Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River
Fogerty sees a bad moon rising at the peak of the hippie era
John Fogerty stamped himself as the voice of the working-class rocker with Green River, one of three albums CCR released in 1969. This masterful collection of songs profoundly influenced the direction of '70s songwriting: Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Ronnie Van Zant and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few, were clearly inspired by its populist vision. "Wrote a Song for Everyone" summoned up an inclusive brotherhood of humanity at a time when rock rhetoric was stridently partisan. The title track and "Cross-Tie Walker" celebrate rural life and use the metaphor of train tracks to capture the restlessness of the American spirit.
Fogerty was also adding to his substantial catalogue of material dealing with the shadow of death and evil in the world — "Tombstone Shadow" and "Sinister Purpose" are impressive, but "Bad Moon Rising" was the most potent of these darker songs, a dramatic contrast to the feel-good sounds of the bigger CCR hits, not to mention the prevailing smiley-face approach of the pop music of the era. "Lodi," one of Fogerty's greatest songs, is ostensibly about a going-nowhere rocker playing for drunks in a one-horse town, but it became a metaphor for anybody stuck in a dead-end job. The terrific rocker "Commotion" and another of CCR's brilliant covers, "The Night Time Is the Right Time," fill out this pivotal American album.
