STAR '69

As he hits the road for a long-awaited celebration of Creedence Clearwater Revival's music, John Fogerty recalls the year when it all came together in three hit albums and a little festival called Woodstock.

- GARY GRAFF

THE NEW YEAR is just a few weeks old and John Fogerty is driving with his wife and manager, Julie, along a stretch of California highway. But as the road unwinds ahead of him, his thoughts are drifting back several decades, to 1969, as he recalls in vivid detail the albums and events that made it a banner year for his band Creedence Clearwater Revival.

“Well, first of all,” Fogerty says, “I don’t think at the beginning of 1969 I had a business plan outlined that said, ‘Okay, we’ll release an album in January, we’ll release one in August, we’ll release another in October...’ I don’t think I had any plan like that. When you’re 22 years old, you can’t see that far ahead.”

In hindsight, however, CCR’s 1969 was remarkable and certainly without precedent in the rock and roll era. It’s when the quartet — Fogerty, his older brother Tom, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford — reigned as rock’s biggest act, kings on both the AM and FM dials, on the concert circuit and in critical circles. And, of course, CCR played the Woodstock festival that year, too. By some accounts, they were the very first band signed to the bill.

The tally was, in fact, three albums: Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys. All three hit the Top 10 on the Billboard chart, with Green River making it to number one, and all were eventually certified multi-Platinum. They produced four top-five singles — “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Green River” and “Down on the Corner” — all of which have gone on to become pop music standards.

“It was certainly very special,” Fogerty says now, chuckling at his own understatement. “If I’m looking back, it was absolutely precious and mind boggling. But at the time it was all kind of mixed up in the feeling that if you work really hard and keep moving forward and keep pushing, you will find success. You will fulfill your dream.”