John Fogerty
Eye of the Zombie

LA RECENSIONE

From the surviving features, it must indeed be the owner of the record, heavily made-up, the "zombie" depicted on the cover. Which then, more than a zombie, looks like... what does it look like? A mix between a gibbon (the nose), a cat (the eyes), and a man.

Undoubtedly, John’s professional situation was zombielike for many years; he was tormented by a bloody legal battle with his ex-management, which resulted in the loss of publishing rights to all his famous, lucrative songs of the Creedence era. For more than twenty years, starting from this phase of his career (the album in question is from 1986), Fogerty forced himself never to perform his numerous, timeless CCR hits live, so as not to enrich the opposing party in the lawsuit. What a situation.

Legal problems or not, it is a certain fact that even the very talented John, after finishing the phase with the seminal group of his best youthful years, achieved very little in addition. The man is still fully active, but all the records released in the half-century since the end of Creedence contain, at best, ten percent of his best songs. It's a fate shared by other greats, like him or even more (McCartney, Page, Brian Wilson, Ian Anderson, Jagger and Richard, Dylan...), who largely gave their best before the age of thirty or shortly after, but nevertheless...

So the best thing about this work is... the cover, as disturbing and anxiety-inducing as few others. Technically, John is still himself: a voice that breaks through, minimalist and sharp guitar, the usual oscillation between rhythm & blues, country, rock 'n' roll, blues with simple, clear, direct arrangements. However, with CCR, every third song was a masterful melodic gem, guitar riffs worthy of an encyclopedia of r'n'r, simplicity turned into genius, little songs that got stuck in everyone’s heads and never came out.

Here, but somewhat throughout his discography under his own name from 1973 to today, there is the same welcoming musical environment, the same invaluable grit, and enviable dexterity on the guitar and other instruments, but it all ends up slipping away and being categorized as pleasant entertainment, nothing more.

We may never know if, with a less problematic professional destiny, this man would have given us many more epochal songs, after that copious and indelible bunch that emerged from 1968 to 1971. There are none in this record, and so it is aimed only at completists and/or absolute disciples of the Californian from Berkeley’s word, with his Robert Redford-style haircut and Wilson Pickett-type voice (even better, actually).