom and I both loved music, and shared it as brothers. I don’t think Tom had much of a cross word for me then.

  The inevitable course was to get an electric guitar and play rock and roll. When I was twelve or thirteen, I bought my first guitar at Sears—a $39.95 Silvertone Danelectro (with one pickup—two cost more)—and a $39.95 five-watt amp. My mom cosigned for me. I promised to pay with my paper route money, which I did. The guitar had a cardboard case with an alligator finish. Later I sold the Danelectro to a classmate for five bucks. I think he paid me. I should’ve held on to that guitar.

  Once I had played around with a couple of chords, I guess I had enough gumption to risk embarrassing myself (even though no one else was around) by trying to play Jody Reynolds’s “Endless Sleep” on the Silvertone. That’s one of my favorite songs of all time, and one of those spooky records loaded with attitude—“Wow, ‘endless sleep’: he’s talkin’ about suicide!” There’s that bummmmm bummm bowwwm on that record—it’s the bottom note of the guitar’s range, a low E that really can’t go any lower. I deduced that the sound was made with either a whammy bar or a bass sliding up. I had neither of those but figured out how to hammer on an E chord. The minute I started doing that, it was, “Oh, that’s like ‘Endless Sleep.’” So I sat there in my house and played it. I did that over and over on the Silvertone for probably an hour, because for the first time in my whole life I had performed a song on electric guitar. It was like, “This is workin’! I like this! I’ll just do it again.”

  The Silvertone’s public debut was at a Christmas program in the eighth grade, when Mrs. Starck allowed me to play a little backup on one or two songs. I can’t remember what I played—something Christmassy. I recall a D minor chord and a G. At the time, it was revolutionary for a school to present a program for the parents where some kid got up with an electric guitar. But no worries, parents: I wasn’t very loud yet.

  That’s the guitar I had when I met Doug. I’d go over to his house or he’d come over to mine, and we’d jam. I liked his enthusiasm. Doug had energy and he was likable. It was casual and easy—we both liked rock and roll. Economically, we were kind of in the same place, and his mom and dad split up at around that time, so he went through the same thing I did.

  I could play songs like Roy Orbison’s “Ooby Dooby” and the single’s other side, “Go Go Go,” and we worked up a repertoire. Sometimes I’d sing a little—“The Battle of New Orleans” or maybe “Hully Gully.” I started thinking about other kids I knew who played—to fill out the sound! We finally settled on Stu Cook for piano. Doug knew Stu, and when I was playing the piano in Mrs. Starck’s class, he mentioned him. Stu was smart and liked the same kind of music as Doug and me. He didn’t know much about piano at the time, but he was willing to learn. So Doug and I decided to try him out.

  Doug, Stu, and I were all pretty clean-cut, mainstream. Stu was the only one who was wealthy by our standards. He lived in a house up in the El Cerrito hills. He had a rumpus room with a piano. And he had a dad at home. Stu’s dad was a lawyer with a great big firm that represented the Oakland Raiders, amongst others. Doug lived down near where I lived, down in the flats. It was all kind of middle-class territory.

  At El Cerrito High there were three fraternities: Delmar, the 49ers, and the Saxons. Delmar was very clean-cut, preppy. The 49ers leaned towards jocks. Then the third one, the Saxons—those were not only the greasers, but the naughty boys, the bad boys. By the time I was a junior, I was lucky enough to be asked to join Delmar—at that point I had straight A’s. Stu and Doug were in Delmar, but there was a big scandal where Stu jumped ship and became one of the Saxons. Stu went and got a tattoo, which was pretty far-out in 1962. I think he later tried to get it taken off.

  The thing that came up with Stu was that at some point he would get impatient. And he would get—what’s the word?—difficult. Stu would get in a tither about stuff and be pissed off. I made a speech about it after it happened one day. We were down in Stu’s rumpus room rehearsing, some idea came up, and he wasn’t even willing to try it—“That’s no good, that’s not gonna work, blah, blah, blah.” Basically, he couldn’t play the part, so he was yelling at the part he couldn’t play rather than yelling at himself for not being able to play it. Finally I said, “You’re that guy on the sidelines at the football game who’s not even gonna try. He’s not the coach, he’s not playing in the game, he’s just some dude standing on the side going, ‘That’ll never work. Why did you try that?! Man, this stinks!’” I made that speech more than once, because over the years, that was Stu. He was that guy in Creedence. Stu could get in somebody’s face. I was too shy to do that—or too polite.

  I came up with the name the Blue Velvets for our band. And I was the bandleader, although I say that kind of comically. When Doug and I were first talking, I remember thinking, Am I joining his band? Then, No—he’s joining my band! Along the way it became very clear. I was steering the direction. I had more music in me. And I wrote quite a few instrumentals. The Blue Velvets were an instrumental band—that was the whole premise. Every now and then I’d sing something like “Hully Gully,” but mostly we did instrumental hits: Duane Eddy, Bill Doggett, Link Wray, the Ventures, Freddie King, Johnny and the Hurricanes.

  The Blue Velvets were just a trio—guitar, drums, piano—so it wasn’t a band with a lot of oomph, but back then there were a lot of little bands that weren’t really fully formed. Johnny and the Hurricanes had a bass player, but you rarely saw that at a local level. And besides, we were the only rock and roll band in our school. Doug, Stu, and I played together as a band all the way from the eighth grade right through high school. Nobody else had the bravado to do something like that—“We’re a band!” We were really considered kind of cool, but also kind of strange. After the Beatles hit, there were a hundred bands in our school, but for now we were it.

  I believe the very first time the Blue Velvets played anywhere was at a sock hop at Portola Junior High at the end of 1959. We might’ve done five instrumentals. I know we played at least one song I’d written—a slow song, kind of an instrumental version of doo-wop, with those kinds of chords. Another of the songs we played at that first gig was a song I heard in the car on the way to the sock hop—“Bulldog” by the Fireballs. I just heard it on the radio and then when I got to school and had a guitar in my hand, I said, “Just follow me. It’s a twelve-bar blues.” I’m not made that way, to spring something unknown on people, let alone my own band, but that one time we did it—at our first gig! I was fairly practical. I wasn’t trying to show everybody I’m Duane Eddy. It was, “What’s my function here? They’re hiring me to play for a dance. I better play danceable music.” That remained my directive over the years, even as I got on the big stages of the world. I went for music that made you shake your body.

  As we kept playing, opportunities started to open up, and this guy, Bob—I cannot remember his last name—took the Blue Velvets under his wing. He was with the El Cerrito boys club. We got to do shows all over the Bay Area—places like Pleasanton, San Leandro, and Oakland—representing the boys club. Because we were kids, Bob would drive us and bring our equipment. He was a really good guy, and he helped us. I’ve never been able to track him down, but I wish I could.

  So the Blue Velvets got great exposure and the opportunity to play a lot. It was good discipline. We worked up three, four songs and went far and wide. We were playing somewhere in Northern California when James Powell first approached me.

&nbs
p; He liked my little band. He said, “Well, I’m gonna make a record and I need a band to play on it.” I was only fourteen. Unlike some musicians, I was always driven. If something lands in your lap, you’re supposed to say, “Yeah, man—I’ll do it!” Right? Nowadays every kid can make a record on his iPhone. So it’s not such a romantic notion anymore. This was, “Mom, we’re gonna make a record!” This was out in the world, making a recording. Just to be able to say it! How cool is that?

  James was a black guy and a pretty doggone good singer. I think he was about twenty-five or so. He had a song he wanted to record called “Beverly Angel,” a classic doo-wop. Really cool song. And he had others—every song was a girl’s name. We rehearsed. I don’t know how many times he came to either my house or Stu’s rumpus room. James knew a guy named Joe Jarros who had a little company called Christy Records. He was a small businessman, and on the side he had a tiny label—the innocent side of the old-time rock and roll record business.

  We were basically backing James, but to do that right, we needed a bass player on the record. Now, they had a string bass in Mrs. Starck’s music room. A couple of times she let me play it. Mrs. Starck had made chalk marks on it so I could see the finger placements and play whatever song she wanted. Hey, it’s like a guitar, only bigger.

  So I decided I’d play bass on James Powell’s session. I couldn’t use the school bass, but on my paper route there was an older fella who played bass in a country band. They had a weekly gig in Oakland, broadcast on local TV. I always loved when he was home because we would talk about music for a while, and he was always full of encouragement for me. A cool guy.

  So one day as I was delivering the paper, I told him we had this opportunity to make a record. He responded, “The heck you say! Really?” He was enthusiastic, so I asked to borrow his stand-up bass. “Sure, man. If I’m not home, just come tell my wife. The bass is in the garage.”

  James had rented a trailer. A string bass is huge. That’s why they invented the Fender Precision—so you didn’t have to go through this! I show up at the guy’s house, and he’s not there. His wife looks at James, she looks at me—I’m just some kid with a paper route. I’m not sure she understood the situation, but she let us take the bass. Lord, we drove across the Bay Bridge, with that big string bass in the open-air trailer, to Coast Recorders in San Francisco.

  We’d already made a little demo record with Tom at a place called Dick Vance Recording Studio. The room was so small we actually had to open the window so Doug could sit on the sill and play his drums. I think we cut two songs there, with Tom singing. All we got was a shellac copy. The guy just cut it right on the spot, and that’s it—that’s the only copy you have. I know for at least part of the song Tom had to manipulate the volume control on my Silvertone so it could sound like a vibrato. I just played and Tom turned the knob.

  But Coast was a real recording studio. We walked in and I saw Monk Montgomery, the brother of Wes Montgomery. Monk was, like, the first jazz bass player to go electric. I thought, Wow, the big time! Walt Payne was the engineer. Years later he was the engineer on “Susie Q” for Creedence. Doug, Stu, and I did the music with James singing, and then I overdubbed bass, which turned out fine. James also overdubbed harmony with himself—an advanced thing for its time.

  “Beverly Angel” is not quite “Earth Angel,” but it’s close. It sounds pretty good. It’s got a big echo and a real ending—it doesn’t just fade out. “Beverly Angel” didn’t sell any copies that I know about, but that record eventually got played on the radio. Feature that: I made a record with my band at fourteen years old—a record that got played on the radio. Even weirder, it was an R & B record, a black record played on a black station—my favorite R & B station, KWBR!

  I was pretty proud. I mean, I didn’t assume, “This means I’m headed to Carnegie Hall.” But get this: Stu took electronics with Mr. Thomas at El Cerrito High, and the project was to make a radio. Well, Stu made his radio, and the story goes that when he first fired it up, “Beverly Angel” came wafting out. Can you imagine that? “Hey, Mr. Thomas—it’s my record!”

  There were some times in my life where I went along with the crowd and was dishonest. When I was about eight years old, a little group of us kids started stealing stuff out of stores—the five-and-dime store, the hardware store. Y’know, just walk out with something under your shirt. Then we would try to sell the stuff door-to-door. Well, that’s how we got caught. What’s a little kid doing with a spatula he’s trying to sell to some mom at her door? It still had the tag on it from the variety store. I was caught. Plus I was ratted out. This one kid, Billy, thought he was such a tough guy. He’s the same one who pushed me over on my tricycle when I was about four years old. I rolled over. I was crying. Billy was that edgy, ornery, smokes-and-swears-a-lot kid—a bully. Billy ratted us out. Not so tough as when he pushed four-year-old me over in the crosswalk. That sure wasn’t funny at the time. I hope Billy turned out okay.

  There was a point when I would steal a record, take a 45. I didn’t have what I perceived to be enough money, even though I had a paper route. I believe I had been in the record shop when I saw another kid steal a record. My eyes got real big—I think there was some thrill in doing it, although I hate to say that, and surely there was also some pressure to pull off this kind of stuff. I’m not saying this for bravado, and I’m certainly not happy to be saying it at all. But it’s a part of my story from those times.

  So here I was, stealing a 45 here and there. I had taken many singles over a period of a year and some months. And I literally looked at this one day and said, “Music is the thing you love. Why are you doing this? This is terrible. It’s the thing you love most, and you’re breaking your own strongest rule. You know what honesty is. What else do you have besides your word?” I was messing up the thing I loved, putting bad feelings and guilt all around it—to the point where I struggled with the idea of coming clean with the store so I could be free of this bad thing I’d done. But no, I never was that brave, I hate to say.

  If anything came of it, I guess you could say I became a real stickler about honesty. To the point of silly things, like when you’re driving, there’s a roundabout in the road and you’re supposed to go around it, but you could cut through it. My kids will be going, “Dad! Dad! Cut through!” And I’m like, “Nope, even if it hurts! The sign says this way.”

  Because it’s a slippery slope. One day you do that little thing, and the next day… Obviously, none of us is perfect. As you may have guessed, I’m a fallible human being. But honesty is still very important to me. The idea of being truthful. Moral.

  That wasn’t the only experience that made me this way.

  In eighth grade I stayed home from school. My mom stomped on the furnace grate—“Oh Johnny! Wake up!”—and off to work she went. It was October of 1958 and the World Series was on. “Wow, I’d kind of like to see the World Series.” In those days, it was played in the daytime. So I stayed home from school. To watch the series and play my new Silvertone. And I stayed home the day after that. My mom wasn’t around to know. Nobody was.

  Weeks later I was doing my paper route after school when Mr. Noricaine, a phys ed teacher, went by in his ’49 Ford, and I thought, Oh, my day is comin’. A few days later, I was busted. My mom confronted me. She’d gotten a call from the school, and after having lost so many credits that year, I got four Fs and a D minus. I used to tell people, “That’s what I get for concentratin’ on one subject.”

  So I was in trouble, and deep. I had to go to summer school—twice. The second time was my last hope if I wanted to graduate with my class. Kids don’t quite get what the consequences are until the consequences are due. Summer school this time was over at Richmond High—not even my own school. But whoa, there was Mrs. Starck, my music teacher from Portola Junior High! Rather than being a punishment, summer school was a revelation. It was great to be there!

  And there was this girl in class. I never really knew her real name, but everybo
dy called her Plookie. She was kind of a heavyset black girl, and Mrs. Starck allowed her to bring her music to school. Plookie played a Supro guitar through a Supro amp with vibrato. Plus someone played tambourine. Plookie and a couple of her friends did some gospel stuff, and it was so good. She might’ve known only one or two more chords than me, but it was more about attitude.

  This was the music I listened to on the radio, but I didn’t know anybody doing it firsthand. I’d hear this spooky stuff like the Staple Singers, and I’d sit down and try to do it, and it would come out like the Ventures. Plookie had that thing, she had that sound, and she was… great. Absolutely great. And she was my age! This was really an eye-opener. Because instead of being way off in the clouds, something I dreamed about down in my little room, this was something tangible, right in front of me. It pointed me in a direction towards something I could do, rather than being forbidden, or being too dangerous for my mom, or being too embarrassing to attempt. It was, “This is what I like. This is what I’m gonna do.”

  Plookie took the time to show me what she was doing with the vibrato, and her cool amp. I had a dinky little five-watt amp, and hers was probably twice as big or more. So I got myself a Supro guitar. First an Ozark model and then a top o’ the line Res-O-Glas from the Sears catalog. That Ozark was my main guitar for years. I got short-scale guitars because I thought my hands were small, and I noticed that I could really just bend those strings by putting light-gauge strings on my little Supro.