Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty
Uploaded: 2026-04-17T17:00:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-04-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-04-17. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2485 - John Fogerty

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Put your stuff on the floor.
It doesn't matter, you can keep it on the table.
It's fun.
There's water there too, in this metal cup, and then there's coffee.
Oh, thanks so much.
Coffee in here.
Okay, yeah, he's ready to...
I have some notes that I'll probably never look at.
You got notes?
Me?
What's on the notes?
Just stuff like what I went through with CCR and all that.
But tell me something.
Did you read up on me or anything?
I'm a huge fan.
I don't have to read up on you.
Okay.
I read up on you a little bit just to catch up about how you got out of the...
Well, you did do military service, but you got out by smoking a lot of weed
and not eating.
I read that.
Is that true?
No.
Is that true?
They lied?
There was a story about you smoking a lot of weed and getting emaciated
so you can get out of the army.
Well, it's not quite in that sequence, but those things did happen.
Yeah, I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right?
So I was kind of really skinny by 1967, 68.
I mean, like 100...
I think it was 129 pounds.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And then I was going to go to the...
I think it was the Presidio, and I had to meet with the army doctor, right?
And my friends gave me a couple of joints, and I stuck them in...
You know, I used to smoke in those cigarettes.
I stuck it in the cigarette, and going across the Bay Bridge, I smoked them.
That's so...
I hadn't even thought about it.
So if you want...
Yeah, man.
He went on a starvation diet, a protest diet, and then smoked a lot of weed.
That's what I heard.
That way, but yeah, okay.
But it's essentially some truth.
Some truth to it.
You had a legendary career, my friend.
Legendary.
Thank you.
Still working on it.
It's incredible, man.
You are like one of the main voices of rock and roll in America, if you really
think about it.
Your songs, I mean, you have so many gigantic hits.
You know, when the UFC has a lot of walkout songs, you know, when fighters come
out and
walk out, a lot of guys walk out to your music.
I don't even know if you're aware of it.
But Fortunate Son is a big one.
Yeah.
Bad Moon Rising, that's another big one people walk out to.
Great.
Wow.
It's pretty awesome.
Wow.
Yeah, I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but, you know, everybody, whatever
floats your boat.
Well, people just love your music.
Yeah.
So, you went through many generations.
Like, you got your first record contract.
How old were you?
I know I signed one when I was around 19.
Of course, it would have been unenforceable.
It's not legal at the time, right?
You had to be 21, the deal?
Yeah, I believe so.
Yeah.
Well, you're also one of the first rock and roll artists that wrote songs that
became very
popular about how you're getting screwed over by the record business.
You know what I mean?
So, Leonard Skitter did it, working for MCA, they did that song, but you had Vance
Can't Dance.
It was actually Zance Can't Dance.
But you had to change it, right?
Yeah.
The name of the person was Zance.
It sold about a half a million copies as Zance.
But the record company, Warner Brothers, in their way of settling somewhat, had
me change it
to Vance.
Yep.
Because the guy's name was Zance.
Zance, yeah.
It was screwing you up.
That's right in the middle of, that whole thing was a mess.
I got sued for sounding like myself.
What?
Yeah.
How'd that happen?
I'll tell you.
So, and I didn't find this out, and there was eventually a trial.
So, it's not, many people think that that's funny.
You got sued for sounding like yourself.
Wow, that's funny.
Well, no, you're getting a legal lawsuit.
That's probably going to take away a lot of your money, and you're going to go
through
three, four years of anguish.
Well, anyway, ended up in a trial.
He was suing me for, at the time, was an enormous amount of money, $144 million
for his, whatever,
metal anguish or something.
The logistics, I guess you'd call it, I had made a new song called The Old Man
Down the
Road.
It was on my album.
It was my comeback on Centerfield.
And I had finally gotten away from Fantasy Records, which is where Credence was,
and Saul Sands,
who owned it.
So, you know, when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the
former people
tend to be jealous, I guess.
And so he was suing me.
What had happened, though, I found out in the trial, the bass player from Credence
was another
one of those people, I guess, that couldn't stand that I'd now had success in a
later life.
He went down to Fantasy and saw Mr. Saul Sands and said, John is ripping off
Credence.
You should sue him.
The irony in all of that is that I had taught Stu every single note that he
ever played in
Credence.
It was not his own creation.
As we talk, you'll see, I was the guy inventing the arrangements.
And so to take possession of Credence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top.
Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me, and Saul had unlimited funds.
And so it went to a trial.
I prevailed at trial and got that over with.
But they torture you during the process because it takes years and it costs an
enormous amount
of money to fight yourself.
Yeah, all that stuff.
That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you.
Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed.
I mean, you know, what we're really talking about is when you come into the
consciousness of
the world, I guess, and you have a certain style, if you're lucky.
And so you start creating whatever your art is.
You're an actor or you're a painter or, in my case, a musician.
And people start liking the style.
Well, how unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes ownership of
your style and now
say, you have to go back and invent some other style, be some other person.
You know, it's just that would be really difficult.
Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style
having to, you
know, reinvent and change to something else.
Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that.
It's insane because, look, so many artists sound like other artists anyway, and
no one
has a problem with that, as long as they're not ripping off the notes and the
lyrics.
There's a lot of people that sound like people.
But the idea that you could get sued for sounding like you with new music and
new lyrics is, that's
one of the most insane things I've ever heard of.
I can't believe that didn't get thrown out immediately.
Immediately, right.
Well, that shows the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people want
to have.
You know, I had written a new song and he didn't want me to, he wanted to own
the new stuff.
He wanted to own me, basically.
That was the idea.
Well, you can never do anything unless you do it for me, you know.
So I was, but not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists, it was kind
of a major ruling.
And thank God it went that way.
Well, thank God it also was public, like with that song and the lawsuit around
the song,
you having to change the name of the song.
Because back then, at least at the time, like, well, this was probably, what,
the 80s?
Yep.
Most people had no idea how evil the music business can be.
Unless they were told, they had no idea.
They bought the albums, they loved the musicians, and they just liked the music.
They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.
They didn't know how these people own your catalog, they own the music, they
own the publishing.
They try to just get as much money out of you as humanly possible.
Own your name, own your likeness.
Most fans had no idea.
And that's probably the way it really should be.
When I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his guitar player, you know?
I didn't want to know all, I didn't even know there was stuff behind it.
The Colonel.
To know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Right, I picked a good one there, didn't I?
Yeah, that's a real good one.
I mean, the Colonel was evil.
That's just too bad.
Another similar situation.
Like, there's a lot of these great artists get, like Prince, he got wrapped up
to the point where he had to change his name to a symbol, because he didn't own
his name anymore.
Prince!
Yeah, I remember going, well, if he doesn't want to use it, I'll take it.
Yeah, it's just the business itself.
I mean, you have these creative artists that make this music that everybody
loves, and then you have these hyenas that work behind the scenes that are the
ones that are collecting the majority of the money from it.
And they're not making any music, and to the average fan like myself, like,
that's abhorrent.
That's disgusting.
Like, you see that.
It just drives you nuts.
Well, also, you know, the creative people are special.
And, I mean, you know, look around.
There's way more of other types of people than there are creative people.
And to douse that, you know, or own that, which is what was going to happen, is
just an onerous thing.
I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff.
I'm a lot older.
I can't say wiser.
It's more like I came out on the good side of it.
I try not to worry about it too much.
It's great that you came out on the good side of it, but it's also great for
people to know.
And it's really great for young artists to be aware as they're coming up,
especially as they're beginning their journey, that this could happen to them.
Yeah, and there's all kinds of, you know, bad people around just waiting for
you to slip up and sign something that will give you rights away, that sort of
thing.
I get such a joy out of music, you know.
I mean, I just, it started that way when I was a little kid.
I mean, didn't even know what I was doing or what that was.
I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it and I just kind of went
with it.
I didn't try to analyze it too much.
And, of course, later with all the things, you know, the different roads you go
through trying to get to some place, happily, I still get that same joy.
I mean, I just, I'm just so glad.
You know, a lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife, Julie.
If I hadn't met her, I probably would be dead.
Simple as that.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Why do you think you'd be dead?
I didn't see any way out.
You know, I was really abusing myself, alcohol, mostly.
I really felt bad inside.
I mean, when you get like that, Joe, you're not really operating on the same
plane in the world that all the other people that you see.
You know, you walk into a market or something, look around, and probably most
of the people are kind of normal, you know, whatever we call that.
But when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case,
something really unjust had been done to me, but, you know, however you get
there, and then you start abusing yourself with drugs, alcohol, whatever, you
just kind of, it becomes a habit.
You just stay there, right?
And so you're not really enjoying the sunshine and the love that's around you
and all the rest of it.
You become kind of a pathetic person, sad, certainly.
So that, you know, that was the deal.
When Julie met me, I was that guy.
There was sort of a, certainly an anger, I mean, but a bitterness, too.
Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where you look for something to go wrong
and then it goes wrong.
And you go, see, I told you.
I mean, it's a terrible mental place to be, and I was there.
Do you think this was a loop that you got in because of the lawsuits?
Oh, yeah.
It did that.
It really just got you that hard.
Well, there was, there was more than one lawsuit, but the betrayal by the
people in my band, you know, I just told you about a very evil man, right?
Yeah.
And I'm the only guy from Credence who's ever actually mentioned that he's an
evil person, to the extent that, quite publicly, my brother Tom, right during
this same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend.
Oh, Jesus.
It was just really hard to deal with.
The other two guys in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it.
They just never 