Creedence Clearwater revival

1969/1970 was an absolutely fortunate two-year run for Creedence Clearwater Revival, happy beyond all expectations: five albums and seven singles, all in the American top ten, an audience that was invariably enthusiastic, and record labels and music critics more gratified than ever before. With the breakup of the Beatles, Creedence then graduated to the status of sole, undisputed "hit single band" in the United States, a dance machine capable of winning over opposing factions: hippies who loved psychedelia and rock'n'roll nostalgics, high schoolers and college students, mainstream radio and alternative frequencies. By the time "Cosmo's Factory" came out, few believed in further artistic exploits, and yet the four Californians stunned the world once again.

The fifth Creedence Clearwater Revival album (July 1970) actually came out at a moment of high tension, stress and internal chaos: having returned in spring from their first European tour (which included a stop at the historic Royal Albert Hall in London), the band needed to break away from the success/album/concert/mass media routine and unwind a little.

The overbearing dominance of leader John Fogerty (lead vocals and guitar, sax, keyboards, songwriter and manager) was starting to chafe on the rest of the band, particularly his older brother Tom, with whom relations had never been idyllic. Despite the problems, what they were about to record was the finest and best-selling album of their career, a solemn epitaph to two years lived at full throttle.

"Cosmo's Factory" (No. 1 in the US and UK) represents Creedence's stylistic summa, managing to bring together every musical ingredient of theirs: rousing rock anthems tailor-made for the charts, soft soul ballads, tributes to their roots (rock'n'roll, blues and R&B), country and extended instrumental jams. Disproving accusations of being "a band only good for 45s", Creedence crafted their most cohesive record, one in which every song has its own story to tell. The album opens with "Ramble Tamble", a seething up-tempo rocker that barrels along at full steam like a freight train, driven by an incisive, repeated riff and a vocal performance as raspy as ever. Just when it seems like it's all over, the track slows down and transforms: the guitars cool the impetuous heat of the earlier passages and veer into a slow ballad that carries on undisturbed until yet another tempo change and a fast close that mirrors the opening section.

Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" opens the covers section (four in all on the album) and calms things down with a brilliant rock/blues showing, complete with orthodox solos and piano in the background. But it's only a brief respite, because lurking around the corner is the unleashed "Travelin' Band", with its tenor sax intro and the merciless drive of bass and drums: John's voice always sounds on the verge of cracking, such is the fervor of his delivery. Getting up and dancing feels almost involuntary.

The pulse eases slightly with Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby", an effective tribute to the rock'n'roll of Sun Records, the storied label of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Orbison himself. As with Diddley, what stands out here is the respectful relationship with 1950s roots and the chameleon-like abilities that earned them the nickname "the Fifties' press office for the new generation".

With "Lookin' Out My Back Door" they explore country-rock horizons: the theme of the journey (closer to the fun, picaresque adventures told by Mark Twain than to the lysergic road trip of "Easy Rider") unfolds through a shuffle with a contagious chorus, an effective, bouncing melody. Practically the opposite of "Run Through The Jungle", which with its guitar explosions and obsessive riffs perfectly captures the setting referenced in the title. Out comes the dustiest, most gloomy side of Creedence, masters of that swampy "jungle beat" that can't help but recall Vietnam: fleeing soldiers, tropical trees and scorching cascades of napalm.

Unsettling scenarios that find partial relief with "Up Around The Bend" and "My Baby Left Me": a great electric guitar riff, choruses and a perfect refrain for the former, a brilliant rock'n'roll rereading (originally Presley's, 1956) and the usual stop-and-go dynamics for the latter.

At this point everything is set for John Fogerty's great masterpiece, the splendid "Who'll Stop The Rain", which returns to the subject of war and the Viet Cong. The mood, however, is more serene, choral and relaxed than on "Jungle", lit up as it is by open acoustic guitar phrasing and vocal harmonies worthy of a generational anthem.

With Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", the group shows it has fully absorbed Black musical roots too, effortlessly reinterpreting them and uncovering new expressive territories and possibilities the original author never dreamed of. Here Gaye's original loses all its sexy, glamorous sheen, getting its hands dirty over eleven grueling, thrilling minutes of hallucinated soul-rock jamming. The track drags on slow and unshakeable through insinuating guitar whirls and rock-solid rhythmic reins (the duo of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford in blistering form) toward an ending that never quite arrives and instead simply fades away.

The closing "Long As I Can See The Light", with its lazy soul groove (echoing the example set by the Band of Bob Dylan), brings the record to a romantic close, with a languid saxophone and an optimistic gaze toward the future.

In forty-two minutes, Fogerty's songcraft, by turns fatalistic and angry, compassionate, reaches its creative peak.

It took just a few years to carry Creedence to the very top of rock's pantheon: a celestial abode the band, however, never much cared for. Creedence are too in love with unfashionable values to ever be "trendy": no drugs/sex/violence, no revolutionary ideals, no allegiance to the avant-garde or the underground. The pure, elemental energy pouring out of those songs needs no secret code to be decrypted. No shared rock-star posturing, let alone a common vocabulary or wardrobe.

For these reasons they never crossed the threshold from cult act to cultural icon: unlike the Stones, Dylan or the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival never inhabited teenagers' wet dreams. With those beards and glasses, nobody was picking anyone up, and those checked flannel shirts wouldn't come back into style for another twenty years. And yet that blend of primitive rock and plainspoken populist statements would make Creedence the quintessential "working class" rock band: from Keith Richards to Bruce Springsteen and kindred spirits (Petty/Mellencamp/Seger), through to the fringes of Southern rock (Lynyrd Skynyrd) and alt-country (Gram Parsons; Long Ryders; Uncle Tupelo), there's always someone who admired them, absorbed them, and echoed them in their own music.

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29/10/2006