John Fogerty on songwriting, 2009

In past interviews you’ve described many nights in the ’60s working on your songs until 4 am. Yet the songs themselves don’t sound labored over at all.

FOGERTY It’s an interesting dichotomy. The best songs are effortless—“Midnight Special” or “Cotton Fields” or “Down in the Valley” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was quite remarkable in its time. It was completely out of the normal rock ’n’ roll box. The way I think back on that was, the Beatles had been very heavily influenced by Buddy Holly, particularly songs like “Peggy Sue” and “Everyday.” Buddy would go through these circles of fourths or fifths and follow the chord to the next progression. The instrumental chops weren’t necessarily earth shattering, so he’d do it with mental power, you might say.

Well, America kind of forgot all that and went on with its own vision of rock ’n’ roll, whereas the Beatles kept cooking with that in their development. It came out in things like “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which had strange ways of changing key and going to the bridge, that kind of thing. But it still ends up sounding effortless.

The thing is, when you’re writing a song, let’s say you’ve got a good verse going and your next move is the bridge or the second verse or whatever. That’s when you have to want it to be a good song—not a throwaway song or in-a-hurry song. So that’s when the labor begins. That’s when you don’t settle for the first thing that occurred to you. You stick with it until it really fits. Sometimes that comes to you in an instant, and other times it doesn’t occur to you. And then one day you’re riding along in the car and you step out into the parking lot in the mall, or maybe you’re brushing your teeth . . . and suddenly that thing you’ve been thinking about for a long time just goes through your brain at a different angle, and you go—of course! And then it’s clear as a bell.

From my John Fogerty feature in Acoustic Guitar's January 2010 issue. Read the full story here.