John Fogerty Quotes

There's a bad moon on the rise.

And I now think that Stratocasters and Telecasters are way cool.

I thought what I was good at doing was playing real simple guitar licks, since I'd cut my teeth on what Duane Eddy was doing; licks that were simple but had staying power.

When I made Blue Moon Swamp, there was a lot of trial and error; I was trying to find people who would be simpatico with my style, and with what I had in mind for the album.

My papa said son don't let the man getcha and do what he done to me ...

As a songwriter, I try not to be sloppy; same with the music. You can be very lean, very efficient, so you're not wasting a lot of time getting' to the point. You're saying it with as pure a word or phrase as you can. That's the part that was craft. You refine and refine and refine. Maybe that's why the songs still hang on, because they're very pure. For one thing, they're very short. "Bad Moon Rising" is like 2 minutes and 12 seconds. I would try to do everything as quickly and with as little extra as possible. It was a challenge.

Coonskin caps, Yankee bats, the Hound Dog man's big start. The A-bomb fears, Annette had ears, I lusted in my heart.

For years I walked around with the phrase "Green River" because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was "Lodi", which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was "Proud Mary". I had no idea what that title meant.

I'm just made differently. Man, I just love being an American, I love my country. But it happened to me during the Nixon time, especially pre-Watergate, that as I watched Nixon for the first time in my life I felt shame. I had to analyze myself. What is this emotion? I realized that my government was separate from my country. It was the first time I ever felt ashamed of the government, not the country.

The only sliding I did was on the kind of instrument that you put on your lap; no Spanish electrics.

I usually destroy unreleased material. It has a way of coming back to haunt you.

I'm much more energetic now; you might say live performance is my mission.

I've long ago learned that if an idea will stand on its own, it'll stand having the light shone on it. But if you shine light on it and it kind of withers, then it probably wasn't a very good idea.

There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.

You should play with real musicians; the best music comes from real people interacting with each other.

When the bad stuff was really intense in my life, it was really what you would call writer's block. Your facility is just not as good because you feel so bad. I've heard of people right on the verge of suicide coming up with some of their best work. I wish I could think of an example, other than Van Gogh, perhaps!

The Telecaster doesn't really sound that good for the kind of rock and roll that a lot of people played.

I practice really hard, every day. I started that about 13 or 14 years ago; it's a discipline now. But the writing is a whole other thing. It'll come from handling a guitar, mostly; thinking up little guitar riffs. I was born and raised a rock 'n' roll guy, and that's the rock 'n' roll ethic, at least through my experience.

I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

Mr. Greed, why do you have to own everything that you see?

That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I'm not a good mandolin player at all.

Washburn's an old American name, but this one was assembled overseas.

Let the people know my wisdom, fill the land with smoke

Long as I remember, rain been comin' down; Clouds of mystery fallin', confusion on the ground; Good men through the ages, trying to find the sun; And I wonder, still I wonder: Who will stop the rain?

I don't know that all the demons have been beaten, but I'm very, very proud of those songs.

Even though I have often recorded alone, I still feel the best music is made by musicians playing off each other.

Playing guitar is a never-finished journey.

Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along.

I wrote that song for my wife, and it's what some guy who's sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that's more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack.

All the really great records or people who made them somehow came from Memphis or Louisiana or somewhere along the Mississippi River ... And singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters gave me the feeling that they were right there, standing by the river.

All these different groups of people that are put right in the path of billions of dollars of American tax payers' money. If I had enough time I could have named all of those people [in the song], too! The song would have been 400 minutes long.

In those days, I didn't know how guys like Clapton and Beck were getting that searing blues lead sound, so I developed my style to be rhythmic and chord-based, with simple lead lines that you could almost hum.

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money.

When I'm standing at the Pearly Gates, I want to say to God, 'Don't look at the records. Look at my family. I'm much prouder about that part.'

I'm now comfortable playing a lot of the old songs, and I've gotten out a lot of the old equipment.