John Fogerty Celebrated His 80th Birthday With Cake, Confetti, and Loads of CCR Classics
Before the show even started, Fogerty appeared on a large screen and addressed the crowd. 'It's been quite a journey to get to this big eight-oh,' he said. 'Thank you for coming along on this journey with me. I appreciate each and every one of you, every little dip and turn in the road..It's such an honor to have people know all your words. Thank you for singing these songs all these years. I just really love performing live with my sons in this band, especially as they grow into adulthood and become really good. That sense of joy about making music is really real.'
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He proved that by walking out onto a riser stationed between two bright, billowing smoke machines, and kicking into 'Proud Mary' as confetti rained down on the audience. He followed it with 'Up Around the Bend,' 'Green River,' 'Born on the Bayou,' 'Who'll Stop the Rain,' and 'Lookin' Out My Back Door.' Like the vast majority of the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog, these songs came out in a little sliver of time between 1968 and 1970 when Fogerty somehow wrote a significant chapter of the Great American Songbook entirely by himself.
This golden period was followed by many dark years where the bitter breakup of the band and a nasty spat with his former label head caused Fogerty to turn away from the Creedence legacy. When he finally launched a solo tour in 1986, he disappointed crowds all across America by refusing to perform even a single CCR song. He wouldn't relent until 1997, a quarter of a century after the band split. By that point, the Creedence rhythm section of Doug Clifford and Stu Cook had recruited a new singer and were touring under the banner Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
But Clifford and Cook quietly dissolved their band in 2020. Two of their former compatriots, guitarist Kurt Griffey and vocalist Dan McGuinness, have attempted to keep the CCR flag flying by booking shows as Revisiting Creedence, but they are essentially a tribute band to a tribute band. That means Fogerty is now the only authentic member of the band keeping the music alive. He bills many of his shows today as 'John Fogerty Celebrates His Songs From Creedence Clearwater Revival,' just so there's no confusion about who created this music.
But the 80th birthday show at the Beacon wasn't merely a Creedence retrospective. Midway through, he broke out his 1997 solo cut 'Joy Of My Life.' It's a tribute to his wife, Julie, who was parked on the side of the stage all night, beaming with joy. 'Julie is the one,' he told the crowd. She is the rock in our family. I wouldn't even be standing here if it wasn't for Julie. We recently celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary. Somewhere along the way, I wrote this song for her.'
Later in the night, he also revisited his Eighties solo hits 'Centerfield' and 'The Old Man Down the Road.' Vintage baseball cards flashed on the screen during the former, and Fogerty's daughter Kelsy came out for a brief guitar jam with her brothers on the latter. The man set wrapped up with a fiery 'Fortunate Son' as fake dollar bills fell down from the rafters.
Before the encore, Fogerty sat down in a folding chair and told the crowd about his upcoming LP, Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. (For much more on that, check out David Browne's recent interview with Fogerty.) The crew then wheeled out a birthday cake, but Fogerty had no time to cut a slice for himself or anyone else. He instead wrapped up the show by ripping through 'Travelin' Band,' 'Bad Moon Rising,' and a quick repose of 'Proud Mary,' taking the night full circle.
The 80th birthday celebration continues Thursday night with an encore show at the Beacon before heading over to Europe in June and July for a run of festival dates, including Glastonbury. The last show on the books is stop at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Quincy, Massachusetts, on August 3rd for a special event commemorating the 400th anniversary of the town.
But there's every reason to believe Fogerty will keep touring for the foreseeable future. A 90th birthday concert in 2035 may seem like a distant dream, but there's little reason to think it won't happen, considering how oddly vital he remains as he kicks off his eighties.
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Meet Creedence Clearwater Revival: John Fogerty's version
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Anger at his bandmates and his record label consumed much of Fogerty's energy in the decades that followed. Fogerty stopped recording in the late 1970s over a dispute about a contract clause; later he was sued by the label, in part for allegedly plagiarizing a Creedence song in a solo track. Meanwhile, he wouldn't perform Creedence songs live to protest the fact that he did not own the rights to the songs because of his initial record deal. (He also had to give up his artist royalties for Creedence songs to be allowed to sign with Warner Records as a solo artist in the 1980s.) Advertisement Now, all of that has changed. This Friday, Fogerty will release 'Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,' a collection of re-recordings of his early classics. The album is a celebration of the fact that Fogerty has finally claimed ownership of his catalog. Advertisement Sixteen of the record's 20 songs were on 'Chronicle,' the best-selling Creedence Clearwater Revival greatest hits album, but Fogerty has replaced cover songs like 'Susie Q' with other originals such as 'Porterville' and 'Wrote a Song for Everyone.' The subtitle, 'John's Version,' is a wink to Fogerty credits his wife, Julie, with his overall happiness, getting the rights back, and recording the new album. 'Love is the whole story here,' he said. 'I don't know that I would have got my songs back if it wasn't for Julie.' Fogerty said he felt 'duty-bound' to keep fighting for the song rights over the years, but was unable to find the right path. He had met unsuccessfully with Saul Zaentz, the record label owner with whom he'd battled for decades. But by 2014, Zaentz had died, and Julie, aided by industry legend Irving Azoff, devised a plan to leave the new label owner a vested interest in the songs, while making John the primary owner. Fogerty said the album was recorded in 'an atmosphere of overwhelming love,' featuring his sons Shane and Tyler as his sidemen. Fogerty, who brought in as much original equipment as possible (such as a Neve recording console from the early 1970s), was especially thrilled to record these tunes using his 1969 Rickenbacker guitar, which he had personalized by changing the tuners, the whammy bar, and pickup. Advertisement Fogerty gave the guitar away in 1973 when he was distancing himself from all things Creedence, and years later passed at a chance to buy it back for $40,000. But in 2017, Julie tracked it down and bought it for him as a Christmas present. Fogerty recorded most of the songs in the original key. He said that while he's lost a bit of his top range, he's preserved his voice by quitting smoking, taking care of his overall health, and cutting out coffee on tour. ('I used to drink seven cups a day, but you get reflux and that's gonna hit your vocal cords,' he said). But it still took Fogerty a while to capture what he wanted vocally. When he first started singing over the basic tracks, he thought he knew what he was doing. 'The first day, we did 'Proud Mary' and I just walked in and sang it — after singing it thousands of times over the years, I thought I was honoring the song the best I could,' he said. 'But later, after spending months on the process, filling in the background vocals, lead guitar parts and all of that, I listened to the vocals and it was immediately evident to me that they weren't up to par.' Upon reflection, Fogerty realized that as a young man, recording those songs felt like 'a matter of life and death, so my whole being was in that.' To recapture the magic, he went back and repeatedly listened to every nuance of his original versions so he would get into the right mind-set — 'to be human, not just a robot singing on the beat.' Advertisement Ultimately, Fogerty wasn't seeking a perfect replica of every inflection. 'It would be beating the thing to death to make every little thing exactly the same,' he said. Instead, he tried to find the 'spirit' of each song. Fogerty said that people who'd heard the album have commented on how joyous it sounds, but also that it feels fresh. 'I'm not sure if they mean the fidelity or if they just mean the happiness that seems to be jumping out of the so-called grooves,' Fogerty said. 'But I do believe there's a palpable thing there. None of us know how long we're going to be here on this earthly plane and I'm just so happy to experience getting my songs back during my lifetime.'
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'I'm just an adventurer coming back to the homeland': John Fogerty on the long struggle to own his songs again
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