MC: Rolling Stone magazine voted you No. 40 in its 100 Greatest Guitarists list. Are there any young players today you’ve been impressed by?
Fogerty: Every now and then there’ll be a Gary Clark Jr. When I heard him I thought, “This guy’s really got it.” I mean, yes, it’s more traditional. Gary passes what I call my “Albert King meter.” Very few young blues players pass that.
MC: Speaking of whom, you played an Albert King song on your “guest host” radio show recently.
Fogerty: That’s right, I did play him on my show, didn’t I! I actually knew Albert a little bit. Back during the Creedence days, we used to play the same shows with Albert when he was just becoming a superstar with the white audience. It was so much fun. We were both breaking through to bigger audiences. Nowadays it seems a lot of the younger blues phenoms that have come along are more of a gimmick, I think. They play too fast. The feel isn’t there.
MC: Well, your current live band doesn’t have that problem, with guitarist James Intveld, drummer Aronoff and keyboardist Bob Malone. What do you look for in a player? Have you held auditions for some of your bands?
Fogerty: Oh sure. Occasionally I’ll hold an audition if it’s for a certain instrument. But I don’t have to worry about a drummer. No need for an audition there. I mean, I am so blessed to have Kenny (Aronoff) with me. I’m a longtime John Bonham fan and Kenny is right up there with him. He’s got that feel, y’know? I tell him, “Kenny the reason I keep practicing is because I want everything I do to be at the same level that you’re at.” He is at the top of the world.
When you talk about somebody like James Intveld, he is a guy who has dedicated his life to being a musician and has such an understanding of rock & roll and certain areas, like rockabilly music and the Stax Volt era, and he knows so much about, and appreciates, that kind of music. He brings a lot of that to his palette. I will have him do a solo so people will hear that style come out of our band. James always brings something special.
MC: Your two sons accompany you on guitar on the album. For the new version of “Lodi” did you all go to Abbey Road Studios in London?
Fogerty: Yes, as a father I wanted my kids to be a part of this album. And the boys chose “Lodi.” They were heading off in a folk-rock area, like Fleet Foxes, that direction. [But] I had long thought that “Lodi” would be cool as a sort of (tougher) barrelhouse version. So when it came closer, that we were gonna go to Abbey Road to do it, I sorta used, I guess you’d say, my parental authority and said, “I think we really want to end up with something that day.” I think I know this area of rock & roll pretty well and I wanted to be sure it didn’t go too far into Fleet Foxes-land. But when we went to Abbey Road I knew we wanted to use that day well.
MC: You had just one day there?
Fogerty: Right. All the basic stuff for the song was done that one day. And when you’re there you can’t help but say, “God, we’re in the same building where the Beatles and so many other Brit rockers had made classics.” So I wanted to be sure we ended up with something solid. And I think it’s a track the boys can be really proud of.
MC: Abbey Road was just one of several studios you recorded in. You mainly recorded in Nashville and in Los Angeles, including Foo Fighters’ 606 studio. When it came to getting the sounds, the feel, and keeping things consistent, who acted as your right hand man?
Fogerty: Kevin Harp was my main engineer on this. He is the guy I count on to mic things and he’s a wiz at Pro Tools too. A lot of the old-timers are not so fast on that, but the fact that the same guy was doing both the miking and the Pro Tools was a blessing. Kevin could isolate something for me in the blink of an eye. The quality was always there. … I really like to hear the song when I work. Pro Tools allowed me to quickly hear a complete version.
MC: A highlight on the album is a new song you wrote, “Mystic Highway.” It sounds so natural, like it came easily to you. Was that actually the case?
Fogerty: The song was originally in a notebook from 1967. I didn’t, at the time, know what the words meant. But the song is about how we’re all traveling down a highway and we don’t know where it leads. … That’s what it meant 30 years ago. I had no clue how to do the music. I kind of, over the years, heard a little chorus, but it was vague. And I never made a concerted effort until now. I wanted to write a couple new songs for this record and it was the first… [As production on the album progressed] there was a gun to my head. All this pressure coming to get it done. So what I first recorded of the song came out pretty good, but it didn’t quite have all that it needed––and I didn’t have all the verses or the middle part. I didn’t have all the tricky guitar parts that you hear. Then I got busy with the other artists and so I had to put “Mystic Highway” off for a while. I knew the song was not done. The chorus was not right yet. The song needed a definite break in the middle, a slight pause.
MC: Those accents make all the difference, don’t they?
Fogerty: Right, and I thought of what it would be like playing it live. So I developed a much more trippy sounding guitar. I spent three days just getting each part perfected so we could play the song all the way through. There are these little guitar things that you hear played a certain number of times. It makes the song work, especially when we play it live.
MC: You’ve had a long career, full of ups and downs, especially considering the Fantasy Records saga. It became years of music business hell for you. What words of advice do you have for artists and musicians who are trying to navigate the music industry shark tank?
Fogerty: Oh man, there’s a whole buncha things to say. One is that if you’re in a band, you need to come to an agreement about where you all want to go—get it in writing. Make it a legal document. Have everyone sign it. I don’t have that with Creedence and it has led to all kinds of problems, including the fact that there is a band running around calling itself Creedence Clearwater. At the time, we had all agreed we’d never do anything like that. But now I don’t have anything in writing.
But on a much more philosophical level, I’d say that whatever you’re doing, make sure it rings true. Because there are a lot of things in life that don’t. You need to be saying, “Yeah, in my heart, this is what I want to do.” Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this; this seems weak; why am I showing up to play this show for free just because one of us in the band is going out with the label head’s daughter?” Some of those things will work for you. But when you do them, be sure you really understand what you’re supposed to get from it.
There’s so much of that in the music business, where it’s kind of left vague, and what ends up showing up is a lot less, and very disappointing.
