Released on this day in 1986, John Fogerty ‘Eye of the Zombie’, the album that followed Centerfield introduced Fogerty’s first full backing band, earned a Grammy nomination and featured a cover that nearly copied David Lee Roth, yet its material stayed silent in concert for more than two decades.
by Paul Cashmere
John Fogerty released Eye of the Zombie on 29 September 1986, his fourth solo studio album and the first he recorded with a dedicated backing band. Forty years later the record still stands as one of the more complicated chapters in his post-Creedence Clearwater Revival career: commercially solid enough for a US Gold certification, critically mixed, and almost completely abandoned on stage until 2009.
The album arrived just 18 months after the multi-platinum success of Centerfield. Fogerty produced it himself for Warner Bros. and brought in session players including Neil Stubenhaus on bass, John Robinson on drums and percussion, and background vocalists Bobby King, Willie Greene Jr. and Terry Evans. Alan Pasqua contributed keyboards on one track. The result was a darker, more groove-oriented set that mixed swamp rock with deliberate forays into Motown-style funk and R&B on songs such as “Wasn’t That a Woman” and “Soda Pop.”
The title track, a brooding single released in August 1986, reached the Billboard charts. Billboard described it as a “dark, shivery tale.” Cash Box called it “dirty and gritty” and “rock and roll with a vengeance.” The second single, “Change in the Weather,” drew stronger comparisons to Fogerty’s Creedence past. Cash Box labelled it a “swampy, grundgy, soulful groove that could have been a CCR hit,” while Billboard noted its “apocalyptic social predictions.” A third single, “Knockin’ on Your Door,” followed in January 1987.
Despite the Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 1987, critical reaction was generally cool and chart performance was modest by Fogerty’s standards. Eye of the Zombie peaked at number 26 on the US Billboard 200 and number 17 on the Australian Kent Music Report. It reached the Top 10 in Finland, Norway and Sweden, and entered the Top 20 in Austria, Switzerland and Canada. The RIAA certified it Gold for shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States.
The album’s visual identity almost looked very different. Special-effects makeup artist John Carl Buechler created the zombie look Fogerty wore on the cover. Fogerty had originally wanted tribal markings across his face, but Warner Bros. Records rejected the idea because David Lee Roth had already used a similar tribal design on the cover of his 1986 album Eat ‘Em and Smile.
After the Eye of the Zombie tour ended in 1986, Fogerty effectively shelved the material. He did not perform any song from the album in concert until 2009, when he revived “Change in the Weather” at a handful of shows. That same year he re-recorded the track for The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again and promoted the new version with television appearances. The long silence remains one of the most striking facts about the record. Fogerty’s next studio album of original material did not appear until Blue Moon Swamp in 1997, an 11-year gap that further isolated Eye of the Zombie in his catalogue.
The original running order, all songs written by Fogerty, ran as follows:
Side one
Goin’ Back Home – 3:25
Eye of the Zombie – 4:35
Headlines – 4:30
Knockin’ on Your Door – 4:35
Change in the Weather – 6:50
Side two
Violence Is Golden – 5:21
Wasn’t That a Woman – 4:13
Soda Pop – 5:53
Sail Away – 4:45
The album has since been reissued under DreamWorks, Interscope and Universal imprints, but the original Warner Bros. vinyl remains the primary historical document of a transitional moment for Fogerty: the first time he stepped into the studio with a band rather than multi-tracking everything himself, and the last time he would release a full album of new songs for more than a decade.
Forty years on, Eye of the Zombie occupies an awkward but revealing place in Fogerty’s solo story. It captures an artist still searching for a post-Creedence identity, willing to experiment with funk rhythms and darker lyrical themes, yet ultimately deciding that most of the material did not belong in his live repertoire. The fact that only “Change in the Weather” eventually earned a second life says as much about Fogerty’s rigorous self-editing as it does about the album itself.
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