creedence clearwater revival

The origin of America’s greatest authentic rock 8c roll at this time that Fantasy Records if||j|^Jas.ed band begins in 1959, the penultimate year of the “Porterville,” the last of the Golliwog singles, under a Eisenhower era. In El Cerrito, California, a lower mid­ new* name, one of the band’s own cKdolThg IB dle-class suburb in San Francisco’s East Bay, eighth- Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Creedence designa­ graders John Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, tion initially did little to change the band’s status as a like so many other rock 8c roll crazed kids, took mat­ lDuane Eddy, Bill Doggett and, Creedence Clearwater Revival had been waiting for; of course, the Ventures. Fantasy subsequently decided to spring for an entire Hitting the sock hop circuit with “Wipe Out” and the album built around this powerful track. like, they occasionally augmented their instrumental Fvom then on, the hits kept coming in a steady stream bent with the addition of John’s older brother, Tom, as the band churned out six world-beating album sjfej ifr* who not only played rhythm guitar but was willing to eponymous debut released in July of 1968 followed ¡§|f sing. It was a time when “Louie Louie” was the de Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the facto ‘teen - national anthem and notions of innocence Poorboys ( the title taken from a phrase in “Down on and rock 8c roll were not at odds. It was America the Corner”), all in 1969, and Q$smo’s Factory and before Dallas, before Viet Nam, before Nixon; it was Pendulum in 1970 — all recorded and released in a peri­ the way it was supposed to be. od of only three years. By 1964, Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets were Although this was the time of the, vaunted San signed to Fantasy Records, the region’s only local label Francisco sound, Creedence, while geographically near with national distribution. After a few releaj-is, the Haight Ashbury, was more than just the distance over the company, without the band’s compliance, saw fit to Bay Bridge from that hippie vortex, both in the musical change their name to the Golliwogs, the rationale being and spiritual essence. John, Stu, Tom and Doug’s forte that an English sounding name would make them more was the concise, radio friendly, two-sided hit. competitive with the British invasion groups. The They were progressive and anachronistic at the same Golliwogs were represented by seven Fantasy singles, time %^a throwback to the golden era of rock 8c roll including “Don’t Tell Me No Lies,” “Where You when you got two great Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Been,” and “You Can’t Be True.” These songs gained or Ricky Nelson songs for the price of one. Their hit little more than scattered local airplay. singles •*- and they went on to score nine consecutive In 1967, Doug entered the Coast Guard and John Top 10 hits — were in direct counterpoint to the psy­ joined the Army Reserves for a six-month hitch. It was chedelic tracks propagated by their San Francisco

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p e r fr m erso neighbors. The patchouli crowd tended to dismiss them song about where you came from. . . as too commerciali; their hit singles were a mainstay on The term “roots rock” had not yet been invented but, Top 40 radiò. in a real way, Creedenee had already defined it. The But Creedence’s blitzkrieg of hits consisted of intènse band wore its influences as proudly as their flannel three-minute bursts of hard driving rock & roll with shifts and red bandannas. Little Richard, Bo Diddley, the most singular purity and purpose ever to find a Hank Williams, Leadbelly, Motown, Stax, Buck mass audience. Total commitment without a trace of Owens and, of course, Elvis, were some of the stan­ kitsch, IlStrn or pandering to the lowest common dard beaters of real American Musiç celebrated in denominator were hallmarks both of the band’s all-out ÇÇR’s song’s and performances. approach to performance and John Fogerty’s songwrit­ The band was so enamored with the southern roots of ing. It was a nuts-and-bolts approach that cut right rock that John’s vocals often affected a quasi-Creole through the clutter. “ Basically,, Creedenee was a rock & patois, which, in the context of the band’s hillbilly- roll foand. that was our job,” John Fogerty recalled, gospel orientation, came across as a genuine musical underscoring his gift for understatement. Here was a coloration rather than artifice. For the crew from El rock band driven by the work ethic, a harbinger of atti­ Cerrito, “Proud Mary” did, indeed, boin most fero­ tudes tdftfe ¡evinced years later’by Bob Seger, Bruce ciously and most of the uninitiated listeners simply Springsteen and John Mellencamp. assumed the band was from Louisiana, Mississippi or Unlike many Top 40 acts of the day, Creedenee some out-of-the-way Delta bog. Doug Clifford once Clearwater. Revival’s catchy material had a dark side summed up his band’s basic promises “Our music was reflective of the younger Fogerty’s sometimes apoca­ very honest, very straightforward, very ballsy and very lyptic preoccupations. Without resorting to overt danceable.” Rock & roll defined. protest, the songs he wrote for the band, including Creedenee Clearwater Revival thrived as John “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Fortunate Son” and “Bad Fogerty’s songs and presence dominated thé band. Tom Moon Rising,” spoke about class privilege, the Viet Fogerty left the band in 1972, and it soldiered* on as a Nam war and institutionalized repression. Persoci; trio, releasing Mardi Gras, the last original album, in concerns about pride, rejection and nostalgia for an April 1972» The Creedenee juggernaut, after six plat­ American culture that was fading fast were the sub­ inum albums and thirteen earth-shaking Top 10 singles, texts of such megabits as “Proud Mary,” and “Lookin’ ground to a halt as the specter of Watergate began to O ut My Back Door**'* loom. John Fogerty went ¿n to become a virtual one- Creedenee Clearwater Revival’s body of work man band in the guise of the Blue Ridge Rangers and includes no real love songs, no ditties with catchy has, of course, recorded successfully under his own hooks for the sake' of commercial acceptance. The name in both the Seventies and Eighties. Tom Fogerty music was more about bwlity and substance than any issued a number of solo albums; he died two years ago band’s before or since. The approach was uncompro­ after relocating to Arizona. Doug Clifford and Stu mising traditional rock & roll, very basic yet, eloquent Cook stayed active as an intact rhythm section, backing about this country, its people, their dreams and disap­ “Sir” Doug Sahm. Cook went on to play a key rôle in pointments. Despite the group’s astronomical successes country rock’s Southern Pacific. over a very short period, it kept true to its working- The legacy of Creedenee Clearwater Revival has left class East Bay origins, eschewing self-indulgent produc- a mighty mark on the course of American music. Just \ tion and the florid tone that seduced so many of its as rock’s pioneers profoundly influenced Creedenee, contemporaries. John understood the strength of the the band has cast a giant shadow on successive genera­ band when he told a Time reporter in 1969, “If you sit tions for whom rock & roll music has become an around and think of all that money, you can’t write a inalienable birthright. - BOB merlis

creedenee clearwater revival at woodstock. august 1969

t h r t e e n TOP: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES from the go den state california

It’s the pot of gold at the end of Route 66; home to the more significant innovations in music than anywhere in the cutest girls in the world; the place you’d rather be when world. More than simply a destination for dreams, California all the leaves are brown and the ski is gray; where it nev­ is home for a dazzling variety of indigenous sounds, echoed er rains and a certain hotel always has room for the pret­ and enhanced by the legendary locale itself. ty, pretty people. It’s where you come when you’re going Where else, for example, could Brian Wilson have found right back/where you started from. inspiration for what remains the single jnost potent evocation It, of course, is California, that mythic state of mind, where of all things Californian? For the rest of the world, the Beach life is .sweet along palmy streets paved with broken dreams. Boys are California, in all its eternal youth and halcyon hedo­ It’s where the world rims out, merging with surf and sun and nism. There is simply no body of work#®, closely associated sky into a fanciful paradise, of winsome charm and wishful with its point of origin as the sound and substance of these thinking. From the desert to the sea to orange groves rolled 1988 Hall of Fame inductees. The Beach Boys’ sonic simula­ flat by freeways, it’s California now and forever... amen. tion of surfing may have initially ridden the crest of a craze, Notwithstanding Bltfis when it sillies, ©r autumn in New but early Sixties hits like “Surfin,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ York, California is maybe the most celebrated locale in the USA” and “Surfer Girl” (complete with a West Coast geog­ history of popular musjc. Banjo-pluckers sang her praises on raphy lesson from “Huntington to Malibu”) have endured as their way to gold fields and heartbreak. Oakies ached for her anthems to that most alluring element df the California citrus-scented bounty, and every surfer worth his salt can sing lifestyle -Ipiie promise of a free ride. a salute to her gnarly tubes. The same might be said for their drag strip drajnas and high For big band warbler Irving Kaufman, “California and school confidentials. But such is the -group’s identity as a You” was all he needed to put together his first hit in the freez­ Southern California Zeitgeist that is virtually impossible to ing Gotham winter of 1914. Ten years later “California Here imagine “Rhonda” or “Barbara Ann” residing anywhere else. I Come,” first heard in a Broadway musical called Bombo, If not always “Good Vibrations,” then certainly “Fim, Fun, reaped gold for, respectively, A1 Jolsoa, George Price and Fun,” could well be California’s official motto. It’s a connec­ California Ramblers* In 1931, Red Nichols & His Five tion that- sparked again in the hit flick ShampQ® when Pennies cashed in with “California Medley.” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” became the ironic lament of Beverly But it’s more recently that California — the dream, the Hills’ bored and beautiful. reality and the shimmering mirage between the two — has The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and a dozen supersonic surf come into musical maturity. Since the dawn of rock 8c roll, bands fashioned a universally recognized California Sound dozens of tunes touting Califon^a/si- elusive essence have out of high harmonies and Strats. But the state has hosted made the char®. Among tk^many: L eil^irore’# such a wide variety of musical evolutions and revolutions that .^California Nights,” the Rivtefas’ “California Sun,” the lines quickly begin to blur: what began there was soon “California Dr earnin’” by the Mama’s & the Papa’s and everywhere. For much of the best music of the rock & roll era, “£aUfornia Soul” by the 5th Dimension. it really did happen in California first. The list goes on (who can forget “California,” Debbie The prime example, of course, is the sublime and surreal Boone’s plaintive 197.8 follow-up to “You Light Up My epidemic of innovation known as the San Francisco Sound. Life but California’s place in rock reaches far beyond a While lumping together such as absurd profusion of music litany ®f Golden State come-ons. It’s a place that has nurtured under a single rubric may be an audacious conceit, this much

from top left: buffalo Springfield; quicksilver messenger service; the byrds

forty five from the S olden state

is known: the outbreak was largely confined to the San everyone else, ever. Tom Donahue’s eclectic Autumn Records Francisco Bay Area in the mid-Sixties, it was no respecter of roster neatly captured the time and place, thanks largely to race, creed or color, and no one has ever been the same since. Autumn’s A&R chief, and this year’s Hall of Fame inductee, What’s striking, at this distance from California’s psyche­ Sly Stone. The label waxed a dazzling array of native talent, delic epicenter, is the music’s commercial impact. Of San from faux-Edwardians the Beau Brummels to the Mojo Men, Francisco’s pantheon of pioneering early bands » the whose lilting “Sit Down I Think I Love You”4s a sparkling Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger example of the sheen the California sound lent to the most Service, Big Brother & disposable pop ditties. the Holding Company According to the f^m ost went on to wag, there is no achieve genuine main­ “there” in Oakland, stream success. It was, yet San Francisco’s of course, another East Bay has forged a example of California modest yet significant trend-setting, but more musical presence with to the point, the San some key California Francisco Sound was artists. The boogie #1 another heady whiff of El Cerrito’s own the creative audacity Creedence Clear.-water that had always hung Revival rightly belongs over the western edge. to fans from Lodi to The transcendental the bayou,thanks to folk tales of California’s nine Consecutive Top native’s the Grateful 10 singles. But sounds Dead, heard on such more representative of essential albums as San Francisco’s down- If 7 0 ’s 'Workingman’s home sister can be D ead and A m erican found in the East Bay Beauty, evoked imagery Grease of Tower of of an Acadian Califor­ Power and the dazzling nia. The “Dire Wolf” diversity of Sly & The prowled the pine forests Family Stone.faphe of the High Sierras; “A clan’s canny funk-rock Friend of the Devil” was on the lam in the high desert. concoctions, most conspicuously 1968’s “Dance to the But it was the ringing, echo-drenched early hits of Jefferson Music” and “Everyday People,” pointed to the mix-and- Airplane that best represented California to the rest of the match cultural mélange for which California was becoming awakening world. 1967’s “Somebody to Love” remains a renowned. Different strokes for different folks, indeed ... cornerstone of psychedelia’s contribution to pop mainstream. and Sly knows most all of them. The acoustic strumming, the silver dagger sentiments, Grace Down South, Los Angeles had long since established Slick’s slashing vocals backed by Marty Balin’s polished har­ itself as a pop music mecca, a hit-making factory the mony — the song neatly summed up the intense fusion of folk equal of any. From Johnny Otis to Terry Melcher, Lou and rock that had been underway in California for years. Adler to Peter Asher, Jerry Leiber to Mike Stoller, the As for the rest of the motley Sixties crew rocking Babylon best behind-the-boards talent in the business did their By the Bay, the mind boggles. After all, wasn’t that the point? best work in the city’s studio hive. The San Francisco Sound was about being different, from L. A.-based Specialty Records boasted a distinctive West

fort y s X from the g o den state

Coast R&B sound with artists the likes of Little Richard, thing out of Travis AFB, flying eight miles high over Larry Williams, Lloyd Price and others. Producer and tal­ Hollywood.The California Sound would continue its pris­ ent scout extraordinaire Johnny Otis was the spark plug matic refractions of time and place, chasing down a dozen for dozens of homegrown hits. Among Otis’ most endur­ variants on the theme of charmed living — from the soul of ing discoveries: California native and Hall of Fame Boz Scaggs to the simmering barrio rhythms of Santana, inductee Etta James, who recorded for the Bihari War, Malo and other exemplars of Chicano cool, to the hard brothers’ Mo-dern Records, another L.A. enterprise. rock candy of Van Halen, the state has room for it all. While flowers in the But it’s the freewheel­ hair were de rigueur ing, fringe-jacketed for San Francisco, singer-songwriter who something more omi­ has emerged as the nous was sprouting to state’s most identifiable the south, where the musical standard bear­ Beach Boys’ balmy er. The earliest incarna­ reveries had given way tion of the sensitive to smog-and-neon pas­ troubadour can be sion plays, with sound­ traced to such second track courtesy of the generation folk-rockers Doors. On the 1967% as Buffalo Spring-field, break-on-through an uneasy alliance of debut album the group soloists where the song posited a wholly dif­ w as th e th in g . The,7, ferent California land­ group’s first hit, “For scape — one, in its WhafTt’s Worth,” was vividness, as complete a chronicle of the Sunset and compelling as Strip riots, and they surf music or psyche-* would incubate a num­ delic soul. Their rapa­ ber of variations on the cious visions #if. an theme, including the urban wasteland shot b u co lic rev eries of.-' through with lurid Crosby, Stills 8c Nash transcendence, served and Neil Young’s the grateful dead,1969 as a road map to Cal­ ranch-style rock 8c roll. ifornia’s soft and seamy underbelly. There were some Founded in Los Angeles in 1971, the band’s ten-year run spooky characters out there in the charred hillpjbeyond yielded five Number One singles, including such paeans to Tinsel Town, and The Door’s moody grandeur lit more fast-lane living as “Hotel California” and “New Kid in than one weird goldmine scene. This, too, was Town.” Here, California was the stage setting for cryptic cau­ California ... a place where madness lurked in the shad­ tionary tales that found innocent country boys and brazen city ows of a Hollywood bungalow. girls locked in a hot, star-crossed embrace ... small wonder It was an echo heard in the melancholy ballads of Love, earnest songsmiths flocked to Los Angeles in the band’s wake, Arthur Lee’s quintessential Lotus Land dandies, whose lan­ all in search of that elusive Tequila Sunrise. What a wdy to go. guid laments expressed the detached cool of an L.A. in love California has, finally, always been that kind of place: wide with its own wan reflection. The Byrds, on the other hand, open to the widest-eyed naif, consort to the dream weavers, defined their California-ness in Right Stuff rock 8c roll, all Jet Our Lady of Perpetual Indulgence. No wonder no place has Age symmetry and supercharged twelve strings, like some­ ever sounded quite the same. -DAVIN SEAY