A vibrant song about mood, texture and life. There is a Lodi in everybody's life - be it a physical location or a state of mind.
I believe that John Fogerty actually passed thru Lodi while driving around in Nor Cal and saw things as they were - dry, desolate and like many central valley towns, not a nice place to visit & certainly not a place to aspire to live in.
However, being an outsider from the culturally rich area of the SF Bay (as a resident during CCR - I don't know where he is from originally) he probably felt like he entered the void as he stopped in that town.
Like most genius artists (if my assumptions are correct) he allowed himself to let go and drink in any creative inspirations with this town - good or bad, not with the intent of writing a song necessarily but just to simply experience something vastly different from his life in SF. ( For perspective -throughout the 60’s and into the 70’s SF was a Mecca for exceptional & outrageous creativity in all areas of art and the experiential ground for LSD - it was free love, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll in such extremes as never seen before in the world).
My guess is that he spent a few hours in a local bar probably talking to patrons to get a sense of (their) reality. Then probably drifted mentally at some point imagining playing music for them on some beer stained make shift stage trying to entertain like a local. When the Lodi experience completed, he drove back to Berkeley and took a final look into the rear view mirror and contemplated his blessings and twists of fate not only for himself but for all of us.
A vibrant song about mood, texture and life. There is a Lodi in everybody's life - be it a physical location or a state of mind.
I believe that John Fogerty actually passed thru Lodi while driving around in Nor Cal and saw things as they were - dry, desolate and like many central valley towns, not a nice place to visit & certainly not a place to aspire to live in.
However, being an outsider from the culturally rich area of the SF Bay (as a resident during CCR - I don't know where he is from originally) he probably felt like he entered the void as he stopped in that town.
Like most genius artists (if my assumptions are correct) he allowed himself to let go and drink in any creative inspirations with this town - good or bad, not with the intent of writing a song necessarily but just to simply experience something vastly different from his life in SF. ( For perspective -throughout the 60’s and into the 70’s SF was a Mecca for exceptional & outrageous creativity in all areas of art and the experiential ground for LSD - it was free love, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll in such extremes as never seen before in the world).
My guess is that he spent a few hours in a local bar probably talking to patrons to get a sense of (their) reality. Then probably drifted mentally at some point imagining playing music for them on some beer stained make shift stage trying to entertain like a local. When the Lodi experience completed, he drove back to Berkeley and took a final look into the rear view mirror and contemplated his blessings and twists of fate not only for himself but for all of us.