Creedence Clearwater Revival Biography
By Brooke Luna
Despite hailing from Northern California, Creedence Clearwater Revival released authentic songs detailing blue collar life in the American South. The group, which included John Fogerty (lead vocals, lead guitar, primary songwriter), his older brother, Tom Fogerty (rhythm guitar), Stu Cook (bass), and Doug Clifford (drums) combined swamp, blues, and roots rock to form their own unique blend of Southern rock. Over the course of three years, from 1969 to 1971, CCR cemented themselves as hitmakers, charting nine top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. With more than 30 million records sold worldwide, CCR is one of the most successful groups in rock, and they were only together for four years.
The Fogerty brothers grew up in El Cerrito, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. John Fogerty attended Portola Junior High School in El Cerrito, where, in 1959, he met future bandmate, Doug Clifford, in the school’s music room. Clifford introduced John Fogerty to his friend and fellow musician, Stu Cook, after Fogerty said he was looking to start a band. The group was rounded out by the addition of John Fogerty’s older brother, Tom Fogerty.
After a few years of playing gigs around town and recording singles, they signed with Fantasy Records in 1964. However, their plans were derailed when John Fogerty and Doug Clifford received draft notices for the Vietnam War. John Fogerty joined the Army Reserve and Clifford joined the Coast Guard Reserve, but neither were deployed to Vietnam and John Fogerty received his honorable discharge in 1967. He did two things after being discharged. One, he did cartwheels on his front lawn. Two, he sat down with his guitar and wrote the song “Proud Mary.”
Growing up, John Fogerty was always inspired by the American South, even though he lived thousands of miles away. When he was a child, his mother would play songs by Stephen Foster that were about the South, like “Oh! Susanna” and “Swanee River.” Fogerty idolized Elvis Presley and other artists signed to Sun Records in Memphis, Tenn. He found life in El Cerrito boring, so instead he chose to write about the image of the South he had conjured up. “I hadn’t been to Mississippi when I wrote ‘Proud Mary,’ nor had I been to Louisiana when I wrote ‘Born on the Bayou,’” Fogerty wrote in his 2016 memoir, Fortunate Son. “Somehow it all just seemed familiar to me.”
After John Fogerty and Clifford’s service, the band, which was first referred to as the Blue Velvets and then the Golliwogs, regrouped and changed their name for a third and final time at the advice of Fantasy’s new owner, Saul Zaentz. “Creedence” was the first name of one of Tom Fogerty’s friends, “Clearwater” came from a beer advertisement that John Fogerty had seen, and “Revival” signaled the rebirth of the band.
They released their self-titled album in 1968, which included a cover of “Suzie Q,” to favorable reviews from critics, who singled out John Fogerty as the star of the group. However, the band’s breakthrough success came with their sophomore album, 1969’s “Bayou Country.” They had hits with “Born on the Bayou” and “Proud Mary,” which peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts.
In the midst of their emerging success in 1969, the band was invited to perform both on The Ed Sullivan Show and at Woodstock. At the latter, they took the stage thirty minutes after midnight, dressed in their signature flannel shirts and denim, ready to begin their 11 song, 55-minute set for which they received $10,000 each. The set was filmed, but John Fogerty refused to let it be included in the Woodstock film or its soundtrack because he felt their playing was mediocre, much to the dismay of Cook.
Nonetheless, the hits kept coming as the band continued to put out new music. Led by John Fogerty’s deep, raspy voice and immersive lyrics that advocated for the working class, “Down on the Corner,” “Fortunate Son,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Travelin’ Band,” “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” “Run Through the Jungle,” “Up Around the Bend,” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” were all top 10 hits for CCR. They released three albums, “Bayou Country,” “Green River,” and “Willie and the Poor Boys”in 1969 alone.
The debacle over the Woodstock film wasn’t the beginning of tensions between the band. For a while, Tom Fogerty, Clifford, and Cook felt John Fogerty was ruling the band with an iron fist and they had no input; John Fogerty felt that he was pulling all the weight. Tensions came to a head when Tom Fogerty left the band in 1971. John Fogerty, Cook, and Clifford tried to continue on as a three piece, but Fogerty wasn’t having it and after the disappointing reaction to Mardi Gras, which was released in 1972, the band broke up. John Fogerty was also feuding with their label, Fantasy, during this time. He wanted out of his contract, but to do so they made him sign away his publishing rights. His bandmates sided with Saul Zaentz, giving Zaentz and Fantasy the rights to all of CCR’s recordings. Tom Fogerty died in 1990 due to complications from tuberculosis and although John went to see him before he died, the two brothers never had a meaningful reconciliation.
John Fogerty’s resentment towards his bandmates continued and the band has never reunited. The closest they came was in 1993, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen. The three remaining members of CCR went on stage to accept the award together, but Fogerty refused to play with Cook and Clifford and instead played with Springsteen and Robbie Robertson of The Band.
Cook and Clifford went on to form Creedence Clearwater Revisited and toured until 2019, while John Fogerty still tours the world, playing both CCR songs and material from his solo career.
Although not together anymore, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s music and the impact it had on a generation will always remain. John Fogerty himself said it best when he “wrote a song for everyone, wrote a song for truth.”
