Reclaiming My Voice

Slowly, with Julie's loving guidance, I began to move beyond the bitterness I'd carried for so long. It was five years later that she came into the house one day and saw that I was playing again. She says it was one of the happiest moments of her life. Thanks to her encouragement, I was rediscovering my voice as a songwriter. Over the years I had been sued for allegedly writing songs as a solo artist that sounded too much like the music I'd written for Creedence—for plagiarizing myself, as it's been described. I successfully defended myself in those suits. But whenever I'd sit down to write a song and it got anywhere near to sounding like Creedence, a little gremlin would pop up on my shoulder in the form of a lawyer saying "Don't do that." One day I said to the gremlin, "Get out of my life. I own this. I sound like this. I'm embracing this." I finally was able to put that to rest and become comfortable again with my sound.

It is fitting that it was Julie who came up with the title of my new album, "Revival." There's a song on it called "Broken Down Cowboy." As I was sitting down to write one day, the line came out of nowhere: "A broken-down cowboy like me." I realized I was writing about myself. That broken-down guy is someone I was a long time ago. When you're in the middle of so much pain, you're just trying to keep from drowning. Now there is enough perspective to write about it. Today I am 62 years old and Julie is 47. We have been together for two decades and have four children. To think that had Julie and I not met on that night so long ago, I could have missed all this. No way. I have my music and my family. I'm the luckiest man in the world! So when you ask about the revival of John Fogerty, it's really a celebration, a gift, the return of the real me.

© 2007