John Fogerty is a true American icon. As leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival in the late 60s and early 70s, he wrote and sang some of the all-time classic rock‘n’roll songs: Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Travelin’ Band and Have You Ever Seen The Rain to name but a few, songs that Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic played in a Creedence covers band before they formed Nirvana.
But if there was one moment in time when the power of Fogerty’s songwriting was felt all around the world, it was on July 13, 1985, at precisely 12.02pm, when the mighty Status Quo kicked off Live Aid with a song Fogerty had written ten years earlier, one perfectly suited to this global music event: Rockin’ All Over The World.
In truth, Fogerty’s career didn’t get off to the best of starts. In the mid 60s, the band he’d formed with elder brother Tom in El Cerrito, California was working under a name that today beggars belief: The Golliwogs. At a time when new social values were emerging, not least the civil rights movement, The Golliwogs were doomed to failure. But when, in 1967, the band was renamed Creedence Clearwater Revival, everything changed.
As important as the new name was a shift in the group’s hierarchy that saw original frontman Tom cede power to John. “I could sing,” Tom would later state,“but John had a sound.”
That sound would become one of the most powerful in American music. Backed by Tom on rhythm guitar, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, John Fogerty blossomed as a singer, guitarist and songwriter of rare distinction. His sound was timeless, relevant to the new rock audience yet steeped in age-old Americana. Blending blues, folk, soul, country, rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelia, the music had a rootsy, backwoods aura that led rock critics of the day to brand it ‘swamp rock’.
Between 1968 and 1972, Creedence released seven albums and scored 12 top ten hits in the US and UK. But they split in ’72, and after Tom Fogerty’s death in 1990 there would be no reunion.
In stark contrast to CCR’s prolific output, John Fogerty has recorded just 11 albums in the last 50 years – including one of rock's great unreleased collections, 1976's Hoodoo. And with 2020's Fogerty's Factory he came full circle, marking the 50th anniversary of Cosmo's Factory with an album of Creedence covers recorded with his three youngest children.
...and one to avoid
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