Searchlight

Album: Centerfield (1985)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Searchlight," the first song on Side 2 of Centerfield, was inspired when Fogerty was driving to Lake Havasu, Arizona. He passed a road sign reading, "Searchlight nine miles," a phrase he scribbled into the notebook of song titles that he always kept with him.
  • The music of "Searchlight," Fogerty says, references Jody Reynolds' "Endless Sleep."
  • Fogerty wrote in his memoir Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, that the song is about being lost, and the song's metaphor is "himself."

Comments: 2

  • Linda Ours from Gloucester, VaThis is a favorite of mine! Totally agree with Mr. Mitchell from Tennessee. :) I'm pretty sure that the line before the last chorus is incorrect in this rendering, though. I have the album with the printed lyrics; unfortunately, it's not at hand where I can check this, but I distinctly remember seeing (and hearing) the line as "The face that smiles back is me" (not "at me"). It's an important difference: "is me" makes it really spooky . . . "at me" not nearly as much. (The copy I have is from the early months of the release, though, before "Zanz Kant Danz" was replaced as "Vanz Kant Danz." I suppose it's possible that this line in "Searchlight" might have been tweaked for subsequent pressings too?)
  • Matthew Mitchell from Memphis, TnOne of his best songs. I listened to it over and over. A rock and roll classic.
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