John Fogerty wouldn’t call himself a guitar “virtuoso”

John Fogerty is a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, with plenty of huge hits behind him, but even he questions his abilities sometimes — at least when it comes to playing guitar.

“I didn’t feel that I was a virtuoso on guitar,” Fogerty tells Guitar World of his Creedence Clearwater Revival days. “I did feel I knew how to get a sound out of my instrument, which was pretty important.”

He adds, “I think musicians, especially guitar players, tend to be a humble bunch because it’s sort of the Wild West. There’s always some guy louder and faster and going to call you out in the street. And it’s just a matter of a flip of a coin if you get bushwhacked.”

But even though he believes “there were a lot of people running around that were better than me,” Fogerty was OK with that: “I felt very comfortable within my own band.”

The rocker says the important thing was that he and his CCR bandmates “were good together.”

“I didn’t think any of us was, let’s say, the best in the world, or even in our own country or our own state, at what we were doing,” Fogerty says. “To me, that didn’t matter. I thought it was much more important to sound good together.”