John Fogerty is enjoying a CCR reunion — with his guitar

John Fogerty fans will see a big Creedence Clearwater Revival reunion in Las Vegas this weekend.

No, not with the guys who used to be in the band. Fogerty has his favorite guitar back.

The 71-year-old rocker says he is even “going to make a little ceremony of it” in Friday and Saturday’s shows at Wynn Las Vegas, where he moves after two limited runs at The Venetian last year.

Fogerty’s wife, Julie, tracked down the Rickenbacker he had named ACME — after the ever-helpful company in the Roadrunner cartoons — and surprised him with it last Christmas.

“I kind of broke into tears, I couldn’t help it,” he says.

NOT JUST ANY AX

Fogerty used the guitar from 1969, when he remembers recording “Green River” with it, until just before the band’s breakup in 1972. He had modified it with a new pickup on the bridge. Because the guitar now had “a very personal and almost defining sound,” he painted ACME on the headstock plate and used it “exclusively for the normally tuned guitar songs.”

But relationships soured with his Creedence bandmates: brother Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford. Somewhere near the end, a young fan was hanging out at their Cosmo’s Factory rehearsal studio, and “for reasons that I don’t even fathom because it just seems impossible now,” John Fogerty gave him the guitar.

“Perhaps I was trying to close a chapter in my life. I know I didn’t feel really good,” he says.

So, he figures, “In a sense I was handing off the baton to somebody who had sort of a clean slate in front of him. My future right then was looking pretty cloudy.”

FOUND, LOST, FOUND

At some point in the 1990s, Fogerty and his wife walked into a Southern California guitar store and the proprietor said, “Hey John, I’ve got your guitar here.”

He went to the back room and came back with the one and the only ACME-brand Rickenbacker. The price for giving it back? A mere $40,000.

“I shook my head and left the store,” Fogerty says. But he was full of outrage: “That’s my guitar! How can you charge me for my guitar? You almost want to pick it up and walk out of there, but that would get me arrested.

“I just assumed then, ‘Now it’s really gone from me.’ ”

Years later, he saw in a magazine the guitar had been on display at a Hard Rock somewhere for at least a year. “Luckily, I didn’t walk in and see my guitar,” he says.

But last year, his wife “set off on a journey” to get it back and tracked it to a guitar dealer in Ohio. She started haggling, this time through an intermediary who made sure Fogerty’s name didn’t come up.

On Christmas morning, he opened an odd-shaped box wrapped in his trademark flannel. “I just saw the corner of an old Rickenbacker guitar case,” Fogerty says. “I hadn’t seen one of those in 40-something years. It had done some traveling, I guess you could say.

“I looked at her and said, ‘Am I about to be overwhelmed here?’ ”

DAYS WITHOUT PROTEST

Because of that cartoon coyote, Fogerty always assumed ACME stood for “generic,” or “ubiquitous.” Now he understands it to mean “at your highest point.”

When he gave the guitar away, “even though we were breaking up, we were the No. 1 band in the world. That certainly was our highest point. … And now it’s coming back to me, perhaps at my highest point now. It sure took its time, but I guess it had to wait till now, when everything is OK.”

Joined by 25-year-old son Shane on stage, Fogerty plays like he is making up for lost time.

“I guess that gives some sort of extra kick to me, because I guess I realize what a privilege it is, and I was away from it for a while,” he says of not playing Creedence hits during the 1970s and ’80s, when he battled his manager and record label over the songs. “It reminds me that I better put everything I’ve got into that experience. I better enjoy every single bit of it that I can. I’m a guy that actually had it taken away for a while, and I didn’t like that.”

Creedence songs often accompany scenes of ’60s protest in movies. So what does Fogerty think of all the protests in the early weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency?

“You should have made your commotion before he was elected,” he says. “Somehow the sun and the stars stay up in the sky. Everything doesn’t just fall apart because we’ve elected somebody you perhaps didn’t agree with. Somehow we move on.

“My mindset really was, ‘Let the guy do his job. Give him at least a chance to start.’ But wow, it sure quickly has turned into a shouting fest. I’m sorry to see that.”

And if that doesn’t sound like what you’d expect a Woodstock guy to say?

“I’m a lot older,” Fogerty says. “You kind of take more things in stride.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.