No fortunate one

I've knocked another beloved artist off a pedestal by reading Hank Bordowitz's Bad Moon Rising: The Unofficial History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Back in junior high and high school in the late 60's and early 70's, I owned practically every single that CCR released and could sing them all note for note. The most astonishing thing about this book was that it reminded me that all their great music (12 hit singles, many of them double-sided hits, and 7 albums) was recorded and released in the span of only four years, 1968-1972. They could do grungy swamp rock ("Susie Q," "Green River"), good time rock & roll ("Travelin' Band," "Hey Tonight"), social commentary ("Fortunate Son"), goofy nonsense ("Lookin' Out My Back Door") and downright spooky unclassifiable stuff, like my very favorite CCR song "Run Through the Jungle," which I remember playing at midnight (through headphones) on summer nights to scare myself silly and get tingles up and down my spine.

Most of us know the story of how the band imploded in the early 70's; lead singer and songwriter John Fogerty broke the band up after his brother Tom left and one last album by the trio of Fogerty, Stu Cook, and Doug Clifford was critically lambasted (though it did have one last great song, "Sweet Hitch-Hiker"). Fogerty, lauded as a musical genius, was expected to have a great solo career, but instead he got embroiled in nasty legal problems with his record company, Fantasy, and has only produced 5 albums of original material in the last 35+ years, none of which has lived up to his reputation, critically or commercially.

I'd always been on his side in his struggles against Fantasy and its head Saul Zaentz, but this book gives a more complex picture of those struggles, and, while Zaentz still comes out an asshole, it turns out Fogerty, undeniably a massive talent but also something of an egomaniac, did as much to sabotage his own career as anyone else by holding onto vengeful grudges (against Zaentz, his former bandmates, and his brother) and never even attempting to take the high road by forgiving and forgetting. The saddest chapter is the tale of their "reunion" when CCR was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993; Fogerty told the event's organizers that, while he would allow the rest of CCR to appear with him at the induction, he would not perform with them, so the house band, with the addition of Bruce Springsteen, played instead while the other guys, who had been reheasing for a performance that night, got the cold shoulder.

The book was written with the cooperation of Cook and Clifford, and the son of the late Tom Fogerty, but with no input from John Fogerty. It is to the author's credit that his story still feels fairly balanced, with Fogerty coming off more a tragic, pitiable figure than a devilish villain. The book feels a bit overstuffed with critical commentary on the music, without doing a very good job at actually analyzing the music, but that's a relatively minor sticking point. It's basically a good read, though I should note that the edition I read was the original from over 10 years ago, and apparently a revised version came out in 2007. However, it seems as if little has changed since then: Fogerty still puts out a well-received but unspectacular "comeback" album once every 10 years or so, and Doug and Stu have continued struggling along in the music business, at one time reuniting as Creedence Clearwater Revisited without Fogerty and without much success. A sad story indeed.