In Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield explains the recent success of the late 60s band, Creedence Clearwater Revival. He writes:
August 1969 was a very Creedence month. But so were most months back then. Creedence Clearwater Revival, the most popular band in America, were riding the hot streak of all hot streaks, cranking out swamp-rock classics at a crazy pace. John Fogerty and his Northern California crew released their masterpiece Green River in the first week of August, a few months after their masterpiece Bayou Country and a couple months before their October masterpiece Willy and the Poor Boys. Their Top 40 hits that year: “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son,” “Down on the Corner,” and the ultimate summer guitar choogle, “Green River.” CCR banged out five of the all-time greatest rock & roll albums in under two years: Bayou, Green River, Willy in 1969, Cosmo’s Factory and Pendulum in 1970.
So it totally makes sense that Creedence were America’s biggest band in the summer of ’69. The weird part is that Creedence are also America’s biggest band in the summer of ’24.
CCR are the most awesomely bizarre case of a classic band that’s bigger than ever right now, without anyone really noticing. But their greatest-hits collection Chronicle is riding high on the Billboard 200 every week, always somewhere in the thirties or forties. It’s currently Number 39, right ahead of the new Ariana Grande album. It’s higher than anything by the Beatles or the Stones or Zeppelin or Queen. It’s crazy because there’s no star power involved, no cult of personality, no Freddie Mercury, no Stevie/Lindsey, no backstory or drama or charisma, no biopic or TV placement, and God knows no sex appeal. Just four anonymous flannel dudes and a bunch of perfect guitar songs about rivers.
Of all the “classic rockers who stay famous forever” stories, this is the one where there’s nothing but the songs. Of all the fans who bought/streamed/whatevered Chronicle this week, I doubt half could give the leader’s name, or tell you a thing about him. But only a hardcore fan could name the other three. Anyone who can tell Stu Cook from Doug Clifford probably is Stu Cook or Doug Clifford. You couldn’t pick any of these dudes out of a police lineup. There’s no hero worship, no narrative, no stars. There’s no love story, no death story. Only the songs.
A couple of years ago, when Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” blew up into a surprise Top Five pop smash, that’s when I really started noticing the astoundingly unastounding popularity of CCR. While the world was celebrating Kate’s triumph, it was funny to see Chronicle hanging around the Top 50 of the album charts, quietly topping the era’s biggest pop icons. But you couldn’t call it a renaissance, since (1) these songs never vanished, and (2) nothing was driving this. No meme or TikTok dance. No soundtrack moment. No band has ever needed a revival less.
There just aren’t any comparable examples. Bruce Springsteen doesn’t have any records this big. Neither do Pink Floyd or Van Halen or the Beach Boys or the Eagles. Any other music franchise this popular has some larger-than-life personality or drama in the brand. To pick the most obvious example, everybody who loves Fleetwood Mac — which means everybody — knows the real-life heartbreak behind the music. You could run down every Rumours track and tell me who’s breaking up with who on which drugs. But Chronicle is just as massive, without any sex or tragedy. (Rumours always goes neck-and-neck with CCR on the charts; last week Chronicle beat Rumours, this week the Mac slipped ahead.) Nobody will ever base a movie, novel, or Broadway show on the making of Green River. (Ugh, can you imagine a duller rock flick than Choogle Hard with a Vengeance: The Creedence Story?)
If you love those old-school rock legends, you undoubtedly relate to their personal struggles: John vs. Paul, Mick vs. Keith, Waters vs. Gilmour, Eddie vs. Dave, Steely Dan vs. the Cuervo Gold and fine Colombian. Don’t you dare look me in the eye and claim you don’t pick sides between Brian Wilson and Mike Love. But that doesn’t happen with CCR. If you were forced to come up with a juicy Behind the Music anecdote, you’d have to say, “Well, they overinvested in an offshore tax shelter in the Bahamas, which turned out to be a fraud, so they lost the publishing rights to…wait, come back!” You want a fashion statement? Flannel. You want glamour, gossip, danger? More flannel.
And it’s not even like there’s one big tentpole hit to sell the others — “Proud Mary” is probably their most famous song, but it’s not much bigger than the sixth or seventh-biggest. They had five Number Two hits but never hit Number One; I don’t know if that’s a record, but it’s a perfect anti-dramatic flex for Creedence, comparable to Al Kaline retiring with 399 homers. They’ve graced a million soundtracks (who can forget the Dude in The Big Lebowski, drumming on the roof of his car?) but nothing ever became “The Song from That Movie,” because they’re more famous than any flick they’ve been in.
There’s only one explanation for CCR’s phenomenal popularity: People just keep falling in love with these songs, without caring about demographic niches or generational clichés or fashion trends. It’s the kind of popularity that officially isn’t supposed to exist.
But all Creedence ever needed, then or now, was these tunes. They’ve got Koufax numbers — 65 tunes in their songbook, at least 40 of them undeniably great. They took pride in being an ace singles band, yet their albums are full of insanely brilliant deep cuts only freaks know. “Ramble Tamble,” the greatest of all Creedence songs, is a seven-minute doom-choogle that builds from pastoral bliss to apocalyptic rage, but I’ve never heard it on the radio even once. You could eliminate all 20 Chronicle hits from their catalog and you’d still have the best non-Beatles/Stones band of their era.
