2/4/2023 0 Comments Brother p touch label makerUnlike their rock ’n’ roll peers, all four men were married by the time the band hit paydirt in the late ’60s. It’s strange, then, that Lingan describes their most popular song, "Fortunate Son," as a "turning away from middle-class values, whether leaving a good job or decrying the military." In other passages, he contradicts this reading. You know everyone should be able to sit and tap their foot, or say, ‘Wow! That’s the right thing!’"Ĭreedence fed off the youthful energy of the counterculture, but they were never a protest band. Music "should unite, as corny as that is. "I’m not trying to polarize hippies against their parents," Fogerty said. One squadron in Vietnam blared their music into the jungles at night when they launched attacks on Charlie, Fogerty shares in his memoir. "You’re never playing that stupid psychedelic shit." Hippies liked Creedence, but soldiers loved them. "I love y'all," she sputters, dead drunk. Even Joplin stumbles in midway through the book. Bob Dylan and Elvis both picked "Proud Mary" as their favorite song of 1969. And because their songs weren’t overdetermined by political events, they enjoyed a broad fanbase: a "remarkable range of high school students, truck stoppers, heads, and miscellaneous," as Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote. Fogerty’s quality control and businesslike approach to crafting hit singles yielded three platinum albums in one year. The rest of the band knew they were riding on coattails. Fogerty relates the episode in his memoir, saying he can still hear the drums are slow on the final track. He proceeded to cut out all the late beats from the tape recording, then drove to the drummer’s house in a rage and threw the snippets in his face. When recording their cover of the Lead Belly song "Cotton Fields," Fogerty became so upset with Clifford not being able to keep time on the drums that he kicked everyone out of the studio. He occasionally belittled his bandmates in their studio (fittingly named the Factory), but his knowledge truly dwarfed theirs. And he didn’t seem to care.Įxcept Fogerty did care-about the music. To Lingan, the episode shows the tight leash Fogerty kept everyone on: He wrote all the songs, produced all the records, and recorded all the background vocals because he believed his bandmates couldn’t sing. Lingan places the reader backstage, hearing the chants of those in attendance and seeing Fogerty unmoved while his bandmates plead to go back out. Tom Fogerty died in 1990.) Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton were apparently in the audience, but earlier in the tour Fogerty had told the band they would no longer perform encores. (He did not interview John Fogerty, speaking instead with Clifford and Cook. It avoids the real reason the players quit: resentment.īeginning the book with the band’s 1970 concert at Royal Albert Hall, Lingan puts himself firmly on one side of that split. Telling the story in this way not only drains the band of its artistry, it deflates the personal drama. He speaks of them being "awkwardly in thrall to Black culture" alongside other white musicians who would "appropriate" black art, citing composer Steve Reich’s early success "It’s Gonna Rain." And as for the breakup, John Fogerty was stubborn, terribly stubborn, and couldn’t share responsibility with his brother or friends-never mind their lesser skill. Lingan breathlessly recounts how the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act passed Congress in 1968, the same year CCR happened to record "Green River." He reproduces the feminist writer Ellen Willis’s pablum about abortion rights the following year, then notes how the band released "Bad Moon Rising." Whereas Creedence wanted you to hear echoes of black artists like Little Richard in their work, Lingan wants you to know: The band stole that sound. What begins as historical context ends in a kind of reproach. He measures Creedence’s success by its political effects, judging the band against currently fashionable beliefs about the environment, sex, and race. What’s worse, as is common among biographers today, Lingan spills much ink moralizing. The book, however, is mostly superfluous after the 2015 release of frontman John Fogerty’s memoir Fortunate Son, which recounted everything a fan or fellow songwriter would want to know. In A Song for Everyone, John Lingan chronicles what’s been called "the saddest story in rock and roll," following Creedence from their school days, to their meteoric rise in the late 1960s, to their acrimonious split in the early ’70s. But nothing could save John and Tom Fogerty, Stu Cook, and Doug Clifford from each other. They dressed plainly in working man’s flannels, sipped Pepsis before shows, and steered clear of the smack that killed Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Even at the height of their influence, Creedence Clearwater Revival resisted the worst temptations of their age.
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