"I WAS THE LEADER ALREADY"

In 1958 rock music had passed its infancy — it was more like a toddler — but it still was not reputable. Not many high schools had even one rock band, let alone junior highs. Especially not in a quiet, working-class suburb like El Cerrito, California. Only a twenty-mile drive from the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco, only perhaps ten miles from the University of California Berkeley, culturally those towns might have existed on another planet. During the '50s through today, El Cerrito epitomizes the quiet suburb.

Jeff Fogerty, son of Creedence rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty, still lives a couple of towns away. He asserts, "El Cerrito is like the most un-hip place to be in the Bay Area. It's this little, small, sleepy town two towns north of Berkeley." Even so, the '50s wrought changes on the former Spanish settlement like the decade changed nearly everything in America. Classic old adobe houses gave way to more modern homes. Old sounds gave way to new.

When John Fogerty was thirteen years old, in 1958, he got the yen to form a rock band. Most parents and even a lot of kids found rock and roll distasteful. Certainly, in Eisenhower's rosy-cheeked, apple-pie America, healthy adolescents had better things to pursue — especially in El Cerrito. Fogerty, however, had entertained the idea of forming a band for close to five years. "I envisioned being exactly what I am now since I was eight," he recalled in 1986. "I remember as early as 1953, when I was about eight years old, that I was going to name my group Johnny Corvette and the Corvettes. I had already made my choice: I was thinking about making a career out of music. Of course, I was Johnny Corvette. Somehow I was the leader already."

It started when his eldest brother, Jim, turned him on to R&B, like Ray Charles. "Around 1953, I started to notice rhythm and blues songs by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and things like that," he told Jim Delahant in 1969. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Fogerty commented to the LA Times's Robert Hilburn, "My idols were guys who were really gritty and who were real rockers. I wanted to live up to what they did."

He recalled walking around as early as the fifth grade with a blues band playing in his head. He would sing all the parts, grunting for the drums, developing mental images of how the music would sound.

His resolve solidified when he first heard Carl Perkins. "Carl Perkins," Fogerty says, "was the first one ever to make me think about being a musician and singer. Elvis was a star, Carl was a musician. I wanted to be more like Carl."

Born on May 28, 1945, John fell smack in the middle of the five Fogerty boys. His oldest brother, Jim, was on a track that would eventually lead to work as an accountant. His immediate older sibling, Tom, had already started to make a name for himself locally as a singer when John made the momentous discovery of the power of rock and roll. Dan, about four years younger than John, eventually would own a chain of pizzerias. The youngest Fogerty sibling, Bob, took many of the photographs for his brothers' records and promotional material. He wound up in the role of John's personal manager.

Growing up in this large family could not have been easy. John's father, Gayland Robert Fogerty, worked in the print shop of the Berkeley Gazette. He had trouble with alcohol, and perhaps other mental disorders as well. He left home around 1953, fairly soon after Bob's birth, about the time John was eight.

Tom recalled, "We come from a strict middle class, middle income background. We got a pretty fair deal, I guess. Our parents divorced when I was eleven. Hell, everybody I knew came from a 'broken home.'"

"My grandfather and grandmother either divorced or separated because my grandfather was drinking pretty heavily at that point," Tom's son Jeff adds. "So she raised all five boys by herself. Eventually she became a full-time teacher."

The divorce left Lucile Fogerty to care for five growing boys spanning sixteen years in age. She worked as a store clerk while studying for her teaching degree. Then she taught handicapped children.

Things got pretty thin at times around the Fogerty house. Their father, Gayland, often missed child-support payments. "I come from what they are calling a dysfunctional family," John recalled. "I did use a lot of energy on that subject. I did hate my father. I always wished it had been better."

"Most of my struggles were mental," he said in 1970. "My old man wasn't around when I wanted an old man. My mother was a teacher who was supposedly making a good living. She really didn't get involved in my life. When she would, we finally got to the point where I said, 'Don't get involved with me. I don't want you any more. I've been doing it on my own for so long. Leave me alone.' Until a week before our first hit record, it was right there in the back of my mind, I may never get out."

John's musical life began to replace the family life he was missing: "I was always ashamed. I never brought my friends home. My room was in the basement — cement floor, cement walls. I just...