“In ‘Don’t Look Now (It Ain’t You Or Me)’ I was just prodding my generation a bit – “Before we get to feeling holier-than-thou with all our grand ideas, let’s take a look at what’s really going on,” who is really doing the work. Even though new ideas were being vocalized, and there was all this hopefulness and do-gooderness, and we’d accomplished a lot of philosophical things through demonstrations and protests, my generation wasn’t working in the blue-collar mainstream yet, and we weren’t doing the kind of stuff that the pioneers who built our country did. So I was saying, “Don’t look now, but it’s not you or me. Other people are the ones doing that stuff for us”.”John Fogerty (1234)

“‘Effigy’ was inspired by Nixon. What a schmuck.”John Fogerty (1235)

“‘Fortunate Son’ wasn’t really inspired by any one event. Julie Nixon was dating David Eisenhower. You’d hear about the son of this senator or that congressman who was given a deferment from the military or a choice of position in the military. The seemed privileged, and whether they liked it or not, these people were symbolic in the sense that they weren’t being touched by what their parents were doing. They weren’t being affected like the rest of us.”John Fogerty (1236)

“That’s really kind of a protest song, but I imagine a lot of people don’t look at it that way. I was going it it sideways. With “I went down to Virginia,” I’m talking about Washington D.C. “I watched the tower grow” is their Tower of Babel. I’m talking about BS, really. Political spin.”John Fogerty (1237)

“This was inspired by riding my motorcycle. I just remember riding along, and the title phrase came to me. Just the feeling of going. Movement.”John Fogerty (1238)

“I’ve seen it written that ‘Run Through the Jungle’ is about Vietnam, but that’s not true. I was speaking about the landscape in America. I had been thinking about the idea ever since 1966, when Charles Whitman had gone on a rampage, killing sixteen and wounding thirty-two others, shooting from the observation tower at the University of Texas. The song is really about gun control. Now, I’m a hunter. And I’m intrigued, even fascinated, by weaponry through the ages. But I am in favor of gun control. I don’t think machine guns should be allowed – who takes a machine gun to go deer hunting?”John Fogerty (1239)

“I’d never heard of a candle being described as a beacon, a safe haven that you can come back to. It’s about the loner in me. Wanting to feel understood, needing those at home to shine a light so that I can make my way back.”John Fogerty (1240)

“That song came about because of my son, Josh. I wanted to write a kids’ song. One inspiration was ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’ by Dr. Seuss. Another was a children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown, ‘The House of a Hundred Windows’. My mother would read that book to me. The only character I remember in the book is a kitty cat. He’s in this enormous house, looking out all the windows. He sees a train going across the prairie. Then he sees a parade, and a harbor with a ship. At the end of the book, he comes to the front door and it’s open. The kitty cat is sitting there, looking out the door. Does he walk through it? I don’t know if it’s happy or sad. That memory chokes me up. Somehow that kitty is connected to ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door’.”John Fogerty (1241)

“It’s about the breakup of the band. I was feeling, “Man, we achieved all our dreams. And you guys are only talking about negative stuff.” By your own volition, you bring in a huge rain cloud and cause it to rain. On your own perfect dream. That’s the way I saw it. I was watching the band disintegrate right in front of my eyes.”John Fogerty (1242)

“I wrote ‘Someday Never Comes’ when I left Martha. It was written right out of my gut, for better or for worse. I was really pining over our children. I was seeing this unhappy thread. I had been in a family where the parents had divorced and I really took that hard.”John Fogerty (1243)