John Fogerty: The Rolling Stone Interview

Below is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in RS 52 from February 21, 1970. This issue and the rest of the Rolling Stone archives are available via Rolling Stone Plus, Rolling Stone's premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can click here to see the full story. Not a member? Click here to learn more about Rolling Stone Plus.

In the calendar year 1969, Fantasy Records issued four albums. Three of them were by Creedence Clearwater Revival and each of those three has now passed a million dollars in sales and the 1968 Creedence LP, spurred on by the success of its successors, has joined them in the Gold Record category, making a total of eight gold records for Creedence and Fantasy

And in addition, of course, single discs by Creedence including "Down on the Corner," "Fortunate Son," "Green River," "Proud Mary," have been among the most successful single discs of the year, even hitting the top rung (No. 1) of the best selling singles ladder and making John Fogerty, who never saw the Mississippi River until a year ago, into a mythological practitioner of something called "swamp rock."

Fantasy is currently housed in a one-story garage-with-office in the Oakland, California ghetto, two blocks from the historical scene of the Black Panther-Oakland PD shoot out. It moved there two years ago when Saul Zaentz (rhymes with pants), a bearded pool-playing veteran of the record business, bought out the original owners, Sol and Max Weiss.

Fantasy was started by Sol Weiss at the end of the Forties in a search for an unbreakable disc. It was one of the first companies to issue vinylite discs (remember the color of the Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan and Cal Tjader LPs?). They introduced Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, Roger Collins, Lenny Bruce, the Mulligan Quartet, the Golliwogs, and others to the record audience.

Their Lenny Bruce albums made history. Their Gerry Mulligan single disc of "My Funny Vallentine" was one of the first jazz single records to sell in the pop field. They pioneered with jazz and poetry, issuing Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth and, of course, the classic recording of Allen Ginsberg's Howl

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

More Song Stories entries »

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