From Woodstock 1969 to Glastonbury 2025: The strange tale of John Fogerty’s Rickenbacker
Rock and roll’s weapon of choice, the guitar, has inspired the creation of countless earth-shattering musical moments over the decades, so much so that a guitar is almost seen as an extension of a musician’s personality rather than an instrument or tool.
Every major guitar hero has his signature axe – Chuck Berry had ‘Maybellene’, his ES-350T, Jimi Hendrix had that beautiful white Stratocaster, Tony Iommi has his Gibson SG, to name only a few examples – and for Creedence Clearwater Revival songwriter John Fogerty, it was his Fireglo Rickenbacker 325 which accompanied him throughout his finest moments.
Fogerty was among the defining songwriters of American rock back in the hippie age of the 1960s. Alongside CCR, the guitarist introduced the infectious sounds of swamp rock to global audiences, crafting a litany of utterly iconic tracks, from ‘Bad Moon Rising’ to ‘Proud Mary’. Along the way, Fogerty and the band immersed themselves in the blossoming protest movement and ‘peace and love’ attitudes of the hippie movement, penning perhaps the greatest anti-war song of the Vietnam War in the form of ‘Fortunate Son’.
Throughout that golden age of CCR, Fogerty was rarely seen without his Rickenbacker, the guitar on which he wrote virtually all of those enduring classics. First introduced during the late 1950s, the Rickenbacker 325 became a popular model during the mid-1960s thanks to John Lennon’s ringing endorsement. However, Fogerty’s guitar was a little different from the one he had strummed ‘She Loves You’ on The Ed Sullivan Show.
For starters, the songwriter heavily modified his 325, installing Gibson humbucker pickups and a Bigsby whammy bar, reportedly inspired by the otherworldly sounds being created over in the United Kingdom by guitarists like Eric Clapton. It was this unique Rickenbacker which accompanied Fogerty from the late 1960s through to the ultimate demise of CCR in 1972. Along the way, the Fireglo axe made its mark on audiences at Woodstock in 1969, cementing it in rock and roll history forever.
Despite its iconic nature, Fogerty had grown sick of the sight of the guitar by the time the band split in 1972. After all, the swamp rock progenitors had descended into a constant battle by the time the 1970s rolled around, and things got particularly ugly around the split, marked by a vicious legal battle between Fogerty and Fantasy Records, who retained the rights to virtually all of his material. In this malaise of legal battles and personal rivalries, Fogerty gave the guitar away around 1973.
“I think I gave it away to sort of end that chapter of my life,” he later revealed.
It wasn’t until two decades later that the iconic guitar finally resurfaced, put up for sale at a guitar shop in Tarzana, California, with a $40,000 price tag. At the time, Fogerty couldn’t afford such a steep price tag, and he was still suffering from the pain of the legal battles which had shrouded his incredible work with CCR, so he passed on the opportunity to reunite with his old comrade.
Then, in 2016, Fogerty’s wife, Julie Lebiedzinski, tracked down the Rickenbacker, bought it, and placed it under the Christmas tree for her husband. “I started playing the solo in ‘Green River’ and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” the songwriter told Rolling Stone around the time of the reunification. “It was exactly that sound, 100%. I dare say I haven’t heard that sound since those days when I had the guitar.”
In more recent months, Fogerty played a few numbers on the guitar during his storming Pyramid stage slot at Glastonbury Festival this year, harking back to the time when he performed with the Rickenbacker at Woodstock all those years ago. What that guitar got up to in the intervening decades after it was given away in 1973 remains a mystery, but the instrument is still sharing the gift of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s timeless swamp rock mastery over half a century on from when it was first purchased by John Fogerty.
