A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival by John Lingan
Reading about a band whose songs are profoundly ubiquitous and yet whose story I really did not know until now.
When I saw that a book about Creedence Clearwater Revival was coming out, one that was getting promoted by some of my favorite music writers, I was intrigued. They’re a group I feel like I knew about but didn’t really know about (or a lot about). But it’s hard to imagine thinking about the late 60s and early 70s, about classic rock itself, without their songs. I knew a little bit about John Fogerty but beyond that it was just their songs. Thus, I was curious to learn about the group.
After reading John Lingan’s book A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival, I feel like I’ve learned more about the group and yet I still don’t feel as though I understand them. Or I’ve come to realize that there isn’t that much there to understand. But I’ll get into that shortly.
Lingan’s book does give a good perspective on the non-Fogerty (John and his brother, Tom) members of CCR—Stu Cook and Doug Clifford. Lingan thanks them in the acknowledgements, which says they were major resources. But I certainly didn’t know about how the band came into being and the instrumental (heh, inadvertent punning by me) role those two played. As Lingan points out, part of what led to the breakup of CCR was the way in which John Fogerty, both by his actions and how the group was discussed, essentially was CCR. A Song for Everyone helps one to understand that was certainly not the case.
There were also elements of the CCR narrative that I just didn’t know, specifically that they stopped performing encores at their show (which I kind of understand because of the rank inauthenticity of just knowing you’re going to do one, but it’s also a bold choice). It also put album tracks such as “Keep on Chooglin’” on my radar in a way they weren’t before.
Yet, even when with revelations after reading Lingan’s book, I still felt like this book only scratched the surface. I wanted to know more about the dissolution of CCR and John Fogerty’s strained relationship with the other members of the group (such that Cook and Clifford formed Creedence Clearwater Revisited to continue playing). But then I started to think… maybe there’s just not that much there and in a way that’s the story of CCR. Not that their songs don’t have substance or are worthwhile— “Fortunate Son” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” are substantial and important tracks, not just fun to listen to—but they’re a group that’s very workmanlike and missing the dramatic flourishes of other bands. There’s a reason “Traveling’ Band” worked as one of their songs.
They weren’t a group that put out one of the great albums of that era in music (probably their best known album is Chronicle, a greatest hits collection that speaks to the strength of their singles). They didn’t dramatically reinvent a sound, rather they brought together many different sonic notions and merged them together. There wasn’t the excess and debauchery one saw in other groups and artists of the time. The CCR guys just made great rock-and-roll inflected with R&B and country. Maybe that’s the story and that’s not one that makes for a particularly rapturous read.
It might be interesting, especially if you’re someone who is interested in the history of rock or particularly enjoy CCR (given their East Bay roots, despite singing a lot about the bayou, I certainly fall into that camp), but it’s not the kind of provocative or scintillating narrative that will be for everyone. Maybe being a band that made “song[s] for everyone,” tracks that crossed all the barriers and demographics, means that you’re also a group that’s not going to have an especially exciting story to tell.
That isn’t a judgment on A Song for Everyone and Lingan’s work. It’s a book that reads quickly (I appreciate his use of shorter chapters—in some music books, you can feel trapped in a chapter forever if it’s on the long side) and is written with a journalistic clarity. But the particulars of CCR’s story perhaps kept Lingan from doing a lot with his book. I do feel like the book peters out at the end rather than coming to an interesting conclusion or overarching salient point (and he makes a quick shift into the first person, which is a bit jarring).
A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival is a book I’d recommend to people with a particular interest in CCR and classic/late 60s rock (specifically coming out of Northern California). But if you don’t see yourself fitting into one of those categories, then it might not be the most interesting book for you.
I would never in a million years have thought CCR came out of the East Bay! Interesting that maybe the biggest revelation of the book is that there's no "there" there. Sometimes it really is that simple, I suppose?