MUSIC

CCR re-release shows greatness

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 05, 2008

Nobody was all that surprised that 63-year-old John Fogerty tore up the stage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival last weekend. Some were a little surprised that he looked exactly as he looked 40 years ago — jeans, flannel shirt, red bandana 'round his neck — when Creedence Clearwater Revival released its debut album.

The simple answer is he's never had to change his look — even the bandana came back into hipster vogue — because his music never went out of style, not for a minute (See also classic rock radio, your parents' CDs, your pals' CDs, every single major league baseball game and any Fourth of July picnic anywhere in the country).

The reality is a little more complex. See, for about a year and a half, Creedence Clearwater Revival was the greatest American rock band in the world and one of the most popular. This didn't (and doesn't) happen all that often. The Stooges and the Velvet Underground didn't sell squat. Dylan's sales figures were never mind-blowing. Beatles, Stones and Led Zep were British.

From 1969 to early 1971, CCR was both bulletproof and shockingly prolific.

Check the facts: All five (five!!) albums released in that period went Top 10 (the 1968 self-titled debut hit No. 52) and eventually (at least) platinum. Nobody had ever gone on a tear like that before. Nobody will again. All of them (and the debut) were re-released Sept. 30 in new and excellent expanded, remastered CD editions.

CCR wrote a song for everyone. Punks such as the Minutemen admired their populism, musical simplicity and fashion sense (former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt still flies the flannel). Indie rock godfathers Sonic Youth named one of its epochal albums "Bad Moon Rising." And are there modern country/roots rockers who don't owe something to CCR?

The really weird thing is that Fogerty was able to make all of the music that screamed Southern/swampy/Nawlins authenticity while being a kid from El Cerrito, a California dreamer who had been hacking out rock ditties since his teens.

He got his bona fides the old-fashioned way — he earned them. When he sang about being "stuck in-a Lo-diiii agaiiiin," you believed utterly that he had done his share of empty one-nighters there, here and everywhere.

The first two albums, "Creedence Clearwater Revival" and "Bayou Country," are somewhat throat-clearing. The former's keeper is "Suzie Q," and the reissue appends a monstrous 11-minute live version from the Fillmore in '69.

No wonder (according to myth) the acid rockers were lukewarm on them — Fogerty and the underrated rhythm section of bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford could outplay most of them, and CCR's jams had more to do with vamping on one or two chords rather than guitar-noodling. Turns out CCR were more Velvet Underground than Grateful Dead. Who knew?

"Bayou Country" is getting there with "Born on a Bayou" (which he was not), "Proud Mary," "Bootleg," the jam "Keep on Chooglin'" and a completely unnecessary "Good Golly Miss Molly."

"Green River" is the first masterpiece, where the band's mutant Americana comes into focus. The title track is two minutes of backwoods nostalgia; "Bad Moon Rising" predicts the worst for everyone ("hope you/ are quite prepared to die"); "Lodi" remembers the worst for himself. Alex Chilton probably listened to their cover of Ray Charles' "Night Time is the Right Time" about a million times.

The tune-driven "Willy and the Poor Boys" continues the amazing streak, the friendly "Down on the Corner," the rollicking "It Came Out of the Sky" and a surprisingly lovely, energetic take on Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields." And that's the first three songs. "Fortunate Son" remains the most punk rock anti-war song of the 1960s, a howl of class rage nobody's ever been able to quite top for punch and verve.

The biggest seller and qualitative peak, "Cosmo's Factory," is a masterpiece of turning disparate genres into your own sound. (It also went No. 11 on the Billboard R&B chart; the epic, 11-minute "I Heard It Though The Grapevine" couldn't have hurt). "Lookin' Out My Backdoor" is so hippiesh that, as a kid staring at the cover of "Factory," I thought Doug Clifford (beard, 'stache, bike) was Fogerty. Only a guy who looked like that could write a song that sounded that everyday laid-back.

Yet, "Up Around the Bend" has a switch-blade riff, "Run Though the Jungle" is a creepy rocker, and "Ramble Tamble" moves from R&B jam to swamp-psych blowout without missing a beat.

Oddly, they seemed to go full-on psychedelic on "Pendulum," an album lots of CCR fans have never even heard. The big hits were "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and "Hey Tonight" (which the Replacements and other hipster '80s bar rockers probably listened to about a million times). The horns have not aged well, but the rest have, even the bongos on "Pagan Baby." "Rude Awakening" is no worse than the side two of any obscure psych-rock record. Bonus tracks include "45 Revolutions Per Minute (Parts 1 & 2)," a tape collage Beatles tribute a la "Revolution 9." It's the squarest-sounding thing the band ever did.

Then guitarist Tom Fogerty left, the album "Mardi Gras" followed, and the band soon fell to pieces.

One final note: It's somehow poetic that the populist band that was never quite spacey enough for their San Francisco peers didn't quite ever reach pop's promised land either — CCR had nine Top 10 singles, five No. 2 singles and never a No. 1. They just have to settle for being the greatest American rock band of all time.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926