Daddy Had a Band
Photograph by Oscar Zagal
When the moment came, it was hardly noticeable at first, landing in the middle of a quiet new ballad called “Broken Down Cowboy.” It’s a very personal song for John Fogerty, touching on a period of his life from nearly two decades ago, when he was a tangle of rage and bitterness over his career and what he should do next, a kind of broken-down rocker in need, and about to meet the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his three youngest children. Fogerty still chokes up talking about it.
Fogerty had just spent much of the first half of his two-hour stand at the Nokia Theater (November 23) roaring through the high-octane vocals of some Creedence Clearwater Revival standards (“Green River,” “Born On the Bayou,” etc.), his voice as big, powerful, and controlled as ever. But it was during the quiet “Broken Down Cowboy,” as Fogerty sat alone with an acoustic guitar, that his voice began to waver and turn raspy, like a jet engine stalling in mid-flight.
“Some of you may have noticed I left my voice in another suit,” he soon said, between sips from a teacup. “I know some of you came a long way … I’m doing the best I can.”
In truth, it was only a momentary fading of his pipes, which slowly roared back and stayed there until the night was done. The concert had begun, after all, with a blast of “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” originally sung by his equally explosive hero Little Richard. Holding back never seemed to occur to him.
The occasion of this concert was the recent release of a new album, fittingly called Revival, which is easily his best and most consistent collection since his first big comeback, 1985’s Centerfield. The idea this time was simply to rock, and to finally embrace his past as CCR’s creative force, even including a swampy self-referential tune called “Creedence Song”: “Daddy had a band, played him a little guitar/Traveled in a van, livin’ that rock and roll, night after night/People comin’ up to the bandstand, say you can’t go wrong, if you play a little bit of that Creedence song.”
Until recently, Fogerty denied himself the chance to perform his classic tunes (and his fans to hear them), angrily estranged from his own past, and entangled in endless legal and verbal warfare with CCR’s old label, Fantasy Records. That battle ended with the recent sale of Fantasy to Concord Records, and a real desire by new management to reconnect with the label’s greatest artist.
And so fans at the Nokia got to hear “Midnight Special” and soon a moment of feedback and fancy fretwork high up the neck for “a happy little song from my past” and the wheezing harmonica of “Keep On Chooglin’,” one of the most distinctive sounds from an era rich with new sounds and voices.
He performed several songs from Revival, an album as rooted in his outrage over a current war as “Fortunate Son” was nearly four decades before. “Can we have some leadership in this country, please?” he said, as he began strumming “Gunslinger” (“Lookin’ across this town, kinda makes me wonder how all the things that made us great/Got left so far behind … . ” ) And he set his aim directly at President Bush in “Long Dark Night,” wailing, “Georgie’s in the jungle, knockin’ on the door/Come to get your children, wants to have a war!”
By now, Fogerty’s voice was back at full power, standing behind a microphone decorated by a bouquet of wheat stalks tied with a red bandana. He lives in a big, elegant home overlooking Los Angeles, but still dresses in plaid flannel and blue jeans. He could be the handyman. At 62, he is still rockstar-handsome, the features of his smiling face softened only a bit from age and maybe new contentment.
He’s essentially preserved from his early state, if maybe less of a ’60s rock primitive in the page-boy shag. But he hasn’t gone weird (Dylan) or irrelevant (Crosby, Stills & Nash), and is one of the few left standing from a generation that showed what rock ’n’ roll could be. Fogerty’s voice has only grown more powerful and refined with age.
Near the night’s end, he brought out his two teenage songs to play guitar on CCR’s “Up Around the Bend,” both of them looking like Fogerty at his youthful peak, now leading his own school of rock. Like Creedence before them, Fogerty and his band signed off with one final round of loud, gutbucket blues and rock, and nothing held back.
Published: 11/29/2007
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