Creedence Clearwater Revival legend John Fogerty has become the latest musician to perform a short set on NPR's popular Tiny Desk Concert series.
Fogerty was joined by sons Shane and Tyler Fogerty on guitar and backing vocals, with bassist Jesse Noah Wilson, keyboardist Doug Lamoth, saxophonist and percussionist Rob Stone and drummer Richard Millsap. He opened his set with Creedence's classic Proud Mary, before telling the audience the story of the song's creation.
"Proud Mary was the first good song I wrote," Fogerty tells the audience. "If I was by myself, I might say 'great song,' but I'd been writing songs since I was about eight years old in a pretty hapdash way, finding a piece of paper and a crayon or something to write words with.
"One day, I found my honourable discharge on the stairs to my apartment house. Remember, this is probably June or July of 1968, right in the height of the Vietnam War. And boy, that's a whole other thing. But anyway, I opened my discharge up and I was really, really, really happy, you know.
"I'd been in the reserves for about three years and I went right in the house, picked up my Rickenbacker guitar, started strumming, and the very first line that came out of me was 'Left a good job in the city / working for the man every night and day.'
"When I finished the song – it took less than an hour – Proud Mary was finished. And I realised I had done something I'd never done before. I mean, it really felt different. And I looked at the page that I had written this on. I said, 'John, you've written a classic.' Wow.
"After writing a whole bunch of lame songs – I mean, hundreds of them – from the time I was little, and having idols like Hoagy Carmichael or Lennon and McCartney, Leiber and Stoller and Bob Dylan, I realised I had passed into the land of greatness, right? And I don't mean that in a bragging way, but this song was so much better than anything I'd ever done.
"I was literally dumbfounded and shocked that it had happened. And then the second thing was, sitting there all alone, I realised I'm the only person in the whole world that knows about this song and knows that it's a great song. It was just the strangest feeling."
Fogerty then played Change in the Weather (originally released on 1986's Eye of the Zombie and revived for 2009's The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again) and A Hundred and Ten in the Shade (from 1997's Blue Moon Swamp) before finishing with two more Creedence songs, Long As I Can See the Light and Have You Ever Seen the Rain.
Before Long As I Can See The Light, Fogerty alluded to the executive order signed by Donald Trump last May, which sought to end federal funding for NPR due to alleged biased news coverage.
"I do want to say that I am an avid listener of NPR," says Fogerty. "And I don't want to cause too much controversy, but – especially in these times – you guys just keep doing what you're doing, please. Yeah, I listen just about every day."
Fogerty plays three shows at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas in March.
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