CCR are the ‘Lee Westwood’ of rock music. Probably no other band has had so many fantastic hits that got to No.2 or No.3 on the top 100 but never won a Major.  ‘Proud Mary’, ‘Bad Moon Rising’, ‘Green River’, ‘Down On The Corner’, ‘Travelin’ Band’…… and many more.  The injustice of it makes you want to ?! Of course, the fantastic RJs on All India Radio didn’t care and fed us a steady diet of CCR on both “A Date With You” and “Forces Request’– God bless Geetanjali Iyer & Philip Neelam! And I know we all fell in love with CCR, making them part of the soundtrack of our teens.

My personal favourite CCR song – Suzie Q – didn’t even make the official top 10! But on my personal Classic Rock playlist (very imaginatively called “Rock On”), lovingly curated from back when I had a cassette player, it is the opening track – as it is on Chronicle (so there! ? ). It is the first CCR song I ever heard and the opening drum eight beat followed by the opening guitar riff is simply brilliant. John Fogerty plucking on his guitar puts me in head-banging mode in a split second with this big goofy smile on my face. I have officially heard Suzie Q at least a gazillion times and it never gets old.

Amazingly enough, a lot of people don’t even count Suzie Q in CCR’s top 10 songs. And, I can understand why – Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Proud Mary, Fortunate Son, Down On the Corner, Run Through the Jungle, Bad Moon Rising …are all rock-solid gold. No wonder Chronicle Vol 1, CCR’s must-own album, was one of my first vinyl purchases from my precious schoolboy pocket money. CCR’s music is classic deep-south blues rock with heavy electric guitar solos, a really solid baseline that actually rules the song and tight drumming. I have such sweet memories of listening to CCR with my best friends in college, a slug of Old Monk and a shared Wills Kings cigarette, feet tapping, head banging, air guitaring & singing at the top of our voices – good times! ?. And in the decades since, CCR has become an essential part of my perfect road-trip mix-tape

John Fogerty, Tom Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford were Creedence Clearwater Revival. Sadly, it’s a manufactured name, there’s no romantic story here. Tragically, the band existed for only four years –1968 to 1972. And in that short time, they created some of the most popular rock songs of all time. Seven albums and nine top 10 singles! They were headliners at Woodstock – and never released that session as John Fogerty felt their performance wasn’t very good ??‍♂️. For a brief couple of years, CCR were the biggest band in the world – in an era of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. In ’72 they acrimoniously disbanded, never to reunite, leaving a legendary back catalogue for us to feast on, even forty years later.

CCR deserve more than one post. I’ll come back to them soon.

Suzie Q is here as well ?