Profound thanks to Julie Fogerty for her constant love, inspiration, and support.
— John Fogerty showing his wife/adviser deep appreciation for help with his latest release…and more.
I know that John Fogerty has been getting rave reviews for his Revival CD, but no one has been doing justice to the first cut, “Don’t You Wish It Was True,” as far as I’m concerned.
Some are saying it’s John Fogerty’s “Imagine,” but John Lennon’s song begins very differently. Contrast the two openings:
“Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try…” [Lennon]
“I dreamed I walked in heaven
just the other night
There was so much beauty
so much light…” [Fogerty]
In both songs, a heaven on earth is suggested, but in Fogerty’s lyrics there is the dream experience of another realm, which includes tactile contact with angels AND hearing the words of God:
“He said the world’s gonna change
and it’s starting today
There’ll be no more armies
no more hate…”
One does not have to believe in a traditional God of any particular stripe — or any God whatsoever — to see that there’s a significant difference here.
In one song, the writer asks the listener to use imaginative powers as a basis for creating solidarity, and producing positive change. In the other, the chorus
“Don’t you wish it were true”
alternates between two totally identical questions repeated (the above line repeated twice)
and
“Don’t you wish it were true
Lord don’t you wish it were true…”
“Lord” here, of course, can be serving the same function as “Boy” or “Jeez” would be if the line were “Boy, don’t you wish it were true?” or “Jeez, don’t you wish it were true?”
But that’s not quite the case. It’s not that mundane.
Now take a look at the first “What if” segment:
“What if tomorrow
everybody was your friend
Anyone could take you in
no matter what or where you been”
That set of lines involves an invocation of forgiveness which is not directly incorporated in Lennon’s song. “Imagine” is extremely powerful, but it is not potent in the same way.
That last statement is not made to suggest that one set of lyrics is better than another, but rather to stimulate intellectual extrapolation.
There is a greater friction than ever before, greater all-pervasive fear, and a greater readiness to respond to injustice and mere difference with violence that’s “justified.” He did this. She did that. We have more “unforgiveables” today. Less tolerance these days. Across the board, mercifulness takes a back seat more than not, more than ever.
Forgiveness has always been the center of many religious injunctions, is a time-worn “weapon” against self-destructive behavior, societal suicide.
Certainly These Times beg for our stretching ourselves in this way, opening up thusly.
And John Fogerty gets it right. Spotlights a neglected essential.
I think he might wince at someone distinguishing between forgiving and forgetting. He would certainly understand the distinction, but something tells me that he underscored the need for “forgiveness” in keeping with his take on “Our Times.” One who “gets over it” doesn’t really get it. Or give what’s needed.
If anyone wants to get others to embrace the likes of felons, they’d do well to clean house on a personal level, inviting those with whom they have either petty or ultra-serious gripes …to hug. Start with your own family. The most difficult challenge, yes?
Besides everyone knows what a drain being pissed off on an ongoing basis can be.
I can thank John Fogerty for a phone call I made immediately after hearing the cut. Now I’m much more ready to spring the incarcerated on the world. Encourage compassion.
The ideal scenarios which both Fogerty and Lennon have in common may seem utopian to some, easily dismissed. However, for those who think that “NO MORE ARMIES” and “NO MORE HATE” is pie in the sky, I recommend two things:
1) Howard Zinn’s chapter “Violence and Human Nature” in his Declarations of Independence (to dispel the notion that war is necessary, inevitable).
2) Not thinking that our goal should be to rid ourselves of ALL real life counterparts to “evil” characters in Flannery O’Connor’ short stories and Cormac McCarthy’s novels, but rather to minimize that quarter. To believe that one cannot anticipate what glory will result from simply not feeding hate. To not assume that we are doomed to be ruled by The Negative.
“Don’t You Wish It Was True,” like “Imagine,” is a call for action. Very personal action. That for which you can be responsible. Set an example.
In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men there is an image painted of a man on horseback — the father of one character — seen in a dream:
He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.
Fogerty’s first cut on the new album is his “I Had A Dream” speech. It is infused with as much hope (and sense of destiny) as Martin Luther King’s words and Cormac McCarthy’s expectations. It shares much with Lennon’s masterpiece, but makes its own singular mark.
Of course, you have to hear Fogerty’s delivery. Obligatory.
It’s guaranteed to wake you up, unless you’ve already gone to sleep forever.
* Marcelle Cendrars, Algerian-American journalist, trusts that anyone in a position to contact Julie Fogerty on her behalf will do so. The author would like to arrange a unique interview with John Fogerty in which a new paradigm for action could be proposed, and discussed (and, then, widely disseminated).