Good Moon Rising: John Fogerty’s ‘Celebration Tour’ Crowns A Legendary Career (Cover Story)

John Fogerty’s music is timeless. As the legendary frontman, guitarist and chief songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival, his classic material is foundational, evoking bygone eras of back porches, swamps and dusty farm towns. His songs combine universally catchy melodies, foot-stomping rhythms and universal themes beneath Fogerty’s trademark shaggy-haired howl with a sonic quality that is familiar, relatable and, most of all, moving.

Few artists can claim the kind of catalog Fogerty amassed – the bulk of it written and released between 1968 and 1972, a period which produced a jaw-dropping 14 Top 10 singles and four Top 10 albums. They’re the type of songs people know when they hear them, even if they have no idea who wrote or is singing it. Most recording artists would be a success to have one “Proud Mary” or “Down On The Corner.” Fogerty has more like 20.

Inspired during childhood by American classics like “Oh Susanna,” and always relating more to small-town America than the big cities, a young, flannel-wearing Fogerty channeled his own rebellion against conformity and the elite that permeated culture in the late 1960s to craft music that to this day represents an everyman (or woman) who was able to speak through music in a genuine way, impervious to fleeting pop-culture fads or peer pressure. And some of what he sees in our world today, to some degree, the 79-year-old has seen before.

“At the time, I was a young person very much rebelling against the establishment,” says Fogerty from his home in California between tour dates. “The people that we would now call Trump or Biden, whoever you want to say. Politically, things in the late ‘60s were a lot like they have been the last four, five or six years, actually. We’ve just lived through a time that was about tumultuous as anything I can remember, and certainly I’ve ever read about, certainly in America. Without taking sides — and most people can probably guess where I come down — but even still you gotta say, there sure has been a lot of controversy and chaos and mistrust and all those emotions that young people were feeling in the late ‘60s when I was writing a lot of these famous songs.”

These famous songs — from the counterculture, fist-pumping howling “It Ain’t Me” of “Fortunate Son” to the jug-band sing-along kaleidoscope “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” to a multitude of swamp-infused burners like “Run Through The Jungle,” “Green River,” “Down On The Corner” “Up Around The Bend” and “Born On The Bayou” to gorgeous ballads like “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” and “Who’ll Stop The Rain” and sing-alongs like “Hey Tonight” and “Lodi” were not only cherished by music fans but Fogerty himself. But he, like so many in the early days of the modern recording industry, got a raw deal when signing a recording contract and found himself in a decades-long feud with label Fantasy Records to reacquire his publishing and artist rights.

Although recording and releasing solo material, including the ubiquitous baseball anthem “Centerfield,” Fogerty mostly refused to perform his CCR music for a period of nearly 30 years. Animosity between the band members, whom Fogerty accused of selling their rights to his mortal enemy and then-Fantasy Records co-owner Saul Zaentz, was so thick that he refused to perform with the band when CCR was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Giving credit to his wife Julie, who acts as artist manager and the overall make-it-happen person, Fogerty last year announced that he had finally reacquired his catalog after a nearly 50-year battle that included lawsuits, musical hiatus, family feuds and bitterness.

“I certainly realized I had a choice, because I’ve crossed that crossroads a few times in my life, which would be to be really angry at what had happened before, and I decided I’m choosing not to do that,” Fogerty says. However, he admits the drive to reacquire what he felt was rightfully his as an artist may have fueled him, as he has joked from the stage, “I outlived those bastards!”

“I’m not going to worry about the past and what went wrong and blah, blah, blah,” he says now. “I’m only just going to feel as anyone should feel, just blessed that it’s happening now and I get to enjoy it.”

Fogerty is eager to continue the “Celebration,” which is the name of the concert tour accompanying his achievement. On stage, Fogerty, who shares a mid-set champagne toast with wife Julie, exudes a jubilant energy as he leads a band that includes sons Tyler and Shane.

“I still love singing them,” he says of the classics, which he resumed playing after visiting the grave of blues great Robert Johnson and having an epiphany that, no matter the legal status, the songs will always belong to the songwriter. That concept has stuck with him since he was a boy listening to Little Richard and Buddy Holly, or, even younger, “Camptown Races” and “Oh, Susanna” by Stephen Foster.

“Those songs, like ‘Green River’ or ‘Proud Mary’ or ‘Bad Moon,’ they don’t get old,” he says. “To me, they’re always exciting and fun. It seems like there’s enough convolution in the words that everything is not all obvious at once, and so I can still enjoy them.”

The genuine and universal qualities of the music and the man have meant that Fogerty’s songs, unlike many hits of the era, never went out of style. They feel at home on the pop charts, rock radio, country-leaning middle America and still find themselves on the big stage alongside contemporary talent.

“He’s happy on stage, he’s happy touring, he’s happy playing with his sons, he enjoys it,” says Robert Norman of Creative Artists Agency, who has worked with Fogerty for the past 14 years. “He sees the joy that brings to the people that are in attendance. It’s a really joyful thing. And you don’t have to grade John Fogerty’s show on a curve for his age. He keeps up with the youngest, most energetic rock bands. He’s spectacular on stage.”

Norman said it became clear that Fogerty would get his rights back in 2023, which led to organizing the “Celebration” tour. Norman’s job was to make sure the routing reflected the importance of the occasion.

“He’s going to do almost 50 shows (this year), with many of them sold out, one of the most high-profile being Red Rocks,” added Norman. The first tour leg took place in spring and was extended into the summer and fall, with dates supported by George Thorogood and the Destroyers in August and September.

Most shows were in the 5,000-and-higher capacity range, with amphitheaters, theaters and some arenas, including Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut, which reported 6,624 tickets sold and more than $500,000 grossed. As this article went to press, three dates at the Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas were announced for January 2025.

“We wanted to give the opportunity to a number of promoters in all kinds of markets, not just big cities, a chance to promote John,” said Norman. “So we went to a lot of independent promoters on this run and we tacked on a few at the end of the tour because people were seeing such a response from the audience.”

The tour and catalog reacquisition seem to be fueling additional interest on streaming services, too, with CCR and especially its Chronicle greatest hits collection keeping the band alongside classic rock artists like Pink Floyd, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, with more than 36 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

With Fogerty turning 80 next year, the artist himself says to expect some surprises, and Norman says a few high-profile festival looks — some that may be surprising — are already confirmed.

Pollstar: The “Celebration” continues! You’ve been playing songs from your classic CCR catalog since the late ‘90s, but this time it’s different.
John Fogerty: I probably will continue the celebration until I can’t play anymore (laughs). Whatever moment that would be, probably upon the day I get called, hopefully to heaven. Some of this stuff is so outrageous, it seems mythical. You spend your whole life trying to get back something that you created when you were in your early twenties. I’m not raging, don’t get me wrong, I’m just more bemused by the whole journey, I suppose. I guess my sense of what’s right and all that kept me going and trying, pursuing the idea of someday owning my songs again. But the older you get, the more you realize there’s a lot of things in this world you can’t control no matter who you are.

I’m sure it’s easier to fight when you have someone like your wife Julie in your corner.
Julie especially had worked on this and really refused to let it fall by the wayside. She refused to let inertia and rumor and all the other kinds of things that happen in this crazy business. She refused to just let that lie there. She’s from the Midwest, a hardworking mom, and she just didn’t understand anything but the right outcome and she finally achieved it. But as I watched it happen, I mean, I wasn’t ready to take a deep breath until I actually saw the writing on the paper (laughs).

The artist manager is supposed to have the client’s best interests in mind, and who better than your devoted spouse?
She hates the idea that I would call her “manager” because she’s my wife, but I look over there and there isn’t somebody else doing it. She’s doing it. But she does it so well. She just makes things happen. It’s unbelievable. I’ll see a situation and she’ll come up with a solution and I’ll kind of look at her and I’ll smile like it’s whimsy. I’m amazed she can do the stuff she does. So obviously that’s why she has the job. I guess I’m not quite saying, “Kids, don’t try this at home,” but I realize what I have going on for me is a very unique situation.

It’s such a happy place for me to be playing music, especially when I’ve got my two sons in the band with me. Most of the time there’s another family member, perhaps off stage, and all of the time Julie’s just off stage helping me. We’ve kind of done this together since the time I met her, which was 1986, I believe. I’m saying that poetically. Of course I know when it was (laughs).

You said the songs don’t get old to you. They don’t get old to the fans, either, and you’ve got so many influential, classic songs that you must be proud of.
Well, thank you. People say stuff to me like, “You’re a legend, John.” I look at them and go, well, here’s my family, here’s my children. I don’t walk around all day thinking I’m a legend. You couldn’t exist in the world that way, at least I couldn’t. So most of the time I’m not really thinking about things like that. But sometimes I’ll think about the songs, especially the 10 or 12 most famous that I can say are really up there. It’s such a distillation, they’re very compact, there’s no wasted moment. It seems to flow from one to the end. There’s nothing extra, nothing weird or excess. That’s why they’re only two minutes long. But I think about that and I go, “ Well, you did a pretty good job doing that.”

When did you know you had a knack for songwriting and might be able to make it in the music game?
For the rest of my life, I will always remember the instant that “Proud Mary” was becoming a song that was developing in my hands. I had the absolute sense at the time that not only was it the best song I had ever written, but that I had finally stepped up to the level where the great songs are written. I was completely aware of that at the time. The mystical process of creation is so strange. You can’t just take the same thing and say, “OK, do it again, John! Just hold that, the ‘O’ from the alphabet soup up there and the little molecule up there and then, you know, write another one.” It doesn’t happen that way. But after the fact, after it was created, I looked at it and realized that it was way up there in the clouds and it’s a strange thing. As the song is just getting finished, it was probably 95% down on paper, I’m holding the paper and going, “I’m the only person in the world that knows this!” I don’t know why I had to say that to myself, but I did (laughs). Isn’t that a strange thing to be aware of?

You wrote most of your catalog at a tumultuous period in the United States, the height of the Vietnam War and based squarely in the counterculture center of the San Francisco Bay Area, where you grew up. Your music seems almost completely separate from that (other than “Fortunate Son,” maybe).
That’s pretty funny, because philosophically I was absolutely right in the middle of what all the young people were feeling. If anything, I always thought I was even kind of more radical than the Grateful Dead and it’s perhaps truer the older we’ve gotten. Who knows? I thought psychedelic music, how can I say it? I thought a lot of the time, the musicians, the bands were hoping that good things would happen but they didn’t predetermine it. There was no arrangement preset, which led to a lot of what I thought was chaos.

I couldn’t handle that. It’s got to be more arranged, more predetermined. You can jam or solo, improvise within that, and that’s OK, but I gotta know where the chords are going, that sort of thing (laughs).

Part of me was rebelling against just the sort of endless – I’ll give the longest, worst example. I went to a show in San Francisco, ’67 or so. A band got up there, it was one of the really famous ones, but I can’t remember which one. He started a show or a set, and the guitar player came in, started his guitar solo, and he kept playing the solo for 45 minutes and then the set was over. I went, “What?” That blew my mind in the reverse. I had been at the Oakland Auditorium seeing James Brown, and he could do seven songs in six minutes. So that discipline was deep in me.

How has the fan response been to the “Celebration Tour”? You really sound great and look like you can outwork most people out there, of any age.
I’m always thrilled that the fans love to sing along. A lot of times I’m just sort of looking out into the lights or different areas, not really seeing individual people but, once in a while, my focus will come down and I’ll see somebody just singing along. And it might be a kid that’s 10 years old, or it might be a grandpa that’s 70 years old, and they’re singing all the words. It just blows my mind that they know all the words. That’s very flattering to me.

I’ve got the best job in the world. That’s the way I look at it. It never feels like work. I don’t care what condition, if I’m a little under the weather or whatever, I always want to get out there and play and sing. The people there have gone through quite a bit of inconvenience to be there themselves. I know what it’s like for me when I want to go to a show, so you hope that you will be rewarded with a good effort.

I do try to take care of myself physically. For years and years I was a runner. Until the last 20 years or so, I was running about 6 miles a day, up from about 4 miles a day earlier in my running career. I ran for about 44 years. These days I hike.

To do rock ‘n’ roll, especially, I have to be the leader driving the band. I’m the singer and I’m the guitar player. I guess if I was a drummer, I’d be ferocious (laughs). I feel like I need to be there 100% and driving the music, which means you’ve got to be in shape to do that. It’s not lounge music. I’m even surprised myself, sometimes.

Sometimes you’ll do a show and maybe a couple things will happen. like you weren’t able to hear a certain monitor on stage or you heard yourself singing off key for a verse or two. That really bugs me, by the way. So you’ll kind of go to bed disappointed. But as I tell people, every day is a new day. I try to train my kids, who are in the band of course, and the band members, too.

There’s a certain honor about doing this, and you have to live up to that and honor the process, meaning, no matter what the situation at the venue or the so-called gig — maybe there’s a show where it wasn’t full, perhaps. A lot of entertainers might bemoan that.

I always tell my kids, my family, “We’re not playing for the people that didn’t show up! We are playing for the people that came here tonight, and we’re so happy to see them.” They always seem to understand that’s what you do. There’s an honor and a dignity to presenting what you do.