I guess since John Fogerty once lived in Northern California (El Cerrito, next to Berkeley, to be exact), Arcade Fire chose to cover the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Hey, Tonight,” last night (July 30) at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, about an hour south of Fogerty’s old home.
Richard Reed Parry handled the lead vocal.
Check it out:
— A Days Of The Crazy-WIld blog post —
Terrific version of “Green River” performed by Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty and the E Street Band at the New Orleans Jazz Festival on May 3, 2014.
Plus an excerpt of “Proud Mary”:
Springsteen, “The Promised Land”:
Here’s better video of a portion of “The Promised Land”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Twenty-Seven years ago, on February 19, 1987, a remarkable meeting of the superstars took place on stage at the Palamino Club in North Hollywood.
Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and John Fogerty joined Taj Mahal and the Graffiti Band, which included slide guitarist Jessie Ed Davis, guitarist Mark Shark, bassist Bobby Tsukamoto, drummer Gary Ray, and keyboardist Jim Ehinger.
George Harrison took charge of the jam session. He sang “Matchbox,” “Honey Don’t” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” all three of which The Beatles did covers of, and Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow. He also shared vocals with Dylan on a version of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.”
At one point during “Watching the River Flow” Harrison improvised a verse and worked Bob Dylan’s name into it. Jesse Ed Davis, by the way, played on Dylan’s original recording of the song.
John Fogerty sang Elvis’ hit, “Blue Suede Shoes,” and before launching into his best known song, “Proud Mary,” which Fogerty hadn’t sung in years, he said, “OK we’re gonna do this ’cause Bob Dylan asked me to do this. Holy Mackerel.”
Taj Mahal sang “Johnny D. Goode” and “Willie and the Hand Jive” with Dylan, Harrison and Fogerty leaning into a shared microphone for the background vocals. Amazing!
What is unique about these jams is how relaxed the artists seem. Unlike so many superstar jams, this one doesn’t appear calculated. The artists are having a great time singing songs they want to sing.
And Dylan is seemingly comfortable in his role as rhythm guitarist, playing a Fender Jazzmaster (one of the types of Fender electric guitars which he played in the mid-’60s), occasionally adding very loose harmony vocals.
Dig the video, which is funky. Sound is pretty good.
“Matchbox,” Taj Mahal and George Harrison trade off on the verses, and Harrison sings “Honey Don’t” and “Watching the River Flow”:
Bob Dylan, George Harrison sing “Peggy Sue”, Harrison sings “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”:
John Fogery sings “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Proud Mary”:
Taj Mahal sings “Johnny B. Goode” and Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Hey, Bo Diddley”:
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Rock legend John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame, has purchased a 20-plus acre estate in Thousand Oaks, California, for $8.9 million, the Real Estalker reports.
Fogerty apparently bought the Hidden Valley estate in May 2013 under the name of a trust that also owns his Beverly Hills mansion, a property that he was reportedly trying to sell this summer for $23.5 million.
His new home has huge irrigated fields and a 22,000 gallon cistern. The main residence is 13,053 square feet, and there’s a swimming pool, spa, 12-car garage and a private water well.
More details and photos here.
“Fortunate Son”
— A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post —
John Fogerty talks about why he’s playing the entire Creedence album Cosmo’s Factory, in an interview with the Washington Post that ran today.
“Well, it was actually an idea my wife said to me one day. . . ,” Fogerty said in the interview. “I went: ‘Gee, I don’t know, honey. Why would anybody want to do that?’ But the more I thought about it, what it did was it kind of placed you in that era. And it made you remember a lot of stuff that was around the album. I’m a fan, I buy albums, too. I sure remember sitting with Elvis’s first album, I don’t know how many thousands of times. Or Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ first album. And you sit there and you’re listening. You’re just in that place because it was so magical. And somehow that stays in you. That little chapter gets tucked away in your brain even though you live another 40 years. But somehow going and doing that, listening to the whole record puts you right back in that place you were all those years ago when you did it that way. . . . It’s a pretty fascinating phenomenon really.”
Talking about his role in Creedence, Fogerty said, ” I was a very strong leader, and I had a mountain, a whole roomful of musical ideas. So I was sort of an unstoppable force. Basically the hardest part was just getting the band up to speed musically so they could record and accomplish these songs. And also just to be in sync and on the same page, wanting to do it. As the success and time went on and got greater there was more and more dissension within the band. You mention how other bands are. What happens then is you spend half your time in the political realm, meaning, well, ‘I don’t know if I want to do that song.’ Or, ‘I want to come up with my own song.’
“That takes time,” Fogerty continued. “There’s a lot of time being consumed in bands where everybody’s having their say, then you have a meeting, you take a vote — you see what I’m getting at. But basically, Cosmo’s Factory was really the very end of me being very strong and very pure and very clear in my direction. And after that . . . the fine running machine was starting to get a little wobbly. Democracy’s a wonderful thing. But as we all know in America, it’s really hard to manage.”
For more, head to the Washington Post.
Check out Creedence live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1970: