{"id":88066,"date":"2024-08-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88066"},"modified":"2024-08-08T10:47:44","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T15:47:44","slug":"88066","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88066","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Rolling Stone <\/em>occasionally bothers to write about music, it can actually be…<\/p>\n

…readable.<\/p>\n

For example, this article, making and supporting the case that Creedence Clearwater Revival is the biggest thing in pop music today<\/a>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I mean, it’s not wrong<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

CCR are the most awesomely bizarre case of a classic band that\u2019s bigger than ever right now, without anyone really noticing. But their greatest-hits collection Chronicle<\/em> is riding high on the Billboard<\/em> 200 every week,\u00a0always somewhere in the thirties or forties. It\u2019s currently Number 39, right ahead of the new Ariana Grande album. It\u2019s higher than anything by the Beatles or the Stones or Zeppelin or Queen. It\u2019s crazy because there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Of all the \u201cclassic rockers who stay famous forever\u201d stories, this is the one where there\u2019s nothing but the songs. Of all the fans who bought\/streamed\/whatevered Chronicle<\/em> this week, I doubt half could give the leader\u2019s 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\u2019t pick any of these dudes out of a police lineup. There\u2019s no hero worship, no narrative, no stars. There\u2019s no love story, no death story. Only the songs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the record, I can tell the difference between Clifford and Cook.\u00a0 Most of the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The “why” is the interesting part:<\/p>\n

\n

But ironically, there\u2019s plenty of dramatic lore in the Creedence story, if anyone knew or cared. There\u2019s two brothers hating each other \u2014 after big brother Tom Fogerty quit the band, they never reconciled before his death. John was one of the very few rock stars to get drafted in the Vietnam era \u2014 he did his time in the Army, waiting out a year of misery, then returned to fight his way back into the Bay Area bar-band scene. None of his peers had a struggle like that to boast about, but it was a cred card he refused to play, even when he was protesting the war in \u201cFortunate Son.\u201d There\u2019s even the hilarious lawsuit after his 1985 solo hit \u201cThe Old Man Down the Road\u201d \u2014 it sounded so much like Creedence, his ex-label took him to court, making him the only rock star ever to get sued for plagiarizing himself<\/em>. He had to take the witness stand with a guitar, to show the jury why his songs sounded like John Fogerty. During cross-examination, he snapped, \u201cWhat am I supposed to do, get an inoculation?\u201d<\/p>\n

Great stories \u2014 but only hardcore fans know them, because Fogerty had zero knack for talking about himself. Since the band broke up, he\u2019s never stopped railing at his ex-bandmates, stewing over business injustices he never had much luck convincing anyone else to care about. His 2015 memoir is a barely-readable pity party. Even in their heyday, the group\u2019s interviews were nothing but drab complaints about not getting taken seriously enough. As Cook groused to Rolling Stone<\/em>, \u201cPeople know about our music but they don\u2019t know about our heads.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I haven’t said “worth a read” about something in Rolling Stone<\/em> in a long, long time.  And it’ll probably be a while before I do it again. <\/p>\n

But here you go.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Rolling Stone occasionally bothers to write about music, it can actually be… …readable. For example, this article, making and supporting the case that Creedence Clearwater Revival is the biggest thing in pop music today:\u00a0\u00a0 I mean, it’s not wrong: CCR are the most awesomely bizarre case of a classic band that\u2019s bigger than ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88066"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88103,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88066\/revisions\/88103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}