In the late 60s and early 70s, Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the most
popular bands in America. The band released a slew of classic hits in
those few short years before breaking up in 1972. This is the untold truth of CCR.
Creedence Clearwater Revival was the perfect vehicle for the singing, songwriting,
and guitar-playing of John Fogerty, but the band can trace its origins to groups formed
by a different member of the family: John's older brother, Tom Fogerty. In the 1950s,
high schooler Tom Fogerty formed a band called Spider Webb & the Insects. The group signed a
deal with Del-Fi Records but never actually recorded anything and broke up in 1959.
Meanwhile, John Fogerty had formed his own group, the Blue Velvets, along with bassist
Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford. While still fronting Spider Webb & the Insects,
Tom Fogerty would occasionally play gigs with the Blue Velvets.
However, after his primary band split, the Blue Velvets officially absorbed Tom Fogerty,
and he became the lead singer of the band, which was rebranded as Tommy Fogerty & the Blue Velvets.
This iteration recorded a handful of singles in 1961 and 1962,
printed in very small runs which didn't bring the band any success. By the mid-1960s,
and after changing its name once more to the Golliwogs, the foursome of two Fogertys, Cook,
and Clifford had released six singles, all of them co-written by John and Tom, who also split vocal
duties. By the time the group would reach its final stage, as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Tom
Fogerty's vocal and songwriting contributions had diminished to the point of virtual nonexistence.
When John Fogerty and his swamp-rocking cohorts came up in the 1960s, it was more
fashionable for the mainstream bands to have short and direct names, monikers like the Who,
the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks. A name like "Creedence Clearwater Revival" would suggest
that the band would sound like grandly named psychedelic groups such as Jefferson Airplane
or the 13th Floor Elevators. Those three words just sound like they belong together,
so they must have some kind of unifying meaning, right? Not really.
When the band signed to Fantasy Records, it was still called the Golliwogs, which label head
Saul Zaentz loathed, calling it, quote, "a stupid name." To generate a new name, Zaentz came up with
a list of ten ideas and then sent the band off to do the same, after which they'd find one they
agreed on. Some early contenders were Deep Bottle Blue, Muddy Rabbit, and Credence Nuball and the
Ruby. The latter was suggested by guitarist Tom Fogerty, based on the name of a friend.
The rest of the Golliwogs went to work improving on Fogerty's idea,
adding an extra "e" to get "Creedence" and then adding "Clearwater," taken from an ad
for Olympia Beer purporting that the product contained "cool, clear water."
"It's the water of tumwater that gives Olympia it's perfect blend of flavor and refreshment."
Then frontman John Fogerty added "Revival" because he felt like the
band was getting a new lease on life with its record deal.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's sound, a mixture of grimy hard rock, blues,
folk, and Gulf Coast styles, has a name:
"swamp rock," because it sounds like the band comes straight out of Louisiana.
That Louisiana flavor is all over Creedence's songs, explicitly so on the song "Born on the
Bayou." But Fogerty is singing from the point of view of a character, because neither he nor anyone
else in Creedence Clearwater Revival was born or raised anywhere near the American Southeast.
John and Tom Fogerty both hail from the Berkeley area of California.
Drummer Doug Clifford was born in nearby Palo Alto, and bassist Stu Cook is from Oakland. The
band members knew each other because they'd all attended El Cerrito High School in California.
Part of the reason why the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 was such a monumental
event of the Baby Boomer generation, was because nearly every major rock act of the
era took the stage over the course of the weekend. Among the bands who played for an
audience of 400,000 people were Santana, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Joe Cocker.
All those acts were prominently featured in the Woodstock documentary and its
live-recorded soundtrack, which helped solidify the importance of the event
in the collective consciousness. Creedence Clearwater Revival also played the festival,
but the band's presence there has often been forgotten and overlooked. Ironically,
Woodstock may not have become a concert of great magnitude without Creedence — once the
chart-topping band agreed to be a headliner, a slew of other acts signed up, too.
The reason why Creedence's Woodstock set is lost to history is because it wasn't
initially or conclusively preserved, left out of the Woodstock documentary
and soundtrack record at the behest of frontman John Fogerty. Fogerty told the
Los Angeles Times that when the band went on to play, it was already 2:30 in the morning.
"Everybody was running late, of course, hippies had been putting on this thing."
Fogerty added that despite playing a great set, there was almost no reaction from the audience,
since most of the crowd was asleep. Fogerty didn't want the band's performance to be
remembered, so he kept CCR out of the Oscar-winning Woodstock documentary.
When one thinks about the top-selling and most successful musicians of all time,
names like "the Beatles," "Elvis Presley," and "Michael Jackson" likely come to mind. Indeed,
all those acts scored at least a dozen #1 hits each and ranked at or near the top of
the Recording Industry Association of America's list of musicians who sold the most albums.
And then there's CCR. Perhaps because their time in the spotlight was a relatively brief four
years, or because they're so explicitly associated with the late '60s and early '70s sound, Creedence
Clearwater Revival can be overlooked when discussing the pantheon of pop-rock superstars.
However, in 1970 the best-selling band on the planet was Creedence Clearwater Revival,
which moved more LPs than heavyweights like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
But there's another reason they're overlooked: despite holding the all-time record for the
most songs to peak at #2 on the charts, they never had a number 1 hit. According to Slate,
the group hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 five times. Those almost chart-toppers:
"Proud Mary," "Green River," "Bad Moon Rising," "Travelin' Band," and "Lookin' Out My Back Door."
In 1970, Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty-written "Travelin' Band" was a smash hit,
peaking at, of course, #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was more of what CCR did best:
hard rock with wailing vocals laced with elements of Southeastern U.S. folk styles.
The song's sound was also a bridge between the straightforward rock of the '50s and the heavy
metal that would come of age in the '70s. Fogerty had a deep appreciation of and was extremely
influenced by the old-time rock 'n' roll performed by Southern musicians, telling Rolling Stone,
"Little Richard was the greatest rock & roll singer of all time. I was a kid
when his records were coming out, so I got to experience them in real time."
Unfortunately, according to Forbes, Little Richard was paid the egregiously low sum
of $50 by Specialty Records for the rights to those rock 'n' roll blueprint songs like
"Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly." And unfortunately for Creedence Clearwater Revival,
Specialty took the band to court in October 1971, alleging that CCR's Little Richard-inspired
"Travelin' Band" was more like a Little Richard ripoff, specifically of "Good Golly,
Miss Molly." In the end, Specialty Records eventually dropped the case.
Of the original members of Creedence Clearwater Revival who have had solo careers,
John Fogerty has been the most successful, scoring hit singles like "Jambalaya (On the
Bayou)," "The Old Man Down the Road," and "Centerfield," a baseball stadium
standard. But he wasn't the first member of the extremely successful CCR to leave the
band to go it alone — that would be rhythm guitarist, and his brother, Tom Fogerty.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, John's tight and unrelenting creative control over the band
lead to Tom's exit. After recording the album Pendulum, Tom Fogerty departed Creedence in 1971
and, over the next ten years, released five solo albums that didn't yield any hit singles.
Meanwhile, back in the depleted Creedence Clearwater Revival,
John Fogerty took his brother's motivations to heart and let the other two band members,
Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, write and sing the majority of songs on the next album,
Mardi Gras. Unlike the group's previous albums, Mardi Gras didn't go platinum.
After one final tour as a three-man band, Creedence split up in 1972.
After Creedence Clearwater Revival split up professionally, they diverted personally, too,
and bitterly at that. John Fogerty loathed and resented Fantasy Records and its boss Saul Zaentz
for placing him and his bandmates under what he thought were unfair and exploitative contracts.
Fogerty's negative feelings spilled over to the rest of the CCR, whom he felt him and the band
"betrayed" because they'd sold their right to vote on band decisions to Zaentz. He told Opie Radio,
"And that was obviously why Saul felt he could now do anything he wanted with Creedence music."
The freeze-out continued for years, and the band reunited as Creedence Clearwater
Revival just once, but not in a professional setting to record music or play for fans.
The four members performed together in 1980, at Tom Fogerty's wedding, according to AllMusic.
Tom Fogerty died in 1990, and several years later,
CCR members Doug Clifford and Stu Cook teamed up to hit the road as Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
John Fogerty sued the duo in 1996 because he controlled the
rights to the name "Creedence Clearwater Revival" and didn't authorize this use.
In 2001, the sides reached an agreement: Clifford and Cook would pay Fogerty a royalty anytime they
used the "Revisited" name. They paid that fee up until 2011, when Fogerty violated the
terms of the settlement by disparaging the latter-day Creedence variant in interviews.
In the midst of all the tragedy and legal battling that descended
on the world of Creedence Clearwater Revival in the 1990s, the surviving
members of the band were given more than one opportunity to leave the past in the past,
get back together, and play their beloved songs for a large and appreciative crowd.
John Fogerty personally prevented both CCR reunion gigs from happening.
After Bill Clinton became the first member of the Baby Boomer generation to be elected
president of the United States, organizers of his inauguration celebration approached
the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival about performing at the January 1993 event.
Fogerty gave a hard pass, writing in his memoir, Fortunate Son,
"I said, 'I'm not playing as a band with Creedence. I don't play with
those guys. We will never play as a band again."
Later in 1993, the three living members of CCR at least breathed the same air together
when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's customary for
newly enshrined acts to perform, even if they've broken up, so Fogerty took the stage – with Robbie
Robertson and Bruce Springsteen. He'd arranged to prevent Cook and Clifford from joining him.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, when Hollywood ramped up its examination and depictions of
the Vietnam War, filmmakers have frequently used a particular trick to let audiences
know that a scene takes place during that bloody military conflict and in the late
1960s — the soundtrack blares Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son."
CCR's John Fogerty wrote the song in 1969 as a protest against the Vietnam War, calling out the
offspring of the connected and wealthy who could pull some strings to get a "draft deferment" and
avoid dangerous combat duty. That sentiment is made pretty clear in the song, which means
it can instantly convey to audiences that the filmmaker's point of view is decidedly anti-war.
"Fortunate Son" has been used to score Vietnam War-focused sequences in movies like Forrest Gump,
Moonwalkers, Prefontaine, numerous documentaries about the era,
as well as on the animated TV shows Family Guy and American Dad! And that doesn't even include
the '60s-centric or Vietnam War films that use other Creedence Clearwater Revival songs.
Rock on, CCR!
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