“Crushed”: the one irreconcilable relationship that devastated John Fogerty forever
Arguments, feuds, and frayed relationships can hardly be described as a novelty within the music industry, but exceedingly few of those feuds are quite as vicious, enduring, or utterly heartbreaking as that which plagued the tenure of hippie-era heroes, Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Although John Fogerty’s swamp rock pioneers are inseparably linked to that innovative age of Woodstock, hippiedom, and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, their history as a band actually stretched back much further.
It was in the late 1950s that the first incarnation of the group first emerged, and during those early days, it was John Fogerty’s older brother, Tom, who occupied the role of band leader. If you are a sibling or have ever encountered a sibling dynamic, you can likely guess where things go from there.
For the uninitiated few, though, John Fogerty eventually rose to become the band’s premier songwriter, and as a result, he tended to have the final word on the musical direction of the band, a fact that rather annoyed his older brother, Tom. So much so that, even during the late 1960s glory years, Creedence was routinely overshadowed by the ever-intensifying sibling rivalry within its ranks.
Eventually, the relationship became so strained that Tom Fogerty left the band, shortly after the release of the legendary ‘Have You Ever Seen The Rain’, a song written specifically about the decaying inter-band relationship. Not only did the brothers separate musically, but they also refused to speak to each other for multiple years, spurred on by the guitarist’s decision to side with Fantasy Records when it came to John Fogerty’s multiple lawsuits against CCR’s former label.
Both Tom and John embarked upon their respective solo careers in the wake of Creedence’s ultimate demise in 1972, and the feud raged on throughout it all. While there may have been some expectation of an eventual reconciliation, that chance was cruelly snatched away in 1990, when Tom Fogerty passed away, having suffered from tuberculosis and AIDS.
According to his memoir, John Fogerty did visit his ailing brother on multiple occasions prior to his death, but there never seemed to be a solid reconciliation between the pair. Speaking at his brother’s funeral, the songwriter poignantly noted, “We wanted to grow up and be musicians. I guess we achieved half of that, becoming rock’n’roll stars. We didn’t necessarily grow up.”
Reflecting on the troubled relationships within Creedence Clearwater Revival, and its eventual break-up, Fogerty told The Guardian in 2013, “I was devastated. I was just crushed… The way I try to say it now is I didn’t feel very good, and when you don’t feel very good, you don’t do things the way you’d do them if you were normal… I was very confused.”
In recent years, Fogerty has been able to look back more fondly upon his time with CCR, having regained ownership of his material from those years, and performing that iconic discography all across the globe. Still, though, the pain of that break-up, and how it manifested itself in the severing of his relationship with his brother, Tom, isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon.
