John Fogerty live in concert

by Peter Twitchell

On October 10, I got to see one of my favorite rock-n-roll icons from 1968. Suzi and I shared the excitement at the Wynn Encore Theater in Las Vegas on our way in to be seated in the 3rd row. I grabbed a handful of 69’ John C. Fogerty guitar picks! What a souvenir. I thought I could pass them around to my friends back home!
That was until my daughter Suzi said, “Dad, the picks are ($10) ten dollars a piece.” I was whisked back to reality.
I put at least half of them back in the tray. Then we laughed!
For the first time I was going to see John in person and hear all the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs I heard at the K.V.N.A. teen center in 1968, back when Harold Sparck was director.
No, not on CD, cassette, record album, 8-track, or DVD – there he was in living color. A little older with wrinkles on his face and black dyed hair. He looked fit as a fiddle!
His sons – Shane was playing guitar with his dad, Tyler joined John in a song and sounded like the young John C. Fogerty with a strong voice and belted out all the high notes like his dad used to!
I enjoyed the live performance with keyboard, sax, trumpet, trombone, accordion, drums and John’s harmonica and guitar.
In 1967 John served active duty for 6 months in Vietnam. He came from a lower middle class family. His single mom raised 5 boys. Times were hard – he wore hand-me-downs, his favorite flannel shirts as they were warm and cheap.
When he was 11 years old he put money down on a guitar at Sears. The rest is history. The first song CCR recorded in 1967 was “Suzie Q”, and my daughter Suzi was thrilled that was one of the first songs he sang from 50 years ago!
John toured with ZZ Top not long ago and he wrote a song with ZZ Top Guitar licks. I think the fans will like it, the new John Fogerty song is “Holy Grail”. Thanks John, for sharing a song for everyone.