Mark's Notebook

Fogerty's revival

San Jose Mercury News

By Brad Kava

The swampy sound of Fogerty's music sounds as if it came from the delta, but he had never been there. "So many of my great icons were from Mississippi," said the 59-year-old, who wrote nine Top 10 singles for Creedence Clearwater Revival from 1969 to 1971, but stopped playing them after fights with his record label, Fantasy, and its owner, Saul Zaentz.

The flash: "I realized, there is some wise guy with a big cigar who owns your songs, but you need to be singing your songs."

You can hear the result on his current tour, which began in June at Saratoga's Villa Montalvo and hits the Grand Ballroom in San Francisco on Wednesday. He mixes rarely played Creedence classics with material from his excellent new album, "Deja Vu (All Over Again)."

The album, his first in seven years, features a wide range of styles: some scathing Vietnam and Iraq war politics in the title cut; a couple of surprising countryish tunes, accompanied by Dobro player Jerry Douglas and bassist Victor Krauss; and some up-tempo material, inspired by the same rock 'n' roll lightheartedness as "Louie, Louie."

The album is only 35 minutes long. Keeping the album short, he says, is a way to make sure there will be others to follow. It also cuts out the excess that plagues artists who feel compelled to fill 72 minutes of disc space with a couple of good songs and lots of filler.

The title cut harks back to one of his early hits, "Fortunate Son," written during the Nixon administration and -- déjà vu -- these days applied to George W. Bush. Fogerty, along with Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews, campaigned for John Kerry largely in opposition to the war in Iraq, which Fogerty compares to the Vietnam War.

The biggest surprise in the new set is in some of his influences, stretching from bluegrass masters to current rockers Smash Mouth and Good Charlotte, bands his sons, 13 and 14, turned him onto.

The album is exquisitely produced, fine sounding in the car or on headphones. Creedence was always a car band, Fogerty says. He always understood that people can only hear a little at a time -- guitar or vocals -- on a car radio, so he kept things simple.

At one time, Zaentz, of Fantasy Records, sued Fogerty, claiming that his new material was too close to his older work, which the record label owned. The court ruled in favor of Fogerty.

Although he is often criticized for seeming to repeat himself musically, Fogerty compares his approach to that of artists like Irving Berlin, Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley, who created a wealth of songs in a signature style.

John Fogerty
Regency Center Grand Ballroom,
1300 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco.
8 p.m. Wednesday.
Tickets $42.50, (408) 998-8497, www.ticketmaster.com

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008