Creedence's Fogerty back on the road

John Fogerty, the songwriter behind Creedence Clearwater Revival, is back on the road playing from the band's songbook he once refused to open again.

In an airless room backstage at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre after the concert, Australian promoter and entrepreneur Michael Gudinski is buzzing.

"Wasn't that bloody fantastic?" he says to no one in particular. "I want that set list," and he reaches for his phone. A guy appears at the door with it. Gudinski scans the 20 or so songs then says, "Only two I didn't know."

All the rest were hits. Big hits, identifiable from the first few bars.

An hour before the show, the man responsible for thrilling Gudinski - and the capacity audience of more than 8000 - is chatting while his wife Julie and kids hang around.

John Fogerty, the singer, songwriter and guitarist who defined the distinctive sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival in the late 60s, is short, slight and trim. At 60, with a full head of his own hair, he could pass for much younger.

Fogerty is in good spirits. The title of his new album - a long overdue collection of his Creedence and solo hits - is aptly entitled The Long Road Home. And it has been not just a long, but a litigious, road.

From heading a world beating band - by the time they played Woodstock in '69 they were racking up back-to-back hits - to being mired in litigation with his record label and former band mates.

He became so bitter that for almost 20 years he refused to play Creedence songs in his solo shows. And consider what those audiences missed: Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, Green River, Down on the Corner ...

The middle son of a working-class family from San Francisco's Bay Area, Fogerty soaked up 50s rock'n'roll and black music from the radio, formed a garage band with his brother Tom and - with bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford - went through a series of names (as the Golliwogs they flopped) before settling on the CCR moniker and refining their sound around Fogerty's vocals and guitar.

He might have been a Californian kid but his heart was in the South and songs like Born on the Bayou, Proud Mary and Mardi Gras became known as swamp rock.

Signed to Fantasy, a jazz label headed by Saul Zaentz (later a film producer and owner of the rights to The Lord of the Rings) who wanted to break into the rock market, CCR had a dream run. Their first tape, an eight-minute version of the old Suzie Q hit, was picked up by alternative radio, their second album Bayou Country in '69 sprang Proud Mary (number two in the States and covered by Ike and Tina Turner), and subsequent albums and shows confirmed their reputation.

While bands were playing sprawling psychedelic rock, CCR kept things tight and based on classic rock'n'roll structures. Travelin' Band and Lodi define respectively the excitement and ennui of being in a rock band; and with Fortunate Son, Bad Moon Rising and Run Through the Jungle he captured the disenchantment of the Vietnam era.

However, after the departure of brother Tom in late '71 Creedence limped through a tour wracked by dissent and after the disappointing Mardi Gras album in '72 they split. They'd sold 100 million records - but Fogerty had signed away his song copyright to Zaentz and on reflection felt CCR's career had been mismanaged.

On his Centrefield album of 85 he wrote Zaentz Can't Dance (but he'll steal your money). Zaentz threatened to sue so Fogerty changed the title, but Zaentz - at the urging of Cook - took him to court arguing the hit Old Man Down the Road from Centrefield ripped off Creedence's Run Through the Jungle. Self-plagiarism?

"It's comical on the outside but I was spending a whole lot of money and time with lawyers and I can't imagine a more depressing way of life. But the Creedence they were talking about [in court] was the one that I wrote the music for, sang and did the guitar playing for. That sound is my sound."

Fogerty won the case and in '93 refused to play with his two former band mates (brother Tom died in 1990) when Creedence was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame by longtime fan Bruce Springsteen. He has nothing to do with Cook or Clifford - who tour as Creedence Clearwater Revisited - to this day.

He wouldn't play his Creedence songs again until 1990. He changed his mind during an epiphany at the grave of bluesman Robert Johnson in Mississippi.

"He was having a resurrection of his career and I was sitting wondering who owned the music. I got a very perverse image in my mind of some shyster lawyer.

"Then I thought, it doesn't matter. Robert is the spiritual owner of his songs. Right after that I thought, 'John, that's like you. You're the spiritual owner of your songs.' That was a very powerful moment for me and my pathway out of the conundrum I'd got myself into.

"I thought the reason I was going to Mississippi was to look up the old blues guys but years later I realised it was so I could be at Robert's grave and start singing my songs again."

An hour later Fogerty sprints onto the stage and launches into Travelin' Band then Green River. He is in excellent voice and, driven by a five-piece band which includes rockabilly guitarist Billy Burnette, promises to "play some rock'n'roll for y'all".

For more than 90 more minutes he does - It Came Out Of The Sky, Run Through the Jungle, Rockin' All Over the World (which Status Quo adopted as their signature anthem), and an angry Fortunate Son as resonant as it was in the Vietnam years. But there is also country music (Hank Williams' Jambalaya) and plenty of swamp rock.

He takes the spotlight for a solo version of Deja Vu, the moving title track of last year's solo album which sounds full of resignation about the war in Iraq.

Fogerty has channelled the feeling of many of his generation in the song, and has reconnected with his audience since starting to play Creedence songs - his songs - again. And with his old label Fantasy sold and under new (delightful) management he now has the career-encompassing compilation album The Long Road Home released.

"Life is good now. The Long Road Home represents a vindication. Now we can see John in his Creedence days and right on up to now. That's a great feeling of closure because my fans can now see that oneness.

"A lot of people know about Creedence but not who John Fogerty was - which is ironic," he shrugs, "because John wrote and sang and produced all those songs."