John Fogerty & Keith Urban -CROSSROADS

42 Minutes with KEITH URBAN and JOHN FOGERTY

Fogerty, a Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer who wrote songs expressing political views on the Vietnam war, has written a song about the Iraq war, titled ‘Deja Vu (All Over Again)

Keith Urban during a taping of CMT’s Crossroads program released by Country Music Television shows.

Interview with Keith Urban

Is there any one song on here that stands out as a turning point, a moment when your music really went from one place to somewhere very different?

“Somebody Like You” was a big cornerstone song for me.

It seemed like “Love, Pain, & the Whole Crazy Thing” was poised to take you to even higher heights — everything was teed up for that to be the album that would open you up to an even bigger audience. But the circumstances in your life around the release obviously affected the launch and its reception. Is it hard for you to think about how that album ended up coming out?

In light of everything, it’s interesting that the record ended up succeeding in such a different way. With an ordinary release, there’s the whole radio launch, the normal promotional way of doing things. Instead, we really didn’t start touring until six months after the record came out.

But the interesting thing was that by then, everybody knew the album tracks — they were singing along with tracks on the album that weren’t the singles. So instead of having it promoted by all the usual, traditional media, we’ve really gotten out and done it just by playing live. So I’m very happy with that side of it.

Interview with John  Fogerty

Is that fast for you? You’re certainly one of rock’s great songwriters — is writing easy?

Oh, my God! No! At least, not in recent years. Way back when, they came to me right and left — although I really wrote about 10 songs for each one I recorded. But since ‘72 it’s almost been agony to write songs. Even as recently as “Blue Moon Swamp” (in 1997). I started working on those songs 10 years ago and was in the studio for five years — which was ridiculous.

How did you learn about music? Was there a radio station or a record store that played a big part in your formation?

It started when I was 7 or 8. We lived in El Cerrito, which was across the [San Francisco] Bay. It was a small town and that was my whole world. Even though it wasn’t really that far from the city, it seemed like being way out in the country. There was a TV program called “The Hoffman Hayride.” It was hosted by Spade Cooley from Los Angeles, and I liked the cowboy stuff.