John Fogerty Quotes

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

"Even though James Burton was my idol, I didn't think I could carry his shoes back then."

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

"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."

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

"I've studied a lot of great people over the years - Pete Seeger, James Brown - and tried to incorporate elements that I've admired, though I can't say I dance like James."

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

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

"I'm very happy to be back in touch with a part of myself, ... It's surreal. For 35 years, I never thought I'd be reunited with the music I wrote during the Creedence Clearwater Revival years."

"But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony."

"In the last two years or so, I've made a conscious decision to play American guitars; I don't know of a more subtle way to say it."

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

"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."

"I loved Western Swing and Hank Williams' music, and I now know that it's a 6th tuning that gives you all of those classic licks."

"I stuck with that size because I could bend the strings so well, and somewhere along the line I must have gotten it into my mind that I had small hands, so I was thinking I'd never be able to play a full-scale guitar, but I also felt like I was cheating or cutting corners."

"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."

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

"Now that I'm older, I like almost anything that's done well, even surf music and instrumentals; I really enjoyed the interviews with the Ventures in your magazine."

"On Eye of the Zombie, I just got some studio musicians who were competent, but some of them weren't right for what I was trying to do."

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