Goin' Back Home

Background

"Goin' Back Home" is the opening track of Eye of the Zombie, the fourth solo album of John Fogerty. Like all songs on the LP, "Goin' Back Home" was recorded at The Lighthouse in North Hollywood, California, and engineered by Jeffrey Norman. The album came out in September 1986 and reached #26 in the USA. 

Fogerty left the optimism of Centerfield behind and changed his mood on Eye of the Zombie. "I wanted to do a record that was darker, a little moodier," he said in an interview by The Orlando Sentinel in October 19th, 1986. Fogerty admitted in his autobiography (2015) that the dark, spooky mood of the album was also a consequence of his legal and personal problems at that time. 

Between the two albums, Fogerty moved from Bay Area to Los Angeles. His office at Warner Brothers was downstairs in the basement, where he wrote in the evening and nights. He also wanted to be more current and increase the use of drum machines and synths on the album. Fogerty had a guitar and a couple of synthesizers in his office.

As an instrumental hymn starting with a robotic female chorus and ending to a searing guitar solo, "Goin' Back Home" reflects Fogerty's desire to modernize his sound back in 1986.  In his autobiography 29 years later, he describes the result as "disturbing, inhuman, robotic crap" (John Fogerty, Fortunate Son, 2015). 

Personnel

Keyboards, guitars: John Fogerty

Live versions

John Fogerty played "Goin' Back Home" live on Rockin' All Over the World Tour in autumn 1986 in the USA and Canada. The world premiere took place in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 27th, 1986. Like all numbers off Eye of the Zombie, except "Change in the Weather",  "Goin' Back Home" disappeared from the programming of John Fogerty for good after the tour was over.  

The tour began weeks before the release of the album. On the concerts of the first half of the series, nobody knew the titles of the new songs off Eye of the Zombie. Critic Jeff Nisan supposed "Goin' Back Home" to be "the national anthem of Venus" (Hank Bordowitz, Bad Moon Rising, 2007). 

Critical reception

"Oddly, Zombie opens with an instrumental, "Goin' Back Home." On that track, Fogerty's forlorn, feedback-laced guitar solo floats over a dreamy, hymn-like synthesizer melody. -Anthony DeCurtis, The Rolling Stone, November 20th, 1986. 

"This instrumental was the only song on the album performed solely by John Fogerty. I don't think there was much point in including it, though - the slow keyboard sounds for two minutes are soothing, but boring! The searing guitar notes during the second half are the definite highlight." -Matt Loewen.

"--- consists mostly of shrill guitar lines layed over a female chorus singing strange gospel lines (boring as hell, too - John was never a successful master of 'atmospheric sound texture')." -George Starostin.

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