I’m a rock/metal guy now and always have been. I grew up listening to classic rock because that’s all my dad listened to (I’m 33 now). I have very wide musical tastes but until the last few years I refused to listen to classic rock because my dad burned me out on it growing up.
So recently I’ve opened up to some of the big bands of classic rock and am listening through their catalogs, not just the hits.
I made my way to CCR Chronicles Vol 1, which I think is a greatest hits collection or something.
Anyway, after listening through this thing I can’t believe how huge these guys were and how many MONSTER hits they had that have endured the ages. I always knew they were big, but I never realized just how many enduring singles they generated over their somewhat short time in the spot light. There are too many to list here. Pretty much every song on this thing is a huge hit, and most of them are good tunes too, not throw away pop.
How did these guys rank amongt the other greats of the time period? They’ve always seemed like one of those bands that got huge after they broke up, but I’m probably wrong.
I assume you are referring to Creedence Clearwater Revival? Because I’m 51 years old and I can’t think of any other band that has those initials. I also cant’ recall anyone referring to them that way - just “creedence”.
And they were huge at the time, to answer your question. “Willy and the Poor Boys” was on an endless loop in my house in 1969. (I was 11, but my three sisters were 16, 17 and 19)
I’m in my 20’s and can’t think of any other band worthy enough to fulfill those initials.
I never felt like they were huge as Elvis proportions, but they are definitely one of the big bands of note. I still groove out to their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
They were big in the 60s when they were new and big on replay in the 70s. I knew what the initials are, and I have all their studio albums on CD. I think that they were one of the truly great bands.
I would put them in the category of someone like The Eagles or Chicago (before Cetera took over - when Chicago was good) - as ubiquitous to the soundtrack of pop music as any band in that era, but in almost a background kinda way. Fogerty, like Henley and Fry or the Chicago boys, didn’t end up on the cover of everything and stand out as celebrities. Then everything fell apart with CCR both internally and with the label/label owner Saul Zaentz and they (well, Fogerty) disappeared for a long time.
Fwiw, Fogerty is just a brilliant songwriter, excellent rock singer and really, really good guitar player.
So, yeah, Creedance, CCR or whatever you want to call them are that good. Simple, hummable songs that you can’t get out of your head and don’t really want to anyway…
Creedence was HUGE in the Bay Area when I was in high school. Not surprising, considering their origins. They started hitting it big right when the The Beatles were breaking up and sort of naturally took their place for a lot of kids. I remember when their 1970 show at Oakland was simulcast on local TV; everyone was talking about it the next day.
I’ll ditto that John is a terrific guitar player. From what I’ve read, he seems like an all-around nice guy, too.
Welllll…he had a lot to do with the band breaking up and he never did reconcile with his brother before his brother’s death. I get the impression he has mellowed some, but at the time it seems he was a bit dictatorial and the whole Pendulum debacle comes off as more than a little petulant and petty.
They were huge, but *juuuuust *short of being so huge that they burned out. Hence, they achieved enduring classic status and will live forever.
Fogerty won’t play any more Credence songs in concert (I’ve heard) because any time he does, money goes directly into Zaentz’s pocket. But his newer, Post-CCR songs are just as good. Check out “Centerfield” for a (relatively) recent classic.
Interesting bit of trivia. Unless it’s changed in the last five or ten years, CCR is the band with the most number two hits (7) without ever achieving a number 1 on the Billboard charts in the US. They’ve had a total of 13 top ten hits (10 of them top five). None ever topped the charts.
That’s weird. I came into this thread to make exactly the same comment. Except that my Billboard Book of Top Forty Hits lists only five number 2s: “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Green River,” Travelin’ Band," and “Looking Out My Back Door.” They lost out to Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy,” Henry Mancini’s “Love Theme from ‘Romeo and Juliet’,” Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and Diana Ross’ “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Only two others were top 5, “Down on the Corner” at 3 and “Up Around the Bend” at 4. They should have covered “Over Under Sideways Down.”
All seven top 5 singles were released in an 18-month span over 1969 and 1970. Not a record. Both Elvis and the Beatles did better.
Blood, Sweat & Tears also had three successive number 2s in 1969. Top 40 radio was cracking at the seams. FM was the way to go.
Wasn’t there an article in “Rolling Stone” magazine a few years ago on which bands from the 1960s/70s do with today’s audience and CCR was at the bottom? Beatles and Black Sabbath were at the top or close to it. For some reason there never has been a great deal written about them. But they were popular 40 years ago: on both commercialized top 40 AM stations and the cooler, hipper FM radio.
No, FM pretty much avoided CCR once they started making hits. When I was in college, they were considered a top-40 group only and got next to no airplay on our radio station.
That was once the case, but has not been true for some time now. His live album Premonition (released 1998) is full of Creedence songs. And according to Wikipedia, “The sale of Fantasy Records to Concord Records in 2004 ended the 30±year estrangement between Fogerty and his former label as the new owners took steps to restore royalty rights Fogerty gave up in order to be released from his contract with Fantasy in the mid 1970s.” I always liked the (probably apocryphal) story that a friend once told him he needed to sing Creedence again, or else “Proud Mary” would come to be known as a Tina Turner song.
Good album, hard to believe it’s been twenty-four years. For what it’s worth, his recent Revival is very strong, and contains the wry self-referential rocker “Creedence Song.” Highly recommended, as is, of course, the entire Creedence Clearwater Revival back catalogue.
He said that since he wrote the songs, arranged them and was the lead singer, he should be in charge. Apparently his band disagreed. They sued to keep the name. It got ugly, expensive and wasteful.
