Part 2
Rolling right along, John details some of the solo parts of "Proud Mary." " The solo in 'Proud Mary' has a definite Steve Cropper influence," says Fogerty. " Iwas copping Cropper, thinking *how would Steve play this on a big guitar?,' because it was the 175 and of course he uses a Tele. Steve's been called the greatest rhythm player ever, but I think he's one of the greatest lead players as well. His solo style involves lots of chorsd, and that appeals to me. He would get these little three-note licks going, with hammer.ons and slides, usually based around a very specific chord shape that looks like the barred A chord at the 9th fret. That's what I used in the first part of the solo and, if memory serves me right, I overdubbed the part. So what you hear on the record ia a unisone doubling of the solo."
Another important influence on Fogerty's development as a guitarist was ScottyMoore, who played and recorded with Elvis Presley in his heyday. "Scotty was a big influence on me, " says Fogerty."In fact, he recently came up behind me at some event a few month ago, put his arms around me and said, ' I want all my licks back!' If anyone ever stole everything from some other guy it was me copping from Scotty, especially in the old days. ' Bad Moon Rising' is a kind of a sideways 'You're Right I'm Left She's Gone.' from Elvis' Sun Sessions. Back then I couldn't do the alternating bass thumbpick stuff so I played it with a flatpick and used my fingers for the upper notes. It's built around an open E chord with an addes sixth, C#, and again I'm playing the G to G# in the riff."
"Scotty is the man!" declared Fogerty. "Let's stop here and give credit where credit is due. He was ground zero, the explosion - the first rock and roll band ever. He was in the band that defined what was the line-up of a rock and roll band would be, and he was the lead guitar player who was melding blues and country and coming up with the bible of rock and roll. That's what you're hearing in the 'Bad Moon Rising' riff - blues and country and me rippin off Scotty in my humble way.
"The solo is just the rhythm of the song's melody and the riff. It's an example of little chords, triads, singing," John explains. "The part is set up like a section of the song. The first phrase goes down and is answered by the second phrase which goes up. Very simple. It's sometimes hard to stay in that realm because I was like a first grader when I made up that part, but I often long for that simplicity - I think that way. That's the deal, the promise of rock and roll, you might say. It's the contract you make with your audience - to not become a noodler, to not loos them. A long time ago I adopted one of the rock's major tenets and stuck with it: be simple and speak powerfully."
One of Fogertys most powerful solo lines can be found in his first phrase of "I put a Spell on You." It's basically in tyhe E minor pentatonic shape at the 7th fret," explains Fogerty. "I run up the scale to an E note on the 3rd string and bend it to F#. On the bent note I used the whammy bar to give the lick a vocal-like vibrato.
"For that solo," he adds, "I used the Rickenbacker and a Kustom amp. I believe I'm the only guy that got a really good sound out of a Kustom amp. They're transistot amps but they have a very cooldevice built in called a Harmonic Clipper, which is a fuzztone. It sounded kind of shreddy, like a lawnmover, on most guitars, but on the Rickenbacker, with its weaker pickups and hollow body, I could get a tone that was a combination or the fuzz-type feedback and acoustic feedback. That note would ring forever. At the time I wanted Marshalls but the were to get in America. So I went from a Fender Tremolux (a white tolex piggyback model with two ten-inch speakers) to the bigger Kustom. Looking back, it was a happy accident because I figured out all kinds of cool stuff to do with the Kustom. In Creedence I used two cabinets, four 15-inch speakers, and one 200-watt head. In fact if anyone knows where I can find a couple ot those from 1968, let me know, care of Guitar World."
By Wolf Marshall. This article was published in Guitar World August 1998.