With his new memoir Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, John Fogerty says that he is happy to leave the past in the past.

"I think the idea that the book even got written was because I was in a better place, you know? But now, with hindsight, I look at it and go 'Man, it's sure a good thing I didn't do this book 20 years ago.'

I would have been so angry and all that sort of thing. Feeling like I had an ax to grind, I suppose," he tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

"How can I say it? I've certainly lived through times in my life where I was that way, and it just doesn't look very good . . . It's like your relative who comes to your Christmas party, but he's got some horrible story he's gotta lay on everybody, bring 'em all down."

"There came a magical time . . . when I realized I hadn't thought about all that stuff for a while. It just wasn't in me," he adds.

"It seemed like before that, it was a daily thing, where the memories and the hurt and all that would pop up, and I'd grind on 'em.

You know how we can play a tape in our head, and it's the same tape over and over?"