Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River Review

Hailing from El Cerrito, California, Creedence Clearwater Revival should've logically been another hippie collective waving flowers in neighboring San Francisco. As these 40th-anniversary editions suggest, leader John Fogerty instead invented an alternate identity for his band based on its otherwise unremarkable 1968 debut album's rumbling reinvention of a rock oldie. His singing voice swollen with the exaggerated vowels and slurred consonants of shouting Southern bluesmen, Fogerty discovered his songwriting voice on 1969's auspicious Bayou Country when he further explored the Louisiana roots of CCR's hit "Suzie Q" cover. He wasn't, as his song proclaimed, "born on the bayou." But he could still conjure a Cajun swamp with a thick and steamy tangle of guitars for the instant classic "Proud Mary."...full text Creedence Clearwater Revival was a commercial juggernaut, with nine Top 10 hits between 1969-71, even outselling The Beatles in 1969. Although encamped right across the bay from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, CCR never injected the slightest hint of peace, love and understanding into its canon. The band had a different inspiration. The strange subterranean world of an imagined South—twisted, eerie and nefarious—inflamed John Fogerty’s mind with images of voodoo ceremonies under gnarled trees dripping with Spanish moss and portent. A fan of horror flicks and Edgar Allan Poe, he urged his band to cover Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You,” penned the dirge freakout “Gloomy,” and put a brittle bite into Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q,” adding dirty, side-winding guitar that slithered into Fogerty’s heart of darkness for an extended jam....full text They didn’t invent rock and roll, but no American band ever understood its essence and mastered its idioms and influences better than Creedence Clearwater Revival. A foursome that included exciting and forceful main songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist John Fogerty, second guitarist Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford forged an instantly identifiable sound that smoothly incorporated everything in the rock canon as if they created it. The six albums reissued under the 40th anniversary banner are spiced by the presence of several great bonus live tracks and alternate takes. Just load a multi-disc player with these six discs and enjoy a band that never worried about categories or trends, but simply wrote, sang and played magnificent rock and roll....full text