John Fogerty, Creedence and magic
The songs endure, after an exile, the singer returns but...
I have not had a chance to check today’s Executive Orders from 1600 Pennsylvania. But as far as I know at the moment, it is not against the law to not like the music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. But it should be.
Though it has been a mighty long time since singer/songwriter John Fogerty has even spoken to former Revivalists Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, the songs they created, or maybe we should say the songs HE created and the music THEY made, still sounds as sturdy, as enduring as any other music you can think of.
And that’s probably INCLUDING The Beatles, who they somewhat briefly overtook as the No. 1 band in the world when they about hit their peak just as The Beatles were about breaking up. And Creedence itself broke up not long afterwards. But their music has hung around.
While they never had a No. 1 hit, they had nine different top ten singles (in a very short span of time) hit the Top Ten. And you can bet that any bar band from 1970 onward knows “Proud Mary” and “Lodi” and “Green River” and “Travelin’ Band” and plenty other of Creedence’s everlasting hits.
And you can still hear ‘em. Since his return to the stage, Fogerty has toured all over the place, playing now with his kids who are old enough to back him on all his old classic.
Ex-Revivalists Clifford on drums and Cook on bass also did some touring for about 25 years as well under the heading “Creedence Clearwater Revisited” but stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It might seem like false advertising since the name “Creedence Clearwater” was on the marquee and those two didn’t have anything close to a hit on their own. But Fogerty’s songs still hold up and you’d have to think they always will.
But if Fogerty had the chops, the voice and the talent to light up the charts like hardly anybody else back then, you wonder what has happened in the 50 years since? Has he lost his touch, has the world around him changed so swiftly that the guy who seemed to be able to tune in to the nation’s collective consciousness with songs like “Fortunate Son” or “Run Through The Jungle” (about Vietnam) or “Who’ll Stop The Rain”? Why isn’t he able to re-connect the way he once did after returning from a long bitter exile.
For years and years, disillusioned by record company problems, the band breaking up and other issues, Fogerty flat-out refused to play any of his old hits in the few concerts he gave for years. Bob Dylan reportedly gave him a nudge, telling him unless he starts playing “Proud Mary” himself, people were going to think it was a Tina Turner song. And since, at the time, all his hits were owned by Fantasy Records, Fogerty wasn’t going to put more money in their pockets and so he shut it all down.
When he came back in 1985 with the uplifting “Centerfield” a Billboard No. 1 and the single “The Old Man Down The Road,” also a Top Ten hit, they were successful records but not revelatory. The albums “Eye Of The Zombie” and “Blue Moon Swamp” earned him gold albums and it wasn’t like he’d gotten worse as a singer or guitar player. He could still play. But the magical connection? Didn’t happen.
If you see him on stage, even now, he’s full of energy, plays the old songs without a hitch in the self-same arrangements everybody knows (unlike another old timer, Bob Dylan.) Though he’s as conscientious, driven and as relentless with his songwriting as he was back in the old days, there hasn’t been a major song from him in decades.
It’s not that there haven’t been some good songs or that he hasn’t tried to connect. His gospel-style single “Weeping In The Promised Land” carried a political message all right but went nowhere. His 2013 collection of duets “Wrote A Song For Everyone,” released on his 68th birthday, climbed to No. 3 but that was likely due to the prominent cast of co-singers like Foo Fighters (“Fortunate Son”) Bob Seger (“Who’ll Stop The Rain”) Keith Urban (“Almost Saturday Night”), Alan Jackson (“Have You Ever Seen The Rain” and Jennifer Hudson “Proud Mary.”
But hell, do I want to hear Jennifer Hudson sing “Proud Mary”? Does anybody outside of the Hudson immediate family?
It’s a puzzle to me. I was able to see him give a free concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame years ago, had John on my shoulders when he sang John’s then-favorite song “Centerfield.” And he continued to tour and occasionally record. It’s not like he had a serious drug problem or went in for the flash lifestyle of a Rod Stewart or wandered into the often-inexplicable musical drifts of a Neil Young. Fogerty has pretty much kept at the same style of music and while he’s had some pretty good songs — but no great ones.
He’s an honest enough, honorable guy to probably admit the same thing. It’s not like he didn’t try hard enough or ran out of ideas. It’s just that these ideas unlike the ones he had during that magical run from 1969-1970, haven’t connected with a mass audience in the same way.
Maybe nobody’s ideas can now. We’re so diverse, so divided, everybody has their own set of ear buds, there’s no sense of EVERYBODY’S LISTENING TO THIS like we had with The Beatles or The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan.
I bought some of Fogerty’s post-Creedence material, liked a lot of it. But the magic just wasn’t there. And it made me think, maybe it isn’t him. Maybe it’s us. We aren’t open to that sort of all-for-one, one-for-all sort of change-the-world thinking any more. We know better. Damn it.
Here’s a YouTube clip of Fogerty explaining how he writes songs.
Yes. Sadly. It is us. This era of music is from a time when, as fractious as it was, had a certain cultural bind that has long vanished. I’ve been supporting these artists still (I’m a cusp boomer so can still afford to go to live shows) but I noticed a tipping point when the greatest collection of these artists appeared at the Desert Trips gathering in Coachella (“Oldchella” for the haters). This was right before Chump’s first election and I witnessed white baby boomers yell out at Neil Young with “don’t go there, Neil” when he said something mildly political from the stage. A lot of angry white privileged assholes in attendance. I thought to myself, “have you not listened to these artists’ lyrics over the past 40-50 years?”
Thus, when Roger Waters took the stage the last night and had Chump’s face on the flying pig with a swastika on it, I chuckled at the number of assholes who were likely losing their minds at that moment.
This music still has much salience to me. There are artists like Wilco and My Morning Jacket still carrying the torch but to a far smaller crowd. Corporate Country and manufactured pop music has been ascendant for decades now. The music industry is very much like it was before the Beatles changed everything. That was a time and place that won’t come back in my lifetime.
You must have missed Blue Moon Swamp. Some of his best.