In 1989 after John Fogerty walked offstage following a benefit performance, Bill Graham approached him and quietly observed, “You really paid a high price for your principles, didn’t you?” Fogerty, who hadn’t seen Graham in nearly two decades, now reflects: “I had been suffering in my own private hell. And the fact that he said this little thing in the midst of this big concert at the Oakland Coliseum—the fact that he got it—sure made me feel good.”

This is just one of many telling moments that appear in Fogerty’s new memoir, Fortunate Son. The book chronicles Fogerty’s musical progression, his rise to fame with Creedence Clearwater Revival and all the anguish and litigation that followed. (One lawsuit made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.) There’s a happy ending, though, as the musician eventually found love with his current wife, Julie, raised three kids and resumed a career originally derailed by hard times and alcohol.

This Friday, January 8, he opens a residency in Las Vegas at the Venetian.

If there was a guy now doing what Scotty Moore did, it would practically be a religion because of the way social media operates. [Laughs.] Scotty basically changed the entire world. He was part of that wonderful quartet that was Elvis’ first little band out of Memphis, with Sam Phillips being the fifth Beatle, as it were.

Scotty was inventing rock-and-roll guitar. He was playing at a level that was far above what most people realized at the time. It was pretty intricate and he had a lot of the simple, direct, distorted tone that people used later.

Scotty embraced all of that—I daresay he also was heavily influenced by Chet Atkins—and he put all of it in one place, right behind Elvis. You can hear it on an incredible record like “Mystery Train” or “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.” You

can listen to the guitar on “Hound Dog” or “Too Much,” and there’s a guy doing the whole rock-and-roll in your face thing, “Yes, I know it’s simple, isn’t it great? I can play one note for 30 seconds— it’s all about tone, man.” I could go on forever about Scotty because I think not enough people realize what he did. Guys like me do, but there should be a gigantic statue outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In your book, you also explain how Elvis’ treatment of Scotty Moore and his bandmates influenced your decision to keep Creedence together when things were unraveling.

I was 10 or 11 when Elvis first hit the scene. He had that incredible year in 1955. But after he went into the Army, things kind of changed. The music got softer with songs like “Stuck On You” and “It’s Now or Never.” He was suddenly recording with Nashville guys and not his original group, which was Bill Black, Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana.

I didn’t know what happened at the time, but in the late ‘60s, there were a lot of unauthorized biographies of Elvis. I think one was in Life magazine, and they talked about how Colonel Parker plucked Elvis out of that group and took him away to be in movies and all the show biz stuff. Elvis became a much bigger star, a mainstream star, but he left behind those guys he had started with.

I was reading this around 1968, just as my group was coming of age, rising to the top, and I really thought that was crummy. Then my brother, Tom, left Creedence, and for almost the whole year of 1971, I walked around wondering what my future was. There was a lot of tension and turmoil. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to back the two other guys, Doug [Clifford] and Stu [Cook]. They had been calling me a lot of names, but the phrase that returned to my head was, “I guess they deserve a shot.” And that phrase was reflective of how I felt the guys who started with Elvis had been abandoned.

In 1964 or 1965, I bought an album by Buddy Holly. Buddy had passed away in February 1959, and suddenly, here was an album with a version of “That’ll Be the Day” that didn’t have the energy of the other great version. It was in a lower key—it was an earlier, unrealized version, while he was working his way toward what became the pivotal recording of “That’ll Be the Day.” That just upset me and I thought, “I didn’t need to hear this, and I’ll bet Buddy Holly wishes I didn’t hear this either.”

So when I started recording, I told myself, “I’ll just make sure nothing like that exists so that no one can do that.” Record companies have no shame; if they can find anything—some rehearsal tape with no vocals on it—they’ll put it out to fill up some album. They don’t have an emotional investment in the songs; they don’t have an emotional investment in the aspirations of the artist who recorded them.

So if I worked my way up to a very good version from an inferior version, I didn’t want those other ones to be known. Those were my work tapes, my draft copies of an essay before I got everything together. People say collectors want to have that, but I’d just as soon have the one version be public and all my private things be kept behind closed doors.

David had been a fan long before I ever got on his show. Friends of mine would tell me that if they came back from a commercial and Paul and the band were playing one of my old songs, David would look right into the camera after the music stopped and go, “John Fogerty, if you’re out there, please come on the show. John, what happened to you?” He would say stuff like that over the years, so when I finally started having a public career again, it was pretty cool to be on his show a few times. Then being able to get on David’s show during the last couple of weeks felt like I was coming full circle because I was honoring him and his great show. He really loved music and he always treated the musical guests very well.

I’ve been pleased when people say they can hear my voice. They can tell that I wrote this book myself. It didn’t get conceived by committee and turned into some generic thing. It’s straight to the bone. I’m very truthful about my own foibles and struggles that are not always complimentary to me, so the reader can understand that everything is treated in as truthful a way as possible. That is the ethic behind the book.