John Fogerty’s Turn to Revisit Creedence (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part Two…

Is it your hope that these new versions will be used for sync in film, television and the like? Perhaps even in place of the original versions?

You know, when I was doing this, I really didn’t think about that much. Lo and behold, I believe my wife has thought about those things.

Does your wife Julie take a role in helping sort out these kinds of thing?

She’s a force of nature; she’s amazing. But I dare say Julie has knowledge of those kind of things. I remember when I met her all those years ago; she was nowhere near the music business, which was such a refreshing thing. I would talk about [music business matters] and she wouldn’t really understand, because she was a Midwest girl.

I remember once watching a TV special about the song “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” Morris Levy had put his name all over it, but the actual songwriter finally got credit for that song. Julia and I were watching together, and she turned that sweet, very innocent face to me and she said, “I don’t understand. Why was he trying so hard for this?”

And I looked at her and I said, “Honey, it’s like you were supposed to be getting a dollar, and then Morris Levy shows up and now you’re only getting 50 cents.” Her face got this amazing look of understanding and enlightenment. And also indignation: That’s wrong, you know. And I said, “Well, that’s what this man was fighting for.” And it was just one of those simple things. She has certainly learned about things; we’ve had a ton of those kind of discussions in the last 40 years.

I still tend to be the guy who just makes music. And I keep myself as that person, because whenever I stray outside and try to act like, “I’m going to be a business mogul; I’m going into real estate,” or something like that, I sort of dry up and get not-very-musical. I don’t know what that is; I don’t know if I just have a limited immune system about it or something. So I tend to just hope that things will work themselves out and that Julie will notice it.

The last couple decades or so have been marked, it seems, in part by you revisiting your past, specifically the legacy (so to speak) of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Your 2009 album The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again was a sequel to your 1973 solo debut. Your 2013 album Wrote a Song for Everyone found you recording CCR songs, joined by famous guests like Bob Seger and Foo Fighters. Fogerty’s Factory we’ve already talked about: more CCR songs. And now Legacy. What’s next for you?

Well, Legacy… I enjoyed that process very much. One guy said to me, “I noticed [that the album’s full title] is Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. Does that mean your next album is going to be The John Fogerty Solo Years?” I looked at him and I said, “You know, that never really occurred to me at all.”

Maybe Julie thought about that, but I sure never did. Julie’s amazing, so I don’t know: Maybe she did. But in my mind, the process of doing this with my kids, exploring the music and getting to a place where everyone’s really happy with what’s been done, that was the magical part. So I’m looking forward to [more of] that.

If you revisited your solo years, there’s always all the songs from Hoodoo, the album you recorded but didn’t release back in 1976. You could take another crack at that if you chose to.

It’s so funny that you mention that.

You know, I’ve never been interested in going back to those songs. Some people would say, “Oh, re-record those!” And I always say, “Well, that was an album made by a fairly injured man.” I was not on my full game. I hear songs [on Hoodoo] that seem to me to be kind of incomplete; that would certainly be my take on it.

But Julie found [a tape of] that somewhere, a really good version of it. She’s played a few of them over the last eight months; one here, one there. And I’ve tended to hear them in a little better light now, going, “Well, I guess it’s not as awful as I thought it was.”

That whole time was pretty hard for me, and I did relive the time as much as relive the songs. So I don’t know if I’m interested in re-recording that. But heck, I re-recorded “Proud Mary,” so I suppose anything’s possible.

New songs would be great, too.

Yeah. I would think that’s the big kick, either writing songs together or working on a song Tyler or Shane has written, or ones that I’ve written, or written with them. I seem to have landed at a place where all of those things are okay now.