Fortunate Son

by John Fogerty

  We hated the name. We felt helpless. And our first single came and went. My goal was to somehow figure out how to be a great band and make a great record. Max was no help. I’d be at the microphone hearing all these things Max was telling us, things that were about as applicable as that Golliwog doll: “How about you put on a British accent?” Or “Put on a ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’” Or “Get that sound on your guitar that George does.” Just weird, from-left-field advice from an older person.

  I was feeling frustrated. We were desperately trying to figure out how this works. And I’m realizing some of the shortcomings of our sound and our approach. At one point I remember looking across the microphone at whoever was there and saying, “Well, I guess Phil Spector’s not gonna come down here and produce us.”

  What that really meant was, I’m going to have to figure out what producing is. And do it. I was expressing it out loud. I said it for my compadres in the room. Because I was only pulling for the band. I never ever thought of myself any other way through all the years I was in it.

  So after that, I was a producer. I didn’t get credit for it, of course. Max got some kid and named him our producer, ha ha. But what this really meant was that I began to think of the finished record at the moment of conception. I learned to envision the sound of the instruments and the style of the arrangement as I was writing the song, sometimes letting that vision guide the writing process. This is quite different from how a singer-songwriter creates. Usually, the writer is preoccupied with words and melody and his focus is on completing the song. He leaves the record making to someone else.

  This syndrome of recognizing a needed service or function—and then assigning that task to myself—happened over and over on our journey through showbiz.

  I finally got to tell Phil Spector that story, by the way. In the eighties I had gone to one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s secret inner sanctum meetings to try to get my hero Duane Eddy included. And who should happen to be sitting next to me but Phil Spector. I told him my Golliwogs story. He got a big kick out of that. As a matter of fact, two or three years later it was Phil who called to tell me that Duane Eddy had gotten into the hall of fame.

  Tom sang lead on our first single, “Little Girl (Does Your Mamma Know?),” and I sang harmony with him on the other side, “Don’t Tell Me No Lies.” On the next single, “Where You Been,” Tom sang the lead again, and on the B side, “You Came Walking,” I harmonized again. We weren’t quite good enough to pull that one off—with a little higher level of musicianship and a George Martin behind us, I think it would’ve been cool. One side of our third single was “You Can’t Be True.” The other side was “You Got Nothin’ on Me.” I sang lead on both of these. They were bluesy, edgy—more like me. More like how I had sounded in Portland than this sweet, mellow thing that Tom was always doing.

  I had never heard Tom sing rough. But by the time I had come out the other end of that trip to Portland, I wanted my music to have more of an edge, be more raw. There seemed to be an audience for a more bluesy approach to rock, and we kind of got into that—certainly the Stones had more of that. It was less doo-wop and a lot more growl from Mick Jagger and the boys. You’d see these other British bands, what they were doing—I thought we should follow that path, rather than bongos and tambourines. There seemed to be a model for us to grab on to and push forward with.

  So I sang our next single, “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and went in that direction. I just thought it was a much more viable style than that other Bobby Freeman kind of sound that we’d done with Tom, which I felt was dated, passé. “Little Girl,” the piano, doing doo-wop… it just seemed old-fashioned. And when you’re a kid, that’s fatal—“Whew, that’s two years ago!” I was trying to catch up… or get ahead!

  “Brown-Eyed Girl” was a regional hit. It was big in California’s Central Valley, starting in San Jose. And it enabled the Golliwogs to actually start getting some local musical dates. We’d work Turlock, Merced, Roseville, Modesto, Marysville, playing school dances and National Guard armories.

  We’d have these jobs way up in the northern part of central California or way down south—Tom and me in one car, Doug and Stu in the other. Later we graduated to a Volkswagen bus that had been owned by the Du-All floor company—it was still painted that way. Our gig would be over at one or two in the morning, and we’d drive home in the night listening to Wolfman Jack on XERB. Wow, what great memories I have of that! Wolfman Jack was so great. He was broadcasting on a radio station from Mexico, and I guess the normal U.S. transmitter regulations didn’t apply. His transmitter was something like 250,000 watts (or more), and you could hear that station all over the United States.* The Wolfman played R & B–leaning rock and roll, and it was presented with much urgency. Kind of like you were peeking into a hidden vein of music that no one else knew about. Records like “Mystic Eyes,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and “Gloria” by Them; “Up in Heah” by Junior Wells; “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the 13th Floor Elevators; “Are You Lonely for Me” by Freddie Scott; “Keep On Running” by the Spencer Davis Group; and “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding. When he got really excited, the Wolfman would do kind of a pep-talk rap and then play the werewolf howl. It was frantic and great! Tom and I really looked forward to those rides home.

  Now that we were doing some real concerts, we needed clothes. The four of us went somewhere, maybe the Haight-Ashbury. Max from Fantasy was probably there too. We were young people with no real experience buying clothes, trying to dress currently. And Max was telling us what was hip. In one store there were these big, shaggy, white fur hats—Himalayan yak hats. Hard to say now who they were for—women? Bald-headed guys? Sherpas? But we bought ’em.

  When we’d come out wearing our big white hats, some would snicker and laugh. “Here’s the Golliwogs!” We were those guys. Always going to be a local band. Later on there’d be a point of just ripping that furry hat off and throwing it in the audience, or at somebody. I think at least one of us threw his out in the audience. I know I don’t have mine. Because I hated it.

  But something was working, and we opened for Sonny and Cher at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento. That’s the place where Keith Richards got knocked unconscious when his guitar made contact with a wrongly wired mic. (When I stood in that exact same space, I always got shocked there as well.) Sonny and Cher were the big time: “I Got You Babe.”

  So we do our set, and by God, there’s such cheering going on that we’re going to get to do an encore. Outstanding! They open the curtain. We come out doing “Walking the Dog.” We did it more funky, like Rufus Thomas. We’re rockin’ away when suddenly—whoosh!—the curtain closes again! What?

  It turned out that “Walking the Dog” was Cher’s very first number, the first number of Sonny and Cher’s set. Ixnay! I’m sure it would’ve been all right—she’s Cher and we’re not. But no, they used the big hammer. Our moment was stolen from us.

  How does a band survive that kind of crap? You keep on. Our ragged “Brown-Eyed Girl” was progress, a step up. “You Better Get It Before It Gets You”—I like that one a lot. “Fight Fire” was another. Man, I don’t know how I sang so high. The maracas on that record were inspired by the Bell Notes song “I’ve Had It.” We saw the band on TV, and the drummer played them. I loved that record. “Fight Fire” is a pretty cool little song. That’s our best British Invasion imitation.

  Sometimes we’d take a step back because our ambition was too grand, or maybe we went left a little bit, doing something off character, but it seemed like things were getting better and better as we moved along. The guys were learning their instruments a bit as we played more and more. And our songs—the ones we wrote and the covers we played our own way—were starting to sound like “us,” getting closer to that thing where it sounds “right.”

  Now, I’m not saying the Golliwogs were very good—it was not a real band yet, commanding a stage. We were lightweight, thin. We were just kids. But hey, we’d gotten
the hook opening for Sonny and Cher! And it was a fun time. It was so innocent. We’re not making it, we’re not hitting the big time, but maybe, just maybe, we… could.

  There were big changes in my life at this time. In 1965 I got married. I had met Martha Paiz while I was working at the gas station. She’d come in with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. I started talking to Martha that way. We were children when we got married. I was twenty years old. Martha proposed to me. I don’t remember the exact words—“We should get married” or something like that. I had a typical male response: “Uhhh… okay.”

  There really ought to be a law. Probably one out of ten of those marriages is going to work. At eighteen, Tom had left home and married his high school sweetheart, so there was some precedent in my immediate family. I was also tossed out of my house by my mom—“Just go there!,” meaning over to Martha’s. She wanted to be done with raising a feisty boy.

  My mom even declared that I had to pay rent if I wanted to stay at home. That’s something Julie and I have vowed not to say to our kids. Both of our parents booted us out.

  My mom and I had sort of an estranged relationship after that. I think she saw Creedence only once, in Oakland. (Although Mom was the one who told me that Chet Atkins played “Proud Mary” with the Boston Pops. I detected that she was proud of that—and so was I!)

  Martha’s family was very much a family. She had a whole bunch of brothers and sisters, a large family, and when I’d go over and hang at their house, it was a real warm and happy feeling. There was this sense of closeness, whereas my house had just been depressing. So that had a lot of appeal to me. I moved right out of my home and into married life.

  And then I got drafted.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dirty Little Wars

  IN 1966, VIETNAM was on every young person’s mind. The draft loomed large. We’d start to talk about it and ask each other, “Well, why are we in Vietnam?” And we’d go around and around and around and never really have a good answer.

  In the early stages of the conflict, I was more gung ho, thinking that’s what America should do. But the reasoning started sounding more and more flimsy. Most of it was just a sham: a couple of egocentric politicians too full of themselves to listen to their own people, and who had the incredible arrogance to send our young kids off to die. My generation just thought it was the most sorry, useless exercise that our country could be involved in, and we were powerless to stop this stupid thing but trying our darnedest through protests, music, and all the rest.

  At the time, I really didn’t understand all the implications, but as I got older, I began to feel that the war (and probably most every war that’s ever been fought) wasn’t actually about the flag: it was about a very small group of rich, powerful people, usually men, who were able to bamboozle a nation to go to war for some myth that they had created. This gets shrouded in patriotism, but it basically comes down to money. Making a profit. Vietnam was surely about that.

  Regrettably, it’s become a familiar story: the powers that be prey on the patriotic feelings of our youth, young people who have very noble ideals and want to go out and do what they assume are good things. But in situations like this, they’re just being manipulated. That’s the part that really makes me mad—even now, because I believe that the wars we’re in are not for the good of America or the American people. Just for some businessmen to make a lot of money.

  To use American citizens—basically kids—to fight and die for big corporations so they can make billions of dollars is just shameful. And to present it as if it’s some patriotic thing, when it’s just because a gas company wants to monopolize the market in another part of the world, or some big steel company wants to build all the buildings and bridges there—to have people die for that?

  But I wasn’t thinking about this back before I was drafted. I wasn’t even going to be drafted—I was classified 4-F, meaning unfit for service. That was a good thing. I know a lot of people would say, “God, how unpatriotic. You’re supposed to go out and fight for Uncle Sam.” I’m sure in some quarters there are folks who will have strong feelings about what I’m saying. It’ll strike some as vaguely un-American, even cowardly. I get that. Now, had I been around in the wake of Pearl Harbor, I’m quite certain I would’ve felt differently. But Vietnam was something else. Most of us felt that if you got drafted, you were going to Vietnam. And if you went, you were probably going to die. It didn’t feel like, “Oh, here’s my chance to be a hero for my country!” Being drafted, you could just immediately see the other end of it. So I received my 4-F classification, and I was smiling.

  A couple of months went by before they sent a letter saying, “Oops! We made a mistake. You’ve been reclassified. You are 1-A.” And after that I got my draft notice.

  I lost my job at the gas station because I told the manager the news, and he still said, “John, you have to come into work today.” I said, “Al, I just got drafted! In thirty days I’m gone! I have to go out and see if there’s anything I can do.” So I was fired.

  I went out looking at the Army Reserve and National Guard in the Bay Area, but they were full and couldn’t take any more people. I came home from one of those days a little distraught, and my wife, Martha, told me she had called a reserves unit. There must’ve been something in her voice talking to that sergeant down at the Army Reserve, because he told her, “You just tell him to come on down here.” I told him my story and he signed me up. He must have put a certain date on my papers—perhaps a date that was earlier than when I received my draft notice—so that I had officially signed up before I got my notice. I was now in the Army Reserve. I never actually got to thank that guy again. He was an awesome, soulful person.

  The first time I went on active duty was at a two-week summer boot camp. One sergeant in particular just liked the sound of my name. “Hey, Fo-ger-ty!” “Where’s Fogerty?” I got… noticed. And I didn’t like it. There could be a group of fifty guys standing there, and you’d hear, “Hey Fogerty!” It was horrible. I was called every time.

  So when I went on my six-month active-duty boot camp, I had learned my lesson. Don’t do anything where you’re straggling behind, don’t do anything where you’re stepping out ahead—just be in the group. Man, be somewhere in the shadows. Try to be invisible. Once the sergeant snags your name, you’re toast.

  So that’s what I did. I became a model of responsibility. Unlike many other times in my life where I had been a flake (such as playing hooky for weeks), I remade myself into the company man. They had all this stuff you have to do: have your bunk made the right way, have all your clothes exact, your uniform spotless. It’s good training, good discipline. And I did it exactly right—all of it. I was on the A-list.

  After a couple of weeks, I got assigned as a barracks leader and was put in charge of a row of bunks. The guy over us noticed that I was getting it done, and by putting me in charge, he had a lot less to do. So I would be after my guys: put your toothbrush away, your shoe-shining kit, your underwear. Everything had to be in a specific spot, and I made sure it was.

  I’d have all my ducks in a row. I was terrified of being caught, frankly. I didn’t want them to ever notice me again. Which I think was a good philosophy, but the other guys got to calling me Ma Fogerty. It was with some affection and respect, but they might as well have called me Old Man Fogerty. They thought I was acting like somebody’s parent! But it kept us out of trouble. We were all twenty years old, kids, and liked rock and roll. There’s that whole sense of, yes, you’re in the military, but you’re twenty, not fifty. But I didn’t want to be snagged. Once you’re on the shit list, you’re not coming off. I learned my lesson the first time.

  When I came back from active duty, I still had my once-a-month reserve meetings and, every summer, two-week boot camp obligations. All of that was going to last another four or five years. And I kept having conflicts. My monthly weekend meeting was in Richmond. I’d have to be there at 7 a.m. after doing a gig four hours north in R
oseville the night before. I overslept a couple of times and the sergeant called me up: “You want me to send you to Vietnam?” That was the threat they held over you. I knew I couldn’t let it happen again or they’d send me.

  I very earnestly tried to work something out. I wanted to come in during the week and I wanted to have long hair. I was the quartermaster supply clerk, and I could’ve easily done my job during the week. And of course the answer came back, “No, we can’t have any of that.” They were pretty rigid.

  At certain times in my life I can get pretty tough mentally—it’s just a matter of focusing, I guess. Once I really had the door slammed in my face by the army and realized that they weren’t going to entertain some other approach, I decided that I was going to resist, go against the grain. And try to get myself removed from the reserve. But in the calmest way possible.

  I started fasting. Like prisoners on strike or Buddha fasting under a fig tree. During this time, the Golliwogs played a show at the Claremont Hotel, and I was on my fast, hardly eating anything. I remember staring at a table of lemon meringue desserts, but no—I didn’t take one. I had a brain of steel. This was a very volatile time in America, with all kinds of confrontation and conflicts and philosophies floating across the cultural windscreen. People chaining themselves to government buildings. If I had to chain myself to an army building, I was prepared.

  I wrote honestly about my plight to my congressman, Jerome Waldie—yes, I brought it to Jerome—and he was pretty helpful. That carried a lot of weight. He started kicking tires around the Army Reserve unit. That got their attention. They don’t like the people’s representatives peeking in the window at all their shit.

  I became skinny as a rail, and because of the stink I was raising, the army made me go to the Presidio in San Francisco for an evaluation. My friends in the band gave me herbs to imbibe, supposedly to calm me down and make me weird. I was not a big pot smoker, yet there I was, driving across the Bay Bridge, smoking a joint on my way to be evaluated by the army. All I can say is, it wasn’t my idea and the Big Lebowski would have been proud.