John Fogerty’s fateful therapy session: “That’s betrayal”
Who knows what possessed John Fogerty to write swamp rock… probably the same thing that convinced Brian Wilson to write as if he were a surfer. While the artist may not be a direct representation of the art, there is no escaping the fact that, because of Fogerty’s impact and his excellent songwriting ability, a great number of people had their minds opened to a new sound of music, and loved him all the more for it.
Creedence Clearwater Revival are a band who carry with them a string of great music, something that people around the world were able to resonate with and that won them both critical and commercial acclaim. Unfortunately, it wasn’t built to last, as once the band were seeing success, other band members were keen on having more of an impactful role in the band, something which caused a great deal of creative tension.
“I didn’t understand all this negative energy coming from the other three,” Fogerty recalled when discussing some of the negative drawbacks that came with these creative differences, “There was always this pressure that they wanted to write songs and be the singer and make up their own musical parts, and I saw this as a threat to our well-being.”
Fogerty’s reluctance to engage with these requests didn’t come from a place of arrogance; rather, it arose because the formula had been working well, and he wasn’t sure why his fellow bandmates wanted to change it. They were doing well both commercially and critically, and he figured the plan had always been for everyone to be in a band, so why would they want to change what they were doing?
Cracks in the Creedence formula
“I’d been with these people more than 10 years, and never in all that time had they shown the ability to write a really good song or sing very well,” he said, “So I felt threatened. I’d hear it walking through airports, all this snickering and bickering, all these voices behind my back.”
The pressure on Fogerty continued, and soon the band disbanded because of these ongoing creative differences. This was when the problems really started to rack up for him, as while the rest of the band were released from their recording contracts once the band had split up, Fogerty remained attached, owing hundreds of recordings for very little pay out. This was tough for him to swallow, given that he had signed with the record label because it was his friend, Saul Zaentz, who ran it.
“I was held in an iron grip,” Fogerty recalled, “I owed them hundreds of recordings, for which I was going to be paid very little. Ouch! It seemed like everybody figured I should get punished extra because I was more talented. There was this whole mindset of ‘We’re gonna stick it to John’ with the assumption being, I guess, he can weather the storm better than us because he’s more talented.”
While Fogerty thought that this was just a bad turn of luck, it wasn’t until he went to therapy that he realised what had actually happened. When discussing things over with his therapist, they were able to shine a light on everything that had happened, letting him know that it wasn’t just bad luck; he had been betrayed by both his bandmates and his label.
“It was an amazing betrayal by my best friends, though I didn’t know that until many years later,” he said, “Going to a shrink, he said, ‘That’s betrayal’. Oh OK, I just knew I was stabbed in the back. I had done so much to make these other people wealthy.”
