There was a bad moon rising in Pittsburgh.
John Fogerty was halfway through his two-hour show. The songs from his new album, ”Eye of the Zombie,” had been well received, but with each song`s conclusion the chant began anew:
”Creedence . . . Creedence . . . Creedence,” came the chant, louder and more insistent with each song.
Two nights earlier in Memphis, Fogerty had begun his first tour since the break-up of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972. That show had been a raving success, but here on the tour`s second stop, the crowd was turning ugly.
Back in Memphis, there had been enough advance publicity that the crowd knew of Fogerty`s vow to never again play his CCR classics. Here, if the word had gotten out, it didn`t seem to matter.
”Creedence . . . Creedence . . . Creedence. . . .”
Fogerty walked to the side of the darkened stage and paused to collect his thoughts. ”I know they`re doing it because they love those songs,” he would say later. ”But it wasn`t their fight. There are certain principles at stake that I simply won`t subvert. And it won`t change.”
Without a word, he launched into the evening`s next number.
There is no single reason why Fogerty, who comes to Poplar Creek tonight
(Sunday) and Alpine Valley Thursday, is turning his back on some of the best rock and roll ever written. Most of them, though, are rooted in his long and bitter battles with Fantasy Records.
Between 1968 and 1972, Fantasy`s best-known act released a string of hits that included ”Who`ll Stop the Rain,” ”Green River,” ”Proud Mary,” ”Bad Moon Rising,” ”Traveling Band,” ”Born on the Bayou” and ”Heard it Through the Grapevine.” After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Creedence became the world`s biggest-selling group.
Fogerty, the band`s producer, writer and arranger, seemed to have a magic touch: When the band needed a new single for a European tour that was about to begin, he came up with ”Run Through the Jungle” and ”Up Around the Bend”
in a weekend`s time.
By 1972, however, the band had disintegrated under Fogerty`s authoritarian leadership.
Still under a multi-record contract to Fantasy, Fogerty released a little-known collection of country standards under the pseudonym ”Blue Ridge Rangers.” But he balked at the idea of producing any more solo records for a label he felt had never given Creedence its financial or promotional due.
Those bad feelings soon escalated into a paralyzing rage when Fogerty learned that all of the band`s earnings had been lost in a shady Bahamian bank scheme engineered by Fantasy.
A million-dollar deal in 1975 permitted Fogerty to release a self-titled collection of covers and originals on Asylum Records. Though spotty in quality, the album did include two near-classics: ”Rocking All Over the World” and ”Almost Saturday Night.”
But, as the suits and countersuits between Fogerty and Fantasy multiplied, Fogerty sank deeper and deeper into a creative funk. Asylum rejected a second solo album in 1976, and Fogerty would not be heard from again for almost a decade. He lived essentially on past writer`s royalties.
In 1980, he won his freedom from the Fantasy contract, but only by signing over all performance rights to the Creedence material. Three years later, a court awarded the four members of Creedence $8.6 million in the suit over the bank scheme. Fogerty`s share reportedly was $4.1 million. His writer`s block lifted almost immediately, and Fogerty, who had spent most of the days during his layoff practicing in his home studio, began work on the album that would become ”Centerfield.”
Released in January, 1985, the album was a commercial and critical success. Though not as hard-edged as his Creedence hits, ”Centerfield`s”
nine songs proved that Fogerty had emerged from his lost decade with his vision and creative powers intact.
About the time ”Centerfield” was zipping up the charts, Fogerty let it be known that he had no intention of ever publicly performing his Creedence material again. ”Why in the world would I want to help make more money for
(Fantasy)?” he said at the time. ”They`re out there licensing Creedence songs to anybody who walks in the door: K-Tel, commercials, you name it. I`m not going to help them buy another Rolls-Royce.”
But there`s more than economic spite motivating Fogerty, according to his brother, Bob, who handles the business affairs. ”If we`re driving somewhere and `Proud Mary` comes on, John gets this pained look on his face. He`d never tell you this, but I think those songs have lost any kind of positive meaning for him.”
If there is a silver lining to be found in Fogerty`s divorce from his Creedence hits, it`s that it frees him to reinvent himself in a contemporary mold. It`s an opportunity Fogerty is determined to capitalize on.
”I have no interest in being an oldies act, singing `rolling on the river` until I die,” he said. ”I don`t want to be pigeon-holed, I want to keep growing. I think the new album could very well be the best thing I`ve ever done.”
He may be right. In Pittsburgh, the songs from ”Eye of the Zombie”
displayed all of the old Creedence muscle, and yet still encompassed the modern influences found on ”Centerfield.”
There was more Stax soul than swamp rock to be heard on ”Knockin` on Your Door,” ”Wasn`t that a Woman” and the instrumental ”Goin` Back Home,” but ”Headlines,” ”Eye of the Zombie,” and ”Violence is Golden” are full of Creedence echoes.
”Soda Pop,” a sort of flip side to ”Centerfield`s” ”I Saw It on TV,” castigates celebrity endorsements, takes a poke at corporate sponsorhip of rock and roll, and includes a not-so-subtle jab at Fantasy`s reckless licensing of Creedence material to Madison Avenue.
During the concert, he peppered the new material with tracks from
”Centerfield,” and a handful of R & B such as Wilson Pickett`s ”I Found a Love,” Eddie Floyd`s ”Knock on Wood” and Sam Cooke`s ”Soothe Me.”
Throughout, Fogerty`s guitar cut like a nasty chainsaw, and his trademark howl rang clean and true (”Yours would too if you`d had 10 years off,”
opening-act Bonnie Raitt lamented backstage with mock jealousy).
After the show, Fogerty traded the black shirt he had worn on stage for one of the plaid flannel shirts that had been his signature during the Creedence years. A lean, avid runner, he looked far younger than 41. In his left ear, there was the small gold earring he began wearing the day he discovered his life savings had been lost.
Sitting in front of a ravaged deli tray, he tried to explain the importance of his new material.
”If I were forced to make a choice between the Creedence fans and the new fans, I`d take the new fans,” he said. ”I know that sounds harsh, but I want to be a contemporary artist. Let someone else carry the `roots rock`
flag.”
He understands that means disappointing many of his longtime fans.
”For now, yes, some people will be disappointed. But as time goes on, and there`s more and more John Fogerty material out there, I think the cry for Creedence material will be less and less,” he said.
”I do think, though, that I`m going to have to get to the point where I`m at least able to respond to the audience when they`re chanting for Creedence. I mean, I am the same guy. I was in Creedence, I still wear flannel shirts. So, it`s not as though I had a lobotomy. I`m just not doing those particular songs.”
Asked if he sees any similarities between his return to visibility and Elvis Presley`s explosive, but short-lived comeback in 1968, Fogerty nodded.
”I don`t want to come off looking like some kind of smart —,” he said slowly. ”Because I don`t want to go around equating myself with Elvis, but, yes, his predicament certainly was in my mind. You would hope to learn a lesson from what happened to him.”
After wasting the `60s making lousy movies, Presley made a dramatic comeback with his 1968 television special. His subsequent descent into smarmy Las Vegas concerts and obesity was almost as dramatic.
The lesson, Fogerty said, is that a comeback is only a beginning.
”That`s why it took me a year to get this new album together,” he said. ”Because that`s the trip: Now that you`re back, what are you going to do now? To me at least, that`s what was so sad about Elvis. After all those lame movies, he comes back, but then sank right back into the same kind of thing.
”It seemed like it would have been so easy for him to get together with Scotty Moore or somebody, do another `Mystery Train,` and just kick —. But he never did, and I don`t know why. It`s something I`ve thought about a lot recently.”
He stopped to rub his hands across his face. ” `Centerfield` was a nice, light album, which brought me back. But now I wanted to do a serious work. I`m creative, and I`d like to do a lot of different things. I`ve got plenty of contributions to make.”
Even so, Fogerty`s legal battles are far from over. After Fogerty`s show at Alpine Valley, the ”Rocking All Over the World Tour” will take a forced break while its leader testifies in a copyright infringement suit filed by Fantasy. The label contends that ”The Old Man Down the Road,” the first single from ”Centerfield,” plagiarizes ”Run Through the Jungle.”
”That`s how ridiculous they are,” he said. He tries to laugh, but it sticks in his throat. ”You say in an interview somewhere that `Old Man` has a `Run Through the Jungle` feel, or that this song sounds like that song, and these guys run off like you said it was the other song.”
The trial, he said, is why the tour began almost a month before ”Eye of the Zombie`s” release. ”If I`d waited until this trial was over and then started rehearsal and lighting and sound, I couldn`t be touring until January or February,” he said.
But Fogerty has resigned himself to the fact that the suits will likely keep coming. And while he knows he should let his troubles ”Sail Away,” as he sings on the new album (”Leaving all this pain behind, gonna sail away/
Letting all these chains unwind, gonna fly away”), he isn`t able.
”I know, I know,” he said. ”All my friends tell me I`d be so much better off psychologically if I just let it go. But the trouble with that is that these things keep happening. It`s not like it happened once 15 years ago, and I`m just brooding. It keeps re-occurring, and every time I`ve got to swallow it and try to stay balanced.
”That`s why I say no one else can understand,” he said. ”This is my fight, and I will never, ever, let them stop me.”
Later, a little before 1 a.m., Fogerty sat alone in the vast lobby of the William Penn Hotel.
Members of his band stopped by occasionally to compare notes on the show or talk baseball. It`s hard to say how seriously he was listening, but at some point he no doubt thought about a story he`d been telling again and again over the last few days.
”I was sitting backstage in Memphis with a pretty good friend,” he`d said. ”And the crowd was real good and real receptive, really going wild over Bonnie (Raitt). My friend noticed it too and said, `Wow, she`s got a great audience.` And then it hit me: No, I`ve got a great audience. And, no lie, I got misty eyed. I`ve got an audience.
”It really hit me like a ton then. My first audience in 15 years. Boy, was that ever a great feeling. That`s when I really felt like I was back.”
