Billy Back in Fogerty Revival

michelej1 · #1 08-08-2008, 03:30 PM

MPN now, Rochester

http://www.mpnnow.com/entertainment/...-ready-to-play

Hopewell, N.Y. -

Even had he not written a word or a note after 1972, John Fogerty’s place in the rock and roll pantheon would have been assured by the string of powerful singles he wrote for his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

“Proud Mary” and its evocation of a carefree life of rollin’ on the river. The furious “Fortunate Son,” directed at the privileged classes who would sacrifice little in Vietnam. The swamp-rock of “Born on the Bayou.” “Bad Moon Rising” and its ominous tone. Straight-ahead rockers of the musical life, “Down on the Corner,” “Travelin’ Band” and the road-weary “Lodi.” And definitive covers of Leadbelly’s “Midnight Special” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You.” To name just a few of the more obvious examples.

However, Fogerty has continued to write, record and perform — and maintains a successful, critically-acclaimed solo career that combines rock, roots and blues stylings. While the immediate post-Creedence years weren’t all that successful (though a 1975 self-titled album yielded a top-40 hit in “Rockin’ All Over the World”), he charted with such songs as the baseball-themed “Centerfield” (“Put me in, coach/I’m ready to play ...”) and “The Old Man Down the Road” in the mid-1980s and won a rock-album Grammy in 1997 for his disc “Blue Moon Swamp.” (His most recent album, “Revival,” was nominated for the rock-album nod in the most recent awards, but lost to Foo Fighters.)

Fogerty will bring the “Revival” tour to the Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center tonight at 7:30 p.m., The “Revival” tour band includes Hunter Perrin and Fleetwood Mac alumnus Billy Burnette on guitar, prolific studio drummer (and onetime member of John Mellencamp’s band) Kenny Aronoff on drums, David Santos (who has toured with artists from the Neville Brothers to Crosby, Stills and Nash) on bass, and Matt Nolen on keyboards, rhythm guitar and mandolin.

Fogerty’s old band Creedence originated in the late 1950s, when he joined with his guitarist brother Tom Fogerty, drummer Doug Clifford and bassist Stu Cook to form a band in California called Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets. They morphed into the Golliwogs and signed with the Fantasy record label in the mid 1960s, taking on the Creedence Clearwater Revival name in 1987, and starting to see chart success, scoring their first hit single with a cover of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q.” A short few years of intense success followed, fueled by John Fogerty’s songwriting and the band’s tight playing, and CCR’s straight-ahead rock-and-roll sound stood out amid the trippier sounds coming out of California during the hippie days.

But success breeded resentment within the band, leading to Tom’s departure in 1971 and the band’s collapse in 1972. And for awhile in the 1980s, Fogerty refused to play Creedence material, due to personal and legal acrimony with his old label Fantasy and his bandmates. (At one time, a lawsuit accused him of, in essence, plagiarizing himself when a song sounded similar to Creedence.) In a 2007 Newsweek article, he credits his wife Julie with helping him move beyond bitterness and rediscover his voice.

“... whenever I’d sit down to write a song and it got anywhere near to sounding like Creedence, a little gremlin would pop up on my shoulder in the form of a lawyer saying ‘Don’t do that,’” he wrote in the Newsweek piece. “One day I said to the gremlin, ‘Get out of my life. I own this. I sound like this. I’m embracing it.’”

These day’s he’s comfortable enough with his legacy to release a song like “Creedence Song,” with lines like “you can’t go wrong if you play a little bit of that Creedence song” — as well as naming an album “Revival.” Recent set lists on the “Revival” tour have drawn from throughout his career, frequently closing out with perhaps his best known and most loved composition, “Proud Mary.”

chiliD · #2 08-11-2008, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

They morphed into the Golliwogs and signed with the Fantasy record label in the mid 1960s, taking on the Creedence Clearwater Revival name in 1987...”

Hmmmmm, that seems wrong.