GOLDMINE: John, recently on Facebook, there’s a music group that asked the question: What’s your favorite lyric or phrase in a song? I immediately thought of the line “pumped a lot of pane down in New Orleans” from “Proud Mary,” which is part of the show featured in the new Royal Albert Hall film. Who are the writers in music and literature that inspired you as a lyricist?
JOHN FOGERTY: Wow, OK, well, a little backstory is that one of the various jobs I had growing up was working in a gas station, back when you actually pumped the gas for the customer and washed his windows and checked the oil. And so when I was writing “Proud Mary,” I thought of that as talking about a person with a fictional past. I was thinking of the gas station. Pumping gas, “pumped a lot of pane” became a line that I thought was cool at the time. When Tina Turner did her version, though, I think she actually said, pumped a lot of “tane” with a T meaning octane. Knowing my background, I had hardly ever heard of people with propane cars. I knew about propane because of gas lanterns and Coleman stoves, but not about vehicles.
GM: I always felt that line was so evocative, “pumped a lot of pane.” But that’s just one of many evocative lyrics you’ve written, either with CCR or as a solo artist. So who were the writers who inspired you?
I think songwriting wise, The Beatles, Lennon and McCartney especially, really were inspiring, I think to everybody that was alive and musical at that time. But before that, in rock and roll, there was Leiber and Stoller and all those wonderful little story songs where they would use a play on words like “Poison Ivy.” I never got to tell those guys. By the way, one of my favorites that Leiber and Stoller wrote was a song called “Great Big Idol with the Golden Head” because it was so colorful and kind of a complete story about an event. Another person very much like that, of course, is Chuck Berry. All his songs seem to tell a story with pictures; you could really see these different things that he was talking about, as opposed to so many rock and roll songs where it’s “I love you, Betty Lou, don’t make me feel so blue.” They were sort of stream of consciousness about feelings
