The family feud at the centre of Creedence Clearwater Revival
One of the most celebrated outfits of the swamp-rock blues genre was Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Californian band played together in various forms from 1959 before starting to play under the CCR name in 1967. After landing on the new moniker, a truly prolific period of recording and playing live shows followed from 1969 until 1971, with 14 consecutive singles reaching the top ten in America.
However, the band suddenly split in 1972. The year before, there had been a lot of tension within the CCR camp. A number of their members felt John Fogerty was too controlling over their creative direction, which led to the departure of his brother, Tom Fogerty, in early 1971.
The group initially considered replacing Fogerty but decided to continue as a trio. However, they were never really able to get over those initial tensions and split for good in 1972. Sadly, the relationship between the Fogerty brothers never fully healed, even those they later played together on Tom’s third solo album Zephyr National.
John claimed he had wanted to resolve the feud for their mother’s sake. “Tom ended up over the years evolving mentally into some sort of weird Patti Hearst syndrome,” he once said (via Rock and Roll Garage). “That’s what I call it when they kidnap you, and you end up siding with your captors, and that’s what Tom did. In some trick of mental agility, he ended up befriending Saul Zaentz against me. By the end of his life, Tom was saying, ‘Saul is my best friend’. He even wrote me nasty letters saying things like ‘Saul and I will win’. It was very unresolved and very sad.”
Saul Zaentz headed Factory Records, who CCR signed with, and the label was another reason why tensions first arose. When Tom looked to have sided with Zaentz and Factory after a number of legal court cases, it widened the rift between the two Fogerty brothers.
Later, John admitted his conflicted feelings about his relationship with Tom. “I have very confused feelings for my brother because there was a time when things were happy,” he said. After all, the two had grown up together. However, he added: “The best I can say in Tom’s case is he was the older brother, and the younger brother had a lot more talent; therefore, he was jealous even to a greater degree than the other two in Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
Referring to the feud between the studio dance band, The Dorsey Brothers, John added: “I’d think about Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, how they had a feud for years, but they reunited, and their mother was so happy. I wanted to do that with Tom for our mother. So I started a dialogue. I think I wrote him a letter. We talked on the phone at least once.”
It looked like the feud had been resolved, even if only on a slight basis. However, the true tragedy of the Fogerty brothers’ split came in 1990 when Tom died of AIDS. While undergoing a back surgery operation in the 1980s, he was given a blood transfusion that had not been screened for HIV. He died of the virus a few years later.
Discussing his sadness at the familial feud combined with Tom’s early death, John said: “I was sad that life had been taken from Tom. That sadness was mixed with other emotions. But I’ve forgiven Tom. I’m not angry any more. I love my brother. I sure loved the old family days, the way we were as kids. It’s resolved, and somehow Tom knows it’s alright, wherever he is.”
