I saw Creedence at the Royal Albert Hall on 27 September, 1971, and for
some reason found myself sat behind them, on the steps that rise up towards the
organ that choirs stand on during classical concerts. It wasn’t the best of
views and no one else was sat there apart from a roadie or two but it was hellish loud and it was fabulous to see an RAH show from the
band’s perspective, to be able to look up at all the tiered levels and watch
everyone grooving away.
In many ways this Fogerty show was a CCR show because
that’s all everyone wanted to hear. I think I wrote this for Tony Fletcher’s
website the day after the show.
Listening to John Fogerty was like
listening to an early ‘70s bar-room jukebox banging out hit after hit, most of
them less than three minutes long, one after the other, endlessly and
gloriously. Since disbanding Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972, Fogerty has
had a sporadic solo career dogged by legal problems with his former record
label and unseemly public spats with his former colleagues, and for this reason
I half expected to see a rather dour fellow, serious of intent and probably
distant from his audience, a bit like Dylan or Van Morrison. In the event, the
opposite was the case: Fogerty behaved like a kid who’s unexpectedly found a
Gibson Les Paul in his Christmas stocking, grinning from ear to ear, his floppy
hair bouncing around, jumping and running across the stage with all the energy
of a jean-clad 21-year-old – Bon Jovi with better songs and no clichés.
Actually, he was 61 last month.
Creedence
weren’t psychedelic, neither were they prog-rock, glam, metal, hard rock or
anything else really. There was a touch of garage about them but at heart they
were simply a rock’n’roll band updated from the fifties in sound and style
whose leader had a rare talent for writing simple catchy songs that invariably
had four chords or less and intros that grabbed you in seconds. They sounded
like they came from the South of the US but they didn’t – they came from San
Francisco – and their songs about rivers and riverboats and the moon and the
bayou earned them a pigeon hole of their very own called swamp rock, but in
amongst the good times and toe-tapping dance music was the odd serious song
about the Vietnam War. Also, they were a singles band, with nine top ten hits
between 1969 and 1971 that still sound fresh today. Thirty-five years later,
their hits CD never gathers dust on my shelf.
Aside from a
support slot for Tina Turner at Wembley Arena back in the eighties, this was
the first time Fogerty had performed in the UK since the latter day three-piece
Creedence played the Albert Hall in 1971. So it wasn’t
surprising that Hammersmith Apollo was jam-packed and raring to go. What was
surprising was the age-range of the audience. I had a standing only ticket but
managed to creep down the right aisle where I found myself alongside four
twenty-something girls who danced the night away and seemed to know all the words to every song, most of
which were recorded long before they were born. Creedence music is truly
ageless.
Fogerty bounced on
stage and opened with ‘Travelling Band’, after which the hits came thick and
fast, at least 20 recognisable songs and a few I wasn’t so familiar with. This
music is not difficult to play – the bass player’s fingers barely moved – but
was played with skill and enthusiasm; vintage good-time Americana that evokes
an era when my life was good and about to get better. No wonder I enjoyed it so much.
Here’s just a few
of the songs: ‘Born On The Bayou’, ‘Bad Moon Rising’, ‘Who'll Stop The Rain’
(always loved that one), ‘Up Around The Bend’, ‘Down On The Corner’, ‘Rockin’
All Over The World’ (which he wrote and Status Quo stole), ‘Green River’,
‘Cottonfields’, ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Sweet Hitch Hiker’, ‘Keep On Choogling’,
‘Fortunate Son’ and, of course, as the final encore, the wonderful ‘Proud Mary’
who’s still rollin’ on the river. There was a couple of songs from his his 1985
solo album Centerfield, the title
track and ‘Old Man Down The Road’, and the odd lesser known album track, like
‘Ramble Tamble’ which featured a spaced out jam as as the Cosmo’s Factory album
Fogerty fronted a
five-piece band but did all the work himself, soloing cleanly but never at any
great length, and filling in licks everywhere. Bob Britt, the lanky guitarist
in a red tee-shirt played some fine rockabilly runs on both Strat and pedal
steel, but the function of the band was to create a great wall of sound, fat
and full like the Creedence originals.
Wisely, there was
no support, just one hour 45 minutes of great rock’n’roll delivered by a man
who knows exactly how it should be delivered but does it all too rarely. I was
on my way by 10.15 leaving time for a decent beer in a proper pub and not the
ghastly Carling lager that is all that’s available at what used to be the
Hammersmith Odeon until Carling took a franchise on it.
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