How old is ccr

While San Francisco longhairs across the bridge scoffed at their commercialism, Creedence henceforth made a point of releasing double A-sides. And invariably both songs would have an uncanny knack of cutting through the weasel words and speaking directly to all sections of the population.

We reached the masses with strong messages and feelgood music, and that really was our greatest achievement. Nobody could have foreseen what would happen next.

That in itself was odd. Creedence was a benevolent dictatorship in which the will of the rhythm section yielded to the decree of the flannel-shirted leader. Fogerty was therefore irritated and nonplussed, towards the end of , to be confronted with the first mentions of an unwelcome concept called democracy. Part of the problem was that Creedence, even at their height of their fame, were a remarkably small operation.

They travelled with two or three roadies, plus Rohrer, and that was it. They had no manager, no booking agent, no PR firm, no entourage. They were the equivalent of a small family firm that accidentally creates a brand name as marketable as Coca-Cola. He had no concept of the business side. Doug and I call it El Cerrito Syndrome. He brings us Allen Klein. Fogerty disputes their accounts, arguing that the percentage was minuscule and that only a pair of idiots would think otherwise.

Cook counters that Fogerty was a novice at reading contracts and should have asked a lawyer to help him understand it. Fogerty refused to sign the contract. Cook and Clifford claim that his intransigence cost them tens of millions of dollars.

Pendulum was launched to the media with an expensive PR event to which journalists were invited — a very un-Creedence-like evening which John maintains he attended under protest. Tom, nevertheless, left Creedence in early to begin a solo career. The others considered asking Duck Dunn to join, before deciding to continue as a trio. The bombshell lay just around the corner.

Fogerty complains that Cook and Clifford concocted a false story about him giving them a bizarre ultimatum in a limousine after a concert in San Diego. Cook and Clifford are adamant that the ultimatum and the limo were real. He was cutting his nose off to spite his face. Stu and I wanted some input, but the last thing we wanted to do was sing. But, anyway, we wrote and sang three songs, and of course the album was doomed to fail.

It was a cruel lie. And I agreed. They thought the album was really cool. Fogerty released The Blue Ridge Rangers in , a country-bluegrass album on which he played all the instruments himself. In the meantime, the bandmembers had lost millions in an offshore banking scheme that turned out to be a swindle.

More hard feelings developed. We got more and more isolated and estranged from John over the years. He stopped recording, angered by a clause in his Fantasy contract that seemed to demand greater and greater amounts of product as each year passed. Jake Rohrer, who worked for Fogerty until , questions his interpretation of the wording.

I personally thought that John wasted two decades of his life waging a war with Saul Zaentz. So, of course, he gets sued. Both were private occasions. But the problems between the Fogerty brothers remained unresolved. By , his illness was a matter of desperate concern. Tom had one last request. He wanted Creedence to play as a four-piece one more time, if only in his living room, before his inevitable return to hospital. John declined the request. Cook and Clifford arrived at the Hollywood centre with their families, expecting to play Creedence hits with Fogerty that night.

According to Cook and Clifford, the band were offered a deal that would have given them 10 per cent of Fantasy Records — effectively 10 per cent of themselves, as they were the only the only chart act on the label. We were there as bandmates, and with ideas to try and help him out of this log-jam, but he just got more and more withdrawn, as if we were attacking him.

It was very frustrating. But John said people would forget us. I felt that a world tour would keep us in the public eye. When Fogerty threatened to bring in the notorious Allen Klein — who was busy making mincemeat of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and their labels — the others backed off in horror.

But contract negotiations with Fantasy had come to a standstill. This situation deteriorated. Clifford says Tom threatened to quit several times during , and that he and Cook would go round and talk him out of it.

In February , just after the release of their Pendulum album, Tom Fogerty made good his threat. Creedence continued as a trio. They toured Europe again, and Australia and Japan.

And within the business people were increasingly aware that all was not well with the band. The rest of the world found out in May when they released the Mardis Gras album. The songs were divided equally between Fogerty, Clifford and Cook. For Clifford and Cook it was the first songwriting credits they had had. And it showed. Those accounts then invariably follow that up with an excoriating attack on the album. And Creedence fans are not going to understand this. Artistically that was a mistake, but we felt we were trying to save the band.

In October , five months after the Mardis Gras album which still reached No. Clifford and Cook were released from their contracts with Fantasy the contracts that had never been renegotiated. Fogerty was not released from his contract. There were no Blue Ridge Rangers — Fogerty sang and played everything on this collection of country covers.

But Fogerty claimed that Fantasy did not promote the record properly, and demanded to be released from his contract. Fantasy said no. The contract still had eight albums to run. Fogerty refused to record any more songs, so Fantasy sued him for breach of contract.

His self-titled solo album came out in , and was Creedence Clearwater Revival without the band — quite literally. The critics loved it but the public was less enthusiastic.

But it did nothing in Britain. And even Status Quo were in two minds before they recorded it a couple of years later. Fogerty threw himself into another album, but even though he was now free from his Fantasy publishing contract the loss of his Creedence songs gnawed away at him. John Fogerty. Unfortunately, our mom passed away. It was family business.

All I could think was, Oh, great — Doug and Stu want to drag Tom a r ou n d the world in a wheelchair. I thought they really wanted to do this for themselves.

It was bizarre and disgusting to me. I went to see Tom a couple of times in , shortly before he died. He was very thin and fragile-looking. Always wearing sunglasses, even indoors. And still kind of detached, in that way he had been, going all the way back to or After I won the plagiarism trial, I ran into Tom.

He had become so aloof, maddeningly detached. I can count on him. Tom forced you to suspend reality. You had to abandon logic to have a conversation with him. I see no point. Time is precious to me. But what could I say? He was fragile, dying.

So I was the good soldier, the dutiful brother. Tom passed away on September 6, I was sad that life had been taken from Tom. And that sadness was mixed up with all the other emotions. I was pissed that Saul had mangled our relationship, because he certainly messed it up. Tom was an unwitting pawn.

Tom may have been motivated to get money for his family because he was dying. I love my brother. I sure loved the old family days, the way we were as kids. In , Stu and Doug formed an outfit called Creedence Clearwater Revisited to go out and play my songs on the oldies circuit.

You can probably guess how I felt about this. One night only: the Beatles! You know something is wack. Man, I never intended to be in a band that turned into that. How did this happen? Why and how was that ever allowed?

To my way of thinking, these guys were trying to rip off the public and confuse them. I won, and then it went to a higher court and they reversed the decision.