Rendering 14

      The article which is called "John Fogerty: 'I had rules. I wasn't embarrassed that I was ambitious"
was published in The Guardian on Wednesday 29 May by Dorian Lynskey. The author told us about John Fogerty. He was once rock's most consistent hitmaker. Then bitterness descended. Forty years after Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up. ohn Fogerty would like to make it very clear that he is happy now. That needs spelling out because, for many years after the demise of his band Creedence Clearwater Revival, he was famous for being miserable.
       The author underlined that for a short while, Creedence Clearwater Revival were the biggest band in America and, after the Beatles split up, the world. Between 1968 and 1972 they released seven albums and an unbroken string of hit singles, including Bad Moon Rising, Proud Mary and Who'll Stop the Rain . Creedence were the only band who could unite hippies, rednecks and the pop critic of the New Yorker. But their acrimonious split in 1972 marked the start of decades of legal strife, bad blood and creative paralysis. In fact, Creedence's afterlife has been so painful and messy that they rival the Smiths as the most unreunitable band in rock, and Fogerty even became estranged from his own songs. He refused to perform them for another 25 years because the associations were too painful. If one of his old hits came on the car radio – which happened often – he would turn it off.
        Fogerty's youthful ambition, class-conscious lyrics and craving for stability can all be traced back to his childhood in the California suburb of El Cerrito. After divorcing his alcoholic father, his mother was left to raise five boys alone on a teacher's salary. John's bedroom was in the basement and when it rained hard the room flooded, so he had to lay down planks of wood in order to reach his bed. Fogerty first began playing with his older brother Tom, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford in a high school band, the Blue Velvets, when he was just 15. They signhttp://www.blogger.come to San Francisco independent label Fantasy Records, who rechristened them the Golliwogs and made them wear fuzzy white wigs to match their regrettable name. It's perhaps for the best that their career was halted in 1966 when Fogerty was drafted into the Army Reserve. That was when he experienced his first songwriting epiphany.
         Fogerty wasn't just Creedence's sole songwriter but its producer and manager. By the standards of the time, he was unusually square (the closest he comes to swearing is "fricking") and strait-laced. He still blames the Grateful Dead for ruining Creedence's big moment at Woodstock.
        Fogerty turned some kind of corner in 1997 when he finally began playing Creedence material again and releasing solo albums with some regularity. He found it hard to explain exactly what he was thinking and feeling in the long and testing period prior to that. At least former heroin addicted acquire the language to talk about the bad times but there was no rehab for bitterness and the suppressed anger still bubbles to the surface sometimes. After one long anecdote about some legal imbroglio, we realise we only have a couple of minutes left and Fogerty laughs awkwardly.
    
So,  perhaps, he feels he has spent too much of his life telling negative stories and fighting unwinnable wars. It's this context that makes Wrote a Song for Everyone more poignant and significant than most celebrity collaboration albums. It decisively reunites an extraordinary songwriter with the songs that, for too long, felt like strangers to him. So when Fogerty grins boyishly and describes the making of the album as a joyous experience, you can't help feeling his joy is long overdue.