{"id":301978,"date":"2025-12-06T17:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/301978\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T17:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:11:10","slug":"the-one-iconic-song-john-fogerty-said-spoke-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/301978\/","title":{"rendered":"The one iconic song John Fogerty said spoke “the truth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Press)<\/p>\n

Sat 6 December 2025 15:55, UK <\/p>\n

The key to being a good songwriter is telling the truth whenever they sit down with a guitar. The biggest crime any musician can commit is being inauthentic when they step up to the microphone, given that it doesn\u2019t take long for people to sense when someone is poorly faking it. John Fogerty<\/a>, however, epitomised authenticity with Creedence Clearwater Revival. When he started writing his first songs, he believed that Brian Wilson had perfectly captured this essence with the track \u2018In My Room\u2019.<\/p>\n

If The Beatles had turned rock music upside down for England in the 1960s, The Beach Boys would have been doing the exact same thing on the other side of the Atlantic. Sure, many of their songs were mindless odes to fun when they started, but Wilson was slowly festering in the background, waiting for the right moment to let his genius fly. <\/p>\n

Compared to most other songwriters, Wilson never claimed to be the genius that he was every day. He was happier to lay back and play music with his friends, but the fact that he could pull a lot of his greatest melodies out of the air with little to no help is the kind of thing one would expect out of Mozart or Beethoven rather than the guy who wrote \u2018Surfin USA\u2019.<\/p>\n

Of all the songs he wrote in the group\u2019s early years, though, \u2018In My Room\u2019 is one of the more openly honest tunes he ever put to tape. As opposed to talking about going out with a girl or the wonders of surfing or hot rods, Wilson is singing about being completely free to be himself whenever he\u2019s left to his own devices<\/p>\n

Although most people were taken aback to hear this kind of song on the radio, Fogerty believed every single word he said. When discussing his favourite tunes, the CCR frontman claimed that Wilson cut to the root of everything on this song, saying<\/a>, \u201cSongwriting peers I admire include Lennon & McCartney, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John & Bernie Taupin and Brian Wilson. You know that Brian Wilson song \u2018In My Room\u2019? It\u2019s the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>John Fogerty playing his guitar. (Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Dennis, Carl and I lived in Hawthorne as kids, we all slept in the same room. One night, I sang the song \u2018Ivory Tower\u2019 to them, and they liked it. Then a couple of weeks later, I proceeded to teach them both how to sing the harmony parts to it,\u201d he recalled of those young days as this song became the first that the core of The Beach Boys learnt to perform together. It was the spark of everything that was to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this world I lock out all my worries and my fears, in my room,\u201d Wilson sings with the world of his own bedroom being a comfortable prison at that point, a place where he hid from everything and pretended that it was soothing. Of all The Beach Boys songs, \u2018In My Room\u2019 is perhaps the most traditional: shades of Barbershop and classical harmony mix with strong doo-wop influences to create their own sun-soaked version of a standard late 1950s and early \u201960s ballad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While a song about being a bit of a loner doesn\u2019t seem like it should be in the conversation of the greatest of all time, it might be one of those things exclusive only to songwriters. Beyond the lyrics, the chord progression was the star of the more progressive moments that Wilson would get up to later, including the musical symphonies he would create on \u2018Good Vibrations\u2019.<\/p>\n

That kind of honesty also bled into what Fogerty would do later. Despite sounding halfway between rock and roll country, much of CCR\u2019s greatest material also related to the truths of life, whether it was the fear of getting drafted on \u2018Fortunate Son\u2019 or something as simple as rolling downstream on a riverboat in \u2018Proud Mary\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But maybe it\u2019s about something much deeper. Yeah, a song about being in one\u2019s room is probably not supposed to be pored over like Shakespeare, but for a songwriter, being alone with their thoughts and getting to translate them either on a guitar or piano is one of the great joys that life can bring. That way, your guitar isn\u2019t just an emotional translator. It\u2019s your best friend, and when you\u2019re in that space, nothing can get in the way of those feelings. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Press) Sat 6 December 2025 15:55, UK The key to being a good songwriter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[29764,35852,96,35851,128,15745,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-301978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-brian-wilson","9":"tag-creedence-clearwater-revival","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-john-fogerty","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-the-beach-boys","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}