Opinion> Connie Schultz> Passing On The Bitters

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Passing on the Bitters

I don't know what possessed singer John Fogerty to be so open after all these years, but I sure hope it's contagious.

His kind of Christmas cheer we definitely need.

Last week, the former lead singer for Creedence Clearwater Revival wrote an essay tucked into the back of Newsweek that felt like an early present for anyone struggling with disappointment and resentment.

Yeah, I know. Long list, that one.

In his essay titled "Reclaiming My Voice," the 62-year-old Fogerty admitted he had wasted years of his life in bitterness over what happened to his band and his music after three short years at the top from 1968 through 1970. Years of betrayal and litigation had left him with no perspective and plenty of rage.

"By the mid-1980s the emotional and financial toll of fighting these battles for so long came to a head," he wrote. "One day I was giving yet another deposition and found myself so angry that I couldn't remember my own address or telephone number! I remember going into a department store and being so fearful and dysfunctional that I could not ask a salesperson about buying a pair of socks. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't feel. Music was who I was and I could not understand who or how I could lose so much."

In the end, he was too broken to fight anymore. And that's what saved him.

In 1986, he met a woman named Julie, whose path crossed his in the time it took each of them to stop for a few minutes at a hotel club in Indianapolis. Fifteen minutes either way, he wrote, and they would have missed each other.

"We fell in love," he wrote. "Let me say that again. We fell in love."

They married, and with her help, he has moved beyond the bitterness and rediscovered his songwriter's voice, which he poured into his new album, "Revival."

Sometimes, you have to step back before you can see the cliff you've been scaling.

"When you're in the middle of so much pain, you're just trying to keep from drowning," he wrote.

"Now there is enough perspective to write about it."

It's human nature to catalogue our grievances, and we start young. Whenever I speak to high school students, I remind them that we all have times in our lives when we have to decide whether we'll waste our time holding a grudge. Inevitably, several of them will nod their heads slowly, and it's clear from the looks in their eyes that they already have crossed that intersection.

At such moments, I can't resist sharing what a wise woman named Dorothy once told me after listening to me ramble on about the supposed slights in my life:

"Resentment is when you drink the poison and expect the other person to hurt."

She raised her eyebrows and waited for a response.

"Whoa," I said.

That was pretty much all I could muster, but it was enough to rein in the horse's gallop and change course. Years later, it remains a powerful caution.

Naysayers will say timing is everything for Fogerty and that he wrote this essay for Newsweek just to sell albums. That kind of cynicism may keep you from feeling like a chump, but it also will blind you to your own fresh start. Not worth the trade-off, thank you.

Besides, there's a memory of Fogerty that I can't shake: I saw him perform with several other artists in Cleveland in 2004, and I have to tell you, nobody was having more fun at that sold-out concert than John Fogerty.

He was almost 60, jumping up and down and grinning as if he had a secret as he belted out "Bad Moon Rising" and "Fortunate Son." I stood frozen in place, watching him and thinking I never had seen anyone look so happy just to be alive. Now, maybe we know why.

For years, Fogerty was tough in all the wrong places, so hunkered down that he was silenced by his own rage. Love seeped in anyway.

Now, hear his voice.

Listen to him sing.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.