CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Alerted to this CD some weeks ago by Amazon, who thought I might ‘like’ it, I was rather hoping it was recorded during Creedence Clearwater Revival’s concert at the RAH on 27 September 1971, which I attended. It’s not. It’s from a show in April 1970 when CCR was a four piece, and probably all the better for it, though the show I did see – with CCR as a trio – was memorable too, and not just because I watched it from behind them, sat with no one around me on those big steps where choirs stand during the Proms. I can’t remember why, maybe it was because the show was a sell-out and no one thought to send review tickets to Melody Maker until the last minute. Or maybe I blagged my way in on the strength of my MM credentials because I really wanted to see a band whose singles I loved in those days. I still do for that matter.

        Formed at high school in 1959, almost a decade before fame beckoned, firstly as The Blue Velvets, then as The Golliwogs, by the time they became CCR they had accumulated more chops than all their Bay Area rivals combined. This wasn’t the only thing that set them apart from their flower-powered contemporaries. They weren’t improvising country bluesmen like the Dead, psychedelic travellers like the Airplane or blues revivalist like Janis, and they dressed in denims, not yellow kaftans and billowing flares. They were radio-friendly, more AM than FM, and were retro if retro equates as having a foundation in basic rock’n’roll but, 12-bars aside, I’d lean more towards power pop before the term was invented, rock songs that were catchy, short and snappy, with great hooks, fat productions with a churning forward momentum supplied by a rhythm section that rarely took its foot off the pedal. Chooglin’ they called it.

        It wasn’t particularly fashionable but it was popular. I’d hazard a guess that no US band’s top ten hits – they had 13 between 1968 and 1971 – were played more on barroom juke-boxes than those by Creedence. They inspired at least a couple of convincing sound-alike records, among them The Hollies with ‘Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress’ and a short-lived British trio called Christie whose CCR pastiche ‘Yellow River’ reached number one in the UK charts in 1970. So uncanny was the resemblance that when I saw CCR at the RAH, some audience members actually called out for ‘Yellow River’ during the show. 

        The mastermind of CCR was writer, singer and lead guitarist John Fogerty whose voice seems to me now like a soulful growl somewhere between Joe Cocker and Bruce Springsteen with a teaspoonful of Richard Penniman here and there. On rhythm guitar was his elder brother Tom, soon to leave, alongside bassist Stu Book and drummer Doug Clifford. They sounded like a well-drilled bar band, with fewer personnel than Springsteen’s E Street men but with the same temperament, the same hard-won skills, the same allegiance to rock’s honourable past.

        The new RAH CD contains just 12 songs and clocks in at less than 45 minutes, its longest track the encore, a mammoth eight minutes plus of ‘Keep On Chooglin’’, its shortest ‘Travelin’ Band’ at 2.11, which qualifies it for inclusion on a Ramones album. Six songs are less than three minutes, but this parsimony in heft (by today’s CD standards) must not to be mistaken for a lack of quality. On the contrary, every track is rattled off in a seemingly effortless display of rock’n’roll know-how, the kind of flawless perfection that only groups with a thousand or more gigs under their belt can deliver. More importantly, all the way through they sound like they’re truly enjoying themselves playing like this, spurred on by a wildly enthusiastic crowd. 

        They open the show at a relatively modest pace with ‘Born On The Bayou’, introduced by Fogerty’s lead guitar riff. Drums and bass quickly assert the group’s signature sound before Fogerty sings, ‘When I was just a little boy…’, beginning at the beginning as it were, taking his audience to the area of America that inspired so many of CCR’s songs, not light and sunny California but the dark and swampy Deep South where hound dogs bark and hoodoos are chased. At 5.13, it’s the second longest track on the CD, enhanced by between-song guitar parts at a marching-band tempo that are designed not to enable the guitarist to grandstand but to enhance the song. Showboating has no place in CCR. ‘Green River’ follows. 

        My CCR companion for the past 30-odd years has been a 20-track compilation called Chronicle which lacks ‘Tombstone Shadow’, track three on the RAH CD. A mid-tempo 12-bar, it’s the only track that seems a bit like filler to me.

        The pace ramps up considerably for ‘Travelin’ Band’, augmented by some Little Richard-style hollering, which is over in the blink of an eye, and doesn’t let up for ‘Fortunate Son’, their sharp, politically-motivated comment on who gets drafted to Vietnam and who doesn’t. While much is made of San Francisco bands’ commitment to love and peace, CCR were – in their own way – on the side of the righteous too, albeit without wearing their hearts on their sleeves. ‘Who’ll Stop The Rain’ – not, alas, included here – is a good an allegory the futility of war as anything recorded by their peers.

        ‘Commotion’ whips by before we reach ‘Midnight Special’, recorded by all and sundry, and CCR give the old folk song an almost spiritual feel, at least by their reckoning. Two of their biggest hits, ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘Proud Mary’ follow back to back, both duplicated note for note from the records, both received rapturously, short and sweet but CCR nirvana on the night. 

        They are followed by ‘The Night Time Is The Right Time’, a slow blues written by Lew Herman, aka Herman Lubinsky, the founder of Savoy Records, which dates from 1957. Now thoroughly warmed up, Fogerty gives it his all while the band echo him in an atypical call and response routine. Accelerating into the home straight, they rattle off Little Richard’s ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ much like The Beatles essayed ‘Long Tall Sally’ and close the show with the eight minutes plus of ‘Keep On Chooglin’’, its rhythm worthy of Little Feat, the pace never letting up for a moment even if the drumming sounds like Doug Clifford was banging a dustbin lid.  

        The booklet notes include an extract from a review by Miles Kingston of The Times who reported that a standing ovation lasted throughout the National Anthem (!) and for a quarter of an hour after that. God save CCR indeed.