by John Fogerty
At the time, I was worried about being current. You have the nagging suspicion that your kind of music has been passed by, and on the radio there’s these new things that have come along, and you’re saying to yourself, Yeah, I suppose I should keep up with that. There’s some truth to that, or at least it’s a common feeling, but I’d also say you should throw that feeling out and never worry about it. There’s a knack to knowing how much of it is useful. I’m sure Bill Monroe didn’t worry about it too much—although when he heard that this Presley guy had rearranged “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” he went back and rerecorded it.
So I messed with my sound. To see if I could be more current, including drum machines, synthesizers. I bought new gear, I read tons of manuals. I was infatuated with all the machine junk.
People like records made with machines because they have a certain vibe to ’em. They don’t sound human. It’s robotic, and so is the music. The opening instrumental of Zombie, “Goin’ Back Home,” was actually played by a human being—me. I had first programmed the whole thing to play by itself and it was absolute crap—disturbing, inhuman, robotic crap.
I’ve had to relearn that same lesson a couple of times. In the first part of this millennium, I started forgetting and got into Pro Tools and all that. For a while I was convinced that I could make a drum machine sound like a human being. Stupid. It’s like trying to turn lead into gold. Classic rock and roll does not sound good if the drummer sounds like a robot. You can’t make a drum machine do Al Jackson Jr., the drummer with Booker T. and the MGs!
For years I had been doing the one-man-band thing. With Creedence, some of the tracks are very, very good musically. You can’t take that away from us. There are other tracks where we were outside our comfort zone, and they sound a little shaky. I thought that was because we weren’t good enough.
And with Eye of the Zombie I thought, Screw the one-man band and the machines: I’m gonna get the best. I’m gonna get studio musicians. People who really had chops. Chops. I was envious of studio musicians—guys who knock out everything fast and can play circles around anyone. I asked Lenny Waronker who to use, and he named a few top people. Berklee College of Music graduates. I went to meet them. That all seemed good.
We did it at the Lighthouse, the same North Hollywood studio where I would record Blue Moon Swamp. I had the songs written and demoed on my equipment. We’d learn the song and then record it that day. In the old days I had always counted on the process of developing the song in a room with the band. That’s what I had done all through Creedence. These guys were studio musicians, and they were so spot-on it happened rather quickly.
But the final product? I had been led to believe that studio hotshots can play anything, any style. Sacre bleu—it’s not true. It’s an entirely different way of making and presenting music. These guys were ever so accomplished, but they didn’t play with my feel. You think this person who grew up in Encino is going to sound like Clifton Chenier?
Eye of the Zombie is not a very good record. But I can’t blame it on anybody else—it was my design. After all, I’m in charge of the ship. I picked those guys to do that music, which wasn’t my style of music. I can’t stand here and try to defend it. If some guy was in line at the music store holding Zombie, I’d try to talk him out of it: “Hey, don’t get that one. It’s not very good.” “Change in the Weather” (which I rerecorded for The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again) and “Sail Away” are great. The rest of the songs might be all right with someone else doing them, just not me. They’re just… sideways. How the album is shaped and played just doesn’t seem like me.
Centerfield was this liberating record full of good songs, good performances. And then the next album is this dark, spooky, and not even well-realized thing, messy and artistically screwed up. There was an almost uncontrolled anger in the music, stemming from all that stuff you’d think I would’ve gotten over. It’s a disturbed album because I was disturbed. It seems bizarre to me now, but the fact that I wanted to do something like that then is a litmus test of my own psychological health. I was not a happy guy. You might catch me calling that album I Am a Zombie, because that’s exactly how I felt.
This is one time when you can even judge the album by its cover. For the art I wanted to do my face with a Papua New Guinea tribal tattoo, but Warners said David Lee Roth was already doing one for his cover. So I went for zombie. It ended up looking fake. Nothing hit the mark with that album. I think the label was embarrassed even before it came out. I’d heard that Mo Ostin had looked at it and said, “This is all wrong.” And of course he was right. In fact, after it was out awhile, Lenny Waronker said, “John, why don’t you make another album like Centerfield, where you play all the instruments?” I thought he was crazy. I didn’t want to do that again. But now I see what he was saying: at least that was me.
I hadn’t toured since Creedence, but I was set to go out on behalf of the Zombie album. For my nearly fifty-date Rockin’ All Over the World tour of the U.S., I used the same guys on the record plus a few more musicians. The first date of the Eye of the Zombie tour was at Mud Island in Memphis on August 26, 1986. I was overjoyed to be in Memphis, thinking about all the great music there.
The day before the concert, we were at Handy Park, looking at the statue of W. C. Handy. And one of the dudes in my new band said, “Who was W. C. Handy?” If you could’ve read the little balloon over my head at that moment, it would’ve said, “Man, we in trouble now!” Don’t they teach you guys anything in music college? And were they overpaid! I was a doofus. I thought they deserved a big payday because they said they deserved a big payday. One of them even mentioned royalties from the record. I thought, Really? After all the years that I’ve been screwed out of my royalties, now I’ve got to give ’em to you too? That didn’t happen.
The Zombie thing just seemed so misguided. Yeah, I really stood onstage and sang “Eye of the Zombie” and “Mr. Greed” instead of my Creedence-era songs. I heard that people were yelling for the old songs and booing me. I don’t blame them. Clearly the guy who made the decision to not play his most famous songs out on tour has some stuff bothering him. At least I wasn’t standing onstage stoned or drunk or throwing up. I’m not saying the music was much better than that. Maybe it wasn’t!
Of course, there’s a perfectly appropriate way of playing that might have been better—and it’s painfully obvious looking back now, as it was to some folks even at the time. After the tour was over, Bruce Springsteen and I went to see Steve Earle. One of the guys in Steve’s band said it straight out, clear as a bell: “I heard that Eye of the Zombie. Why didn’t you just get you some guys from Texas and play the blues?” Ain’t that the truth.
The Zombie album marks another dark period in my life. If you’re idle and not financially obligated to go to a job at 8 a.m., that’s a recipe for a lot of bad behavior. I was well aware that I was marking time, spinning my wheels—enough that I was saying to myself, John, you’re not going forward. You’re just getting drunk, sleeping all day, and thinking about hooking up with a female companion or figuring out how to get a pizza delivered.
It wasn’t just that my music wasn’t working. Saul Zaentz was torturing me again. Lawsuits. Depositions. I was really pissed off and very unhappy. Drinking enough to sink a battleship, and doing it with a vengeance. The odd thing about it was that I desperately wanted things to change. I kept trying to figure out something that would change my life. All my life I’d been looking for something and just hadn’t found it. I just seemed to have a kind of emptiness.
I was a freight train of sorrow. I only weighed about 120 pounds, drank too much, smoked too much.… Ever seen that movie with Tyrone Power, Nightmare Alley? He starts out on top of the world and by the end of the movie he’s the geek. Locked in a cage, being thrown a raw chicken bone to gnaw on. That was me.
Sometimes I wondered if I would make it out of the eighties alive.
And then I met Julie, and everything changed. You’re probably used to me
being the storyteller thus far, but now I’m going to have Julie join in. She can tell you things I can’t and add depth to the story. She knows the truth—and isn’t afraid to say it!
CHAPTER 15
Wild as a Mink, Sweet as Soda Pop
JULIE: I was born Julie Kramer. I grew up in a small town in northern Indiana. My parents were blue-collar: my father served as a marine, my mother worked in a factory. She was secretary of the union and she worked there until it closed down and they moved all the jobs out of the country. President Kennedy was a big star in our house. Those values and beliefs were important to us. We were right smack-dab in Middle America, red, white, and blue.
There were four girls in our family. Much of my childhood was spent at my grandparents’ lake house, where my grandfather would fish every day and my grandmother would cook the daily catch. It was a very ideal life for sure at the lake. But my parents divorced when I was five, and their relationship was similar to John’s parents’. They could never get along and they sure didn’t handle the divorce well with us kids. I think this is why John and I both try to protect our kids from things they shouldn’t be a part of or worry about. Childhood shouldn’t be filled with all of the adult stresses. We feel very strongly that childhood should be pure, simple, and joyful.
I met John on September 24, 1986, in Indianapolis, Indiana. I lived in South Bend, Indiana, at the time. Indianapolis was about four hours south of where I grew up. I had a sister who went to school down near Indianapolis in Terre Haute. She had been having terrible trouble in a relationship, and we were all very worried about her. She asked if I would help her move out of this house she shared with her boyfriend at the time. She was scared, and I offered to get her things and move her back home. We both decided on the way down to Terre Haute that we would stop in Indy and have some fun together. We left South Bend a little later than planned—I think we got to Indy at around 10 p.m. We stopped off at a gas station and changed clothes, since we both were dressed in jeans, and put on fresh makeup—something girls do.
We walked into this club in Indianapolis called Don’t Ask. I don’t really know how we ended up there, but we walked in and sat at the bar. Wow—this place was crowded and seemed to be happening. There were the usual dudes trying to pick you up. My sister and I were just having fun, chatting and laughing. Entertaining the dudes…
I was recently separated and was getting a divorce from my husband. I married at twenty-three and I had a little girl at home, Lyndsay. This trip was intended to be a little break, and we were going to make the best of it, even though the next day we would be facing some very serious stuff.
One of the “boys” hanging at the bar with us noticed John walk in. He said, “Hey, that’s John Fogerty over there!” Now, I wouldn’t have known that was John unless he pointed him out. I was a casual music fan, and I’d worked in a large independent record store, so I had knowledge of who he was, but I never would’ve recognized him. I had seen a music video on MTV starring John, “The Old Man Down the Road.” I’m really not sure why I remember that, looking back.
This was not my nature, but I walked over to John—maybe it was a way to get away from the dudes, or maybe it was just a dare of sorts. I was going over there to shake his hand.
John: I’d just played a concert in Indianapolis. We were staying at the Canterbury Hotel and some of the fellas in the band said, “We’re going around the corner to this bar. Why don’t you come on over there?” I was looking for adventure in those days. I walked inside and around the whole place and determined that I hadn’t really seen anything I was interested in, and decided to leave.
But this group of shadows in the corner caught my eye. The shadows parted, and it was as if a light was coming out of the sky. There was this beautiful girl in a red sweaterdress. I said to myself, That’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I’m just standing there dumbfounded and suddenly she starts walking towards me. It was the strangest thing. It was like one of those slow-motion dream sequences. And she walks up and says, “Can I shake your hand, Mr. Fogerty?” I talked to her a little bit, eventually asked if I could buy her a drink. She said, “Peachtree on the rocks.” I’d never heard of such a thing. I said, “Say that again?”
Julie: John was a little rough around the edges. He had on a pearl-snap Western shirt, baggy Levi’s, wore a scarf around his neck, and his hair was long and shaggy—to this Indiana girl he resembled a Willie Nelson character, a broken-down cowboy. We chatted in the back of the bar for hours, and even danced to the song “Sledgehammer,” if you can believe that. John ordered quite a few drinks. I think I stopped at four. He kept ordering straight shots of tequila and chasing them with a beer. Then he’d tear off the filter on his cigarette before smoking it. This was something I had never seen before, except maybe on TV. It just sent a message that somehow this guy wasn’t caring about himself or didn’t have anyone to care for him.
He asked about my relationship and I told him I was getting a divorce. I asked him if he was married, and his reply was, “Well, sort of, but it’s not really a marriage. It’s not at all what marriage is supposed to be.” I wondered what that meant, being only twenty-six and newly separated myself. I thought, Maybe that’s a normal way of life for a Willie Nelson character, for a broken-down cowboy. That’s just how they live. Looking back, it seems a little funny but that’s truly how this twenty-six-year-old felt.
It was time to leave, as my sister and I had a job to do. She had a really old car at the time, and all three of us piled into the front seat, and we drove John back to his hotel. He invited me in and told me that my sister could sleep on the couch. It was that Willie character again. I said, “Thank you, John, it’s been wonderful to spend time with you, but that isn’t in the cards for me.” I will never forget dropping him off at his five-star hotel. There was a really long red carpet and I watched John walk very slowly to the door. My sister and I looked at each other and felt bad for him—John looked so sad and alone. We both remember that walk to this day. I never gave John my number and I never thought I’d see him again. We just drove off.
Days went by and I couldn’t help but think of him. Something in him, I don’t know what, connected with me. There was just something about John.
John: There was a gap in that tour, between the first and second time I saw Julie, and I checked myself into rehab. I was ready for whatever it was—because I needed to change. I always blamed myself for drinking. I didn’t try to blame somebody else. Of course, in rehab they don’t let you outside. I wanted to go running but I couldn’t, so I was doing all the calisthenics and exercise in my room to get my heart rate up. Finally, on the third day, the doctor checks my pulse, and I guess all my physical signs weren’t what he was used to. He said, “Why are you here?” I said, “I have a drinking problem.” He said, “Really? Look, if you really want to stay here—and you beg us—we’ll let you stay. But we don’t think you need to.” That was helpful: “Here’s the steering wheel. You’re in charge of what you do.” I think that, luckily, I was not physically addicted. And when Julie saw me the second time, it was like I was a completely different person. I wasn’t drinking or smoking at all.
Julie: John played a show in Merrillville, Indiana, on November 13. This was close to my home, and I decided I needed to see him. I had no idea how to contact him other than by going to his show. My friend Bev came with me, and outside the venue I saw this guy who looked like a crew member. His name was Slice and I gave him a note to give to John. Slice went off, came back out, and informed me that John would meet me after the show, which was just about to start. After the concert, there was John—wow, did he look different! He was all cleaned up, wearing a leather jacket. He looked quite handsome and healthy. We talked again for hours. John didn’t drink or smoke that night, although he served me so many drinks I should’ve never driven home. I had no idea where this crazy thing was headed—if anywhere—but I felt something special happening. I remember walking with John to my car. It was
freezing cold and the snow was falling.
John: Julie says, “Why don’t you just come to South Bend with us?” And I’m thinking, That’s impossible. I’m out on the road, I’m in a bus, I’m traveling here and there. But here’s this beautiful siren, this temptress, trying to get me to jump ship, leave the tour and fly away with her to South Bend, Indiana.
The windshield was frozen over solid. I’d never seen that in my life. So we were scraping away. And then Julie kissed me—the first kiss. And… oh my. I started having second thoughts about not going to South Bend. I thought she was the most beautiful creature. She seemed to be everything that I hoped in my heart I would find someday. I had no way of knowing something like that so soon, but she just seemed… perfect. And delightful.
I said, “How do I get in touch with you?” She wrote her number inside a matchbook and I put it in my pocket. Next day I dig out my matchbook to give her a call, and it was just a bunch of scribble. Let’s just say Julie had a bit to drink. My hopes were dashed. All I knew was “Julie from South Bend.”
Julie: Time went by and I was finding myself thinking of John often. With a divorce coming and handling all of that, I had been through quite a bit. I needed a getaway, a break from everything I had been going through. I booked a trip to California—my aunt and uncle lived in San Juan Capistrano. While there, I rented a car and drove to Los Angeles. I went to Universal Studios since it was my favorite place to visit when I was a kid on vacation there. And then—either I read it in a newspaper or saw it there on the Universal Amphitheatre marquee (this was pre-Internet)—I learned that John was going to be doing a show while I was there!