June 22 – Runt Went It Alone

Who among us hasn’t stopped dead and listened in awe to a great guitar solo, or sax bit, or piano flourish and wondered how anyone can get to be so good at playing that instrument? Maybe wished we had that level of talent too. Well how’d you like to be able to play just about all the instruments like that! Today we look at one guy who seemingly can do just that. Todd Rundgren turns 76 today!

Rundgren, or “Runt” as many call him, played in bands along the way including Nazz and Utopia, and often has used his musical friends to help out on his solo works (as most musicians do)…but not always. Take his 1978 hit “Can We Still Be Friends?” for instance. The single off his eighth album, Hermit of Mink Hollow, is all Todd. The whole album is really; even the title references that – Mink Hollow Road, in Woodstock, is where his house was and where he recorded the whole thing himself. The haunting song sounds like an entire band, but was just Todd playing instrument after instrument and over-dubbing the tapes. Even all those backing vocals are him. He wrote and produced the whole album at home all by himself, in fact, two decades before Pro Tools and other computer software would make such tasks semi-easy.

“Can We Still Be Friends” was a top 30 hit for Todd in the U.S. Later Robert Palmer also had a hit with his version of it… but Robert needed four backing musicians.

So, Todd went it alone, which leads us to the Stunningly Solo Seven – seven musicians who’ve done it all – literally – on their records. Like…

Paul McCartney. McC, who turned 82 this week by the way, was at his best with a good band around him. A group called The Beatles comes to mind. Wings wasn’t half-bad either. But once in awhile, he’d follow his own instincts without even trying to listen to other opinions or get others involved. The results have been three albums titled McCartney, McCartney II and recently, McCartney III. We always knew he could write a fantastic tune and play bass well but those albums show us his range was quite a bit broader than that. Take the synthesizer-heavy “Coming Up” from the second such album in 1980. Everything on it was “come up” with by Paul – the writing, the singing, the instruments, the engineering and production. And it became his first North American hit of the ’80s. Mind you, he’d had a few more of those in the preceding two decades!

Steve Winwood. Stevie had been a teen prodigy in the ’60s, a good singer, songwriter and keyboardist. He helped both the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic become major acts all before he was 20. But when he decided to go it alone, he often seemed to do just that. His second solo record, Arc of a Diver is a great example of that. He was the main writer of all seven songs (on the title track, Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is listed as a co-writer) and the producer. The album went platinum in North America and scored him a major hit with “While You See A Chance” and got a bit more airplay for the tasteful song “Arc of a Diver”. On that one, he plays synthesizers of course, but also piano, electric and acoustic guitars, fretless bass, drums and a mandolin!

Dave Grohl, aka Foo Fighters. He was barely noticed behind the drums (and Kurt Cobain) in Nirvana, but when that band came to a crashing halt, Dave went for it, (or took a chance in Steve Winwood’s parlance). Although not as “iconic” as Nirvana, the Foo Fighters have been running for close to 30 years, have a bevy of platinum albums and a museum’s worth of Grammy Awards. Now, of course, as anyone who’s seen them knows, the Foos are a band, led by Grohl. But it wasn’t always that way. The first, self-titled album in 1995, including this great tune, was Dave and … well, just Dave. Except for a wee bit of added guitar from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs on one single track, Grohl did it all. Wrote the songs, played the guitars, drums, bass, anything else he deemed necessary, recorded it and produced it. He really only started assembling a band when he realized he loved playing live and wasn’t quite good enough to play a guitar, drums, bass and sing all simultaneously on stage.

John Fogerty. Whereas Grohl is Mr. Gregarious it would seem, Fogerty seems… well, possibly just a tiny wee bit prickly to be around. He blew up Creedence Clearwater Revival essentially because he couldn’t get along with the others (including his brother Tom) and seemed to feel that he was the only one in the band with any writing skills. He might not have been totally wrong on that, but it didn’t make him popular with the bandmates. So when it was time to make more music, not surprisingly, John seemed to go it alone. His huge 1985 hit album Centerfield, with the title track baseball anthem and the hit “The Old Man Down The Road” was written entirely by him and produced, and played. He’d done about the same thing with his 1973 solo debut The Blue Ridge Rangers , although that one consisted of cover songs like the old country standard “Jambalaya”.

Stevie Wonder. Like Winwood, this Stevie was a teen sensation in the ’60s and quickly established himself as a fantastic piano player and singer, but by the time he was leaving his teens he showed he was a lot more than just that. In sharp contrast to many other big Motown acts who tended to be micromanaged by label boss Berry Gordy Jr., Wonder showed increasing control over his records in the ’70s and by 1972’s Talking Book, was close to a one-man show. The great song “I Believe” on it, used to great effect at the end of the movie High Fidelity, was all-Wonder. Although his then sister-in-law Yvonne Wright helped write it with him, Stevie played everything – piano, clavinet, Moog synthesizer and bass, sang it and produced it himself.

Lenny Kravitz. Unlike Stevie, Lenny pretty much started out doing it all by himself. His 1989 debut album Let Love Rule was mostly just Lenny. He wrote the songs, played most of the instruments and produced it himself. Although the title track did have a couple of session musicians joining him, the song “Sittin’ on top of the World” was entirely by him.

So there you have it. The Stunningly Solo Seven, great artists who took “DIY” to another level!

January 15 – Fogerty Swung For The Fences & Got A Hit

It’s a hit! Ex-CCR singer/songwriter John Fogerty swung and missed a couple of times but hit it big with his third solo album (and first in a decade), 1985‘s Centerfield. The album vaulted Fogerty back onto radio, into the public eye… and into a lot of courtrooms. We’ll get to that later.

Although he’d had marginal success with his 1973 solo album Blue Ridge Rangers which gave him a North American top 20 hit with “Jambalaya”, in general Fogerty had kept a very low profile since one of the States’ most successful bands of the early-’70s (Creedence Clearwater Revival) had broken up. So it was perhaps a surprise when this album came out and sounded so fresh yet so retro all at the same time.

Fogerty is both very talented, and very… well, not the easiest person to work with all the time, according to rumors. Therefore, he took his time with Centerfield and made it just like he liked. By himself. It is a truly solo record, with John writing the songs, playing all the instruments and then mixing and producing it himself. The truly singular vision worked and hit #1 in the U.S. and #2 in Canada and gave him several radio hits, the first in a dozen years for him. The last time he’d been on top of Billboard was 1970 with CCR’s Cosmo’s Factory. Centerfield went double platinum, propelled by the top 10 single “The Old Man Down The Road” (a #1 hit on rock radio charts and a top 10 in Australia as well) as well as the radio hits “Rock & Roll Girls” and the title track.

Reviews were decent enough. Rolling Stone picked it as the sixth best album of ’85. Later on, allmusic would rate it 4.5-stars, despite an up-and-down review. They noted it was “knowingly nostalgic, deliberately mining from Fogerty’s childhood memories and consciously referencing his older works” yet sounding very stuck-in-the-’80s with songs “propelled too often by electronic drums.” they added it was the obvious work of a “Baby Boomer romanticizing TV, rockabilly, baseball and rock and roll girls” yet for all that he wrote a “clutch of terrific songs” like the ode to Sun Records “Big Train from Memphis”, the title track and “’The Old Man Down the Road’, a callback to CCR’s spooky swamp rock.”

That it was, and his old boss thought so too. The result was lawsuit after lawsuit and one of the most famous, bizarre music suits yet. Saul Zaentz, the owner of Fantasy Records, sued Fogerty… for plagiarizing himself! Zaentz said “The Old Man Down the Road” was musically a copy of the CCR tune “Run through the Jungle” which John also wrote. Now that sounds rather weird – Nickelback would never make it out onto the street from a courthouse if artists were regularly sued for sounding like their earlier self – but the legal angle was that Fantasy Records owned publishing rights for the CCR song, and Fogerty put his new album out on Warner Brothers (since then it’s been passed around and you possibly may have a copy on Geffen, Dreamworks or Universal Records). They went to court, and eventually Fogerty pulled out his guitar, played both songs for the musically-happy judge who dismissed the case.

That of course wasn’t the end to it. Fogerty, never a guy to forgive and forget, had put a song on the album called “Zanz Kant Dance” and Saul figured it was about him. He also found it insulting, so back to court they went, with Zaentz suing Fogerty for defamation. I don’t know if he had to demonstrate to the judge that he could dance, but once again Zaentz lost… although Fogerty quickly changed the song and the title a little to “Vanz Kant Dance” which is how it appears on most copies. So that was the end to that right?

If only. Fogerty then counter-sued Zaentz for frivilous harassment, and eventually won his court costs for the other two cases from the old record owner. Seven years later. Fogerty prevailed, but many wonder if he really won, making his reputation rather muddy in the musical world and spending a lot of time in court instead of in the studio or on stage.

On a happier note for the San Francisco baseball fan, his song “Centerfield” has become a baseball traditiion in many ballparks and in 2010 he was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame which inducted the song into the hall. Fogerty got to play it (on a bat-shaped guitar no less!)at the induction ceremony and stand up next to Andre Dawson – a great centerfielder being inducted into the Hall the same day!

May 28 – John’s Birthday Gift To Fans

It’s John Fogerty’s birthday today, so a happy number 78 to him! And it’s an anniversary of sorts for his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival . They made their presence known on this day in 1968 with the release of their self-titled debut album. It delivered glimpses of the greatness soon to come through its eight songs and 33 minutes, but as a whole was a little lacking.

Although it only charted to #52 in the States, it eventually was one of nine CCR albums to go platinum and it introduced listeners to the band which as Allmusic say, were “gloriously out of step with the times.” By this time, CCR had been around for about five years in the San Francisco area, although the name itself was quite new. They’d begun as a group called the Blue Velvets while the members were still in school, then built a following as The Golliwogs. When Fantasy Records signed them, the new boss there Saul Zaentz (a name which would shape the band’s future and haunt Fogerty for decades) wanted them to record but hated the name “Golliwogs.” The album saw John take over lead vocals from his brother Tom, who had to admit, “I could sing but John had a sound!”. While John Fogerty wrote five of the tunes, including “Porterville”, a song they’d released as a single as the Golliwogs previously, the noteworthy singles were both cover songs from the ’50s: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put A Spell On You” and Doug Hawkins (no relation to Screamin’ Jay) “Susie Q.” Drummer Doug Clifford said of it “it was a rockabilly song that sounded like all of the other rockabilly songs” and he wasn’t too far off. However, John Fogerty wanted it on San Fran prog rock station KMPX, so they extended it out to over 8 minutes, added some feedback and “the little telephone box (vocals) in the middle which is the only part I regret.” It lacked the unique quality of later hits the band wrote but would still hit U.S. charts and be the first of 10 top 10 hits they scored to the north in Canada.

Decades later, few see it as a great work, but instead consider it an interesting introduction to a great band. Utimate Classic Rock for example, ranked it as the sixth-best (out of seven) of their albums. they thought “CCR were digging for treasure in the mud of Americana” and that it was a “sampler platter of what the guys… were into, from roadhouse rockabilly to Stax soul.” At the time though, fledgling publication Rolling Stone weren’t as impressed as they would later be by CCR. They liked John well enough, saying he was a “better than average singer” but other than that “there’s nothing else.” How wrong they were! By the end of the following year, they’d have four albums under their belt and four American top 10 hits:  “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Green River” and “Down on the Corner.”

October 16 – CCR Said ‘See Ya’ 50 Years Ago

About two years after the world learned Britain’s top band had broken up (The Beatles, obviously), America’s did the same. Creedence Clearwater Revival officially broke up – for good as it turns out – on this day in 1972.

Astute fans couldn’t have been surprised. Cracks in the band were becoming deeper and more public since early-’71 when Tom Fogerty quit the band he helped start about 13 years earlier. Indeed, Tom, drummer Doug Clifford and bassist Stu Cook had been performing together since starting a band called the Blue Velvets in high school in the late-’50s. The fortunate, but ultimately destructive, moment for them came around 1964 when they added in Tom’s younger brother, John. John could play guitar better, write songs and sing. He sounded a lot like Tom, but the older one deflected that by saying “I could sing, but John had a sound!” The sound got them noticed around the Bay Area as the Golliwogs, and signed to local label Fantasy Records, where they were “an unapologetic throwback to the golden era of rock & roll, (different than) their peers on the progressive, psychedelic San Francisco scene” as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would note.

Another name change, suggested by the record company, and the band were up, up and away. In an amazing four year run, they put out seven studio albums and scored nine American top 10 singles… all featuring John and most written by him, like “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and “Fortunate Son.” They were one of the unexpected highlights of Woodstock and one of the top touring acts of the turn of the decade. That pressure as well as John’s dominance in the band began to take its toll.

“I was alone when I made that music,” John would later say. “I was alone when I made the arrangements, I was alone when I added backing vocals, guitars and other stuff…(the other three) were obsessed with the idea of more control.” That led Tom to quit the band in ’71 after they released their sixth album, Pendulum. They continued to tour and work on a new album (which became Mardi Gras) as a trio. For that record, John threw up his hands in disgust or called their bluff, telling the other two to write songs themselves and play it; he’d only add rhythm guitar on anything but his own songs. The result was their least popular album, and one with only two semi-hit songs, “Sweet Hitch-hiker” and “Someday Never Comes”, both John Fogerty-written and sung. Rolling Stone famously called it the worst album “ever from a major rock band.”

All that coupled with a growing riff between the group and Fantasy Records’ boss Saul Zaentz. They all figured they had a terrible contract with the company, Cook (a business student) blamed Fogerty for signing it. It’s only surprising the split didn’t come sooner!

After that, as we know, things got messy, and fortunes didn’t soar for any of them. Tom Fogerty had a wee bit of success with his ’74 album Myopia (on which all three of the others appear, the closest thing to a real reunion that’s happened) but died young, in 1990. Stu and Doug remained friends and did some work together, touring for awhile as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, playing CCR music with other vocalists… something John sued unsuccessfully to stop. And of course, John’s recorded at times, and even had a major comeback hit in 1985 with Centerfield, but is mostly known for the time and effort he’s spent in litigation with Zaentz, Fantasy Records and his former bandmates. He refused to join Cook or Clifford when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; Tom had passed away by then.

Fans needn’t hold their breath for a cheery, and lucrative reunion, even though John had mellowed a bit and by 2011 said “Never say never… reunion? Yeah it’s possible.” At the time Clifford stated “leopards don’t change their spots…this is just…image-polishing by John,” and nine years later the event hasn’t even been hinted at.

March 3 – The Song So Nice He Got Sued For Playing It Twice

“Mr. Swamp Rock” has his first solo top 10 hit on this day in 1985. John Fogerty had been the voice of and lead guitarist for Creedence Clearwater Revival, the California band which somehow defined the sound of the southeastern backwoods, with hits like “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and “Bad Moon Rising” (they also have the distinction of having the most songs hit #2 in the U.S. without a #1 hit – five). After a couple of relatively unnoticed solo albums in the ’70s, and a nine year hiatus, he hit gold again with his album Centerfield.

The epitome of a solo record, John played all the instruments on it and produced it himself, and the single “Old Man Down the Road” was his biggest hit since CCR had broken up. The title track, it’s worth noting, wasn’t a huge seller as a single but remains a radio staple and earned him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame, a rarity for a musician and quite an honor for the big baseball fan. He got to play the track at the Hall of Fame ceremony in 2010, in front of Andre Dawson, a centerfielder being inducted that day!

As for his top 10 hit, the only person not digging it was Saul Zaentz of Fantasy Records, CCR’s old label. There was no love lost between the two, and Fogerty had put a pointed song on the album entitled “Zanz Kant Danz”, complete with a claymation  video featuring a thieving pig. The old boss sued Fogerty for plagiarizing himself, saying “Old Man Down the Road” was the same as “Run Through the Jungle”, a song Fogerty had written for CCR which Fantasy owned the rights to. Fogerty prevailed when he pulled out his guitar and played both songs in front of the judge!

Disappointingly though, John’s popularity as a solo performer hasn’t had the same universality of CCR’s; though he’s put out seven more albums since – the last being 2020’s Fogerty’s Factory – only two have hit gold status at home and he made the Top 20 singles chart only once more, and that with another song off Centerfield, “Rock and Roll Girls.”

January 5 – Born On The Bayou. Or By The Bay.

Rock got swampier in 1969… Creedence Clearwater Revival were on the rise. They put out their second album, Bayou Country, on this day that year, only seven months after their debut one.

Although the band was a quartet out of California, two things were quickly becoming apparent about them by then. One, that as allmusic would put it, singer John Fogerty “sounds as if he crawled out of the backwoods of Louisiana, instead of being a native San Franciscan.” And two, despite the contributions of his brother Tom, of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, CCR was essentially John Fogerty and a few hired hands. On this album, John wrote six of the seven tracks (with the other being a cover of Little Richard’s hit “Good Golly Miss Molly”), sang, played lead guitar, added some percussion and then produced the record. He saw no reason for it to be any different. “We had a real confrontation”, he says looking back at the making of the record, “everybody wanted to sing, write, make up their own arrangements…this was after ten years of struggling, we had the spotlight.”

Single-minded or not, Fogerty managed to put together a good album that really clarified what would become the band’s highly distinctive “swamp rock” sound with this album. It was highlighted by two spooky tracks running past seven minutes, “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Graveyard Train”, but was dominated by the two singles : “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou.”

“Proud Mary” in particular has become an American standard. The song about leaving the city for a riverboat life was written two days after he’d been discharged from the National Guard and was perhaps an inspirational mantra to himself. The song was the first of five of theirs to get to #2 in the U.S., and was also a top 5 hit in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The single is currently double-platinum in the States; only two years later Ike & Tina Turner scored a gold, Grammy-winning single with their take on it. “Born on the Bayou”, looking back the more conventional CCR song (which is to say unconventional sounding compared to most of what was popular then) , failed to hit the top 40 then but has been so popular since, it’s now certified gold. All in all, the album improved upon the debut. It got to #7 in the U.S., #14 in Canada and while only making #62 in the UK, at least it charted, unlike their first one. Born on the Bayou went gold a year or so after its release and since has reached double platinum status.

Critics then, and since, have probably got the right idea about it. At the time, Rolling Stone said “the good cuts (particularly “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou”) are very good, but the bad ones just don’t make it.” Years later, allmusic would give it a fine 4.5-star rating, better than the debut but not as good as the trio that would soon follow. They complimented their “southern-fried groove” and called “Proud Mary” “timeless…utterly distinctive and addictive.”

The music wasn’t the only thing addictive. John Fogerty loved the press and the attention and tried to take even more control of the band in the coming months. The result was a run of brilliant music and massive success… but a short one. Tom quit not much more than a year later and the band had basically called it a day by 1972 due to the internal strife.

January 5 – Bayou Boogie Built Fans

Rock got swampier in 1969… Creedence Clearwater Revival were on the rise. They put out their second album, Bayou Country, on this day that year, only seven months after their debut one.

Although the band was a quartet out of California, two things were quickly becoming apparent about them by then. One, that as allmusic would put it, singer John Fogerty “sounds as if he crawled out of the backwoods of Louisiana, instead of being a native San Franciscan.” And two, despite the contributions of his brother Tom, of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, CCR was essentially John Fogerty and a few hired hands. On this album, John wrote six of the seven tracks (with the other being a cover of Little Richard’s hit “Good Golly Miss Molly”), sang, played lead guitar, added some percussion and then produced the record. He saw no reason for it to be any different. “We had a real confrontation”, he says looking back at the making of the record, “everybody wanted to sing, write, make up their own arrangements…this was after ten years of struggling, we had the spotlight.”

Single-minded or not, Fogerty managed to put together a good album that really clarified what would become the band’s highly distinctive “swamp rock” sound with this album. It was highlighted by two spooky tracks running past seven minutes, “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Graveyard Train”, but was dominated by the two singles : “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou.”

“Proud Mary” in particular has become an American standard. The song about leaving the city for a riverboat life was written two days after he’d been discharged from the National Guard and was perhaps an inspirational mantra to himself. The song was the first of five of theirs to get to #2 in the U.S., and was also a top 5 hit in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The single is currently double-platinum in the States; only two years later Ike & Tina Turner scored a gold, Grammy-winning single with their take on it. “Born on the Bayou”, looking back the more conventional CCR song (which is to say unconventional sounding compared to most of what was popular then) , failed to hit the top 40 then but has been so popular since, it’s now certified gold. All in all, the album improved upon the debut. It got to #7 in the U.S., #14 in Canada and while only making #62 in the UK, at least it charted, unlike their first one. Bayou Country went gold a year or so after its release and since has reached double platinum status.

Critics then, and since, have probably got the right idea about it. At the time, Rolling Stone said “the good cuts (particularly “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou”) are very good, but the bad ones just don’t make it.” Years later, allmusic would give it a fine 4.5-star rating, better than the debut but not as good as the trio that would soon follow. They complimented their “southern-fried groove” and called “Proud Mary” “timeless…utterly distinctive and addictive.”

The music wasn’t the only thing addictive. Power was too! John Fogerty loved the press and the attention and tried to take even more control of the band in the coming months. The result was a run of brilliant music and massive success… but a short one. Tom quit not much more than a year later and the band had basically called it a day by 1972 due to the internal strife.

October 16 – And Then, CC’R’ Done

About two years after the world learned Britain’s top band had broken up (The Beatles, obviously), America’s did the same. Creedence Clearwater Revival officially broke up – for good as it turns out – on this day in 1972.

Astute fans couldn’t have been surprised. Cracks in the band were growing deeper and more public since early-’71 when Tom Fogerty quit the band he helped start about 13 years earlier. Indeed, Tom, drummer Doug Clifford and bassist Stu Cook had been performing together since starting a band called the Blue Velvets in high school in the late-’50s. The fortunate, but ultimately destructive, moment for them came around 1964 when they added in Tom’s younger brother, John. John could play guitar better, write songs and sing. He sounded a lot like Tom, but the older one deflected that by saying “I could sing, but John had a sound!” The sound got them noticed around the Bay Area as the Golliwogs, and signed to local label Fantasy Records, where they were “an unapologetic throwback to the golden era of rock & roll, (different than) their peers on the progressive, psychedelic San Francisco scene” as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would note.

Another name change, suggested by the record company, and the band were up, up and away. In an amazing four year run, they put out seven studio albums and scored nine American top 10 singles… all featuring John and most written by him, like “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and “Fortunate Son.” They were one of the unexpected highlights of Woodstock and one of the top touring acts of the turn of the decade. That pressure as well as John’s dominance in the band began to take its toll.

“I was alone when I made that music,” John would later say. “I was alone when I made the arrangements, I was alone when I added backing vocals, guitars and other stuff…(the other three) were obsessed with the idea of more control.” That led Tom to quit the band in ’71 after they released their sixth album, Pendulum. They continued to tour and work on a new album (which became Mardi Gras) as a trio. For that record, John threw up his hands in disgust or called their bluff, telling the other two to write songs themselves and play it; he’d only add rhythm guitar on anything but his own songs. The result was their least popular album, and one with only two semi-hit songs, “Sweet Hitch-hiker” and “Someday Never Comes”, both John Fogerty-written and sung. Rolling Stone famously called it the worst album “ever from a major rock band.”

All that coupled with a growing riff between the group and Fantasy Records’ boss Saul Zaentz. They all figured they had a terrible contract with the company, Cook (a business student) blamed Fogerty for signing it. It’s only surprising the split didn’t come sooner!

After that, as we know, things got messy, and fortunes didn’t soar for any of them. Tom Fogerty had a wee bit of success with his ’74 album Myopia (on which all three of the others appear, the closest thing to a real reunion that’s happened) but died young, in 1990. Stu and Doug remained friends and did some work together, touring for awhile as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, playing CCR music with other vocalists… something John sued unsuccessfully to stop. And of course, John’s recorded at times, and even had a major comeback hit in 1985 with Centerfield, but is mostly known for the time and effort he’s spent in litigation with Zaentz, Fantasy Records and his former bandmates. He refused to join Cook or Clifford when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; Tom had passed away by then.

Fans needn’t hold their breath for a cheery, and lucrative reunion, even though John had mellowed a bit and by 2011 said “Never say never… reunion? Yeah it’s possible.” At the time Clifford stated “leopards don’t change their spots…this is just…image-polishing by John,” and nine years later the event hasn’t even been hinted at.

September 6 – The Forgotten Fogerty

The program The Crown illustrates (among other things) the sibling rivalry between Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, and how the younger one was jealous of the elder. A similar kind of reverse situation existed with the “King of Swamp Rock.” And today, we recall his older brother. Tom Fogerty passed away 30 years ago today, from most reports still not getting on well with his younger brother, the more successful John.

The Fogerty’s were California kids, with Tom, born in 1941, being a little more than three years older than John. Both loved music, and to many people’s surprise, Tom was the first out of the gate. He actually led a band with a recording contract in the late-’50s – Spider Webb & the Insects. In ’61, younger John had begun his own band, the Blue Velvets, and Tom joined them, initially the lead guitarist and main vocalist. By the time they’d changed their name to Golliwogs, and had their career being boosted by then-local DJ Casey Kasem, John was taking on more of the responsibility, and by the time they had signed to Fantasy Records and changed names again (to Creedence Clearwater Revival) it was clearly John’s show, with him doing almost all the writing and lead vocals and Tom relegated to the sidelines as rhythm guitarist. Tom was an essential part of CCR during their brief run at the top however. Rising animosity between him and John led him to leave the band and after he quit in 1971 (after Pendulum), they only released one more, less successful LP.

Tom stayed on with Fantasy Records, the label his brother would soon enter into a decades long legal feud with. He’d go on to put out five solo albums, with his first, a self-titled album being the most successful but still not coming close to a shadow of his former band’s popularity, peaking at only #78 in the States. His 1974 album Zephyr National was as close to a CCR reunion as fans would get, with all three of his former bandmates appearing on it – even John on the very CCR-sounding “Joyful Resurrection”. Somehow, despite Tom’s obvious similarity to his brother’s singing voice and CCR-ish titles like “Goin’ Back to Okeefenokee”, it flopped and frankly the public never warmed much to Tom’s own work.

Sadly he died in 1990 several years before CCR got inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and more sad, he died of AIDS which was blamed on tainted blood being given him during a surgery several years prior.

May 28 – The Old Man Down The Road Is Old-ish…But Still Rockin’

Happy 75th to the voice of “swamp rock”, John Fogerty!

Although he’s had a respectable solo career for the past 40 or more years, John’s always remembered for the few brief years Creedence Clearwater Revival were on top of the world. He and his brother Tom formed the band- “Creedence” was a friend’s name and “Clearwater” came from a phrase they heard in a beer ad – and signed to San Fran’s Fantasy Records in the mid-’60s. As Matthew Oshinksy of the Wall Street Journal notes, CCR showed “genius for roots rock as it would be called today,” having amazing success when “if you weren’t writing tripped-out concept albums or redefining your instrument you were likely to be trampled under foot.”

With John at the mic and writing most of their material, success they found. They had two #1 albums in the U.S., the largest number of songs to hit #2 on Billboard without having a #1 hit – five – (in Canada mind you, they notched four-straight #1s in ’70-71) and later on their Chronicle “best of” album would be certified diamond in the U.S.

Solo, he had his biggest success with 1985’s Centerfield, another #1 album which also got him honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame for the baseball-themed title track. as well as his biggest hit without CCR, “The Old Man Down The Road.”

Unfortunately, too much of John’s post-CCR time seems to have been taken up with fights with Fantasy Records over royalties and so forth (one famous lawsuit involves the record label suing him for plagiarizing himself! He won that case and counter-sued Fantasy for legal expenses) and arguing with his ex-bandmates. When CCR was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in ’93, he refused to play with the others and so he brought in Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson and some session musicians to play hits like “Green River” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” in place of the actual band.  A shame as there were probably much more productive uses of his time – Rolling Stone rank him the 87th greatest artist ever and 40th best guitarist.