John Fogerty

Before John Fogerty wrote a song for everyone -- and the man has written many of popular music’s most timeless standards like “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” “Born On The Bayou” and “Who’ll Stop The Rain” to name just a few -- he first wrote songs for himself.

“Every now and then, I did try and write a song for everyone, but it would all start because I would feel something deeply and personally that would mean a lot to me,” Fogerty explains today. “Something in the world would strike me as being bad or tragic or unfair like in `Fortunate Son’ and so I would get pissed off in a way that was very personal. Then as I was in the writing process, I would try to make the statement larger than just myself, and so in some small way, some songs became universal. But it wasn’t ever calculating. I couldn’t write commercials and jingles. I just began to think of ways to make the songs larger than myself, and the songs just kept growing.”

Wrote a Song For Everyone is a testament to the fact that the songs written by John Fogerty over the past forty-five years continue to speak in a powerful way to generations of music makers and music lovers. The stellar result is a heartfelt celebration of the impact Fogerty's iconic songbook that find Fogerty working together with some of the most acclaimed and popular artists in music today. As Fogerty explains, “Writing songs can be very private, but making music is best made with other people. And on this album, I’ve had the honor of making music with many of my favorite people in music now.”


Wrote a Song For Everyone is a very big and moving album that reminds us once again how profoundly universal the songs John Fogerty has written truly are. “I must say that every now and then, there’s a song I’ve written that I felt like existed before me, and `Proud Mary’ is definitely one of them,” says Fogerty. “There’s other songs around in the world that feel like that -- certainly more than a few by Dylan and the Beatles, to put myself in some very exclusive company. But in an abstract way, I’m kind of detached from it. I don’t walk around like I’m Irving Berlin. I think I’m an All American kid, so it blows me away to be associated with a song like that because in my heart of hearts, I know it’s pretty good. I felt like something or someone had touched me with that song. That was the first one like that. But I don’t think I was ever the spokesman of my generation. Bob Dylan can have that title. I used to joke around about that – like “Someone hand me the phone now -- I need to get in touch with my generation.”

Wrote a Song for Everyone takes its fitting title for a Fogerty song that first appeared on Green River, the 1969 album by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the legendary group that Fogerty led so brilliantly. “My wife Julie came up with calling this album Wrote a Song For Everyone, and the second she said it, I was like `Of course,’ because it made so much sense,” Fogerty explains. “We didn’t have a title when we started. I would blanche when someone called it Duets. I feel like that title has been used. Julie had suggested the project, and her idea was a little different and more interesting than how I perceive most of these get-togethers. Julie said, `Instead of these people doing your songs for you, why don’t you pick some great people work together and create something different and unique?’ She got it. Then the light finally went on in my head that I could get to meet some of my favorite artists and make a record with them. Suddenly, this get together became an very exciting prospect.”

“It dawned on me gradually that I could work with this new generation of men and women I admire who are full of music,” Fogerty says. “But as time went on we realized we should tell them what the project was, let it resonate with them, and see if they had a concept so that they could bring their own thing to the process. We wanted to leave room for the artists to have a vision about it or pick a song rather than me trying to horse collar everyone. Sometimes I would go to them with an idea about the song, but all the artists had their take on how it should go. I love that because that’s what made it interesting so that it’s not just a copy of the original.”