The 10 best songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up over half a century ago after enjoying a solitary year of peak success. However, since then, their popularity has continued to be in a state of constant revival as the band uphold a spiritual sense of the 1960s and all that entails. From the tempestuous end that led to a long-running feud to the visceral vitality of their music, they are an emblem of the American zeitgeist in the 1960s and that remains a thrilling force to behold.
“Creedence Clearwater Revival … were progressive and anachronistic at the same time. An unapologetic throwback to the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll, they broke ranks with their peers on the progressive, psychedelic San Francisco scene. Their approach was basic and uncompromising, holding true to the band members’ working-class origins,” Bruce Springsteen said when he inducted them to the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame. Concluding: “I stand here tonight still envious of that music’s power and its simplicity.”
Consisting of Doug Clifford on drums, bassist Stu Cook, guitarist Tom Fogerty, and singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer John Fogerty, the band had a pointed impact with that simplified power. This is a factor that can often be lost when you look at their former reputation in the Bay Area scene as the ‘Boy Scouts of Rock’, but with fierce protest anthems and thunderous melodies, they proved that there is more to music than following the hip trends of freakiness.
This stern method of staying in their lane and driving a blistering trail therein provided them with a back catalogue that simply everyone could get onboard with. Thus, they might not have become some weird cultural phenomenon, but their tunes have outstayed any fads, solidifying them as a refined gem in the counterculture crown. Evidence for this comes from the shear quality of the ten tracks we have picked out below.
The 10 best songs by Credence Clearwater Revival:
10. ‘Green River’
Part of the beauty of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s music comes from the tightness of the band. Despite the bitter end, within the songs themselves the force of brotherhood is there to behold. As Clifford once bemoaned, “Everyone has the most fucking respect for the Beatles. Well, we’re the biggest American group.” And while they might differ in other areas, the sense of CCR being an outfit that waxed and waned on each other’s strength is decidedly Beatlesque and imbues their music with a similar wallop of energy.
The backstory to this early epic typifies that. “‘Green River’ is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California,” John Fogerty says in Storytellers. “I went there with my family every year until I was ten. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there. There was a rope hanging from the tree. Certainly dragonflies, bullfrogs. There was a little cabin we would stay in owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody.” The song is brimming with that sense of shared nostalgia within the band.
9. ‘It’s Just a Thought’
John Fogerty’s voice is the sort that could silence a hurricane, and with ‘It’s Just a Thought’ we hear his growl hit an impassioned height. Cutting through a rolling bassline, John Fogerty’s topline vocal melody sloshes great glugs of dark energy into this otherwise laidback anthem. On the strength of that vocal performance alone, the song is allowed to build from a very simple rhythm section set-up towards sweet ballad.
When Springsteen credited the power of their simplicity it was surely this sort of track he had in mind. The composition shows their savviness when it comes to songwriting. Throughout the song, you expect a twist or turn – we have come to expect that from such a steady driving rhythm – but the band subvert this expectation by just laying down a vocal melody and not a lot else. In doing so, they layer the song with a strange brooding aura that adds a level of power to what is essentially a mere bassline.
8. ‘Suzie Q’
Written by Dale Hawkins in the late 1950s, Creedence Clearwater Revival released their version of ‘Susie Q’ around a decade later in 1968 as their first single. The track is lyrically simplistic, a sweet love song written to Susie Q, with verses full of repeated compliments and requests to “say that you’ll be mine”. Creedence take the rockabilly song and refine its sound, with clean picked guitar and effortless riffs, steady drums and John Fogerty’s deep vocals.
These elements exhibit the band’s unique cohesion and with that singularity, they make the song their own. The track charted at #11 and became perhaps the most well-known version of the song. It was featured on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s self-titled album in the same year, though it had almost doubled in length, a sign of the progression creeping into their work.
7. ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’
Littered with roots rock references like the skiffle rattle that adds an old school air, ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’ perfectly shows how CCR were able to capture the zeitgeist in some mystic way. As John Fogerty said regarding how the song came to the fore during a concert in 2007: “Well, this next song has a bit of a fable surrounding it. A lot of folks seem to think I sang this song at Woodstock way back then. No. I was at Woodstock 1969. I think. It was a nice event. I’m a California kid. I went up there and saw a whole bunch of really nice young people. Hairy. Colourful.”
Continuing: “It started to rain, and got really muddy, and then half a million people took their clothes off! Boomer generation making its presence known, I guess. Anyway, then I went home and wrote this song.” With thinly veiled protests of the Vietnam War also making themselves known in the verses, the song looks at the times from afar with a biblical attitude that is tempered from being too grand by celebrating the simplicity of old riffing folk rock.
6. ‘Proud Mary’
The strength of ‘Proud Mary’ is perhaps symbolised by the fact that it has become a sort of modern American standard. With stunning covers by the likes of Tina Turner, it has transcended CCR’s discography and become a cultural phenomenon of its own even if the band themselves never mounted that feat.
The track itself has everything: an aura of timeless, a sense of historical story, a rattling vocal performance, visceral rock guitars, danceability, and a singalong chorus. With a descending third intro that harks bark to Beethoven’s techniques, this strength is no mystic accident – this is, in short, perfect rock ‘n’ roll songwriting. It makes its way through great anthems in history and knits together the vital musicological parts to create something that will live on forevermore. And in typically ironic fashion, it perhaps doesn’t have the depth or introspection to make it their best.
5. ‘Run Through the Jungle’
A haunting wail acquiesces to a bluesy riff that captures the misplaced sense of America in Vietnam. Alongside this odd culture clash of sounds, the song takes on biblical imagery as it takes aim on the war. The result is a truly harrowing piece of music that used CCR’s popularity to spread the word of how disturbing and devoid of glory war truly is.
However, in typical double-edged fashion, the song also focusses on gun control on home soil. As John Fogerty told Rolling Stone: “The thing I wanted to talk about was gun control and the proliferation of guns… I remember reading around that time that there was one gun for every man, woman and child in America, which I found staggering. So somewhere in the song, I think I said, ‘200 million guns are loaded.’ Not that anyone else has the answer, but I did not have the answer to the question; I just had the question. I just thought it was disturbing that it was such a jungle for our citizens just to walk around in our own country.”
4. ‘Bad Moon Rising’
‘Bad Moon Rising’ arose when John Fogerty watched The Devil and Daniel Webster, a little-known horror flick from 1941. The movie reimagines the tale Faust and the devil as a man forms a pact with the devil for seven years of prosperity, but as Robert Johnson will tell you, such a deal never goes well. There is a dark and stormy ending to the movie that is very much the mood that Creedence capture in the composition. As Fogerty told Rolling Stone regarding the link between the film and the song, “[it’s about] the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us.”
The song triumphantly captures the feeling of foreboding, but it paints it in a charactered light that lends itself to a foot-stomping good time. Like ‘Proud Mary’, this has resulted in a song that also approaches being a new American standard. There is such a sense of singalong playfulness to the track it has shouldered out a place in society, whether that be a dad hollering it on the way home from the school run or cinema using it to put the willies up people.
3. ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’
‘Have You Ever Seen The Rain?’ was released in late 1970, just preceding guitarist Tom Fogerty’s decision to leave CCR. Its lyrics ask “Have you ever seen the rain coming down on a sunny day?” Seemingly reflecting on the rising friction between the band at the height of their success, the song reads as a letter from John to his brother. The lyrics are hopeless, suggesting the rain “can’t stop.” The track is much more downtempo than Creedence’s usual style, with soft guitar and percussion reminiscent of the bittersweet weather it describes.
John Fogerty introduced the song at a 2012 show in Arizona as his all-time favourite, stating “This song was originally written about a very sad thing that was going on in my life. But I refuse to be sad now. Because now this song reminds me of my little girl, Kelsy, and every time I sing it, I think about Kelsy and rainbows.” It is easy to see why.
2. ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door’
The world was a hive of mayhem in the 1960s and bands were rightfully wading into the rapids. However, with grace and beauty, CCR quietly proclaimed that sometimes you’ve got to take a moment to simply look out your back door and engage in some garden gazing. They sat aside the stream with an introspective ditty that may well be their most multifaceted and timeless anthem.
The track is filled with such atmosphere and imagery that you can almost picture John Fogerty cradling his mug as he leans out of his stable door with the sun on his face and pocketfuls of relaxed contentment. In some ways, despite other anthems on this list, ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door’ is almost the antithesis of a protest song, urging the listener to escape circumstance and take dominion over what they can control for a moment, and they offer up the perfect sound-bed to do this as luscious do-do-dos and jangly acoustics play out like a musical pipe and slippers combo.
1. ‘Fortunate Son’
Remarkably Donald Trump, the son of a man whose net worth exceeded one billion dollars in 1997, used this song as part of his campaign rally, a move which John Fogerty renounced and understandably found very “confusing”. In the same way that Bruce Springsteen’s scathing anti-Vietnam-war song ‘Born In The USA’ was misconstrued by the government as a patriot anthem, this shows the protests song’s subversive power to subtly reveal stupidity within a government as well as attack it. So, while ‘Fortunate Son’ might have been tied the Vietnam War, it has a sense of timelessness ingrained in its razor-sharp rally against inequality that will always embody the fortified point of rock ‘n’ roll.
This notion is only heightened by the the misreads; it would seem that if you throw in a few star-spangled lines then all other context gets lost when it comes to the powers that be, but in many ways, that is testimony to the power of the music that CCR muster. ‘Fortunate Son’ simply sounds like a protest song, its melody, production and structure form the perfect rally-cry and it’s a rally-cry that suits the hoarse tones of John Fogerty down to a tee. At the height of the Vietnam conflict, this song perfectly illuminated the vast disparities in a divided America. It is a sorry triumph that it continues to do so. But at least it does so in considerable swaggering style.
