Fortunate Son

by John Fogerty

  Bruce is my friend. A really great guy. It might surprise some people, but Bruce is a pretty self-deprecating guy. We were onstage together at Hyde Park and I called him “the greatest American rocker of all time.” Off mic, he said, “Whoa! What an introduction!” I think he was a little embarrassed. But if you think about the number of years and amount of impact, yes, some candles have burned brighter for a short period, like Elvis. But Bruce is still going strong. I hope to do more things with Bruce. It’s always really exciting and really good. And fun!

  Julie: I am always bugging Bruce to make music with John. I think it would be great if they toured together, but Bruce doesn’t tour with anybody. He always seems to chuckle when he sees me. I think he knows it’s coming—“Oh no, Julie Fogerty again!” When we were set to play the New Orleans Jazz Fest last year, Bruce was playing the night before. I told John to call him up and suggest that they play a couple of songs together, but John is too shy. He never wants to intrude on anyone’s show. So I had John’s brother Bob call and set it up. John’s so cute. When I told him that Bruce said yes, he said, “I have to get my show together. I don’t think there’s time!” I said, “Don’t worry. You’re doin’ it. You have to.” He didn’t say another word. Smart man. John worries too much about perfection sometimes. I try and have him be in the moment, unrehearsed and wonderfully him.

  CHAPTER 21

  Wrote a Song for Everyone

  THE IDEA CAME from Miss Julie. We were sitting together, having family time. Julie has these really intuitive, cool ideas—I’m kind of used to it now. She plugs into these mystical concepts. In some ways Julie is far more plugged into the mojo-voodoo thing than I am. She said to me, “Why don’t you get a bunch of the people you love and sing your songs?”

  I thought, Wow, I can call up people that I don’t really know, like Brad Paisley, and say, “Hey, man, I have admired your work. I’m going to make this album of my songs. Would you like to join me?” That sounded like Christmas to me, so I jumped right in with both feet.

  The first priority was to get the artists on board. Scheduling was the hardest part. Once they said yes, I’d say, “Okay, pick the song you’d like to do.” I wanted the artist to take some possession of this idea. And then I’d say, “I want you to think about an arrangement or a vision that you have that makes it personal to you.” I didn’t want them to just copy what I’d done years before. I wanted it to be a collaboration.

  And most importantly, I wanted to be in the same room with each artist recording my song. That may sound basic, but in this digital world, a lot of these “duet” albums are made by musicians sending files to each other through the ether. My psyche just cringes at that whole idea. I wanted to make music, and music is really made between two or more souls sitting there in the same room and vibing off of each other. And I sure didn’t want to call my album Duets.

  “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” with me and Miranda Lambert, was the first thing that we actually recorded for this album. Several years ago, I felt that I had discovered Miranda Lambert. I heard this wonderful voice one night on my little radio that I sometimes fall asleep with. She’s singing this incredible song, “More Like Her,” and I thought I was the only one in the world who knew this magical artist. About the third time I heard the song on the radio, I learned her name: Miranda Lambert. Now I’m off—I went online, found the song, made my own CD of it, and listened to it in my car over and over. I’d just get goose bumps when I heard her sing. It was like some exotic food—I had to have it again and again. I went back online, all ready to tell people about this song… jeez, I’m such a geek. I learned that eight months before, she’d won the album of the year. The whole world knew about Miranda—except me.

  Eventually I met her at the Academy of Country Music Awards show in 2010. Later I asked her to be on my album—I think her exact answer was, “Hell, yes.” Julie enters this story again. She thought “Wrote a Song for Everyone” would be a really cool vehicle between a man and a woman. I hadn’t really pictured it that way.

  She is such a trouper, Miranda. She sang every single take that we did with the band, and then all her vocal tracks, from which we made a complete master. We were listening together for her best performance, and as we got to where the middle instrumental solo would be, she blurted out what she thought was needed: “A face-melting guitar solo!” It was such a jolt to me. I wasn’t sure if she was joking. I never really thought of a country record having a face-melting solo. When I think of face-melting, I think of Van Halen, big hair, and spandex. I had envisioned more of a hippie guitar solo for the song. I could almost smell the patchouli oil and see the flower children twirling in their rainbow dresses and beads.

  Later on, I was finishing the song, trying to do my hippie guitar solo. Miranda’s vocal was so great—she’s just killer. I kept thinking to myself, Oh man, I’ve got to live up to that. This solo has got to be just as good. I can’t lame out and just throw something on there. I could just sense that what I was doing didn’t measure up. And Miranda’s words keep coming back to me: a face-melting guitar solo.

  I thought of Tom Morello because I’d seen him with Bruce at Madison Square Garden. And for a nanosecond I thought, Yeah, I’ll play something like Tom Morello. Then the real guy in me took over—“ No, I’m going to call Tom.” I did, and he said, “Where? When?”

  We met in the studio. He plugged in his very simple, direct rock and roll rig: an amp, one little special pedal that he uses, a speaker box with old Greenback speakers in it. I was still sitting there in the studio, didn’t even have my headphones on, and he was already playing solos. I thought, Whoa, I better get back there behind the glass.

  Tom says, “Give me some direction.”

  I said, “Soaring!” And then I added, “Heroic!”

  Tom did it a few times and was basically done. He stayed for the whole editing process. He wanted to hear it all together—y’know, “What are you going to do with me? Will I recognize myself?” These were true artists I was working with, people with passion. They really care. And when it was done, Tom looked at me and said, “John, I think that sounds heroic.”

  I’m so proud of the result. It may be a little unusual for Tom and Miranda compared to their other records. Me, I don’t think it’s unusual at all. Whenever I play that track for people, I turn to them and say, “This is why I did this album in the first place.”

  I had been hearing about My Morning Jacket for some time, and I knew there was substance to their music—it wasn’t just some flavor of the month. They wanted to do “Long as I Can See the Light” and record it in Nashville. I must say, this was kind of an out-on-the-edge session. Before a session I would usually discuss the specifics of the recording with my engineer, Kevin Harp, who did a great job on the project. In this case, I had been touring and hadn’t connected with Kevin, so when I arrived in Nashville, nothing had been set up. All the equipment was just sitting on the floor. I’m used to having things more pinned down.

  Then, when the band started to play, I thought, Uh-oh. It was a little vague-sounding. I had to remind myself that that’s what jam bands do. I decided to be the wise, old professor looking in the mirror: “Well, this is exactly what you set up. This is what you wanted. So don’t go ruining it now by saying something that screws it all up.” I had been telling everybody on the project, “Don’t be me. Be you.”

  The clock was ticking. I was hearing sounds that I wasn’t used to, seeing things that seemed precarious, and as you might guess, I am a bit of a control freak. What that really all means is, My Morning Jacket was out of my comfort zone. My first instinct was to go, “Uh-oh, we better change this.” I had to really step on my tongue and tell myself to shut up.

  I was watching, waiting, learning. And it turned out so great—and so different from what I would’ve done. Jim James plays guitar in a really different way. His style is so angular and jagged. The track ended up being great, really cosmic. I can’t really take any credit artistically, other
than as the patient parent. I have to admit that I could have messed that all up, turned it into just a studio musician sort of thing. Instead, they made a great record, and I learned a lot about artistic expression.

  I love Bob Seger’s voice. “Night Moves” killed me, as have all the records he’s made since “Katmandu”—I just thought, Wow, that man is kicking it! He’s got one of the greatest voices in rock and roll history, and I knew I wanted to have that on my record. So I called him up. It turned out he likes my music. Singers tend to collect other singers, so fortunately for me, he liked my voice. In the eighties, Bob recorded a live version of “Fortunate Son,” and when I heard it, I thought Fantasy Records had gone and snuck out some bootleg version of Creedence. He actually fooled me!

  Bob says, “I want to do ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain.’” He puts down his cell phone, and I hear him pick up a guitar, and he starts strumming into the phone, “Long as I remember…” And he sang the whole song to me over the phone. My jaw dropped, it sounded so great.

  Bob has a unique way of strumming the guitar. He does it with his thumb. So that sound that you hear on “Night Moves”—it’s not a pick. It’s not like me or Bruce or so many other singer-songwriters: when we’re strumming that big chord it makes kind of a percussive sound. Bob’s thing is almost a thump. Which is very personal.

  We’re there in the studio, and Bob goes off by himself because he wants to make sure his game is on. He’s over in the corner alone with his guitar, going over the verses, going over his approach. I had been busy producing things, and suddenly I just hear that guitar thump and his voice: “Long as I remember…”

  And I go, “Whoa!” The producer—no, the fan—in me heard another artist really doing it. This record was about taking chances, which didn’t necessarily mean making a Top 40, two-minute song that fits some record company genre in a nice, neat little box. It was about being artistic, and I had all these wonderful artists. So when I hear something that cool—like what Bob Seger was doing—the artist in me says, “I’ve gotta have that.”

  I had met Alan Jackson back in the nineties, around the time of “Mercury Blues.” I’m a huge fan. I started with his first album back in 1990, and I have loved them all ever since. Incredible voice, incredible taste. I feel he has much in common with the golden age of country music.

  One day I got word from my record company: “Alan Jackson has heard about your project, and he wants to record a song with you.” I was floored. Of all the times in my life, this was one that kind of took me aback. I didn’t dare hope that this could ever happen. It really meant a lot to me.

  I went down to Nashville, and we recorded “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.” Alan is the friendliest, nicest guy. He didn’t act like God, even though I think of him as one. In fact, I told people it’s like having Lincoln on your record, because that’s the bearing he has for me. I knew I wanted some of that cool left-hand piano stuff that Joey Schmidt does on Alan’s records, like “Small Town Southern Man.” And, of course, I had to have some great Brent Mason guitar! Brent has been one of my heroes for years, starting with the great solos he does on so many of Alan’s songs.

  So all these wonderful musicians were part of this session—plus a subliminal ingredient that you would never know about unless you were there.

  The building where Alan records is a weird-looking old house from the thirties that they call the Castle. The band is sort of in the main room, and Alan goes into this side room where he always sings. We set up facing each other, each with his own microphone, and I was a kid in a candy store. Alan is singing with that awesome voice of his, and every once in a while he rears back to sing a line and you could hear it echo off the walls in that room. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I knew that sound from listening to his records. Any other place in the universe, you would never get that sound. It’s part of all his records, and it’s not some button you can push. You can really hear the sound of that room, and this extra bit of magic just took my breath away.

  Jennifer Hudson and I were both at a benefit a couple of years ago. We didn’t actually meet, but I stood and watched her performance. She has a one-in-a-billion voice, for the ages. If I had a cannon like that, I’d be showing off all the time. I would stand on the street corner and stop traffic.

  So I got up the courage to ask her. I wasn’t even sure if she knew who I was. She chose “Proud Mary.”

  One night around this time, I was at dinner with Julie and we were having a gentle conversation about many things, including music. I started to talk about my song “Don’t You Wish It Was True” and perhaps rethinking the arrangement. I mentioned that maybe it would be cool in a New Orleans setting, and I described some of the elements that make that city’s music so great. Suddenly, Julie’s eyes get real big and she blurts out, “Proud Mary.”

  I look at her as if to say, “No, honey, you misunderstood me.”

  She says insistently, “Proud Mary.”

  I go, “What do you mean, honey?” Now I realize that I’m hearing an idea.

  She says, “Proud Mary. All those things you just said: the gospel feel, the zydeco, the wonderful fiddles, the washboard, the triangle, the horns…”

  I’m hearing this and I say, “Yes, yes, yes, you’re right. This is a great idea.”

  I was starting to get excited, and she adds, “It’s got to be a musical journey. It’s got to show the history of New Orleans. And we have to go to New Orleans and do this.”

  The first thing I said was, “I’m gonna need help—I should call Allen Toussaint.”

  So I did. We had met two or three times over the years. And I must say, Allen has a very special presence. Not someone I would walk up to, slap on the back, and treat frivolously. But there is one thing that is quite interesting. The first time I met Allen Toussaint was at the 1998 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony at the Waldorf in New York City. I was inducting Gene Vincent. I was sort of in my own world, trying to do a good job for Gene. But I look over and see Allen Toussaint.

  Allen was being inducted that night. I’m a big fan and offered my congratulations. And then I said, “Allen, have we ever met?” His face gets a little curious, quizzical. He is a wonderfully suave, beautiful man—the way he speaks, just his manner, is so elegant. He goes, “No, I don’t think so, John.” And I go, “Oh, well, then I must have dreamed it.” And then I just shook his hand and excused myself.

  Well, what had happened was, years before, I’d had a dream and it was so real that I thought I knew Allen. So when I walked over there that night, I felt like I knew him.

  Finally we’re down at Piety Studio in New Orleans, tracking with Jennifer Hudson and the Rebirth Brass Band, from the streets of New Orleans. We had gotten a lot of the music recorded, so we felt pretty good. Allen was kind of sitting over by himself at the piano. So I came over and sat down next to him, kind of like the son to the father. I said, “Allen, I want to tell you something. Do you remember when I walked up to you at the hall of fame and said, ‘Have we ever met?’”

  He said something like, “I found that curious, John. Yeah, I remember that. But it was just sort of strange.”

  “Okay. I want to tell you about a dream I had. In that dream, you and I were in New Orleans working together, coming up with arrangements. We were doing this because we were producing a very talented girl singer, and the song that we were working on was ‘Proud Mary.’” And that’s the God’s honest truth.

  He looks at me and hits a strange chord on the piano. Kinda, bra-ang! And he says, “That’s weird.”

  I said, “Yes, sir, but that’s exactly what happened, and here we are.”

  “You know, Brad, you are just one of my favorite guitar players of all time. Can you show me how you make that sound?”

  Guitar players collect other guitar players that they love. And Brad Paisley is at the top of a very select few. I know of other players who are virtuosos and all that, which I respect. But I wouldn’t want to play like that—it doesn’t
do anything for me. In Brad’s case, I hang on every note. I am an idolizing, genuflecting groupie. He plays the Telecaster like a violin player, ripping out stuff that is just so lyrical, musical. He is obviously one of the most talented guitar players that has ever lived.

  We were backstage at an awards event when I asked him how he “made that sound.” He just pulled me over to his amp and went immediately into guitarspeak. Now, we were just two guitar geeks talking gear. (With Brad Paisley? The Ultimate!) In the midst of that, I blurted out how I’d always wanted to do a record like his album Play, and he suddenly says, “As long as you let me play on your album.” I was speechless. I didn’t think anyone knew about my plans for an album. I think I said, “Yes… please.”

  When we got on the phone to talk about it, Brad wanted to do “Hot Rod Heart.” I thought that was an unusual choice, but he said he loved Blue Moon Swamp. Then he told me about being a thirteen-year-old kid and singing “Centerfield” at a huge outdoor festival. He said, “I didn’t do it in G. I did it in E.” E is the guitar player’s key. I just laughed and said, “Oh, you made a guitar song out of it.” He goes, “Heck, yeah.” Even at thirteen, Brad’s voice was lower than mine.

  We got back to “Hot Rod Heart.” And Brad says, “I’m picturing two guys having a guitar duel out on Main Street.” That was his vision. So I pictured an old Western duel. I thought, Oh my God, he’s Clint Eastwood, and I’m already dead. We met in a studio in Nashville (on Main Street), and I knew immediately I was in the presence of the Yoda Master. Man, what fun that was! Back in the control room listening to Brad just ripping it out had me and everybody else cracking up at how great he plays. (Little-boy voice: “How do you make that sound?”)