I saw Fogerty live during the Blue Moon Swamp tour and when he introduced the band he described Kenny as 'the best in the business '. The admiration was mutual.
I spent close to 9 months working on that album. And worked with a lot of drummers during that album, but I left before the end (that album spent over 5 years.) most of the time it was one song each day. We changed the Kick drum head everyday. Snare head about every four or five takes. Bob Gluab was the bassist for most of those tracks. There was another bassist but I can’t remember his name after all these years.
Total respect to Kenny, and I would see him with John Fogerty in a heartbeat. I also feel the original CCR rhythm section was great - just listen to Down on the Corner, it doesn't get any better than that.
Learning drums over 30 yrs ago, I bought one of Kenny's CD's while he was with Mellancamp. The CD started out with Rain on the Scarecrow. I was most impressed with his comment when he said about what is my favorite Mellancamp song "Between a Laugh and a Tear," that the song "did not call for it" meaning a fast or or complex grandiose drum part. Just solid time keeping and feeling of the song. I think Simon Phillips is of the same philosophy. A good drumer is like the ocean. By yourself in the middle of the ocean, you have nothing, and can die on the open ocean from thirst, but being on a beach or an overview of the ocean, it attracts billions of people. No matter where you are on this planet, if you are at the shoreline, you are conected to the planet: from the shore of Boracay, Philippine to Pitcairn Island from Elephant Island in Antarctica, to Homer, Alaska. You are universally connected by the sea, just as a drummer is connected to all styles of music. A good drummer brings the ocean to music and suddenly makes it come alive. Was an orthopedic surgeon, world traveler, licensed pilot , certified scuba diver etc etc but now almost like a childless couple who took up drums too late when I was 37, am frustrated and despondent that my struggles on the drums, after 33 years , now have to accept the fact that now at 69, it is too late. I never realized that despite the simple time keeping and beat that he drums bring to music, there is a universe of different styles, acents, licks, gooves, chops, or what ever you want to call them out there, just as each drummer has his unique personality, as if his own finger print or retina scan to identify him or her as unique. Back to my kit.
Love your writing style - very evocative. As another 69 year old drummer who played pro for 50 years, I'm facing the "dying of the light' with as much protest as possible. I just learned a new one hand roll technique that will keep me busy mastering for months.....all thanks to people who are determined to examine the craft and experiment. Keep drumming until they shovel dirt on us.
Kenny is an excellent drummer and obviously a very cool guy and a real 'team player' I admire that. I'm an ex pro drummer from years ago and sadly didn't get along with most due to their massive egos, you have to be able to listen to suggestions for it to work like Kenny does!
I used to say that "the hardest part about playing the drums,.. was dealing with the guitar player's egos!" 🤪 It's one thing if you're working with a musical genius, an actual professional player & writer. But when you're just a cover band, and the guitar player is a pompous ass,... that's another!!
I saw that tour in Denver and even got a recording of it,somewhere during the show you can hear somebody say “Kenny’s beating the shit out of those drums!” It was a great show and I got to meet John and Julie afterwards,great down to earth guy.
John used to play the annual kids/parents talent show every spring at a school where our kids both attended. My band the Grateful Dads always played the penultimate set, then celebrity dad John would close the show. He always played the Creedence songs so we could all sing along, even though he wouldn’t play them in public at that time. The third year we did this, I was asked - few days ahead of the show - to stay and drum for his set. I was excited and flattered, but nervous as hell because of the stories I’d read about how he could be tough on drummers. I practiced the whole catalogue like crazy, and thought I was ready. So I haul my drums backstage a few hours before the talent show, and there’s another set there already. Yup, even though it was just a casual school talent show for about 200 parents and kids, at the last minute he booked a studio drummer and bass player for his set. I must admit I was relieved! And it was a great, rockin’ show.
I’ve met John and Kenny on the Blue Moon Swamp. Nice guys and incredible musicians. My former professor Jon Lowson was nominated for a Grammy for engineer on Blue Moon Swamp.
My kids took me to a John Fogerty concert on September of 2015. It was something I had wanted since I was a kid myself. They were amazing. Both my kids and John Fogerty.
Sure, Buddy Holly was cutting tape. but was he manually quantizing drum tracks on tape?? splicing is not the same as manually editing a sloppy drum track into a solid back beat.
I saw John at Wembley Arena 2007 with Kenny on drums, I've been a Fogerty devotee since 1969.It was a night that will live in my memory till I die. I was seriously ill at the time and only made it because my sis inlaw came with me (we travelled 200 miles), but without me knowing some friends in the America contacted John and told him about me. When we arrived Bob came over and started pushing my wheelchair, I thought ' what happening here' after going through corridors we came out backstage. I saw Kenny and the band chillin and it was 'wow' then John, I think Julie was with him. He came toward me and I was not gonna be sat in a wheelchair when I meet my hero. I stood up and he took my hand. First thing he said was. "Like the shirt" it was the same as John's, he chatted like he already knew me, told me they were coming to play the Royal Albert Hall next year and hoped I'd be there. I was so shocked to go meet him I never had my camera with me, didn't even think to ask for his autograph. He was so gracious and for a little while the crippling pain I was in disappeared. He said it was time to go on stage so we said goodbye. I don't know how long we chatted I was on cloud nine lol. I heard the start of "Travelin Band" then Bob took me to a balcony overlooking the stage. My sis in law was already there, but my tickets where not for such a great view. I must admit the pain came back and I was in agony for the rest of the night and had to go back in hospital the next day. I'd only been home a few days before I travelled to London. It took nearly a year to get well but I wasn't well enough for the Albert Hall Concert sadly. I managed to see John Again at the London 02 arena with my son, who's listened to CCR and John since the day he was born virtually lol. Kenny has easily been the best drummer John has ever had, he put's the Rock in John's Rock n Roll.
Saw the Blue Moon Swamp tour in Denver in 1997 2nd row at the Paramount Theatre. An hour after the show John walked with Julie at his side,I called out to him and I think he recognized me and walked right over and talked to us,shook our hands and signed my concert ticket,a cd and a guitar. He was really nice and pleasant over all. Nice memories!
I heard a little rumour tha Kenny has 4 pairs of smaller glasses on underneath those huge ones he wears ... like the Russian Dolls of spectacles ...I'm just kidding ! I'm a huge ,huge admirer of Mr Kenny Aronoff . Just a little levity on a cold ,Winter Saturday afternoon , 6000 miles away .
It sounds like JF used the same principal as Walter and Donald did in Steely Dan. As Dean Parks said, " They would practice us to get to perfection, then practice more to get to where it sounded natural". If first saw KA play on the Premonition tour. To me, he breathed new life into songs like "Ol Man Down The Road", "Swamp River Days" and "Almost Saturday Night". KA was a perfect fit.
Music the way it ought to be…Classic all the way around…talent and commitment rock. I was pleased Mr.Fogerty released all his albums on High Resolution files…AWESOME! Nice interview. Learn a little every day.
Kenny, John mellencamp, and John Fogerty all have an Indiana connection. Fogerty married his wife in Elkhart Indiana after meeting her during a concert in Indianapolis back in 1986. John and his wife then lived there for awhile.
Some people are born geniuses, and the sooner you recognize that if you’re in a band with them, the sooner you get out of the way, and give the music a chance to breathe, that’s chemistry.
I remember a quote from John Fogerty years ago where he was talking about how the other guys in Creedence wanted to write and sing their own songs and put them on the next album. He said something like, and I'm paraphrasing, "I told them, guys I have the formula. It works. I don't want to go back to washing dishes for a living."
Same thing as John Kay and Steppenwolf, the other guys saw the success and money coming in from the first two albums and thought "me too", Kay left them do some songs on the "At your birthday party" album and it was a step down from the first two albums. It had some moments, but not as solid as the other ones. Same with CCR and the "Mardi Gras" album, the other guys had some songs on there, not too bad, but not up to the usual standard. And Kay told the guys that were fired from the band "I'm not going back to starving because of someone's immaturity", sounds a lot like Fogerty, doesn't it?
@@obiobiwan9268 You left out the part where he refused to sing any of the songs he didn't write. All they wanted to do was contribute a little bit more than they were being allowed to but Fogerty's massive ego wouldn't allow that. He also made stupid business decisions that cost them millions of dollars.
I saw the CCR inducted into the rock n Roll hall of fame. The original drummer Doug Clifford thanked the other 2 band mates, but not John Fogerty. He must have gotten the 4 hour treatment over and over until he was sick and tired of it!
I knew nothing about Fogerty before "The Old Man Down The Road", Top 40 Radio in the 80's being so myopic. He wrote and performed catchy song after catchy song, he is legend.
Myopic? Stylistically, top 40 radio in the 80's was the most diverse in history. You had everything from Dolly Parton to Taco Puttin' on the Ritz to RUN DMC to Bon Jovi, Men at Worl, Toto, Madonna and Prince... so much variety
@@richardthompson6366 Really? Metallica Master of Puppets, The Cure Disintegration, Guns n' Roses Appetite for Destruction, Peter Gabriel So, Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking, Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine... are stagnant??
Aronoff is not the Best Drummer in the World but the Best Drummer in the World sends him a Christmas Card every year out of respect. Yeah, he is really that good !
When Green River was released in 69 I don’t believe we at that time dissected the song or the band or the technical arrangements or the meaning in the lyrics. That generation in time knew what a great song was and Green River had a beat that rocked. It’s like when Won’t Get Fooled Again came out… it’s the progression from Cant Buy Me Love upto these hits and what classic rock evolved from and in to. Fogherty was a catalyst that created we just didn’t know how intricate he was.
Saw Fogerty with Aronoff in 2006. Aronoff with his drumming put the whole show to the next level. Otherworldly! 2 years later he had another drummer. A nameless cat from Nashville. It was ok because all songs belong to the soundtrack of my life. But it was not great. Aronoff was missed badly!
I talked to someone who was on his road crew for a while, and she said most of the people on the crew thought he was a jerk. They used to call him "Chucky".
Just made me remember the fact I was making my own videos and audios in 1967 when I was 10 years old and splicing. If I was doing it when that young and unknowledgeable I can’t imagine it was anything too arcane.
No, pretty sure tape splicing was a thing for as long as there’s been tape. In fact maybe earlier as film was edited in a similar way as far back as Eisenstein and DW Griffith. The Beatles were certainly doing it in the mid-60’s, although maybe not to the same level of detail as Fogerty seems to have done. I think the guy is embellishing a little for effect here.
In CCR's day, nobody knew how to remove a section of tape, and scotch tape it back together?? In the early 60's I was watching an uncle do it on his reel to reel, so I think a LOT of people knew how to do it, it was commonplace.
I'm from that recording era and remember 2" tapes, retakes, splicing tape at the recording console, etc, etc. Years later, as the digital recording age emerged I sold all my reel to reel equipment, set up a simple digital recording studio and no matter what most of the "old schoolers" say about digital, putting it down, it is a freaking CONVENIENT BLESSING and time saver...and there's never any of that annoying tape hiss to deal with to boot!
Yes, my friend had all that set up in his garage. We had fun messing with it. 8-) Before I new him ,he had a band, (Of course I forget the name), and my friend's claim to fame, (He's actually very modest), was to get some club gigs in '68-'69 on Sunset Blvd. And his guitar player Roman, could play anything, and better than well. Best guitar player I've ever seen without a record contract.
Of course they cut tape back in the day. That was common place for editing. Every studio had a splicing block, tape, and a yellow grease pencil. Where are you getting your history from ? That kind of stuff went on, in studios, long before John ever set foot in a studio.
Yes indeed, in the Blue Swamp Tour, John and the band played CCR hits, but John did it in a rush, acelerated tempo, and sounds a little bitter because there was the others Clifford and Cook's "band" CCRevisited who played the songs exactly like the originals records, even doing the same voice like John... 🇲🇽✌😎
@@adamiusrex Yeah, I met them all a week apart in Eugene for Fogerty and Salem OR for Stu and Doug, along with Elliot Easton who was pretty cool too. Stu and Doug did the open string, ching ching sound and drive of original CCR, JCF put on quite a different sound, often due to Kenny himself and his heavy hitting style. Just different, thats all.
Kenny is aging and know it’s it a young person’s industry. He is trying to mask aging around the eyes and look ‘cooler’. And while I agree he could do without them, but if they make him happy, thats all that matters.
Last time I saw Fogerty a few years ago, he had his son's band backing him up. John used to have some of the best musicians in the business (including Kenny Aronoff) as his band. Sound just wasn't the same. Enjoyable but not great.
I saw John Fogerty live in 1998 and thought it was a great show. But, I thought the drumming was a let-down and too different from the original songs. I feel Fogerty is not being completely honest about Cook and Clifford's abilities. Yes, I believe he was the musical brains behind CCR, but I also believe he is selling the other guys short as if they had no musical abilities as musicians. It seems, with Fogerty, it's very much a me, me, me and me thing. And I'm saying this as a huge fan of his music since the late 1960s.
Agreed. I don't care for Aronoff's drumming either. And Fogerty may have made many edits to Clifford's drum parts, he had plenty of punch-ins on his own guitar stuff as well. I was and am a huge Creedence fan, but Fogerty's trashing of his bandmates is out of line -- regardless of how much he "helped" them. And I have heard and read about the 30-drummer thing, and all I can say there is, if you can't find someone to play what you want in 30 tries, maybe YOU are the problem and not THEM. You can't communicate well or are as over-the-top as Brian Wilson was as a producer/arranger.
@@mtadams2009 As I remember, before CCR, the band was under the leadership of John's brother, TOM, who was the lead singer..... called the "Golliwogs"? They were a struggling, run-of-the-mill San Francisco cover band, each wearing white wigs, until, one day, John took over the lead as singer and songwriter, and yelled, Enough of this bullshit. Bingo.
This is why his original band mates turned on him and threw him under the bus, they were too lazy to practice and perfect a "sound" they couldn't hear!
Totally agree 👍 A foolish thing to say that Fogerty cut tape before anyone knew you could do it. After hearing that I stopped playing this video being unsure I can believe anything this guy says.
