“I was kind of stunned”: when John Fogerty was starstruck by a former Beatle
It is difficult to imagine a rockstar becoming starstruck by anybody else; it simply doesn’t fit into the accepted arrogant image of that persona, particularly if that rockstar has been around for decades, having played every stage from Woodstock to Glastonbury, as in the case of Creedence Clearwater Revival songwriter John Fogerty.
One of the most essential outfits of the hippie age, CCR were always largely in a league of their own, single-handedly establishing the swamp rock sound and carving out some of the most iconic anthems of the era – from the anti-war heroism of ‘Fortunate Son’ to accidental psychedelia of ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door’. Perhaps most impressively, though, Fogerty made a point not to consume any of the drugs or alcohol being binged by virtually every other rock outfit of the time, making him perhaps the only sober person at Woodstock Festival.
That isn’t to say, however, that the songwriter couldn’t appreciate the artistic genius that was being struck upon by that influx of psychedelic inspiration. After all, countless contemporaries and influences upon the band spent the majority of the 1960s off their faces on whatever substances they could get hold of.
Perhaps the greatest example of that fact was The Beatles, whose experiments with LSD transformed them from fresh-faced teeny-boppers singing about holding hands to moustached musical experimenters, changing the pop landscape forevermore. Like virtually every other songwriter of that time, Fogerty could not help but become infatuated with The Beatles’ output, routinely using that Liverpudlian source of inspiration within his own songwriting, too.
Seemingly, if you find yourself at the epicentre of rock and roll excellence for enough years, you tend to bump into The Beatles eventually. Although Fogerty never managed to meet the band while they were still together, pre-breakup, he did reveal to Track Star, “I’ve met three Beatles: Met Paul, Ringo, and I spent the most time, you might say, with George.”
Expanding on that rather ominous introduction to his George Harrison anecdote, the CCR songwriter harked back to an infamous 1987 gig in which Taj Mahal performed at the Palomino in California, with Harrison in attendance alongside Bob Dylan, Jesse Ed Davis, and, of course, John Fogerty.
“I heard that George Harrison was in the building, so I snuck around this cloak room – it was just a curtain drawn across some corner,” he recalled. “I peaked my head through and George Harrison was standing there.”
Not wishing to pass up an opportunity to meet a real-life Beatle, Fogerty quick struck up a conversation: “I walked in, he said ‘Oh, John,’ and I say, ‘Hey man, how you doing?’ We got to talking in and out, music and all that, and suddenly George blurts out, ‘Well, the band really loved Creedence.’”
Fogerty responded as most musicians would when presented with the fact that the greatest band of all time were active fans of their own work. “I was kind of stunned,” he said. “I’m really not doing this to drop names, I think I’m really trying to lay on you how impressed I was with that sentence, which I’ve carried ever since.”
Seemingly, if there are any musicians capable of making their fellow rock stars feel like nervous children waiting by the stage door, it is The Beatles.
