Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only John Cob. John.
Speaker 1: Good to have you on the program, but it's great
Speaker 1: to be here, Thanks Bob. So you've been on the
Speaker 1: road since last summer. Have you had any problems with
Speaker 1: COVID and touring? Of course, a lot of it being
Speaker 1: you're taking all the precautions, wearing a mask everywhere. Once
Speaker 1: in a while, a member of your crew or a
Speaker 1: member in the place where you're playing, or you know,
Speaker 1: COVID is around and that person has to then disappear
Speaker 1: and go isolate for ten days, two weeks, or whatever
Speaker 1: the rule we're under at the time. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's always present, just behind the screen,
Speaker 1: behind the curtain, I guess. And it still was, you know,
Speaker 1: hasn't gone away yet. Have you gotten COVID or anybody
Speaker 1: in the band? I believe I've gotten COVID twice. The
Speaker 1: first time was right at the beginning of when we
Speaker 1: were just beginning to hear that this new thing was coming.
Speaker 1: He was in the January early February, UM, and I
Speaker 1: got mainly at night I would be copying, trying to
Speaker 1: sleep and you know, a lot of symptoms like that.
Speaker 1: I felt kind of strange, but I didn't really know that.
Speaker 1: I went to my doctor and just tried to get antibiotics.
Speaker 1: In fact, I went through his first run of him
Speaker 1: and the second run of them, uh, and still wasn't
Speaker 1: any better. And in the midst of the second run,
Speaker 1: he said, why would you continue the same medicine if
Speaker 1: it wasn't working. But I'm not a doctor. I don't
Speaker 1: think like that. I just said, well, I'll take this
Speaker 1: some more. Um. But looking back, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: was COVID. Then went through the whole you know, that
Speaker 1: horrible year when there was no protection, no vaccine. Um,
Speaker 1: I ran down. You know, I was first on my
Speaker 1: block to run down when the vaccine became available, or
Speaker 1: at least uh, I was right there at the beginning.
Speaker 1: So then I ended up getting the first and second shot,
Speaker 1: and then after my booster shot, which is the third shot.
Speaker 1: About three weeks after that, three to a month, UM,
Speaker 1: that old symptom of the cough came back at night,
Speaker 1: and I think my wife was away on a trip
Speaker 1: or something, and I was telling her I was having
Speaker 1: a heck of a time. She said, you gotta test yourself.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, I was positive even after all those vaccines.
Speaker 1: But of course, as we all know, with the vaccine,
Speaker 1: the consequences were not dire. It was I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of that cough, but it was that same cough,
Speaker 1: but nothing else was wrong. I didn't really even feel tired.
Speaker 1: I was still going running, you know, in all the
Speaker 1: normal things. I tested again, and maybe three days or so,
Speaker 1: you know, immediately started staying away from people. But um,
Speaker 1: I've still had it. And after ten days I tested
Speaker 1: it again and still had it. It took about two
Speaker 1: weeks for it to you know, where I finally wasn't positive.
Speaker 1: Have you had to cancel any dates because of COVID.
Speaker 1: Right at the beginning, we were literally going. We played
Speaker 1: a show in at a casino in Laughlin, Nevada, and
Speaker 1: which I really by then I didn't want to do this.
Speaker 1: And then uh, and this I believe was late February
Speaker 1: early March of and there was another show the next night. Nice.
Speaker 1: I just really didn't want to go through with it,
Speaker 1: but we were sort of obligated. But finding the governor
Speaker 1: of Nevada got wise to the thing and just shut
Speaker 1: people down. And so like five minutes before I would
Speaker 1: have gone on stage, they canceled the show. We ended up,
Speaker 1: of course, it was postponed, not canceled. A year and
Speaker 1: a half later we played that show, but yeah, we
Speaker 1: we lost some of those. So you mentioned your wife
Speaker 1: in the press. You've always said positive things about your wife.
Speaker 1: How long you've been married to your wife now? Well,
Speaker 1: officially thirty one years. Our anniversary was about a month ago, congratulations,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. And how many years before the
Speaker 1: official probably four years before that, three something like that.
Speaker 1: So how did your meter? We met in UM six
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis. I was on tour and uh after the show,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the fellas in the band said, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's this club right around the corner of our hotel.
Speaker 1: We're all going down there, and uh so I showed
Speaker 1: up probably twenty minutes later and kind of walked around
Speaker 1: the whole place, and you know, I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to leave, and just as I had kind of
Speaker 1: made up my mind to leave, the sort of the
Speaker 1: people parted. Uh you know, these shadowy figures in the dark,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I'm staring at this beautiful girl in a
Speaker 1: red dress, and I literally said to myself that's the
Speaker 1: most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And my world stopped
Speaker 1: in its tracks right there. Um, that's how we met. Okay,
Speaker 1: continue the story. You see her in the waves part
Speaker 1: like in a movie. Do you approach er? What do
Speaker 1: you say? Literally, she came walking towards me and because
Speaker 1: she was Yeah, I found all this out later she
Speaker 1: was with a group of people, and most she was
Speaker 1: with her sister and helping her sister move across Indiana
Speaker 1: to a new location. But they had just stopped in
Speaker 1: at this club and they were only going to be
Speaker 1: there an hour, said they. You know, the the whole
Speaker 1: idea I think for my wife was if I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go down to where you are and bring you back
Speaker 1: up to where I am, and it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: six hour slept, maybe we can have a little bit
Speaker 1: of fun in between. And that was sort of their
Speaker 1: motive at the time. Um. And then you know, they
Speaker 1: had just met other people and she was talking to
Speaker 1: them and one of them noticed who I was, so
Speaker 1: sort of on a dare, my wife said I'm going
Speaker 1: to go up and talk to him, and she comes up,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like that old scene in the
Speaker 1: commercial where the couple is in slow motion walking, you know.
Speaker 1: I see her walking really slowly towards me, and she
Speaker 1: sticks out her hand and says, can I shake your hand?
Speaker 1: Mr foger They so all the thoughts in my head
Speaker 1: that were, let's say, not all above board were suddenly
Speaker 1: just throwing out the window with that Mr Fogerty. I
Speaker 1: kind of, oh my goodness. Um. But we talked a
Speaker 1: while and ended up talking the whole night. They until
Speaker 1: they closed the place. You know, just sat at a
Speaker 1: table sort of. This place had a dance floor, by
Speaker 1: the way, I literally got up and danced with this
Speaker 1: girl for one dance. Do you normally dance or was
Speaker 1: this an exception? I don't dance. I do not dance,
Speaker 1: but I felt like dancing. We always joked. The song
Speaker 1: was Sledgehammer. You know. We went back and sat out
Speaker 1: and talked some more. I just she was so well,
Speaker 1: I was just taken with her, smitten. Uh, and it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful feeling. You know. It went totally away from
Speaker 1: that other characterization that I was sort of just being
Speaker 1: a typical musician on the road. Uh. All of that
Speaker 1: kind of changed into sort of a boy scout talking
Speaker 1: to somebody who was charming and cute and funny, and
Speaker 1: you know, I just became this other I was in
Speaker 1: this other mood and she was certainly somebody I really
Speaker 1: wanted to spend more time with. But needles to say,
Speaker 1: she's an Indianapolis and you're on the road, So how
Speaker 1: do you maintain the relationship. Well, a few days later,
Speaker 1: I mean it might have been a couple of weeks. Really, Um,
Speaker 1: I got word that she was going to be at
Speaker 1: a show that was It was really not that far
Speaker 1: away as the crow Flags. I think it was in Maryville,
Speaker 1: and the place it was it was a concert venue,
Speaker 1: and also the hotel where I was staying. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: our head road guy guy named Slice, got the message.
Speaker 1: She came walking up to him in the afternoon and said, know,
Speaker 1: she knew I was playing there, and she said, can
Speaker 1: I if I could you a message? Can you give
Speaker 1: it to John? And he said sure, And so she
Speaker 1: either gave him a little note or a you know,
Speaker 1: a verbal message, and he came and told me, and
Speaker 1: I was delighted. I said, well, yeah, see, you're telling
Speaker 1: But it was really easy because the hotel and the
Speaker 1: bar and all that stuff was right in that same building,
Speaker 1: and you know, you didn't have to drive down a
Speaker 1: dark road somewhere. I said, I'll meet her after the show.
Speaker 1: I would be great, because by then I was probably
Speaker 1: in sound check. Um. And by then, by the way, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I came and met her in the bar.
Speaker 1: But I was a teetotaler. I had actually had some
Speaker 1: well publicized problems with alcohol, and now I was not
Speaker 1: drinking at all. And she was shocked at the difference
Speaker 1: in my appearance and demeanor, you know, the guys she
Speaker 1: saw before the first time, she said it was it
Speaker 1: was like walking up to Willie Nelson, you know, which
Speaker 1: I think I take as a compliment, but I think
Speaker 1: she met I looked a little haggard to kind a phrase,
Speaker 1: and this time, you know, I was all cleaned up.
Speaker 1: I looked probably healthier, gained a few pounds, you know,
Speaker 1: my hair was called um. And I was not drinking.
Speaker 1: Her and her girlfriend were, but I was not. And
Speaker 1: I just sat there and talked until you know, they
Speaker 1: retired and had to go home. Okay, then what well,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to get to see her again, so
Speaker 1: I said, gosh, you gotta give me your phone number.
Speaker 1: And so, sitting right at the table. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a booth actually in this uh little uh I would
Speaker 1: call it a bar and a holiday inn. But you know,
Speaker 1: so you get the picture and there's a little uh
Speaker 1: matchbooks there with the name of the place on the
Speaker 1: match So she grabbed the match book, gets a pen
Speaker 1: and writes down what I think is her phone number.
Speaker 1: Her name is uh to her her name is anyway,
Speaker 1: her name is Julie Lebzinski. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: she wrote down Lebezynski or her uh earlier name, which
Speaker 1: was Kramer. But anyway, um, I, you know, dutifully okay,
Speaker 1: And I took that and put in my shirt pocket
Speaker 1: and I was all smiles. And they had to leave
Speaker 1: and you know, drive back to South Bend where she's from.
Speaker 1: And uh, next day, I'm sitting on the bus, said, wow,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to look at her number.
Speaker 1: And I pull out the matchbook and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like that scene with Steve Allen in the Jerk where
Speaker 1: he's sitting in the bathtub. And I opened the matchbooks
Speaker 1: to see Julie's information and it says love love, lovel love.
Speaker 1: It's all scribbled that it it I can't read it.
Speaker 1: And now I'm heartbroken. Well, by God, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: every Julie in the South Bend phone book until I
Speaker 1: find there. I didn't quite have to do that. A
Speaker 1: few weeks later she came and found me. A very
Speaker 1: few weeks, it might have been even two. I was
Speaker 1: playing out in California at Universal. So she came out
Speaker 1: and found you, and then you were off to the
Speaker 1: races or to take how long until you were actually
Speaker 1: together living in the same place. Well, if you really
Speaker 1: want me to finish the story, I will. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: this is my favorite thing to talk about in the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: keep going. Okay, So I'm playing at Universal, I think
Speaker 1: two nights and so, which is a venue in southern
Speaker 1: California in l A and So I'm staying in the hotel.
Speaker 1: There's there's two of them there and and ones a Sherton,
Speaker 1: and the other is something else and I can't remember
Speaker 1: it might have been called Universal It anyway, she gets
Speaker 1: out there to Southern California. She's staying with her aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle, I believe, and she sees in the paper
Speaker 1: I'm playing at Universal now I have given the hotel
Speaker 1: strict um because I'm registered under my own name, because
Speaker 1: how can I say it's a a compt room because
Speaker 1: it goes with playing at the venue, right, So it's
Speaker 1: under my name. But I've given them strict orders do
Speaker 1: not put any calls through to my room or they're
Speaker 1: asking for John Pokery because I'll be getting calls at
Speaker 1: three am. You know, I need my rest. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, on the other side of reality. There, she
Speaker 1: looks in the paper, sees I'm playing at the Universal,
Speaker 1: says wow, I'm just gonna call him up. And so
Speaker 1: she you know, looks in the phone book or somehow
Speaker 1: figures he's at that hotel there. So she calls up
Speaker 1: the hotel says yes, can I please talk to John
Speaker 1: Pogotty and they put her right through. Well, if you
Speaker 1: know my girl, Julie, I've been with her for thirty
Speaker 1: five years or so, this is absolutely on Q. She
Speaker 1: is the man manifesto of the universe and she can
Speaker 1: make anything happen and and obviously always does. So there
Speaker 1: she is on my phone. I pick up the phone
Speaker 1: and she has HI, John, It's Julie. Now I was,
Speaker 1: at that same moment in time, a very mournful, sorrowful person. Um,
Speaker 1: I had my first marriage was breaking up. I was
Speaker 1: feeling like the tour was coming to an end. My
Speaker 1: career seem, I don't know, stalled, you know, for all
Speaker 1: those reasons that a person can get themselves into a
Speaker 1: sor of a place, I just I literally felt like
Speaker 1: I was standing on the dock with one end of
Speaker 1: a rope tight around my ankle and the other end
Speaker 1: around a big rock, and I was just about to
Speaker 1: throw the rock in the water. Anyway, I pick up
Speaker 1: the bones. She says, Hi, John, this is Julie. And
Speaker 1: the next thing that happened was I started laughing. I'm
Speaker 1: laughing so so fully and completely that I'm laying on
Speaker 1: the floor in my room. She says, what's the matter
Speaker 1: with you? And I tell her the story about the
Speaker 1: dock and the rock and the rope. I said, Honey,
Speaker 1: I I don't know how life can go from one
Speaker 1: swing from one end to another in fifteen seconds, but
Speaker 1: it just did, you know? I said, hello, how are you?
Speaker 1: I've been looking for you? Uh, And turned out she
Speaker 1: was staying down in Hollywood at a hotel, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked, and I think the next day
Speaker 1: I finally got to see her. So you saw her
Speaker 1: how long until she moved from Indianapolis to where you were?
Speaker 1: We stayed about a year apart. I know that. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see what we were together during that time. That
Speaker 1: week or so, I was in at the Universal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then she had to go back to her home. UM.
Speaker 1: But around New Year's I wanted to go. I was
Speaker 1: just compelled to come see her. And then I had
Speaker 1: to go back to California. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know why we do those things, but something said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's where you're staying, and so you're supposed to
Speaker 1: go back there. So I went back, and you know,
Speaker 1: it turned out that every couple of weeks I would
Speaker 1: fly to South Bend. I remember one time we were
Speaker 1: walking in the airport um parking lot, you know, to
Speaker 1: where the planes were whatever the determinal, and she stomped
Speaker 1: her foot. She just she stopped her foot down on
Speaker 1: the asphalt and I looked at her. It was just
Speaker 1: the cutest thing, you know, motion I've seen guys do it,
Speaker 1: but I've really never seen a girl do that. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, what's the matter, and she said, you're leaving?
Speaker 1: And it was my idea really, or or inclination I
Speaker 1: after a couple three times, flying back to South Bend
Speaker 1: every second week or so to spend a few days
Speaker 1: with her, I began to realize I was really in love. Um,
Speaker 1: but I was terrified that she would be you know,
Speaker 1: I tend to get tumatic too dramatic sometimes in life.
Speaker 1: I was terrified that she would be that entity that
Speaker 1: we some call it sometimes called the rebound. And so
Speaker 1: a guy will break up with his wife and then
Speaker 1: he'll meet, you know, somebody in a bar and they're
Speaker 1: together for six months, but that's all, and then he
Speaker 1: shakes him self thoroughly and drives out and then starts
Speaker 1: planning his real life. And so susie Q kind of
Speaker 1: goes away along with all those other things he just
Speaker 1: went through. I didn't want that to be my reality,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of kept it as it. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll come and see you, but I think we should
Speaker 1: stay apart. And I had this idea that it would
Speaker 1: last a year. I you know, don't ask me why now.
Speaker 1: It seems silly, um, but I guess there was some
Speaker 1: wisdom in that, because once we got together, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been together for thirty five years and without ever
Speaker 1: a hiccup I mean, it's just it's been wonderful. There's
Speaker 1: it's the deepest relationship I've ever had, and and and
Speaker 1: there's just no question ever you know about who is
Speaker 1: your soul mate and who you want to be with,
Speaker 1: who you run to with, what you're excited about, or
Speaker 1: with your problems. You know, Um, if you have such
Speaker 1: a thing, Bob, then you know exactly what I'm talking about, right,
Speaker 1: Just to get the landscape you were married before. How
Speaker 1: old were you when you got married the first time?
Speaker 1: I got married at twenty and there ought to be
Speaker 1: a law. What was your motivation for getting married at twenty? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought I was in love at the time,
Speaker 1: but I think you're at that age pretty young to
Speaker 1: to actually really know what you're talking about. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I was not insincere about my feelings, but
Speaker 1: also there was a large dose of um my mom
Speaker 1: was pushing me out of the house. You know, I
Speaker 1: was still living at home with my mother, and it
Speaker 1: was all I think at one point she you know,
Speaker 1: I was almost the last kid at home. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think my brother Bob was still at home, But
Speaker 1: how can I say it? I was acting like a
Speaker 1: foot loose, twenty year old, you know, coming in with
Speaker 1: Remember I'm still twenty, not even one, uh coming in
Speaker 1: late night, making a bunch of noise, I'm sure. I know.
Speaker 1: One time I went to give her a ride somewhere
Speaker 1: in the car and there was a six pack of
Speaker 1: beer sitting on the floor of the front seat that
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about as I put her in the
Speaker 1: Let's just kind of looked at that, you know, and
Speaker 1: I kind of to myself and oops, you know, so
Speaker 1: I was being kind of tossed out or else i'd
Speaker 1: have to pay rent. I think that's how she put it,
Speaker 1: And it was kind of her, you know, her way
Speaker 1: of saying, gee, I'm kind of tired of this re
Speaker 1: this situation. Let's change it, which I totally understand now,
Speaker 1: of course. But uh So, there was some of that
Speaker 1: I was kind of I don't know, there was there
Speaker 1: was a bit of coercion or pressure on me that
Speaker 1: I didn't understand, and that may have been some of
Speaker 1: the impetus toward getting married the first time. How did
Speaker 1: you meet your first wife? I worked in a gas station,
Speaker 1: and so I met her and her sister and that
Speaker 1: sister's boyfriend. All at the same time at the place
Speaker 1: I used to pump gas. They would come in rather late,
Speaker 1: and probably that happened two or three times. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you had kids with your first marriage, Yes, three kids.
Speaker 1: Three kids? What are they up to today? I'm not
Speaker 1: in a real close contact, but uh, you know these
Speaker 1: are people. These are all adults in their fifties. Now. Okay,
Speaker 1: So were you eager to have children with Julie or
Speaker 1: did you say, hey, you know, I've already had children.
Speaker 1: How do you decide to have children again? Well, Julie
Speaker 1: already had a daughter, Lindsay, who was about two and
Speaker 1: a half when we met. I know this because I
Speaker 1: have changed a diaper or two, um. And I think
Speaker 1: when that happened, she might have looked over and said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a keeper, you know, because I was. I hadn't
Speaker 1: done it in a while, but I certainly knew I
Speaker 1: was doing um. And then I think I think we
Speaker 1: both put it this way. We would talk rather vaguely
Speaker 1: about marriage at first. I think she'd been in a
Speaker 1: marriage that had not worked out, And of course I've
Speaker 1: been married for twenty years, um with less than spectacular results. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think we were both very skittish about
Speaker 1: that idea. It's bob, it's the weirdest thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're in love with someone and yet another part of
Speaker 1: your brain is sort of clanging against the metal walls
Speaker 1: with a ball peen hammer, going no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: marriage no. You know. So uh, I think things just
Speaker 1: sort of evolved naturally. And UM, at some point we decided,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going, we're gonna. I know how it happened.
Speaker 1: I finally came to my senses. She she was back
Speaker 1: in um South Bend, and I was with her, and
Speaker 1: I had an epiphany. I realized that she didn't she
Speaker 1: would talk about me to her girlfriends, and by then
Speaker 1: I was getting to know everybody, her mom, you know, sisters. Um.
Speaker 1: It had been a few years, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that anyone talked about marriage openly. You know. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a subject. How do you talk about that
Speaker 1: in front of the two people That might get awkward? Right? Um,
Speaker 1: But I had an epiphany. I I was I was
Speaker 1: I'm a runner, so I was out running, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're running, my your head well
Speaker 1: just clear. It seems like it's a good place for
Speaker 1: to think, you know, all the other instant pressures of
Speaker 1: you know, I'm hungry or it's raining or all that
Speaker 1: goes away, and you just sort of go into a
Speaker 1: how the zone, I guess you call it. And I
Speaker 1: had an epiphany about what why she's seeing all her
Speaker 1: friends and you know, her girlfriend. I could really see that,
Speaker 1: not so much that her family, but her girlfriends the
Speaker 1: one she wants to talk to intimately, and she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a ring to show them. I mean, I could
Speaker 1: really I could feel her position, what her heart must
Speaker 1: be like, it's wow, that's awful. She's telling them about
Speaker 1: this guy, you know, and we're committed to each other.
Speaker 1: But I just had my picture of I guess from
Speaker 1: the movies, see and they hold up their hand and
Speaker 1: there's a little beautiful, uh one carrot sweet little uh
Speaker 1: engagement ring, you know, and that's sort of that's sort
Speaker 1: of to a guy, that would be a contract, you know,
Speaker 1: like a book, you know, but to a girl, it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of established with that thing on her finger.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very momentous part of telling the tale.
Speaker 1: And I just really could feel that, so literally I
Speaker 1: finished my run. My run went down to a local
Speaker 1: mall and bought a one carrot engagement you know, and
Speaker 1: paid way too much money. I think they saw me
Speaker 1: coming with you know, stars in my eyes. Oh man,
Speaker 1: look at this roube. Wow, he's in love. We'll get him. Um.
Speaker 1: Because even though you know, because I'm a rock and
Speaker 1: roller and and I have a pretty good career going
Speaker 1: and all that, some people, especially nowadays since Twitter and
Speaker 1: TikTok and uh certain famous family that's on the internet
Speaker 1: all the time, people think that an engagement ring is
Speaker 1: a career move, you know, a statement of your place
Speaker 1: in your stature in life. But I didn't. To me, Uh,
Speaker 1: I was relating to when I was, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: and going to the movie. So I bought her this
Speaker 1: sweet little maall engagement ring and literally uh went to
Speaker 1: a rest a restaurant. It's famous in South Bend called
Speaker 1: Tippy Canoe because it uh used to be the student
Speaker 1: Baker mansion. But also uh maybe that political candidate from
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years ago may have stayed there,
Speaker 1: owned it or whatever. Uh. And I talked with the
Speaker 1: people the waiter and said, look, I'm gonna bring my
Speaker 1: beautiful wife or my beautiful girlfriend down here and have dinner.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to give her this ring, but I
Speaker 1: want you to put this in the glass of wine
Speaker 1: that we're gonna order. Okay, okay, you know, and so
Speaker 1: the the jinks was in, you know, the fix was in. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So later that day we come to dinner Robbily's and
Speaker 1: and I go around everything, okay, you know, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I knew there wouldn't be time to arrange that at night.
Speaker 1: And of course, well, honey, have some of your wine,
Speaker 1: you know. She takes a little sip of it, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and I can clearly see the ring in
Speaker 1: the bottom of that glass of wine from where I'm sitting.
Speaker 1: I see that, Well, how do you have another sip
Speaker 1: of that wine? And probably you know, after the second
Speaker 1: or third, you know, she finds these looks, Hey, what's
Speaker 1: going on here? You know? Anyway, then the story was out.
Speaker 1: You know. That was the best feeling in the whole
Speaker 1: wide world. I gotta tell you. Okay, So what waves
Speaker 1: has your wife changed your life or helped you make
Speaker 1: decisions in your life? Everything? Bob. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: the only reason you allowed me to go on with
Speaker 1: this rather biblical story. Um is you've probably had an
Speaker 1: inkling Um, Julie has been there to be my sounding board, UM,
Speaker 1: my counsel when I needed to figure something out or
Speaker 1: a lot of times. Is what happens more often than
Speaker 1: not now is she actually thinks about stuff, especially UM
Speaker 1: career kind of stuff more than I ever do, and
Speaker 1: figures it out or at least gets a plan of
Speaker 1: how to approach it and and maybe how to make
Speaker 1: it come to pass, which is why I call her
Speaker 1: the manifesto. Uh. You know, a lot of times, I
Speaker 1: how can I say if there's things I just have accepted,
Speaker 1: You might say, I'm I'm just very happy that I'm happy.
Speaker 1: I think you probably know that I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of really bad, uh show biz crap happened to me
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't wish on even my worst enemy, who
Speaker 1: happens to be one of the reasons. And um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and I've gotten through all that, and it was a
Speaker 1: really hard time that was not pleasant, and life was
Speaker 1: not pleasant and in the years, I mean, I'll just
Speaker 1: take a shortcut here and tell you that I'm a
Speaker 1: really happy person, very happy and looking forward to life
Speaker 1: and looking forward to every morning getting up and the
Speaker 1: possibilities that I have getting to work on, you know, music,
Speaker 1: and also getting the see the members of my family
Speaker 1: and just enjoy that I have this life. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really where I'm living, and I'm smart enough to
Speaker 1: realize that's a good thing and it's probably the best
Speaker 1: you could ever hope for. Uh far more. I do
Speaker 1: know this to my soul that that is far more
Speaker 1: meaningful than any career thing, or any materi aerial thing,
Speaker 1: or any career thing you could try to go after
Speaker 1: and accomplished, because just having the right person with you
Speaker 1: is all of it is the whole meaning of life. Okay,
Speaker 1: you talk about that moment at the Universal Hotel we
Speaker 1: were at the end of the dock before you met Julie.
Speaker 1: Do you tend towards depression or you a glass half
Speaker 1: empty or glass half full kind of gone? I would
Speaker 1: say that. I mean, looking back over my life, I
Speaker 1: think I I have had to have been depressed at
Speaker 1: several different times. Um. You know, sometimes I've actually wondered
Speaker 1: if I might be bipolar or not. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen other people who are literally I think we just
Speaker 1: call that manic depressive, and you know, at one point
Speaker 1: they'd be bouncing off the walls they're so happy, and
Speaker 1: then at other points to be laying on the you know,
Speaker 1: I'm talking spiritually laying on the floor, they're so unhappy.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I'm like that. I'm always functioning,
Speaker 1: But I do know that during the very dark days
Speaker 1: of still being owned by Fantasy Records, which is where
Speaker 1: the label that Credence at first had success with UM,
Speaker 1: getting through that whole quagmire was very depressing to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were there were times I could not
Speaker 1: get that evil person out of my mind, and whenever,
Speaker 1: sometimes just seeing the word Fantasy could spoil my day.
Speaker 1: So I think you would call that depressed. And it
Speaker 1: was hard, and it was really hard for someone to
Speaker 1: tell me, come come to talk to me and just
Speaker 1: say something light and have me react. How can I
Speaker 1: say in an unbiased fashion, like the way we expect
Speaker 1: normal people to to have interplay with each other, you know,
Speaker 1: I would be so tilted towards a um bad mood
Speaker 1: and and can't you see this ugly thing that's happening
Speaker 1: to me, you know, that sort of mood um, which
Speaker 1: I wouldn't wish on anyone. I mean, that's a horrible place,
Speaker 1: you know. I I'm a lot lighter. But I do
Speaker 1: see that from time to time. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: a perfect saint by any means, don't get me wrong, um,
Speaker 1: but I'm not captured anymore. That stuff doesn't own me.
Speaker 1: And I realized now that it's really quirky too, because
Speaker 1: I do it in my life. I'll walk up to
Speaker 1: someone and start to talk and not here uh interplay
Speaker 1: you know, a response, and you know they're in a
Speaker 1: bad mood. I'll just let them have their space, you know,
Speaker 1: And it can happen, I mean to someone you know,
Speaker 1: or even if you go into a store and there's
Speaker 1: a salesman and you know and supposed to help you,
Speaker 1: but he's not helpful. And you, the older, you get
Speaker 1: that you know time and shorter bob Um, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: aware about time, and I'm much more uh, much more
Speaker 1: wanting to use my time in positive uh endeavors and
Speaker 1: not waste time stuck in things that are you know,
Speaker 1: a waste or going to drag you down or give
Speaker 1: you a bad mood. To what degree was duly influential
Speaker 1: in getting you to play the Creeden songs again? Oh,
Speaker 1: she was huge, hugely influential. I believe that it was
Speaker 1: because I was. The way I put it is as
Speaker 1: I fell more and more deeply in love with Julie.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think, forty years ago, I
Speaker 1: couldn't even talk like this as a grown man. I
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about love as a real thing and not
Speaker 1: be embarrassed or awkward about it. It just, you know,
Speaker 1: it seemed like something you didn't talk about polite company. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I was very strange and clunky trying to
Speaker 1: even say the word oh love. So later, as I
Speaker 1: had fallen so deeply in love with Julie, I think
Speaker 1: my motive is I talk about it all the time
Speaker 1: because I know what it is and I'm really happy
Speaker 1: about it, and I also sort of say it out loud.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm a happy that it happened for me.
Speaker 1: But also when I see other people that they know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about and that it that it obviously resonates. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just feel good for them because that's
Speaker 1: where life should that's where we should all be as
Speaker 1: human beings know. And it could be love with your sweetheart.
Speaker 1: It could be God's love, which is how some people
Speaker 1: have it. It could be love in the situation you
Speaker 1: know your family members and all that, but certainly it's
Speaker 1: a that feeling of love is probably to say it
Speaker 1: a little religious or spiritually would be that's what God
Speaker 1: had intended for all of us. Um anyhow, to be
Speaker 1: in that state is where I was, uh, even though
Speaker 1: I was not playing my songs again. But you may
Speaker 1: have heard about my trips to Mississippi. Um. There there
Speaker 1: was a time when I came to Julie. I was
Speaker 1: had been feeling this this urge, this urgency that I
Speaker 1: didn't even quite understand what. But it finally took shape
Speaker 1: as almost a feeling or a voice. You have to
Speaker 1: go to Mississippi. But here's how that. Then it finally
Speaker 1: got so strong I had to do something about it.
Speaker 1: And it was a morning time and I walked up
Speaker 1: to Julie, probably in the kitchen. I said, honey, um,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you something. And she said, okay. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have to go to Mississippi. She just stops for
Speaker 1: a minute and her eyes get big and she says,
Speaker 1: okay when and I said, now, uh, okay, okay, it's
Speaker 1: all right. I said, you know, honey, oh And then
Speaker 1: she says why And I said, I don't know which
Speaker 1: was literally the truth. I mean, the only thing I
Speaker 1: could think of was I was interested in the blues tree,
Speaker 1: kind of the family tree of the blues, because that's
Speaker 1: literally all I knew about Mississippi. I believe that I
Speaker 1: literally had not set foot in Mrs Hippy in my
Speaker 1: entire life. As much as I've been around music and
Speaker 1: had toured the South with credence, I know I've been
Speaker 1: in Arkansas and Louisiana, but I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: been in Mississippi and trying to make it, you know,
Speaker 1: done and hop over this. Uh. I didn't really know
Speaker 1: why I was going there, but I certainly was interested
Speaker 1: in the blues, and I vague knew that a couple
Speaker 1: of the people I had grown up, I mean it
Speaker 1: started when I was seven eight years old that I
Speaker 1: had heard about. I vaguely knew some names from Mississippi.
Speaker 1: I love the blues, but I experienced the blues as
Speaker 1: a current thing, not in a library. I and I
Speaker 1: was old enough or born at the right time. I
Speaker 1: heard Howling Wolf on the radio and Muddy Waters on
Speaker 1: the radio. They were having hit records on the Rhythm
Speaker 1: and Blues station out of Oakland, whose letters then where
Speaker 1: kW br um and so I knew these musicians and
Speaker 1: had read a little bit about jazz and blues, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of a vague thing to me,
Speaker 1: and so I just thought, I'm gonna go to Mississippi,
Speaker 1: um poke around, kind of learn more about the you know.
Speaker 1: I was not much of a plan, tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: But I was very lucky in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: First of all, that Julie was so open to letting
Speaker 1: me go, because I know that when you know you're
Speaker 1: it's a partnership, but between you and your spouse, and
Speaker 1: there can be times when your spouse is just not
Speaker 1: happy about something, and one spouse or the other can
Speaker 1: make the person do something they don't want to do,
Speaker 1: just when they feel very strongly. I've you know, met
Speaker 1: many men and women to say, well, Joe was never
Speaker 1: gonna let me do that, or Free is never gonna
Speaker 1: let me do that. And it's a strange power, but
Speaker 1: we give our spouse that power because we love them.
Speaker 1: But yet here in this instance, which was so much
Speaker 1: on the flim flam, it seems she said yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's all right, and uh, you know, went down the
Speaker 1: first time and kind of poked around, and uh, I
Speaker 1: didn't have much of a plan. I had heard about
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson, but I'm not sure that I knew he
Speaker 1: was from Mississippi. Of course, of course grew up with
Speaker 1: Jimmy Reid, but had no idea that Jimmy Reid was Mississippi.
Speaker 1: And so there, you know, and as I uh ended
Speaker 1: up taking several trips two, three, four or five I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure, um, but any time I would stay
Speaker 1: five days or so. The first in fact, the first
Speaker 1: time I went, I think I flew to New Orleans
Speaker 1: and went across that way, which is I totally missed
Speaker 1: the delta myself. I mean I didn't know. I had
Speaker 1: heard of delta, but I didn't know what. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything. I didn't even know how Mississippi related to Memphis.
Speaker 1: You know, what geography there was, all these things. Of
Speaker 1: course I knew about all this, and Tupelo um the
Speaker 1: same thing. And so that was the way I went
Speaker 1: the first time. The second time I went to Memphis
Speaker 1: and drove down. Um, it's just sort of a it
Speaker 1: was important to me. I mean, this was this was
Speaker 1: really when I say it was important, I felt it important.
Speaker 1: But also in the long run in what was important
Speaker 1: to my life. It was important that way, and I
Speaker 1: believe it was probably the second time where um, I
Speaker 1: had read enough that I got some instruction in the
Speaker 1: in the kind of blues books I was reading that
Speaker 1: there was a person in I think more Head City,
Speaker 1: Uh it might have been more Head. Um it was
Speaker 1: a postmaster who knew where Robert Johnson was buried. And
Speaker 1: then this was a mystery. I now realized it because
Speaker 1: I liked Robert Johnson. By the way. Um. At first
Speaker 1: I was buying UM cassettes and putting them on. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: at first, I was buying LP records and putting them on,
Speaker 1: making my own cassettes and taking the cassette with me
Speaker 1: on my trip. Right that was I think I started
Speaker 1: doing that the second trip. But after that I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to get a c D.
Speaker 1: I think it was Big Bill Bruns. I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: So I went to uh, uh, you know, a federated
Speaker 1: or best Buyer, one of those kind of big box places,
Speaker 1: and I bought a boom box and then I bought
Speaker 1: a CD of Big Bill Bruns. I had a couple
Speaker 1: of them, and I put it in on the front
Speaker 1: seat of my rented card. I started driving down the road.
Speaker 1: But the boom box is going, well we got this morning,
Speaker 1: Well got the plan. You know it's I'm going this
Speaker 1: is the stupidest thing I ever out. I can't play
Speaker 1: my CD, but I wanted the world to know that
Speaker 1: John Fogerty finally bought a CD was in the the
Speaker 1: new high tech world because of a blue song and
Speaker 1: a blues guy. Uh, and I'll always remember that. Of
Speaker 1: course CDs are now dinosaurs. Um where were they going
Speaker 1: with all that? Anyway, I ended up, uh going down
Speaker 1: the road finding this more Head place, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a speck on the map, opening the door
Speaker 1: to the finding the post office. You know, parked the car,
Speaker 1: opened the door, and the man is sitting there looking
Speaker 1: at me. He's at a table. As I opened the door,
Speaker 1: he's at a table directly like he's waiting for me, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it was. And I said, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought there would be like one of those little
Speaker 1: cages with a you know, a guy be a little
Speaker 1: post answer with those hats and all that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: the little green hat. I think, Um, I said, well,
Speaker 1: this is a strange question, But I've heard that you
Speaker 1: know where Robert Johnson is buried. He says, oh, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: And he tells me to drive up to this the
Speaker 1: road there and turn right, and there's a certain church
Speaker 1: and I can't quite remember the name, but I knew it.
Speaker 1: Then he said, go into that churchyard, to go into
Speaker 1: the back where there's a little cemetery. And there's a
Speaker 1: great big tree there, and I can't I've heard that
Speaker 1: it's called a pecan tree, but in my mind's eye
Speaker 1: now it was a great big tree um to me
Speaker 1: more like an oak tree. But anyhow, he says, and
Speaker 1: Robert's buried right under that tree. He said, there's no marker,
Speaker 1: so you just have to know he's buried there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I go up and I did what he said,
Speaker 1: end up at the little graveyard. But it had rained
Speaker 1: like a son of a gun for the week before
Speaker 1: I got there. In fact, you would all that hurricane probably,
Speaker 1: so there was about a foot of water, uh in
Speaker 1: this cemetery, and certainly out by the tree, it was
Speaker 1: a swamp and there was a bunch of I mean
Speaker 1: it was surrounded with brush or bramble bushes or whatever,
Speaker 1: and so I see the graveyard and I see the stuff,
Speaker 1: and uh, I you know, started to walk away. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a lake out there where that tree is,
Speaker 1: and I'm walking away, and then I go, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: I came all this way because I want to know
Speaker 1: where Robert Johnson's you know, it had become more and
Speaker 1: more important because I I had heard about Robert Johnson,
Speaker 1: by the way, because the the box set had been released,
Speaker 1: the CD box set. Okay, So I turned around. I
Speaker 1: looked at that big tree and said, my god, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna touch that tree. At least I don't know where
Speaker 1: the place on the ground is. So I wade out
Speaker 1: through the water. I'm an experienced spishermen, and I fished
Speaker 1: that way. I always get wet up to my knees,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't um. I didn't have any misgivings about
Speaker 1: getting wet, but still it was kind of swampy, you know,
Speaker 1: mosquito water whatever. And I made my way through all
Speaker 1: those bushes and touched that tree and felt like I
Speaker 1: had kind of component comp what's that word I'm looking for,
Speaker 1: calm and sit now consummated my trip. Yeah, by touching
Speaker 1: the tree, it felt like you know, there was closure there,
Speaker 1: um and this was my my the first time being
Speaker 1: there at Robert's gravesite. I didn't have a camera with me, right,
Speaker 1: But anyway, I walked back and kind of look around
Speaker 1: the other parts of the little churchyard, and it was
Speaker 1: really hot, even though there's water deep water like that
Speaker 1: on the ground. I get back up where its kind
Speaker 1: of dry, you know. I mean, so it's hundred ten
Speaker 1: degrees and probably ninety five percent humidity, really sweltering. And
Speaker 1: so now I'm kind of taken with the whole Robert Johnson,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I'm just sort of in one
Speaker 1: frame of mind about Robert as again, the fact that
Speaker 1: he's got a CD out. I'm thinking, Wow, you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder, I wonder who owns those songs. And then,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's been all these years and all that,
Speaker 1: it couldn't be whoever did it way back when it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they probably passed through. You know, this the normal stuff
Speaker 1: that unfortunately so many Blues Guy's legacy has traveled. And
Speaker 1: I said wow, I said, wow, you know, it's probab
Speaker 1: some stinking lawyers some wise guy in a tall building
Speaker 1: in the big cities probably had a big fat cigar,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't. He don't care at all about Robert Johnson.
Speaker 1: He just owns that property. You know. I'm saying it
Speaker 1: to myself in the most disgusting way because I'm really
Speaker 1: sickened by how that always happens, you know, And and
Speaker 1: I finally, I'm so disgusted, and I'm wet up to
Speaker 1: my knees, and go it. It doesn't matter. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm semi delirious because of the heat and all,
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, it just doesn't Robert. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: actually personally now to that fellow over there under that tree, Robert.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. The whole world knows those are your songs, Robert.
Speaker 1: Those are your songs, and everybody knows it. And of course,
Speaker 1: since I'm the only one around, there's a deafening silence
Speaker 1: after I say it. The whole world knows it. I stopped,
Speaker 1: and I realized what I have just said. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think in any other instance the deafening silence
Speaker 1: would have led me to this thought process. But because
Speaker 1: I said that about somebody that was so important, it
Speaker 1: was still ringing in my own ears. As I said
Speaker 1: everybody knows those are your songs. And I've heard that
Speaker 1: said to me a couple of times. Boynette said that
Speaker 1: to me, Chubby Checker said that to me, um, And
Speaker 1: I think it was that that that I said that,
Speaker 1: you know that hearing those voices all ringing in that
Speaker 1: deafening silence in my eyes, I'm sure got real big
Speaker 1: as I chewed on this thought, and I went, wow,
Speaker 1: oh my good, John, you gotta start singing your songs
Speaker 1: before you're sitting there in the ground like Robert. I mean,
Speaker 1: I literally had that thought. And that was the first time,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how many years that my heart
Speaker 1: was actually happy about the idea that I was gonna
Speaker 1: sing my songs again, because I don't know, if you
Speaker 1: know this thing. I had made a pact with myself
Speaker 1: not to do the songs because of certainly because of
Speaker 1: Saul's aunts and Fantasy records, because it was so personal.
Speaker 1: One man owned my songs and owned those records. And
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't like he owned some other artists
Speaker 1: and all that, but none of them were like Credence.
Speaker 1: It was it was just one on one and he
Speaker 1: was very evil. So that I had made a very
Speaker 1: strong pact with myself to never sing those songs again
Speaker 1: because it would bring him such riches, right that that
Speaker 1: to do so was just playing into his hands. And
Speaker 1: so I have been, of course very unhappy about that
Speaker 1: whole situation. Gordian's not You might say that I could
Speaker 1: not solve the puzzle, and so that moment in Robert
Speaker 1: Johnson's um Grave area, Uh overcome by this that story,
Speaker 1: And I guess you might say the unfairness. But yet
Speaker 1: the inescapable logic that I had said to myself, I
Speaker 1: realized I could now do it. I wasn't whimping out
Speaker 1: or going back on, you know, my word or all.
Speaker 1: You know, if somehow the not had become open and free,
Speaker 1: and you know, without me changing my values, you might say,
Speaker 1: I guess, because that's what I literally happened. You know,
Speaker 1: I suppose a negative, a cynical person would twisted some
Speaker 1: other way. But I'm not listening. You know. I had
Speaker 1: this epiphany that said, you can sing your songs now,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. But okay, but of course I
Speaker 1: wasn't touring, I wasn't out in the world. What I
Speaker 1: was doing it was, I was trying to write new
Speaker 1: songs and make a record, so you know, and I
Speaker 1: made several more trips down to Mississippi actually before I
Speaker 1: stopped doing that and went on to something else, mostly
Speaker 1: trying to write songs and taken up the dough bro.
Speaker 1: But um, as time went on, I finally wrote some songs,
Speaker 1: painfully got them recorded, and then finally happily got them
Speaker 1: recorded and Blue Moon Swamp became the album. This was
Speaker 1: now seven years later, and I had kind of forgotten
Speaker 1: all about what got me here. I was just happy
Speaker 1: that I had some songs and a new album, and
Speaker 1: I went into the record company to do what you
Speaker 1: might call, um make a press kit. And you know
Speaker 1: what they got to get together for releasing a record,
Speaker 1: and part of that was to, you know, to tell
Speaker 1: my story to someone that's going to write it down
Speaker 1: and make a bio a short story of your situation
Speaker 1: that they can stand out with the new record, and
Speaker 1: that pressed people can have, as I guess, materials that
Speaker 1: helped publicize the record. And at some point, remember this
Speaker 1: is now I'm telling my story. And then I I
Speaker 1: some somehow come up come up telling the story of
Speaker 1: I begin telling the story of Mississippi and Robert Johnson.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, you know, I made some trips down there.
Speaker 1: I was pretty fascinated. And one day I was standing,
Speaker 1: uh in front of the grave of Robert Johnson, and
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't really know why I was going
Speaker 1: to Mississippi, but I finally decided, you know, back then,
Speaker 1: it must be so I can look up all the
Speaker 1: old blues people. And I ended up, you know, having
Speaker 1: a little conversation about Barbert Johnson with myself and realizing
Speaker 1: his songs belonged to him and the world knew that.
Speaker 1: And I said, and then I realized my songs belong
Speaker 1: to me, and I should start recording my songs again.
Speaker 1: And I stopped, and I looked at the fella, and
Speaker 1: I said, oh my god, that was why I was
Speaker 1: supposed to go to Mississippi. That's what this whole thing was.
Speaker 1: Seven years later, you know, I was my brain exploded.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I did not realize it at the time.
Speaker 1: I realized that seven years later, what was the purpose
Speaker 1: of that trip? To me? That's still that weird stuff
Speaker 1: we uh all have happened to us, that where you
Speaker 1: realize somebody's paying attention. Okay, let's go back to fantasy.
Speaker 1: You talked about seven years that you didn't go on
Speaker 1: the road. You're making this record at this late date.
Speaker 1: People know most of the money is in the publishing
Speaker 1: and you sold those rights. How did you survive financially
Speaker 1: all these years? Good question. We got hey, we got
Speaker 1: married enough fever. Um. I know we got paid as
Speaker 1: credence um, haltingly. You know, in fits and spurts. We
Speaker 1: always had to audit and sometimes got I mean it
Speaker 1: was begrudgingly. Did we ever get paid? But I tried
Speaker 1: to save as I tried to live frugally. You might say, um,
Speaker 1: and so I had money in the bank, but we're
Speaker 1: talking in the hundreds of thousands, not living like a
Speaker 1: king in a mansion. But I mean I was living
Speaker 1: frugally at the time. I mean there was a there
Speaker 1: was one point you may remember this story in the
Speaker 1: middle eighties where I was sued for sounding like myself.
Speaker 1: Without going into that whole story, at that moment in time,
Speaker 1: Fantasy not only stopped paying me for that one song,
Speaker 1: they stopped paying me for. Their issue was we're not
Speaker 1: gonna pay you for any of the songs. And that's
Speaker 1: what they did. I mean, that's outrageous. They had fifties
Speaker 1: songs of mine or something on Credence albums, you know,
Speaker 1: probably Mary uh Um, Bad Moon, Rising, Green River, Commotion,
Speaker 1: Born on the Buyou Down on the Corner, and Fortunates.
Speaker 1: You know, they had all of them, all the album
Speaker 1: songs they've written, and they weren't paying a time for
Speaker 1: any of them until we after I won the trial.
Speaker 1: That was quite a few years. And even my own
Speaker 1: lawyer said, man, how did you manage to stay afloat
Speaker 1: without even getting paid? Well? I was living frugally, you know.
Speaker 1: I didn't go out and buy a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: that that I really couldn't afford, and then you know,
Speaker 1: buy it on time with the idea of future royalties
Speaker 1: what not when you're on Fantasy. Um, So that was
Speaker 1: That's basically how I was able to get by. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for years and years I was not paid ya, Just
Speaker 1: so we get the history straight. When you sold to Fantasy,
Speaker 1: they already owned the recordings, they therefore owned the songs,
Speaker 1: but they still played you writer's royalties. What exactly was
Speaker 1: the deal? Yes, and by the way, we did not
Speaker 1: sell in my mind anyway. You know, their lawyers speak
Speaker 1: in a whole language of gobblygook, and anybody that's lived
Speaker 1: longer than twenty years starts to learn that they're basically
Speaker 1: charge some multiple of a certain number by how many
Speaker 1: words they write or speak. It's so, yeah, it might
Speaker 1: be several thousand dollars per word, but it's the more
Speaker 1: words they can cram into any document, the higher they
Speaker 1: get paid. It's as simple as that. And don't you
Speaker 1: try to tell me it's something else, because it's not true. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they just jam all these words in there
Speaker 1: that no human being can understand. And I believe that's
Speaker 1: why when you get all done with this contract that
Speaker 1: you've sunk your life into and placed your faith in,
Speaker 1: five years later, some other lawyer comes along and says, well, actually,
Speaker 1: those words don't mean that that those words mean, and
Speaker 1: you're screwed anyway, even though you paid a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And by the way, does that first lawyer give you
Speaker 1: the money back? Does it didn't work? No? So uh,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the beginning, when the first when
Speaker 1: that record contract was signed, in the same contract, they
Speaker 1: already own a future song that I will write. I
Speaker 1: did not have a song and walk in there and
Speaker 1: then some man says Hey, John, that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1: I'll give you three dollars for that song. You know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like that. I knew better than that. But
Speaker 1: we had already signed our rights away. Actually before I
Speaker 1: actually started writing the majority of the songs, we were
Speaker 1: already under a contract that said Saul owns your songs
Speaker 1: that you write for the next several years. Okay, but
Speaker 1: the legend is that the three other members of the
Speaker 1: band talked to some professional and that a certain asset
Speaker 1: was sold to Fantasy for a million dollars or something.
Speaker 1: It's that ring a bell. No, I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: even know what that means. All I know is we
Speaker 1: were all under contract for recording, and we were all
Speaker 1: also under contract for songwriting. It's just that the other
Speaker 1: three didn't write any songs until after that contract had expired.
Speaker 1: The only one that had songs written that Saul's ants
Speaker 1: owned was me. Um. He might say I served the
Speaker 1: time for that. Um. You know, had had it been
Speaker 1: a situation where Tom wrote songs or Doug Clifford wrote
Speaker 1: songs during that time, Saul would have owned those songs. Um.
Speaker 1: At the time. After the credence broke up in seventy two.
Speaker 1: Tom left the band at the end of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: but Credence kind of soldiered on as a trio, but
Speaker 1: officially broke up in seventy two, at which point, even
Speaker 1: though we were all under contracts yeah for a fleeting
Speaker 1: amount of time, I thought that meant, well, the group
Speaker 1: is no more now I'm free. Didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1: I was not free, but Fantasy almost immediately sent three
Speaker 1: letters to the other three members of Credence and said,
Speaker 1: you are now not under contract to Fantasy. Therefore, we
Speaker 1: will not pay for any albums you go out and
Speaker 1: record or any of the rest of it, because they
Speaker 1: didn't want them to spend any money because I'm sure
Speaker 1: I didn't see much future in what they would record.
Speaker 1: But they didn't let me go. I was still under
Speaker 1: contract as a recording artist until finally I sold my
Speaker 1: rights to two artists royalties back to them in so
Speaker 1: that I would no longer owe them future recordings. That
Speaker 1: was at the end near the Was that a significant amount.
Speaker 1: Here's the way I looked at it, Bob, Since you
Speaker 1: guys are screwing me out of my artist royalties, you know,
Speaker 1: every other week, and I have to go get a
Speaker 1: lawyer and literally, as we speak, auditing you for two
Speaker 1: different periods of time that you have not paid me, right, uh,
Speaker 1: And these were times after the initial couple three years.
Speaker 1: These were times from maybe seventy five to seventy seven
Speaker 1: and then seventies seven to eighty or something like that.
Speaker 1: And since you're screwing me out of so much money,
Speaker 1: I mean, the way I had to tell myself, even
Speaker 1: though there would be a long future, you know, years
Speaker 1: into the future that I could hope to get paid
Speaker 1: artists royalties, it was I had to tell myself, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be so minimal. And remember, I'm one quarter of
Speaker 1: a band, right and we were getting paid pennies, and
Speaker 1: then that had to be I got one quarter of that. Um.
Speaker 1: I just looked at it as my next three albums
Speaker 1: are gonna be great records, and I don't want them
Speaker 1: to own an album way into the future. And to
Speaker 1: tell you how meaningful that was, if I had not
Speaker 1: done that in Night, they would have owned Blue Moon
Speaker 1: Swamp in and that's the name of that story. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so ultimately Fantasy was bought by Concorde. What is the
Speaker 1: status of your ownership and royalty situation in all those records. Today,
Speaker 1: I get paid artists royalties such as it was at
Speaker 1: the time Credence existed by Concord Records on the Concorde
Speaker 1: on the records that Concord distributes that were Credence records. UM.
Speaker 1: And I've managed to get myself a little bit of
Speaker 1: a bump upward by um signing on with Concord for
Speaker 1: UM there at various times, like I made a record
Speaker 1: for Concord in uh believe it was two thousand seven
Speaker 1: something like that. I know that when Fantasy was finally
Speaker 1: sold by and saw I didn't own it anymore, that
Speaker 1: seemed like a pretty positive thing to me and Julie
Speaker 1: and I went back and tried to ingratiate ourselves with
Speaker 1: the new owners and it's sort of worked, and it
Speaker 1: sort of did. I don't want to get into all
Speaker 1: the stuff, but um, you know, record companies end up
Speaker 1: acting like record companies, and it unfortunately, UM, it is
Speaker 1: a business, I'll just say it that way. And for
Speaker 1: a for an artist and for a person who's personal
Speaker 1: value system and belief system is sort of an artistic system,
Speaker 1: it's just really hard and difficult when people see only
Speaker 1: the business side, and everything is bottom line, and you
Speaker 1: know I will never listen to I want to hold
Speaker 1: your hand and sit here and think about what the
Speaker 1: bottom line must look like. That's not how I relate
Speaker 1: to the musical world, nor how I relate to John
Speaker 1: Lennon and McCartney and the Beatles, and or Otis reading
Speaker 1: or book or team the MGS, or even Elvis, who
Speaker 1: you know certainly got involved in a lot of whose
Speaker 1: business became well known. Let's say, I mean all that
Speaker 1: music that stirred my soul. Um, you know, I still
Speaker 1: relate to it that way, and thankfully so, and I
Speaker 1: hope it stays that way un till the day I die.
Speaker 1: Just to put a bow on it. You're sophisticated, Maybe
Speaker 1: not everybody. The audience is. There's a hundred cents in
Speaker 1: the dollar publishing. Traditionally, if someone else owns the publishing,
Speaker 1: they get fifty cents and the writer gets fifty cents.
Speaker 1: How is your publishing split up today, just the same way,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, it is right, Um, the
Speaker 1: the the whole context of that is, somebody actually owns
Speaker 1: Proud Mary or any other song that has copyright. Someone
Speaker 1: actually has ownership and having the ownership of the song
Speaker 1: means you get to determine the destiny of that song,
Speaker 1: in other words, how it's used. Um. And so as
Speaker 1: you said, there's a hundred, there's a hundred pennies. And
Speaker 1: if the publishing or if the ownership is to make
Speaker 1: it simpler, if the ownership is split fifty fifty, the
Speaker 1: person that is the publisher is getting fifty cents and
Speaker 1: the person that is the songwriter is getting fifty cents.
Speaker 1: And that's the most fair way that that should be.
Speaker 1: But the owner, who is also probably that publisher that
Speaker 1: I just named, he's getting to the side how that
Speaker 1: song is used. For instance, if Proud Mary gets used
Speaker 1: as an underarm deodorant and the poor guy that wrote
Speaker 1: the song takes offense at that doesn't want to see
Speaker 1: some lumberjack's hairy armpit connect did with his song, um um,
Speaker 1: proud Mary or Send in the Clowns or love as
Speaker 1: a mini splendid thing, you know, I mean, But the
Speaker 1: writer probably does not get to control that destiny. The
Speaker 1: publisher or the owner does. And that's where you hear
Speaker 1: song Usually songwriters hawking about how things get used. Certainly
Speaker 1: this songwriter anyway, so how's royalty revenue these days? For you?
Speaker 1: I don't pay as much attention to that as you
Speaker 1: would hope a guy like you just called me sophisticated. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I resemble that. Um, you know, it kind of never
Speaker 1: really works out. I mean, all the years that I
Speaker 1: was on Fantasy, I always suspected that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: that there were other pressing plants somewhere and making pressing
Speaker 1: records and selling them that I never even saw any
Speaker 1: kind of report about. And you'll never you'll never convince
Speaker 1: me that didn't happen, because every other thing that saw
Speaker 1: Zance did was so crooked. Um, it's just hard to
Speaker 1: believe that he avoided that very easy thing for him,
Speaker 1: that in fact, he's the guy that told me about
Speaker 1: such situations in the first place. And I always I
Speaker 1: know that one time, think this was the early days
Speaker 1: of credent success and um you know, ah g, we've
Speaker 1: John's writing all these songs. And I was actually visiting
Speaker 1: Saul in his office at the at one of the
Speaker 1: earlier locations, which was the place in Oakland that Fantasy
Speaker 1: had for it was almost temporary, only one block from
Speaker 1: the famous Ducky Market. It's the front cover of Willie
Speaker 1: and the Poor Boys. But anyway, I was down there visiting,
Speaker 1: and there was a man from being my which is
Speaker 1: the uh uh songwriters Performance Association that keeps track of
Speaker 1: how many times records are played so that the songwriter
Speaker 1: usually the publisher too. But it's a it's a way
Speaker 1: that the creator of the song can be paid for
Speaker 1: all those uh times that the songs played on the
Speaker 1: radio or even in movies and other things. So this
Speaker 1: guy from it is called Broadcast Music Incorporated b m I.
Speaker 1: Any songwriter will tell you. So there was happen to
Speaker 1: be a guy there in the office where I'm visiting.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all flushed with this new success and
Speaker 1: Saul sitting there and this fella from b m I,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of just innocently said, well, um, well,
Speaker 1: how does b m I spit split the relationship between
Speaker 1: the publisher and the songwriter? You know? Is it fifty
Speaker 1: cents for each? And saw suddenly face turns bright. It
Speaker 1: I mean, smoke is coming out of his ears and
Speaker 1: he's you know, and this fella herb um, and I
Speaker 1: won't go any further than that. He says, well, I
Speaker 1: think it's paid a little more for the publisher than
Speaker 1: the songwriter. And that was the first inkling I had that, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's stuff back there behind that curtain that I'm not
Speaker 1: supposed to pay attention to, and uh wow, I better
Speaker 1: not bring it up here today because I'm about to
Speaker 1: be lanced, you know. But obviously I had, and quite
Speaker 1: innocently I wasn't. I I thought we were all friends here.
Speaker 1: I thought we were so happy that I can hope,
Speaker 1: against hope, we're having actually having hit records, because none
Speaker 1: of us had ever experienced that before. But you know,
Speaker 1: like that those scenes in Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Speaker 1: where the poor fellas actually discover a gold mine and
Speaker 1: then things go really bad. Um, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: happened forgetting all the business shenan against the contracts. Just
Speaker 1: talking about what's coming into your bank account. Is that
Speaker 1: a good amount of money today? Yeah? Sure, by any stretch. Um,
Speaker 1: that's makes me happy. It's far less than what it
Speaker 1: used to be. UM. And the simple answer, of course,
Speaker 1: is that because of the online streaming, an actual physical
Speaker 1: record doesn't get sold very much anymore. You know, a
Speaker 1: CD or whatever physical um thing holds an album, and
Speaker 1: so most of the music gets listened to by streaming
Speaker 1: off the internet and so the way and people can
Speaker 1: buy those, um, I suppose from iTunes or Spotify or
Speaker 1: there must be other places. Um, but you are paid
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar for what uh what it used
Speaker 1: to be. I know, the cost of an album is
Speaker 1: far less that way. And also the record companies all
Speaker 1: it's like that clam at the bottom, the giant clam
Speaker 1: that grabbed the pearl diver in the song leah Uh,
Speaker 1: they snap shut. When streaming was invented, he said, okay,
Speaker 1: we have a new um, what do you call new technology?
Speaker 1: And now you know we used to pay you, um,
Speaker 1: eight dollars or whatever it was on an album or
Speaker 1: four dollar or whatever it was. Then we're now going
Speaker 1: to pay you far less, you know, some percentage because
Speaker 1: there's no physical actual property and they could be the same,
Speaker 1: but there they don't. I mean, they could pay you
Speaker 1: the same percentage. Let's say it was percent of retail
Speaker 1: or something like that, but they don't. They'll pay you
Speaker 1: for eight percent ever, you know, it's some a ridiculous number. Again,
Speaker 1: you end up, if you're a successful artist, you're making
Speaker 1: into the millions of dollars. So trust me, Bob, I'm
Speaker 1: not sitting here crying in my beer. Um. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to explain that it's now far less than it
Speaker 1: used to be because of that situation. Okay, you talk
Speaker 1: about all this traveling to Mississippi, going into the post office,
Speaker 1: is going to visit Julian, Indiana. The people recognize you everywhere.
Speaker 1: What's it like being John Fogerty once you leave your house? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the pen the pandemic has been wonderful. I'm
Speaker 1: walking around with a mask on, you know, the one
Speaker 1: that says Johnpoverty across the frame. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just like everybody else. I'll take it back a few years.
Speaker 1: Let me click back, Um, when people would stop me,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of times, you know, excuse me.
Speaker 1: When I when I was first getting to know Julie,
Speaker 1: her daughter Lindsay was two and a half three, Like
Speaker 1: I said, you know, we finally we're cohabiting and a family. Um.
Speaker 1: Lenzy was getting to be four years old and quite
Speaker 1: a little um manifesto herself. And one day she actually
Speaker 1: said to Julie and I, John, how come people always
Speaker 1: come up to you and say, aren't you John Bogoty.
Speaker 1: You know, she's a kid and she's wondering why that
Speaker 1: would happen, and I mean, it was an interesting phenomenon
Speaker 1: to a child. And I I told her, you know,
Speaker 1: we both kind of Saturday and said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: John is a famous musician and people like his music.
Speaker 1: So when they see him, you know, and they actually
Speaker 1: really like, oh, that's him. You know at the supermarket,
Speaker 1: the ones that are let's say a little less shy
Speaker 1: will come up and talk. And what the reason I
Speaker 1: bring this up is I always approach those moments in
Speaker 1: the most sweet way because it's a blessing, you know.
Speaker 1: Number one, It's solidified to me in my mind the
Speaker 1: way I felt about Julie and lindsay, this was happening
Speaker 1: to us together and it was kind of it was
Speaker 1: really sweet. I wasn't like a horde of people like
Speaker 1: in the Beatle movies or something, you know. I was
Speaker 1: used a man and wife, maybe a man and wife
Speaker 1: with one child. And it was always low key because
Speaker 1: in those days I wasn't touring there. There wasn't new
Speaker 1: music out yet. You know, later on as music came
Speaker 1: out and I was on tour, or certainly if I
Speaker 1: was anywhere near a place I was performing, there would
Speaker 1: be an obvious connection, and it got a little more hectic,
Speaker 1: but I tried to deal with it the best I could,
Speaker 1: and I was I was very naive about this. UM
Speaker 1: started touring after Blue Moon Swamp, and of course you're
Speaker 1: flying to towns that aren't within driving distance that means
Speaker 1: almost every place, and and at an airport, and there
Speaker 1: would suddenly be these strangers that had um sheets of
Speaker 1: paper and uh, sometimes guitars and sometimes drumheads, and they
Speaker 1: want you to sign this stuff, or even pictures or albums,
Speaker 1: and I would sign them all. Okay, you know, I
Speaker 1: started signing them, and you know just I mean, that
Speaker 1: went on for several years. And I remember around in
Speaker 1: that time seeing Mark McGuire, the famous baseball player, who
Speaker 1: was talking about how he came to not sign things anymore.
Speaker 1: He said, he'd be in a motel, you know, the
Speaker 1: A's or whatever team he's with, was on the road,
Speaker 1: and a man came knock on his motel door. You know,
Speaker 1: it was signed my baseball bat or whatever, and he
Speaker 1: started to get a little grumpy because he realized they
Speaker 1: were running off and selling these things. He said, so
Speaker 1: then they started knocking on the door and they'd have
Speaker 1: the little kid stand there and Daddy wasn't anywhere in sight.
Speaker 1: But Mark knew that how does this kid managed to
Speaker 1: come to where I am? You know? And they put
Speaker 1: a little b in my bonnet at least. But still
Speaker 1: I was signing all the people that came to see me.
Speaker 1: Finally I got it in my head that these people
Speaker 1: were just turning around and selling everything on eBay. They
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily pains. I mean, when a guy walks up
Speaker 1: to you has got a briefcase full of everything connected
Speaker 1: to you, but he's also got other briefcases. You know.
Speaker 1: That particularly would happen um in airports where there was
Speaker 1: like a festival, and so these guys were showing up,
Speaker 1: Um who were gonna snag anybody who you know, any
Speaker 1: fly that that landed here on the fly paper, and
Speaker 1: it didn't matter who he was. They probably had it
Speaker 1: covered with a couple of items, you know, And I
Speaker 1: would do it. And it started to know it started
Speaker 1: to be inconvenient to my family because I'm I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get my family to our The next part of
Speaker 1: our ride are either the the car, the so called
Speaker 1: limo that's going to take you to your hotel or
Speaker 1: to your venue or whatever. Um. And I had little
Speaker 1: kids with me, and it started to actually be dangerous
Speaker 1: at times. So you know, Julie would look at me
Speaker 1: and you know, I really wanted to do it and
Speaker 1: then assign it, I mean and being obligating uh, obliging
Speaker 1: um artists. And then other times I begin to actually
Speaker 1: see a businessman stare me in the face. The worst, Bob,
Speaker 1: the worst one of these that ever happened was I
Speaker 1: couldn't even tell you what town. Uh. It's back when
Speaker 1: people could follow you right to your gate where you
Speaker 1: were going to take off. And this guy had this
Speaker 1: among Us video camera on his shoulder and he comes
Speaker 1: walking up and says, well, John, UM, tell me some
Speaker 1: words about that. And I looked at and said, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm happy to be touring. And then he's asking
Speaker 1: me a couple of more questions and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I've got my kids with me, and well, I want
Speaker 1: to get to the gate, you know, and get everybody settled.
Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of time. He says, well, no,
Speaker 1: you are you going to honest, buddy? I I gave
Speaker 1: you a little time. Now. Now my brother Bob comes up.
Speaker 1: He sees I, I'm in a hopeless situation. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be nice, so I can't be firm because he's
Speaker 1: switched from the guy. It doesn't matter if he gets
Speaker 1: me as a nice guy and I have something polite
Speaker 1: to say, that's probably one kind of paparazzi stuff. But
Speaker 1: if he can get me to actually turn purple, because
Speaker 1: now I'm mad at the guy, this is better and
Speaker 1: you'll get he can sell it for more money. So
Speaker 1: he's trying to make me mad. He's starting to bait me.
Speaker 1: And that's when Bob, here's it, and I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know how to react right, I'm still almost being sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Bob comes up, says, the buddy, you're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to turn it off. Take it away. John gave you
Speaker 1: a little bit, now, please go away. Says well, I
Speaker 1: hope you have a miserable this is the guy. I
Speaker 1: hope you have a bad fight. I hope the airplane
Speaker 1: crashes and I'm going wow. And after that I realized
Speaker 1: that it's it's pretty complicated to get involved with people
Speaker 1: that want something from you while you're traveling especially with
Speaker 1: your family. Going back to the beginning, what kind of
Speaker 1: kid were you? Were you kind of kid who had
Speaker 1: a lot of friends, or the kid who was staying
Speaker 1: at home reading comic books. We're a good student, bad student.
Speaker 1: I was all of those, you know, don't get me started,
Speaker 1: but the big huge I was just talking with someone
Speaker 1: yesterday about this subject. That the time I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: when you were a kid. There's even a good country
Speaker 1: song I love has this in it. We were outside.
Speaker 1: You know what he's stayed in around? We were outside.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in your house. Your parents are in
Speaker 1: your house. Who wants to be in your house? You
Speaker 1: go outside and mess around. You know, we're gonna see
Speaker 1: our friends. We're gonna go mess around. Uh do stuff
Speaker 1: on our bicycle, you know, Uh, get on our bikes,
Speaker 1: go over to someplace that's a bacon a lot. I mean, wow,
Speaker 1: a bacon lot was such a world, a universe. We
Speaker 1: didn't even have malls yet. I get it. I understand
Speaker 1: why a mall is an attraction. But I'm talking all
Speaker 1: the time before that, you just you found things to do.
Speaker 1: You probably had a bicycle, um and your friends and
Speaker 1: you all did things outside. It was just that was
Speaker 1: a good life. Um. Later, of course, because of TV
Speaker 1: and especially because of gaming, you know, the video games
Speaker 1: and stuff, and then online people started more and more
Speaker 1: congregate in. But I was an outdoor kid. I did
Speaker 1: all of that. I love messing around. I loved going
Speaker 1: with a couple of friends and hiking over the um
Speaker 1: Indian Rock. We client as a place in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's still there a few miles from my house.
Speaker 1: You know, all all the cool things. I was in traffics,
Speaker 1: and that means I was helped the students across the crosswalk. Uh,
Speaker 1: during recesses and times when school was either coming in
Speaker 1: or going out, and so we got little passes to
Speaker 1: the local theater. And I love going down on Saturday
Speaker 1: and seeing a movie for free or for five cents. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I loved music early, so I began to
Speaker 1: be fascinated. We had an old Stella guitar. Believe it
Speaker 1: or not, I was blessed and lucky enough that that's
Speaker 1: part of my upbringing. Uh. It didn't work very well,
Speaker 1: but it's acoustic. But the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: Stella rather than some other brand name. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's probably Sears Roebuck. It's where my parents got it.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to play, as my brother Bob says, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we played baseball all with that thing. Yeah, we use
Speaker 1: it for a bat, but it was built like a
Speaker 1: tank and it's the same kind lead belly had, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So those things were in in my life. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I had the normal amount of friends, but
Speaker 1: they were there and I was I loved hanging out
Speaker 1: with them. There were other times when I was in
Speaker 1: my room, you know, like the wonderful song by the
Speaker 1: Beach Boys. I suppose it's Brian Wilson. Um that just
Speaker 1: says it so well. You know, it's that that area
Speaker 1: of your life where that's your sanctuary, that's your place
Speaker 1: where a lot of your thinking gets done or a
Speaker 1: lot of your fears. You know, it's a it really
Speaker 1: is a true thing. And for me, of course, I
Speaker 1: had my radio and my little record player and a
Speaker 1: lot of my world exploring music. You know, the whole mysterious,
Speaker 1: magical thing to me, and music was certainly that. I mean,
Speaker 1: first I loved music or I was attracted, but it
Speaker 1: became this It was so full of mystery, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had the old fashioned kind of radio, I guess
Speaker 1: you'd call that analog. And so at night you would
Speaker 1: be was edging the dial, the tuning dial between stations,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you get stations from out of town you
Speaker 1: never heard before. It might be Montana or you know,
Speaker 1: some other far away place that just because of the
Speaker 1: atmospheric anomalies, it was bouncing off a cloud and coming
Speaker 1: to you but in sort of a uh rhythmically an
Speaker 1: unclear pulse, and a lot of times it made the
Speaker 1: record sound even better, you know, and more mysterious. Um.
Speaker 1: And certainly the other part of that experience, by the way,
Speaker 1: having your radio in your room as a kid in
Speaker 1: your bedroom, the tubes, yes I said, tubes lit up
Speaker 1: and with dance, certain little shadows on the ceiling of
Speaker 1: your bedroom. All the lights are out, and this thing
Speaker 1: would kind of flicker on the ceiling as you listen
Speaker 1: to some far away station. And sometimes you heard, you know,
Speaker 1: your current rock and roll record or a new record,
Speaker 1: or sometimes you heard weird things like gene Autry, you know,
Speaker 1: or a blues record oh by Lightning Hopkins called Mojo
Speaker 1: hand that hadn't quite made it to your area yet. Um.
Speaker 1: And when these things would happen. You felt like you
Speaker 1: had found a portal to Mars or something that nobody
Speaker 1: else could find. Sorry, I went on, but that was
Speaker 1: my relationship with music. In some ways. It was so
Speaker 1: mysterious and magical because I knew there was a big
Speaker 1: thing out there. I guess that's what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: knew there was way more than I knew, and I
Speaker 1: was just dying, craving two get to it, to be
Speaker 1: immersed in it, to discover it. Okay. Was this interest
Speaker 1: in music generated by your parents or by siblings, Like
Speaker 1: my parents, they would take us through the young Kids concerts,
Speaker 1: they would play the show tunes. Was this something you
Speaker 1: discovered alone or was this something all your family was
Speaker 1: exposed to? Absolutely my family first. Um, when I was
Speaker 1: quite young. I remember, I think being on vacation is
Speaker 1: you know. So we were probably up at the Poda
Speaker 1: Creek in northern California. It's near Winters, and I'd be
Speaker 1: this be night, maybe they're going to drive to the
Speaker 1: grocery store. But to me it was like taking a
Speaker 1: long trip. I'm sitting between them in the dark, and
Speaker 1: my mom and my dad are harmonizing and they would sing,
Speaker 1: you know, old standards from their day, like by the
Speaker 1: Light of the Silvery Moon. Um. One of the songs
Speaker 1: they sang was baby Face. You know, baby face, you
Speaker 1: got that cute, as did Obey. But they would sing
Speaker 1: add lack you got the keys that right, that was
Speaker 1: their own little Um. They're already in the blues tradition.
Speaker 1: They took something there that they liked and rewrote it. Um.
Speaker 1: But that I discovered they were harmonizing, you know. And
Speaker 1: again I was probably three to four years old and
Speaker 1: asked them, well, why are your voices different? And my
Speaker 1: mom explained that to me. Another very very important thing
Speaker 1: that happened. I was about three and a half. We
Speaker 1: came My mom was one of the parents and also
Speaker 1: what I think a teacher or part time parent teacher
Speaker 1: at preschool nursery school. That's the way she said it
Speaker 1: to me. And we came home in the afternoon from
Speaker 1: one of the days and she sat me down and
Speaker 1: she presented me with a little record record, a record
Speaker 1: yellow record, and she explained to me that the songwriter
Speaker 1: of these songs is Stephen Foster. So she wasn't telling
Speaker 1: me who the singers were who. I really actually don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: it might have been a Little Golden Book or a
Speaker 1: Little Golden Orchestra or whatever. But the songs were Oh
Speaker 1: Susannah and Camptown Races. Do uh Do? She played both sides,
Speaker 1: maybe several times, but again she explained to me the
Speaker 1: song writer of these songs is Stephen Foster, and that
Speaker 1: went in and stayed. I mean, I remember that. I
Speaker 1: can still see myself sitting in that chair and being
Speaker 1: taught about Stephen Foster. And as I've grown, you know,
Speaker 1: I've just find that remarkable that anyone, any parent of
Speaker 1: a kid who obviously loved music, because I was dancing
Speaker 1: around and singing and you know, noticing somebody with a
Speaker 1: drum or a pickle or whatever the piano um and
Speaker 1: wanting to know about it. Telling a person about a
Speaker 1: songwriter at that age is just unusual. And it has
Speaker 1: stayed with me ever since. And I believe even to
Speaker 1: the sort of music that I like, which you know,
Speaker 1: the education probably continued, you know, as time went on,
Speaker 1: but meaning my mother's influence, but the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: Stephen wrote a certain kind of you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: know at the time he was America's first professional songwriter. Um,
Speaker 1: that's pride, a thing. But and also he got screwed
Speaker 1: out of his royalties, became an alcoholic, and died pretty young.
Speaker 1: Well everything there is true, except hopefully for the part
Speaker 1: about dying pretty young, um as far as applied to me.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um, I think even though I grew into
Speaker 1: teenage years and became a what I would call a
Speaker 1: normal rock and roll kid, somehow when it became time
Speaker 1: for me to create my own music, I hear a
Speaker 1: lot of Stephen Foster in what I do, and I
Speaker 1: think that that influence just went in there and stayed
Speaker 1: there and became part of my voice. Another thing that
Speaker 1: was very also very influential is my I'm kind of
Speaker 1: trace backwards, but I think I think this is really important.
Speaker 1: It was the forties. You know, I'm three, four or
Speaker 1: five years old. I'm born in um My mom was
Speaker 1: one of the first folkies. You know. Um obviously her
Speaker 1: politics were liberal left. My dad too. My parents split up,
Speaker 1: by the way, when I was about eight. That's why
Speaker 1: I talked about sitting between them in the car. That's
Speaker 1: that some of the last memories I have that way.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um my mom's so she's a liberal person
Speaker 1: listening to folk music and at some point she starts
Speaker 1: telling me about those guys, like especially Pete Seeger, and
Speaker 1: she was a Pete Seeger freak, And so I became
Speaker 1: a Pete Seeger freak. Before the folks scare, before Tom Dooley,
Speaker 1: Let's say, I was already knowing a lot about Pete
Speaker 1: Seeger and his music, but and and a lot of
Speaker 1: the other artists like Sam Hinton and Burrow Lives and
Speaker 1: uh several other the weavers. My mom would sing Goodnight
Speaker 1: Irene all the time. But I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: didn't have it all historically correct. It was just music.
Speaker 1: But when the folk festival thing finally happened, and I
Speaker 1: will say as a result of the Kingston Trio and
Speaker 1: Tom Dooley. Even though all those old guard folkies hated
Speaker 1: the Kingston Trio, I think because they were successful commercially,
Speaker 1: even though you asked about royalties. By the way, all
Speaker 1: that pezze weren't all at bad um. He was selling records.
Speaker 1: But somehow the old guard folky's hated that Tom Dooley
Speaker 1: by the Kingston Trio was on the jukebox right, And
Speaker 1: so I started to hear from some of the true
Speaker 1: folkey people. My mom actually took me down to get
Speaker 1: folk music guitar lessons at light Bolk Park in Berkeley, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember Barry Olivier, who I consider a very
Speaker 1: influential person on me, but he was in their crowd.
Speaker 1: He's an older person, and he talked about how Tom Dooley, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they put that little pause in there, Tom Dooley, so
Speaker 1: that the guy at the bar would you know, slip
Speaker 1: and follow up his elbow with the hiccup, would bother him.
Speaker 1: And I thought, gee, that had an attitude. Why did
Speaker 1: he say that. Well, anyway, folk music really took off
Speaker 1: after Tom Dooley and they started having folk music festivals.
Speaker 1: The one near me was called the Berkeley Bolk Best
Speaker 1: of All and put on by this same fella, Barry Olivier,
Speaker 1: And all those cats were there, Pete Seeger, uh Sam
Speaker 1: Hinton one year was Lightning Hopkins, um Uh Alan Lomax,
Speaker 1: uh Ewan McCall, Peggy Seeger, you know, uh, Jesse Fuller,
Speaker 1: all these people, and Pete of course was the sort
Speaker 1: of un un anointed god of the whole thing. Also,
Speaker 1: he's the best entertainer I ever saw. And it's the
Speaker 1: most blessed experience if you could have ever been in
Speaker 1: and I've seen Frank and Sammy and Elvis and Dino
Speaker 1: and you know all that stuff. And uh, I've seen
Speaker 1: Wayne on Wayne Newton on TV. I mean that they
Speaker 1: call that entertainers, you know, the Vegas kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But what Pete did was engaged in entire audience into
Speaker 1: that world and make them part of it. And you
Speaker 1: left out of there like had been in church. Um so, yes,
Speaker 1: you asked me who was influential? Yeah, my mom. So
Speaker 1: you were born in fourty five. I was born in
Speaker 1: fifty three, and it was different because I certainly remember
Speaker 1: the folk boom. I certainly remember the nylon string guitars,
Speaker 1: taken lessons from somebody in the neighborhood, etcetera. But for
Speaker 1: my generation, it was when the Beatles broke that everybody
Speaker 1: got an electric guitar and everybody formed bands. You're older,
Speaker 1: when did you start to perform? What music were you
Speaker 1: doing and what was it like when the Beatles hit?
Speaker 1: Can I do that as a two parter? Do it? However?
Speaker 1: You want to? Sure? Well, because because of the folk
Speaker 1: people I literally I'm talking about in the fifth and
Speaker 1: sixth grade, but usually particularly in the sixth grade, I
Speaker 1: started organizing a few of the other kids, boys and girls,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it was more than five of us.
Speaker 1: But um, well, first before that, about a year before that,
Speaker 1: I had partnered with my best friend, I Felt, a
Speaker 1: kid named Bob Carlton. We were pantomiming Stan Freeberg records.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, these were these comedy bits that
Speaker 1: he he made fun of Heartbreak Hotel, or he made
Speaker 1: fun of the song d O by um Harry Belafonte.
Speaker 1: So we would dress up in little costumes and stand
Speaker 1: in front of the school class and just pantomime them.
Speaker 1: We we didn't write anything, and we didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: Just our lips moved our you know, we held a microphone.
Speaker 1: So I was already getting used to the idea of
Speaker 1: standing in front of an audience. In the sixth grade.
Speaker 1: Kind of halfway through, I organized a group of kids
Speaker 1: and we had bongos and shakers and stuff. Nobody could
Speaker 1: actually play a real instrument, but we were doing banana
Speaker 1: boat song or story whatever it's the real name, deo um,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple other of those sort of clips. So
Speaker 1: we folk songs and mostly just singing all right. Um.
Speaker 1: Seventh eighth grade, I think it's right in there. I
Speaker 1: take those begin I've already playing guitar. I think I
Speaker 1: was in the seventh grade. I talked my mom into
Speaker 1: help me get a Seares electric guitar out of the
Speaker 1: catalog with my paper route money. And so it takes me,
Speaker 1: you know, ten months to pay off eight dollars. It's
Speaker 1: eighty dollars. It's thirty for a guitar, an am, and
Speaker 1: over the time of eight ten months, it's eight dollars interest. Um,
Speaker 1: But she co signs, so I get to have the
Speaker 1: thing now, you know, with eight months in a kid's life.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, an I start on that. So I'm
Speaker 1: in both worlds. I've got electric guitar, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm seeing the people from the fifties Elvis. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was a song called Honky Talk by Bill Dogg that
Speaker 1: was way over my pay grade. Um. The first song
Speaker 1: that I remember on that electric guitar there is pre Beatles,
Speaker 1: of course, was that I sounded like something was Endless
Speaker 1: Sleep by Jody Reynolds. I remember on on Endless Sleep
Speaker 1: by Jody was a big hit record, and it was
Speaker 1: a it was a suicide record, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: except it has a happy ending. But um it's called
Speaker 1: endless sleep. But anyway, they're using a whammy bar to
Speaker 1: make a lower note become a higher note. And so
Speaker 1: with that sense of going bom bom bom, boom boon't
Speaker 1: like that, but it's a guitar doing this. The way
Speaker 1: I mimic that with my electric guitar with my amp
Speaker 1: you know, turned up was to him are on the chord.
Speaker 1: I kind of just discovered it myself. I could go.
Speaker 1: It's an actual technique that especially lead guitar players, especially
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Eddie van Halen people like that used
Speaker 1: this technique to hammer on. But I kind of discovered
Speaker 1: it to mimic this song I love called Endless Sleep.
Speaker 1: So I could play these chords. Um enough, there were
Speaker 1: three chords in this song, and I figured out those
Speaker 1: three chords from a burl Ives songbook, by the way,
Speaker 1: and played could play that song all the way through
Speaker 1: with nobody else around, you know, did it like during
Speaker 1: lunchtime from school. I'd rushed home and try and play
Speaker 1: that like and I would just as soon as I
Speaker 1: finish it, I just started again. That probably played six
Speaker 1: times in a row, singing as loud as I I
Speaker 1: wasn't shy because there was nobody home right um, and
Speaker 1: so by n fifty nine, towards the end of my
Speaker 1: eighth grade, I had a wonderful music teacher named Mrs Stark,
Speaker 1: I think in seventh and eighth grade. By now I'm
Speaker 1: going to junior high. And she let me come into
Speaker 1: her room after school and just bang on the piano.
Speaker 1: And I started doing that every day. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: knew a little boogie woggie and I was playing in
Speaker 1: wrong keys like all black keys, matter of fact, f
Speaker 1: sharp um. But she let me do it, and that
Speaker 1: her room. The door to her room was right at
Speaker 1: the It was right by the stairs where you went
Speaker 1: down to the boys and girls gym, so any of
Speaker 1: the after school stuff, everybody had to pass by there.
Speaker 1: So pretty soon there was a crowd of twenty people
Speaker 1: sitting there at that piano watching John play do you
Speaker 1: want to Dance? Uh? God, what was Do you Want
Speaker 1: to Dance? Was when I knew all of it could
Speaker 1: play on the piano. Um, right now I can't think
Speaker 1: of the other ones, but you know, it doesn't matter anything.
Speaker 1: I could, Oh, Hollo Gully, I could play Holly Gully
Speaker 1: really loud and sing it pretty good too. Eventually, Uh,
Speaker 1: Doug Clifford and I linked up at school because he
Speaker 1: was at the junior high And sometime after that, uh
Speaker 1: Stu Cook, who became the bass player in Credence. Uh,
Speaker 1: we linked up and we formed a little band called
Speaker 1: the Blue Velvets that mainly we were going to be instrumental,
Speaker 1: but we you know, we were a band. It's like
Speaker 1: blood brothers. We have this thing and we probably could
Speaker 1: play fIF twenty instrumentals, the like of which were Dwayne Eddie,
Speaker 1: the Ventures and Tall Cool One by the Whalers. And
Speaker 1: you know that was an era of rock and roll instrumentals.
Speaker 1: Um BENSI I learned how to play honky talk um again.
Speaker 1: I'm sure in those days I had none of the
Speaker 1: sophistication of Billy Butler, who was the guitar player. UM,
Speaker 1: but sure appreciated. I mean, that's still one of the
Speaker 1: best records ever made. Uh in you know my negative Woods. Anyway,
Speaker 1: and so by the time the Beatles came, Uh, I
Speaker 1: started hearing the Beatles at the end of my senior
Speaker 1: year of high school. UM. I was miss hearing that
Speaker 1: they were playing a song called Please Please Me, and
Speaker 1: I thought It was by the Shields, and they played
Speaker 1: it in heavy rotation as a pick of the week
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I would hear it drive. I was
Speaker 1: driving in my car on my way every day for
Speaker 1: about a week. It's like May of sixty three, and
Speaker 1: you know, I liked it. I said, hey, wow, those
Speaker 1: Shields are pretty cool. You know. I knew there was
Speaker 1: some old band that had I think you cheated, you lied,
Speaker 1: but that's what I was hearing. Then for some reason,
Speaker 1: I didn't know they had turned the record over, but
Speaker 1: they started playing another record the Shields. It was called
Speaker 1: from Me to You, and that was so cool. I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, who are these guys? You know, this
Speaker 1: is really great. And then after two weeks they went
Speaker 1: away and I didn't hear any more about it until
Speaker 1: somewhere around December. I read in Time magazine there was
Speaker 1: this band in England and they had played some concert
Speaker 1: for the Queen. I mean, that was the way it
Speaker 1: all came together. And one of the band members said, um,
Speaker 1: you people in the cheap seats just clap your hands
Speaker 1: and the rest of you rattled your jewels, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, it was endearing already that these guys were
Speaker 1: working whoever the Beatles were. I said, hey, I saw
Speaker 1: a title that I reckon. That's those guys, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: And they were I think they were in that that
Speaker 1: stairway picture, you know, in the stairway that we're all
Speaker 1: wearing black, and they just looked it was all together.
Speaker 1: It was a group, you know, just but not our fashion,
Speaker 1: this whole different look. While the rest of the world
Speaker 1: found out about it must have been a matter of
Speaker 1: weeks when suddenly you were here and I want to
Speaker 1: hold your hand, and it uh the way I the
Speaker 1: way I sometimes say it is when we were when
Speaker 1: we were seniors in high school at Elsevito High, we
Speaker 1: were the only band in the school. The next year
Speaker 1: there were a hundred bands. Also, not long thereafter, we
Speaker 1: have the famous San Francisco scene, which starts to you know,
Speaker 1: percolate in the mid sixties, and by time we hit
Speaker 1: the sixties, seven Jefferson Airplane has a hit that's across
Speaker 1: the river from you. But to what degree did you
Speaker 1: feel part of that scene? And did you partake of
Speaker 1: that scene? Go to the film or whatever. It was
Speaker 1: all mixed up together. Um, the politics or philosophy of
Speaker 1: young people, the war Vietnam, l b J being the
Speaker 1: first Nixon, then lb excuse me, lb J, then Nixon.
Speaker 1: But at this time it was lb J and that war,
Speaker 1: you know, sixty s or so and the music and
Speaker 1: at some I mean you, I'm trying to give you
Speaker 1: the first blush of this thing. There were protesters protesting
Speaker 1: the war. Uh. Actually before that, there had been this
Speaker 1: thing on the cal campus cal Berkeley called the free
Speaker 1: speech Movement and Mario Savio and they wanted the right
Speaker 1: to be able to say the F bomb. And I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it here because even though I say
Speaker 1: it all the time, and I regretted even around my
Speaker 1: kids who are adults. Um, I try not to say
Speaker 1: I say it when I I'm agitated, but I try
Speaker 1: to not just say it as an affectation. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that makes any sense to you. But so
Speaker 1: that was sort of a short lived political movement, the
Speaker 1: very speech movement. It's kind of silly, but all the
Speaker 1: mechanics were in place for what later became the anti
Speaker 1: war movement. But the funny thing was, in the beginning
Speaker 1: the anti war movement was was a bit messed up.
Speaker 1: I know that, Um, there was this there was gonna
Speaker 1: be a troop train go by somewhere on the tracks
Speaker 1: down in the lower part of Berkeley and Oakland, and
Speaker 1: of all people, the Hell's Angels were there. But there
Speaker 1: were you know, there were a few people that were
Speaker 1: trying to stop the train, and then the Hell's Angels
Speaker 1: were actually acting like true blooded Americans in the John
Speaker 1: Wayne uh songbook and helped keep the train moving. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just a strange thing. Of course, later the
Speaker 1: Hell's Angels became what's the word, They had enough cred that, uh,
Speaker 1: they were now seen as liberals where they were unfortunately
Speaker 1: are to be bodyguards at Altamont, but eventually kind of
Speaker 1: seen as criminals. And the whole thing was actually pretty scummy,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty bad um. And that's just a blip
Speaker 1: on the radar to leading up to the music I had.
Speaker 1: I had only vaguely heard about something happening in Golden
Speaker 1: Gate Park and that there was musicians and music over there,
Speaker 1: and it kind of it felt like it was amateurish um.
Speaker 1: But then by nineteen sixty seven, at least from me,
Speaker 1: there was a local radio station called k mp X.
Speaker 1: It eventually became known as the world's first underground video
Speaker 1: station and lo and behold, it was Tom Donahue who
Speaker 1: was the main guy. He had He had been a
Speaker 1: normal rock and roll DJ on k y A, a
Speaker 1: top forty station in the Bay Area. Tom Donahue and
Speaker 1: uh Mitchell, Bob Mitchell, Mitchell and Donahue were kind of
Speaker 1: the kings of the rock and roll in Bay the
Speaker 1: Bay Area, you know, the normal place. And I was
Speaker 1: getting a little older, you know, rock was getting a
Speaker 1: little older, and now there was just underground thing that
Speaker 1: was really cool because you know, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of music that was perhaps not played on the rock,
Speaker 1: the top forty station, or maybe not played right away.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about what we kind of called stacks
Speaker 1: music or soul music. And I was, of course, I
Speaker 1: always listened to the black station, the R and B station,
Speaker 1: and you heard much of the music that made it
Speaker 1: later into the top forty you would hear it on
Speaker 1: the R and B station. First. I'm talking about Otis
Speaker 1: Redding and Eddie Floyd. As far as the San Francisco scene,
Speaker 1: it starts to it starts to become more noticed for
Speaker 1: at least for me, when when one of the Stacks artists,
Speaker 1: and certainly it was there that you started to hear
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, Quicksilver, the Airplane, you know, the San Francisco bands,
Speaker 1: and that was it was quite clearly also politically involved
Speaker 1: with what young people were feeling at the time. There
Speaker 1: was there was there was no real party, you know,
Speaker 1: it was that organized quite that way. I think the
Speaker 1: real thing that was that everyone had in common is
Speaker 1: that they were young, uh, and it was just a
Speaker 1: different mindset obviously than let's say L. B. J or
Speaker 1: Hubert Humphrey or any of the other old people you
Speaker 1: know that we were looking at and the music because
Speaker 1: it was even more um, even more free form than
Speaker 1: rock and roll. You know, rock and roll was sort
Speaker 1: of on the top forty stations, and this was kind
Speaker 1: of a new thing that was. I mean, we loved
Speaker 1: at that place. We loved the records by Stas, We
Speaker 1: loved Van Morrison, you know, people that kind of that
Speaker 1: blues based rock. But then there was this other new
Speaker 1: thing coming in, particularly from San Francisco bands, and that
Speaker 1: was getting played on k mp X. And to what
Speaker 1: degree were you into that. Were you more of a
Speaker 1: roots rocker or were you buying those records, listening to
Speaker 1: those records, doing drugs, going on trips. The funny thing was, well,
Speaker 1: I went on I went on active duty for the military,
Speaker 1: for the Army in late January of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Before you tell us this story, how did you end
Speaker 1: up going into the military, because that was our worst fear. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I got drafted. I got drafted in early nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six. Um, do you want to hear that story? Yes,
Speaker 1: every every young person, every young male, I guess, was
Speaker 1: pretty much uh having trepidation, trepidation about being drafted. Um.
Speaker 1: There was this war in Vietnam that none of us
Speaker 1: knew much about, and strangely, there had been this kind
Speaker 1: of surprise announcement right at the end of August. On
Speaker 1: August thirty one, who I heard. I heard the announcement
Speaker 1: on the radio at about eleven thirty twelve o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, and it said, all of you who have
Speaker 1: draft deferments because of various reasons, will now not have
Speaker 1: draft deferments, and you will all be eligible for the
Speaker 1: draft after August at the first nineteen unless you happen
Speaker 1: to be married. And I was getting married in five days,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking for five minutes or something, Wow,
Speaker 1: maybe I should go get married now up in Reno
Speaker 1: or something. But you know, I kind of it almost
Speaker 1: felt like that was a travesty to kind of to
Speaker 1: let this affect something as beautiful as a marriage, right, uh, deferment.
Speaker 1: And I got a draft notice and that was giving
Speaker 1: me a certain time that I was to report, and
Speaker 1: I got pretty agitated about all that. I actually went
Speaker 1: down to the draft board and this young lady who
Speaker 1: was probably twenty one. You know, but you're almost seeing
Speaker 1: the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz talking to you,
Speaker 1: because you know they're on the what's the word there
Speaker 1: in the untouchable seats and your own situation is much worse.
Speaker 1: And she says something like, well, if your wife could
Speaker 1: become come pregnant before and I'm going you mean become
Speaker 1: pregnant as of yesterday. So none of that was working. Um,
Speaker 1: And finally, what what happened, I was I was pretty
Speaker 1: agitated about going in right away, going into the regular army.
Speaker 1: And I poked around and and you know, the word
Speaker 1: went to all the National Guards and called people and
Speaker 1: all the rest, and finally found an army reserve unit
Speaker 1: that I was able to get into. And the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter, matter is I believe my now wife,
Speaker 1: young wife had called that place and the fella that
Speaker 1: was the sergeant in charge of that unit said something,
Speaker 1: you just tell him to get on down here and
Speaker 1: we'll sign him up, and she had you know, she
Speaker 1: had heard something in her voice. I've always thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, if I had a called, he probably would
Speaker 1: have said, you get down here, buddy, and you know
Speaker 1: they're going to Vietnam. Um. So that was how I
Speaker 1: got into the Army reserves, which meant I still had
Speaker 1: an obligation for active duty, and I was looking at
Speaker 1: probably six years of total of service, meaning once a
Speaker 1: month meetings, once once a month, weekends, and also every
Speaker 1: summer two weeks worth of UH boot camp all over again,
Speaker 1: I guess you'd say. So it turned out that my
Speaker 1: active duty came up in January of sixty seven. But
Speaker 1: the guys in what I was musically what the guys
Speaker 1: what I was getting to is we travel on these
Speaker 1: long um. I was already going to Army meetings by
Speaker 1: the way, reserve meetings, and sometimes we would be three
Speaker 1: miles away playing a show on on a Friday night
Speaker 1: and have to get back to my home so that
Speaker 1: I could be at seven o'clock um in the morning
Speaker 1: Army Reserve meeting, and a lot of times on the
Speaker 1: way back, I was talking to the guys about some
Speaker 1: of these records I had, and they were, um, some
Speaker 1: of them were available. They were it was through our
Speaker 1: Holy Records, but it didn't say our Holy. It said
Speaker 1: something like old time classics, things like that. And I
Speaker 1: had these copies of tracks I had never heard before
Speaker 1: in my life, one of which was rolling in Tumbling
Speaker 1: by I think it was baby Face Leroy was actually
Speaker 1: I didn't find out untill later that that actually was
Speaker 1: Mighty Waters, but they contry actually he was recording somewhere
Speaker 1: else where he wasn't supposed to be, so they named
Speaker 1: the track after the artist. After the drummer. Um, I
Speaker 1: heard an old song called Honey, take a whiff on Me,
Speaker 1: A lot of old blues things, and I would tell
Speaker 1: the guys about them, and somehow I think I had
Speaker 1: a little recorder. I was able to play stuff back
Speaker 1: in this old Volkswagen that we would have a van
Speaker 1: that we would travel in. So anyway, there it was
Speaker 1: almost like before active duty and after active duty. So
Speaker 1: I was telling the guys about this music four or
Speaker 1: five months and then I went on active duty. By
Speaker 1: time I came back, they were telling me about this
Speaker 1: radio station that was playing all these things, you know,
Speaker 1: and I, oh, cool, Yeah, that was exactly what, you know,
Speaker 1: the the touchstone you might say, of the place. And
Speaker 1: so now you could tune into a radio station and
Speaker 1: hear all this stuff. I was talking about a lot
Speaker 1: of other groovy stuff. And of course the local bands
Speaker 1: were also getting played. So that kind of for the
Speaker 1: for the pilgrims that joined the Faithful, that sort of
Speaker 1: became the altar, the place where you started listening to
Speaker 1: more often than not, because you're gonna be surprised, you know,
Speaker 1: on a top board the station you sort of had
Speaker 1: the way wade your way through the cow sills and
Speaker 1: all the you know, I mean pop music in the middle,
Speaker 1: you know, centrist, if you're gonna use political terms, it's centrist,
Speaker 1: kind of sappy, but it's vanilla, and the most people
Speaker 1: like that. And then there's that small percentage it might
Speaker 1: be ten pc it's on I'm talking about on the
Speaker 1: pop station that's really sort of edgy, and even the
Speaker 1: censers like some of that, and they can't believe how
Speaker 1: great it is once once they get in the mood
Speaker 1: um and that stuff. You know, the Beatles where they
Speaker 1: in the beginning, and so was Alvis at the beginning
Speaker 1: of their careers. I mean, and then there came a
Speaker 1: time when in the Bay Area all these bands like
Speaker 1: Big Brother and the Airplane and even the Dead or
Speaker 1: a moment, you know, they were that edgy thing that
Speaker 1: was just too far out for the you know, that
Speaker 1: middle of vanilla place. But anyway that was it was
Speaker 1: a a wonderful It was almost like the beginning of
Speaker 1: rock and roll in nineteen all over again. Here it
Speaker 1: was a nineteen sixty seven with k mp X sort
Speaker 1: of bringing clearly into focus this way of thinking, which
Speaker 1: I think is part of it, um and this way
Speaker 1: of listening to music and a certain kind of music
Speaker 1: that was cool, and some were even more edgy than cool,
Speaker 1: you know. There it took a while to kind of
Speaker 1: get out there with those you know, with those people,
Speaker 1: but eventually that was brought into it. You know. At
Speaker 1: the same time some of the shows we were doing
Speaker 1: that we're late, we'd we'd come home listening to Wolfman
Speaker 1: Jack and during the middle sixties there he was definitely
Speaker 1: in that same place. I don't know that I don't
Speaker 1: think there was one word about politics. Um, but wolf
Speaker 1: Man jack was definitely cool. And the music, um, I
Speaker 1: just spoke for itself. And that's that's where I heard
Speaker 1: things like Mistake Eyes or that wonderful Freddie Scott record
Speaker 1: and it I think it's called are You Lonely for Me? Baby?
Speaker 1: But all I remember is it's my last bus to Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: Whatever became a a mainstream hit. But I first heard
Speaker 1: stuff like that on Wolfman. Okay, when was the first
Speaker 1: time you heard yourself on the radio And what was
Speaker 1: that experience? Like, it's a lot earlier than you might think. Um,
Speaker 1: we the Blue Velvets. That was that trio of Doug
Speaker 1: and Stu and I uh. In junior high school. We
Speaker 1: we got adopted by our local boys club, which was
Speaker 1: really half a block away from our junior high school.
Speaker 1: It was right there. And this wonderful man named Bob.
Speaker 1: And I confess that I've looked for his name and
Speaker 1: tried to google. You know that Bob. Here's another Bob
Speaker 1: by the way, that person that was with the Del
Speaker 1: Crito Boys Club in nine And you know, I've never
Speaker 1: been able to track down his full name, his last name,
Speaker 1: but he adopted us. Um. I mean, now it kind
Speaker 1: of makes more sense, but at the time I was
Speaker 1: just a kid fourteen years old with a paper out
Speaker 1: with two of my musical friends. We had this, you know,
Speaker 1: we considered ourselves a little little amateur band, um, and
Speaker 1: we were a rock and roll band. And he adopted
Speaker 1: us to go represent our boys club and play in
Speaker 1: these get togethers with all the other boys clubs, you know,
Speaker 1: like a Saturday on into evening type festival. And it
Speaker 1: was the most wonderful thing because at that very early age,
Speaker 1: we were being presented as something in a white shirt
Speaker 1: with a I think that was called a continental tie
Speaker 1: that that, you know, and made us look finished. I
Speaker 1: think we were all allowed to just have any We
Speaker 1: didn't have pants because that was too expensive, so we
Speaker 1: had each had some kind of black pants and some
Speaker 1: kind of we didn't there were no beatle boots yet,
Speaker 1: but we weren't quite that uniform. We were kids, but
Speaker 1: we were being presented and treated as if we mattered
Speaker 1: like like that. It was legitimate, and you know, we'd
Speaker 1: go play a couple of songs. We might play Walk
Speaker 1: Don't Run, or we might play an original one of
Speaker 1: the songs. I had written as an instrumental, and Bob
Speaker 1: would drive us there and talk to us. You know.
Speaker 1: We had the whole well, the piano was there. It
Speaker 1: was drums, guitar and piano was the instrumentation, and uh
Speaker 1: Doug had a few drums and I had my little
Speaker 1: guitar set up. But Bob would talk to us, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of give us adult lessons. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the most important one I ever had. We had been
Speaker 1: driven to a place to play, and we were going
Speaker 1: to you know, we were the boys club representative. And
Speaker 1: for some reason I was trying to plug in my amplifier,
Speaker 1: but my AMP would not reach the electrical outlet. I
Speaker 1: needed an extension cord, which wasn't part of my arsenal,
Speaker 1: and so I went over to find you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta find Bob. I gotta find, you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: in a strange location to do this. But I I
Speaker 1: don't even actually remember doing it, but I know it
Speaker 1: happened because I heard the the playback of the tape,
Speaker 1: you might say, from Bob. I walked up and Bob
Speaker 1: was sitting talking with another gentleman who was obviously in
Speaker 1: a similar position with another Boys Club but I must
Speaker 1: have kind of interrupted urgently, sort of certainly, without asking
Speaker 1: please or may I interrupt you? I probably walked up
Speaker 1: and said something like I really needed extension cord. My
Speaker 1: aunt's not gonna work without, you know, like I'm so
Speaker 1: important in other words, um, and Bob looked at me,
Speaker 1: looked at the other gentleman. Because I didn't realize I
Speaker 1: had done this. I just suddenly, he was now saying
Speaker 1: his mannerism, said whoa time out? Slow down? Right? And
Speaker 1: he said, first you should say please. Now I realized
Speaker 1: I've done something wrong that you should ask me as
Speaker 1: a request, may I please have your help, your assistance,
Speaker 1: because I really need to find an extension court and
Speaker 1: I forgot to bring one. I've looked at Bob, and
Speaker 1: of course I'm sure I was hot under the collar
Speaker 1: then did what he said. But in all the years later,
Speaker 1: when I've thought about that moment and and Bob, through
Speaker 1: many more appearances that we did and a couple of
Speaker 1: years of it, actually I've thanked him in my mind that, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a snotty kid who thought he
Speaker 1: was important, that I was obviously what's the word embarrassed
Speaker 1: that I didn't have it together, and so now I
Speaker 1: was urgently whatever that is, because that's so big. You
Speaker 1: see so much of that crop. In fact, now we
Speaker 1: expect it from our celebrities. Is horrible. And Bob kind
Speaker 1: of stopped me in my tracks at probably fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: kind of just you know, he's an adult and I'm
Speaker 1: a kid, kind of saying you're acting like a kid.
Speaker 1: You're being immature. It's rude and you you know you
Speaker 1: won't get very far doing that, And how can I
Speaker 1: say it? I've had a good enough upbringing less their
Speaker 1: heart from my mom and what other teachers had cared
Speaker 1: to bother You know that I understood what this lesson was.
Speaker 1: So um Again, I'm a human being. I've certainly had
Speaker 1: my moments, but that was important to me and it's
Speaker 1: still important to me. Okay, the band has huge success,
Speaker 1: starts with Susie Q. Proud Mary is gigantic. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're on a roll, you're feeling good, you have a
Speaker 1: couple more hits. Then, how hard is it to write
Speaker 1: these songs? Do you feel well, I have to write
Speaker 1: a song is good or close to as good as
Speaker 1: the other ones? Do you discard other ones? How much
Speaker 1: pressure internal pressure. There's always external pressure deliver a hit,
Speaker 1: but how much internal pressure not? How did you manage that? Well? Now,
Speaker 1: remember um, when the four when I got off of
Speaker 1: active duty, the four of us sort of resolved to
Speaker 1: make it or break it. We gave ourselves vaguely a year. Right.
Speaker 1: Amazingly it happened within that year. But we figured that
Speaker 1: Tom was the only kind of quote adult. He was
Speaker 1: over twenty one, had a real job at pgn E,
Speaker 1: that's the electrical company, also became a band. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: and we were rehearsing every day and took it very seriously.
Speaker 1: We were trying to get better. And you know, we
Speaker 1: we really as gollywogs that had made the records earlier
Speaker 1: with Fantasy that was kind of churish, not unlike so
Speaker 1: many records of that era, like perhaps Psychotic Reaction by
Speaker 1: the Count Five and many others. Yeah, So just to
Speaker 1: be clear, because I don't want to leave this hanging.
Speaker 1: When you were with the Boys Club, did they make
Speaker 1: a record? It was not the first time you heard
Speaker 1: yourself on the radio? Yeah? Absolutely, That's why I went there.
Speaker 1: Um at one of the places we played, and I
Speaker 1: know it was an outdoor race track, and that's all
Speaker 1: I can remember about it. But this young man named
Speaker 1: James Powell came up and it was had seen us play,
Speaker 1: and he said, I would like you to get you
Speaker 1: guys to help me make a record. And you know,
Speaker 1: he was twenty five or so, we were about fourteen, okay, Uh, needless, well,
Speaker 1: James was a black fella. Um. His music was decidedly
Speaker 1: doo wop, but he was really good at it. I
Speaker 1: mean he you know, if I was to sing a
Speaker 1: song like that, it would have sounded like a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old middle class white boy, and James really sounded
Speaker 1: exactly like that was his wheelhouse, right, And he had
Speaker 1: a few songs, if I remember correctly, almost every song
Speaker 1: he had was a girl's name, and so his the
Speaker 1: we recorded two songs to be uh that first record,
Speaker 1: and he, by the way, he already had a relationship
Speaker 1: with a record company which was I believe it was
Speaker 1: called Christie Records, And we eventually met the owner of
Speaker 1: a man named Joe jarros Um, and we rehearsed with
Speaker 1: James and eventually went over to Coast Recorders in San
Speaker 1: Francisco and recorded these two songs, Beverly Angel and the
Speaker 1: other side was Martha mke Darling Beverly Angel. It was
Speaker 1: an absolute classic four chord slow song in the Vein
Speaker 1: of Earth angel or in the Still of the Night. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not quite as good as those in for sonic reasons
Speaker 1: or others, but pretty dangn close. And I literally got
Speaker 1: to hear that on the R and B station by
Speaker 1: the way, uh one time. And I believe Stu Cook
Speaker 1: may have he may have actually heard it at school
Speaker 1: one time because he was in I think the story
Speaker 1: goes he was, you know, the electronics class, and he
Speaker 1: supposed to build a radio, and he built a radio,
Speaker 1: and as it came together, he tuned in that station
Speaker 1: and they were playing Beverly Angel. If that was true,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine the mental Hey that's me. Um. So
Speaker 1: that was the first time I heard myself, although I
Speaker 1: you know, I was not the singer. I was in
Speaker 1: the back. Well, you give yourselves a year, So continue
Speaker 1: with that narrative. You were telling the story, all right,
Speaker 1: So this is nineteen seven. We've resolved to do everything
Speaker 1: we can to make it. And at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: we we say, well, we're all gonna write songs, and
Speaker 1: we're all gonna play and all that, and we actually
Speaker 1: released a song that I had already written and that
Speaker 1: had been released with I Believe, with myself and my
Speaker 1: brother Tom credited as the writer. The song was called
Speaker 1: porter Bill. I had written this song basically marching around
Speaker 1: in the army in the hot sun. It was um
Speaker 1: It was sort of a pivotal moment in my life
Speaker 1: where you're doing all this marching. You can only imagine.
Speaker 1: It's really hot on the asphalt. It's what they call
Speaker 1: a parade ground. It was a mile square, so you
Speaker 1: could march a long way in one distance in the
Speaker 1: august heat, and I would tune into this personal radio station.
Speaker 1: I started doing this song that was kind of kind
Speaker 1: of my life and kind of not and turning it
Speaker 1: into this story that was going to be a song.
Speaker 1: I got out of the army or off active duty
Speaker 1: and finished that song. I had learned how to do
Speaker 1: something I hadn't done before anyway. That song got released
Speaker 1: by the Golliwogs and called Porterville. But when we changed
Speaker 1: our name to Credence pre Credence clear Water Revival, UH
Speaker 1: Fantasy re released the song by Credence Clearwater Revival, and
Speaker 1: now the the credit at where the songwriter is was
Speaker 1: t spice bush swallowtail and what that was meant to be? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something Doug came up with. We were all smoking
Speaker 1: pot at the time and I guess it sounds like
Speaker 1: it doesn't it. Um. Anyway, it was a It was
Speaker 1: a word or phrase that was supposed to represent all
Speaker 1: four of us writing the song. Well, obviously since I
Speaker 1: wrote the song in the first place, you can see that,
Speaker 1: I uh, can I say, generously shared my credit with
Speaker 1: my bandmates, which is something that happened quite a bit
Speaker 1: um during that period of time and even later. It's, Uh,
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna say about is if you know about me,
Speaker 1: you know that that you know that I did that
Speaker 1: a lot and it's kind of surprising actually, But anyway,
Speaker 1: that was um, that was how our songwriting. I'm can
Speaker 1: I say it became collected for a while. But after
Speaker 1: the first album was beginning to take shape and I
Speaker 1: had written I think all the songs that were not
Speaker 1: cover songs, I finally went to the band that they said,
Speaker 1: I don't like this arrangement. It was now six seven
Speaker 1: months later, eight months later, and I had written all
Speaker 1: the songs and it had kind of turned out that
Speaker 1: the other guys weren't coming up with ideas. I think literally,
Speaker 1: I would show up at our everyday practice and you know,
Speaker 1: rehearsal and go, well, does anybody have anything? And everybody
Speaker 1: would kind of look at the ground, you know, look
Speaker 1: at their shoe tops and say and so I would
Speaker 1: show them what I had. And this happened day after
Speaker 1: day for months, and we and the course of which
Speaker 1: we started to learn musical ideas, you know, RiPPs, things
Speaker 1: like that, drum beats, things that I had created, baselines,
Speaker 1: and eventually several songs the best of the best I
Speaker 1: could come up with were those ones that appear on
Speaker 1: that album. And I didn't want to share the credit.
Speaker 1: So what I said would look, I'll share the money,
Speaker 1: but I think I should get credit for something I've written. Um,
Speaker 1: at least I did that, and it's true. Uh, the
Speaker 1: songwriting was split four ways at that time for the
Speaker 1: next two years on the next four albums, I believe,
Speaker 1: all of which were uh, you know, multi platinum around
Speaker 1: the world. I think I finally said, okay, you're all
Speaker 1: millionaires several times old is many years. Hence I said,
Speaker 1: I think I don't have to share the money. Anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: I realized that that sounds like backsliding. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: too many days after that that the band broke up,
Speaker 1: So I think it was almost with self defense. You
Speaker 1: might say, Uh, you know, we're talking nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: or so. Anyhow, Okay, to go back to your question,
Speaker 1: which was, let me ask a different question. When you
Speaker 1: wrote proud Mary, did you know it was a smash? Uh?
Speaker 1: What a question? And I was the only one in
Speaker 1: the room, Um, believe it or not. Now we we
Speaker 1: skip up to nineteen sixty eight. I've done my active duty.
Speaker 1: I've determined that I'm going to try and get released
Speaker 1: from the military. So I I started volunteering. Said, look,
Speaker 1: I'll come in during the week and do my work.
Speaker 1: I don't even have to show up to the official
Speaker 1: meeting in my uniform and you know, make you guys
Speaker 1: angry at me. But they wouldn't go for that, so
Speaker 1: I began trying to figure out ways to actually get released. Okay,
Speaker 1: so April even May of sixty eight, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get released from the Army reserves. But I know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to go to uh summer camp. And I
Speaker 1: also know that here's that guy, there's that communist. They're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna have their way with me if I
Speaker 1: have to go through that thing. So it was probably
Speaker 1: Midsummer of and I don't know, I can't pin down
Speaker 1: the month any better than that. But there's this thing
Speaker 1: on the steps. There's an envelope sitting there, and it's
Speaker 1: got a big government stamp on it. I literally stepped
Speaker 1: over it two or three days in a row. I'm
Speaker 1: a kid in a little apartment what finally, because it
Speaker 1: kept being there, and it's in front of my neighbor's
Speaker 1: door actually, and I look closer and it says John Fogerty,
Speaker 1: Private John Fogerty. I look inside and it's my honorable discharge,
Speaker 1: and I go, WHOA, Yes, are you kidding that? After
Speaker 1: the journey I had been through. WOA, Yes. I was
Speaker 1: so happy. And I literally there's a little patch of
Speaker 1: grass in front of our apartment building. And I did
Speaker 1: a cart We don't ask me how, but I did
Speaker 1: a cart wheel. My brain was saying, you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to know you did a cart whale, and I did.
Speaker 1: I ran in the house and I grabbed my Rickenbacker.
Speaker 1: I started playing with these chords I've been playing before,
Speaker 1: kind of the vaguely the Beethoven's Fifth Thing, you know,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know. And
Speaker 1: I started doing him again and suddenly I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm euphori. Wow. Wow. And I started working on this
Speaker 1: song with these chords, and the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and left a good job in the city because I
Speaker 1: just did working boat a man every night and day. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm playing these chords, you know, I'm all by myself, right,
Speaker 1: and the screen door is I mean, the door is open,
Speaker 1: but there's a screen door that I've come in from
Speaker 1: outside where that just happened, this bolt of whatever from
Speaker 1: the sky. I mean, I was just in this euphoria.
Speaker 1: I'm strumming away and suddenly I'm rolling, rolling, rolling, Wow,
Speaker 1: what are you rolling on the river? Cat? I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just all slamming together in my brain. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited and happy, you know, And what's this about? What?
Speaker 1: What is this thing? Rolling on the I left a
Speaker 1: good job and so I grabbed this little thing. And
Speaker 1: it's a whole another story, Bob, And we don't have time.
Speaker 1: But it was my song book that I had only
Speaker 1: just started a few months before. I flipped through it,
Speaker 1: flipped through it and looking around for some kind of
Speaker 1: and the very first thing I ever wrote in that book,
Speaker 1: the prior October was the very first injury in the
Speaker 1: book is the words proud Mary. And when I wrote
Speaker 1: them there, I had no idea what the hell is
Speaker 1: proud Mary? Who is that? But now I'm I opened
Speaker 1: my book and I Proud Mary. Proud Mary. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a name of a boat. Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: song about a boat rolling on the Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: I mean it really happened, just like I'm living. And
Speaker 1: now it was what oblong I'm trying to say, obscure
Speaker 1: things coming from obscure corners, sort of clinging together in
Speaker 1: a way that made sense to me from the structure
Speaker 1: that I had loosely set up around myself without realizing it.
Speaker 1: And within an hour of picking up that that envelope,
Speaker 1: I had a song that was called Proud Mary. I
Speaker 1: can't say that every single verse had every single word,
Speaker 1: but it certainly wasn't finished. I had three verses, I
Speaker 1: had a chorus, and I had this yellow piece of
Speaker 1: like that legal pad paper, and I used those days
Speaker 1: I used this felt tip kind of ink pin and
Speaker 1: I was sitting there looking at Proud Mary. It said
Speaker 1: at the top of these three verses and choruses, and
Speaker 1: I bob setting and sitting in my room. I was, wow, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is really this is a standard. That was my phrase,
Speaker 1: because I was kind of old fashioned, you know, meaning
Speaker 1: like Irving Berlin or Jogi car Michael. I said, this
Speaker 1: is a standard. This is a really, really good song.
Speaker 1: And I'm shaking with with such realization that how hected
Speaker 1: me do this right? I mean, it was like if
Speaker 1: you were had stumbled in the mountains and found the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail or whatever. You know, I'm too dumb to
Speaker 1: do this, but somehow I had stumbled into this and
Speaker 1: here it is, and I knew it was great, absolutely,
Speaker 1: with every core, you know, every bone in my body.
Speaker 1: I just knew it. And there was nobody ever, no
Speaker 1: one else knew. There was nobody for me to tell.
Speaker 1: And yet my own consciousness was absolutely that this stands
Speaker 1: up next to I don't know, Blue Skies or star
Speaker 1: Dust or you know. I don't know if I dared
Speaker 1: to think I want to hold your hand yet, but
Speaker 1: I knew this song was for a long time. Well,
Speaker 1: I find it interesting. Everybody says, uh, no one knows
Speaker 1: what to hit. But when you talk to the masters,
Speaker 1: they say it exactly like you when you really ring
Speaker 1: the bell, when you hit it eleven. You know. So
Speaker 1: in any event you start having hits, how do you
Speaker 1: write songs thereafter? And how about the internal pressure? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I have a spice bush swallowtail because for a
Speaker 1: while there was that limited idea that we would all
Speaker 1: be writing songs kind of like uh, named bands that
Speaker 1: do that, and I can't think of one right now now,
Speaker 1: not them, um, you know where it's a collaborative kind
Speaker 1: of maybe more like Dan Halen or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But clearly because of Proud Mary and Born on the Bayou,
Speaker 1: which was the other side, and that second album that
Speaker 1: they were on, um, something had happened. At least it
Speaker 1: was clear to me. I mean, like you know, it
Speaker 1: was clear to everybody. Come on, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The guys in my band got real started to get
Speaker 1: real weird about this, Okay. So then I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to follow this up, and I knew there was
Speaker 1: nothing else on that album. The album being the second
Speaker 1: album being Byou Country had Borne on the Bayou and
Speaker 1: Proud Mary, and then a few clicks down was a
Speaker 1: track called good Golly, Miss Molly, which was also a
Speaker 1: great track, but there were there wasn't anything else that
Speaker 1: was like Proud Mary, okay, And that meant I had
Speaker 1: to write a new song to try and compete, you know,
Speaker 1: be at that level. But it would be an orphan
Speaker 1: meaning it would be a single. It's not on an album.
Speaker 1: That didn't bother me. I didn't, you know, but it
Speaker 1: was by itself. So I eventually wrote Bad Moon Rising
Speaker 1: and Low Die, and even in my own heart, it
Speaker 1: was it was the very best I could do, and
Speaker 1: I almost felt like it didn't quite measure up to
Speaker 1: Proud Mary. I actually told the guys, uh, well, we've
Speaker 1: got two B sides, you know, and I guess they
Speaker 1: were good enough, but I I mean, I feel differently now.
Speaker 1: But it once you've had Proud Mary be taken the
Speaker 1: way it was with everyone kind of almost did anybody
Speaker 1: actually write that or was it just there all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, because that's how it felt, because I had unwittingly,
Speaker 1: you know, all that stuff we talked about Pete Seeger
Speaker 1: and Stephen Foster in America and whatever. All that sort
Speaker 1: of air dust is that we kind of just intuitively
Speaker 1: understand as our country and who we are and all that. Um.
Speaker 1: I had somehow blindly tapped into that, and you know, how,
Speaker 1: how's that ever gonna happen again? I thought Bad Moon
Speaker 1: was good anyway, so that was what I did, and
Speaker 1: Bad Moon Rising became a big hit. In fact, it
Speaker 1: started to be a hit and was on the charts
Speaker 1: before pril Mary was off the charts, which was a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing. So now he was, Okay, I gotta start,
Speaker 1: you know, get busy. And now there was sort of
Speaker 1: the attitude that, well, I can see I'm I'm the
Speaker 1: guy that's kind of got to do this otherwise it's
Speaker 1: not going to get done. And I had always you know,
Speaker 1: I loved Sun Records, and I loved the sound of
Speaker 1: a band like that that would be on Sun Records,
Speaker 1: and we hadn't quite officially gone there yet, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to do that. You know what, you might if
Speaker 1: it was the top artist, it would be an Elvis track,
Speaker 1: and if it was one of the other guys at
Speaker 1: my Perkins or um certainly not Jerry Lee. But although
Speaker 1: he had the spirit but the kind of guitar oriented
Speaker 1: music that came out of Son Johnny Cash even and
Speaker 1: you know, I had this idea about the Green River
Speaker 1: that had been carrying around since I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: and I managed to collect all that imagery and feeling
Speaker 1: with the music, and I knew what it should sound like,
Speaker 1: and I knew really nobody else was touching that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was my favorite stuff. If somebody would make that record,
Speaker 1: I'd buy it, you know. And that's what I kind
Speaker 1: of set out to do to make that music. That
Speaker 1: song that is my very very favorite thing of all Um.
Speaker 1: It's sort of that acoustic sounding rock and roll that
Speaker 1: came out of Son, and I thought I did it
Speaker 1: Um And so that was the next thing, and we
Speaker 1: were there's one of the sad stories in our band
Speaker 1: that it's where one of the first cracks showed up.
Speaker 1: We were in rehearsal at Dougs Place and we were
Speaker 1: learning the new song Green River, and probably commotion to
Speaker 1: get it ready, you know, to be this was going
Speaker 1: to be the third album, but we weren't anywhere near
Speaker 1: recording the album, but we were getting ready to record
Speaker 1: the single. Green River especially was what we were working on,
Speaker 1: we're done, we get out to the curve. I remember
Speaker 1: I had my Gibson guitar sitting in that the way
Speaker 1: that certain guitar case looked, and I was going to pack.
Speaker 1: You know, We're all saying goodbye, and Tom says to me,
Speaker 1: you're really getting quite a repertoire. But he doesn't say
Speaker 1: it in a loving, admirab like admiring way. I could
Speaker 1: just tell, because we're all human beings were sensitive to
Speaker 1: tone of voice. And you know, even though the words
Speaker 1: were like an acknowledgement or even a U a pep talk,
Speaker 1: it was it was just he hissed it through his teeth,
Speaker 1: you know, And I mean it scared me. It was
Speaker 1: really unsettling to me because of all the journeys since
Speaker 1: I had been home from active duty, every single day
Speaker 1: had been positive, every single step along this path, even
Speaker 1: nights when we played someplace in some bar and there
Speaker 1: were only three people in the audience, you know, it
Speaker 1: was always a positive motion of us um. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're together and you hang together, you can overcome anything.
Speaker 1: That's just the way Blood Brothers operate. And this was
Speaker 1: the first moment of like what they call trouble in paradise,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like and I just I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what to make of it. I didn't understand,
Speaker 1: as they say, where it was coming from. What you know.
Speaker 1: It was the first also the first time I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of three songs now that are
Speaker 1: pretty good, you know. But all I could see was
Speaker 1: to put my head down and get that shovel digging
Speaker 1: in the ground. The delay, the telegraphed, the unhappiness emotion,
Speaker 1: but I really didn't understand it at all. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do a whole another thing with all
Speaker 1: the songs and all the credence. But let's jump forward
Speaker 1: at this late date. Fortunate son and who will Stop
Speaker 1: the Rain? Relevant of your intention when writing them, have
Speaker 1: become part of the canon. Stephen Foster, as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: protest songs, anti war songs. Leave it at that, even
Speaker 1: though sometimes the right has tried to glam onto those songs.
Speaker 1: So as the son of left wingers, as a liberal
Speaker 1: in your error, what do you think about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the United States now? And could music play
Speaker 1: a part like it did in the sixties and change
Speaker 1: people's thoughts? You had to go and ask this one. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's only one way to answer,
Speaker 1: and so I'm going to answer that way. But what
Speaker 1: I mean is not holding back anything, not trying to
Speaker 1: filter anything. Sometimes people think I may be a little abrasive.
Speaker 1: Um and is I'm saddened. This all makes me very sad.
Speaker 1: Um the political, emotional, philosophical place. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the music on their radio. I'm talking about the genuine,
Speaker 1: the genuine, the general demeanor of our cultural topography. And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that he's two dollar words there. It makes
Speaker 1: me really sad because boy, in the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: when people would say you know everybody, and they meant everybody.
Speaker 1: We should be better people as a country. We are
Speaker 1: better than this. We should welcome all of our people.
Speaker 1: We should welcome all of our citizens. We should be
Speaker 1: willing to help the lowest in our society economically pull
Speaker 1: themselves up because they can't perhaps do it themselves. We
Speaker 1: should lend a hand so that we all get to
Speaker 1: ride at a higher level. I mean that to me
Speaker 1: was the dominating feeling, certainly of young people in the sixties,
Speaker 1: you know, And a lot of words were used like peace, love, happiness. Um,
Speaker 1: they were. They were genuinely meant by most people then
Speaker 1: and felt by most people then, and certainly by young people. Um,
Speaker 1: I know that. You know, back in the day, there
Speaker 1: would be somebody like a Less Dramatics who happened to
Speaker 1: be from the South, or Governor Wallace, who, um, what's
Speaker 1: the word obviously stood for a certain point of view,
Speaker 1: but acknowledged it publicly. You know. Um, there were some
Speaker 1: other guys who were even worse. These were basically, in
Speaker 1: one form or another, white supremacsts. But you didn't say
Speaker 1: that out loud, and you certainly were not proud to
Speaker 1: say something like that. You should be in shame on you.
Speaker 1: You should be embarrassed to think that way. That's how
Speaker 1: I personally feel. And we're America. We're not hey one
Speaker 1: corner of America. Now we are America. You know when
Speaker 1: all those people started fleeing in Europe for hopefully a
Speaker 1: better place, um, that's what they had in mind. They
Speaker 1: wanted to set up a utopia. And slowly but surely
Speaker 1: we've arrived. You know, some of these things you can legislate,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these things you can't. It's it's
Speaker 1: really hard to make a document that for tells every
Speaker 1: way human beings will try to circumvent other human beings. Um,
Speaker 1: you you just have to have a premise that of
Speaker 1: tolerance of you know, yes, you deserve to be here
Speaker 1: just as much as I deserve to be here. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna start with that premise. So go ahead, tell
Speaker 1: me you're bad stuff, and I'll tell you my bed stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, let's see if we can work this out. Um,
Speaker 1: that's how it was in the sixties. It was volatile
Speaker 1: and clanging and loud, and people were yelling. But aside
Speaker 1: from a few of the crime and ofstden I'm talking
Speaker 1: about people who were politically I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shut up and just keep it. People who look like
Speaker 1: they were just politicians, but actually behind the scenes they
Speaker 1: were much more evil than that, um, and had control
Speaker 1: of certain arms of our government. Uh, most of us
Speaker 1: really wanted to find that utopia. When I hear a
Speaker 1: president of the United States nowadays utter a phrase that
Speaker 1: could have he could have just said it after the
Speaker 1: Buffalo shooting. Someone like that guy could have said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's very good people on both sides. How
Speaker 1: the hell do you say that. I mean, does that
Speaker 1: sound ludicrous to you or what? That's that's how I
Speaker 1: would I'm so sad that we now have politicians even
Speaker 1: a week later now expousing this trap about replacement. I
Speaker 1: can't let one of those people in my country because
Speaker 1: he's gonna take my place. That's not what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: We're inviting everybody. Yeah. I realized there's got to be
Speaker 1: some kind of quota system, but nobody's like walking around
Speaker 1: the back of the auditorium and eliminating you. Right, you're here,
Speaker 1: they're here. Let's work it out. Um, yes, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm uh like like that. That's a legitimate way of thinking.
Speaker 1: I no wonder other people get mad. Uh. We gotta
Speaker 1: do better, We gotta we gotta start to agree that
Speaker 1: you you don't have the right to go wipe out
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people, and then some politician is
Speaker 1: going to give you a you know, an elbow and
Speaker 1: wink a nudge and say it's okay, we understand that one.
Speaker 1: That's wrong. Okay. We believe that music could change the
Speaker 1: world in the six these is there a role for
Speaker 1: music and changing people's thoughts and moving the country to
Speaker 1: a place where you would be more uh, you would
Speaker 1: be happier about the state. So you're asking about You're
Speaker 1: asking me about something that hasn't occurred now. But all
Speaker 1: I can the answer is, yes, is there? Yes, I
Speaker 1: absolutely believe music, the arts, certainly, and music being perhaps
Speaker 1: the most accessible form of art um does have the
Speaker 1: potential to change hearts and minds everywhere. Can I see
Speaker 1: that happening in this America in two thousand twenty two? Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I think you know even my own experience and emotion
Speaker 1: that I did not realize I possessed. And it's happened
Speaker 1: to me many times, you know, sort of a little
Speaker 1: bit off center here. But one of those songs to
Speaker 1: me was a song called Sending the Clowns, which I've
Speaker 1: been both the clown and the guy on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, And at some point hearing that song and
Speaker 1: hearing how it is so full of humanity, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure when I was twenty one, my my heart
Speaker 1: didn't even know how to experience that. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: understand what I'm saying. And I realized I was I
Speaker 1: was not that person at twenty. Um I am now,
Speaker 1: you know, And I hope that my words can convey it,
Speaker 1: at least to my family certainly how I feel about them. Um,
Speaker 1: there's been many of these kind of things where I see,
Speaker 1: gosh you oh. Um. I'm trying to be specific, and
Speaker 1: I don't have a great there's a car. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of moments. I remember hearing Jesse jacksonation and we were,
Speaker 1: you know, some of us at least were Remember Reagan
Speaker 1: at some point said apartheid is good. So at least
Speaker 1: it's on the record. I can use that one. I didn't,
Speaker 1: of course believe that, And there was at some point
Speaker 1: in his presidency Jesse Jackson said it is not Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan's fault that he's president. And I actually listened to
Speaker 1: those words and and thought about those. Of course, he
Speaker 1: didn't elect himself. Other people made him president. That's the
Speaker 1: upsetting thing here. Um. Look, I'm not trying to sit
Speaker 1: here and say Ronald Reagan was a bad man. He
Speaker 1: just didn't happen to be in you know, my political
Speaker 1: real house. But he was the guy that said apartheid
Speaker 1: is good. Go ask Nelson Mandela. Um, So I learned
Speaker 1: something from that phrase. I also in my lifetime, through
Speaker 1: my life, have I have listened to Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: Say those words over and over about I have seen
Speaker 1: the other side of the mountain. I may not get
Speaker 1: there with you. And holy smokes, if that doesn't make
Speaker 1: if you were alive when he was alive, and you
Speaker 1: think about that as I'm almost doing right now, that
Speaker 1: makes you cry and you realize there are heroes in
Speaker 1: our world. Um, some you know, some of the parents
Speaker 1: of these people in this last tragedy in Buffalo. Um,
Speaker 1: it's sorrd for me, as a white person to even
Speaker 1: express it all, you know, any anywhere near the way
Speaker 1: a person from that community would say it. But when
Speaker 1: you hear the son of a person have to deal
Speaker 1: with the death of their mom, and you hear them
Speaker 1: just trying to keep their memory alive right in the
Speaker 1: heat of the moment, when you know, I can only
Speaker 1: imagine the anger and the frustration and all that. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: we got to start talking to each other because just
Speaker 1: we've when you've got eighteen year old boys running around
Speaker 1: it are here. As I said earlier, I don't know
Speaker 1: who I was at twenty, but I'm not who I am.
Speaker 1: It wasn't who I am now I know an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old doesn't even understand what the f he's doing,
Speaker 1: and he's here seeing and hearing all this dribble and
Speaker 1: being in doctor aided, you know, because older people who
Speaker 1: should know better are telling him it's okay with a
Speaker 1: wink and a and uh, a real tickle from an elbow.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's horrible. Uh. It wouldn't make any difference
Speaker 1: if that kid had been fifty six. No, but it's
Speaker 1: just worse because because young people can be so misguided,
Speaker 1: so idealistic, you know, is it only takes a couple
Speaker 1: of twick tweaks of the radio station too to make
Speaker 1: it seem like it's some kind of cause, like their
Speaker 1: rebel without a cause, you know, and turned into turned
Speaker 1: into that. I'm sorry, I'm I'm trying to I'm babbling
Speaker 1: a little bit, But yes, I am very unsettled about
Speaker 1: what I see on the landscape of America now, because
Speaker 1: we have senators and congress people and sometimes even President
Speaker 1: is talking in ways that's just outrageous as far as
Speaker 1: lack of humanity for our fellow man, well articulated. You know,
Speaker 1: you talk about talking to each other. I've loved listening
Speaker 1: to you, you know, there's so much we didn't cover.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to, you know, go too deep in
Speaker 1: the stuff that's been covered by so many other people before.
Speaker 1: But I just want to add one note. You know,
Speaker 1: there was this rock artist coalition for a minute there
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this century, and there was a
Speaker 1: concert at the Forum which you participated in, and you
Speaker 1: just blew me away. I wrote it, so it's not
Speaker 1: like I'm lying. You can look it up. Whatever. People
Speaker 1: who haven't seen you have no idea. It's beyond the songs.
Speaker 1: You have one of the best bands. You have Kenny
Speaker 1: Aaron Off on drums, and there's a power just in
Speaker 1: the sound. Never mind, you still have your voice and delivery,
Speaker 1: and therefore you're on the road. People should go see.
Speaker 1: I can say that with all my sincerity. But John,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk to me in my audience today. But well,
Speaker 1: thank you for those kind words and some of which
Speaker 1: I know you have also written for which I'm so appreciative.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir um. But I do want to say,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a movie called The Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz and at one point one of the characters started
Speaker 1: talking about his importance and some day don't build a
Speaker 1: statue for me. And then the ladies say, I think
Speaker 1: it's anti m but it said, I said, well, don't
Speaker 1: start posing for it now, and seconds later the other
Speaker 1: fellow ranges it's a twist stop, it's a twist stop. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you for all of that. I I just I
Speaker 1: try to I take the music very seriously. I tried
Speaker 1: to present what I can, you know, in the best
Speaker 1: way possible. I mean, um, I try not to be
Speaker 1: self important about it, though I'm sort of the conduit
Speaker 1: lucky enough to get to do this, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in all humility. I want people to understand it
Speaker 1: like if I was if I was at Babe Ruth,
Speaker 1: I would probably look in the mirror and go, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're doing pretty good today. You know. I'm not Babe Ruth,
Speaker 1: but I'm I can only imagine what that must have
Speaker 1: been like to be that guy. You know. Um, there's that.
Speaker 1: There's that I can say, personality. Duty to yourself to
Speaker 1: try and then you owe it to everyone, especially yourself too,
Speaker 1: to give that a hundred percent effort to make sure
Speaker 1: that you always operate that way. Listen. I grew up
Speaker 1: in the era when baseball stars were heroes. I was
Speaker 1: even there when Roger Merris in his sixty one and
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth is a legend. Yeah, I was there at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium. I can tell you the whole story where
Speaker 1: I was sitting while did the ball goes? Really some
Speaker 1: them October one. But music superseded baseball for so many
Speaker 1: of us. And I'm not lying whatsoever. I would say
Speaker 1: most boomers would say, you're bigger than Babe Ruth. Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth it is seven fourteen or fifteen home runs and
Speaker 1: he had a great career. I don't wanna take anything,
Speaker 1: but your songs have lived on for fifty years and
Speaker 1: will continue to live and affect people in a three
Speaker 1: dimensional way that an athlete cannot reach. A human being. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope to always kind of live up to that,
Speaker 1: you know what you're saying. I I do try to
Speaker 1: write songs now, and of course there's always that specter
Speaker 1: of you know, probad Mary just sitting there kind of
Speaker 1: laughing at me. And in some ways that's almost another person,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's a device. By the way
Speaker 1: some of us use two what's the word release yourself
Speaker 1: from that guy, so that I can look at him
Speaker 1: and go, hey, he was pretty was your He was
Speaker 1: pretty good? You know, didn't you used to be John Fogerty.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The older I get, the better I was.
Speaker 1: It's all of that stuff because you you tried. You know,
Speaker 1: at the time, I know my intensity and and even now, um,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I've hit that mark in
Speaker 1: the last five years, although I don't know. Maybe we've
Speaker 1: been in the Promised Lands. Pretty good song. Um you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, though, it's you. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to have a little humor about it and
Speaker 1: laugh at yourself trying to do that because others and
Speaker 1: by that shadow that won't let me have a good time,
Speaker 1: because I think that's the undoing of At some point
Speaker 1: the things deteriorate and you can't hit that home run.
Speaker 1: But um are you know, artists and writers and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. We can keep going, but there is
Speaker 1: that if you keep struggling and don't have give yourself
Speaker 1: some kind of release from it, some humor. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you I don't know if it's arrogant or
Speaker 1: just futile, and you to the outside world, you won't
Speaker 1: look very nice, you know, what I'm saying. I know
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying. You know, you have to survive.
Speaker 1: There can't be the person that people expect you to be.
Speaker 1: For every day. People go through changes, they become somebody different,
Speaker 1: they learn things, they're a different person. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like Bob Dylan says when they talk about the songs
Speaker 1: of the at Least six, he says, I can't do
Speaker 1: that anymore. He says, you know, I have to do
Speaker 1: something different. You kind of covered it, so there you go. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can talk for days. We want to talk more
Speaker 1: about credence and the songs, etcetera. But once again, thanks
Speaker 1: for taking the time. All right, Bob, thank you enjoying
Speaker 1: this very nut. You bet me too. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left six