Why John Fogerty Never Felt Like the Best Musician
John Fogerty reflected on never having felt like he was one of the best musicians in the world and that the same applied to his bandmates in Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Despite that, he insisted in a recent interview with Guitar World that he's always felt comfortable with his abilities and how the four-piece sounded as a unit.
“I didn’t feel that I was a virtuoso on guitar,” Fogerty said of the band’s early era. “I did feel I knew how to get a sound out of my instrument, which was pretty important. I had spent a lot of time in recording studios before Creedence existed, either with myself or with some of the members of the band that became Creedence, or even with other people, and became very aware of what things sounded like.”
He noted, “I think musicians, especially guitar players, tend to be a humble bunch because it’s sort of the Wild West. There’s always some guy louder and faster and going to call you out in the street. And it’s just a matter of a flip of a coin if you get bushwhacked. So, the things that I knew are what I knew. And I liked how I sounded, but I also assumed that there were a lot of people running around that were better than me and cooler than me and all the other stuff. I felt very comfortable within my own band.”
Forgerty admitted that he “didn’t think any of us was, let’s say, the best in the world, or even in our own country or our own state, at what we were doing. To me, that didn’t matter. … I always used Booker T. & the MG’s as the best example of that. Because as much as I love Steve Cropper or Booker, I just felt that their real strength was how they sounded together. No one’s ever put up a groove the way Booker T. & the MG’s did. I think that remains the Mount Rushmore to strive for.”