A Song For Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival

by John Lingan

Overview

The definitive biography of Creedence Clearwater Revival, exploring the band's legendary rise to fame and how their music embodied the cultural landscape of the late '60s and early '70s

From 1969 to 1971, as the United States convulsed with political upheaval and transformative social movements, no band was bigger than Creedence Clearwater Revival. They managed a two-year barrage of top-10 singles and LPs that doubled as an ubiquitous soundtrack to one of the most volatile periods in modern American history, and they remain a staple of classic rock radio and films about the era. Yet despite their enduring popularity, no book has ever sought to understand Creedence in conversation with their time. 

A Song for Everyone finally tells that story: the thirteen-year saga of an unassuming suburban quartet's journey through the wilds of 1960s pop, and their slow accrual of a sound and ethos that were almost mystically aligned with the concerns of decade's end. Starting in middle school, these Californian friends and brothers cut a working-class path through the most expansive decade in American music, playing R&B, country, and rock 'n' roll under a variety of names as each of those genres expanded and evolved. When they finally synthesized those styles under a new name in 1968, Creedence Clearwater Revival became instantly epochal, then fell apart under the weight of personal grievances that dated back to adolescence. As musicians and as men, they embodied the contradictions and difficulties of their time, and those dimensions of their career have never been explored until now.

Drawing on wide-ranging research into the social and musical developments of 1959-1972, extensive original interviews with surviving Creedence members and associates, and unpublished memoirs from people who knew the group closely, A Song for Everyone is the definitive account of a legendary and still-beloved American band. At the same time, it is also a cultural history of those same years—from Elvis to Altamont, Eisenhower to Watergate—seen through the eyes of four men who encapsulated them in song for all time, told by one of the rising figures in contemporary music writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306846700
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	382,182
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Lingan writes for publications including the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Pitchfork, and The Oxford American. He is also the author of Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk, and lives in Maryland with his wife and three children. 

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 Classmates 1

2 The Combo 11

3 A Grown Man 19

4 Blue and Green 28

5 Fantasies 39

6 Freedom Summer 49

7 Humiliation 58

8 A Man of Nature 67

9 Nitty-Gritty 73

10 The Valley of the Black Pig 83

11 Full-Time 95

12 Revival 102

13 Strike Time 108

14 An Incipient Fad 120

15 Grief 128

16 A Crime to be Young 136

17 Disharmony 142

18 Rolling 150

19 Rising 157

20 Smoldering 167

21 At the Feet of the Gods 174

22 Songs for Everyone 185

23 The Acceptance of Death 197

24 Together and Apart 205

25 An Army Growing in your Guts 214

26 We Shouldn't Be Taken Lightly 225

27 Forward to the Past 233

28 Bloodbath 240

29 Good Business 249

30 The Oldest Young Man 257

31 Blue Again 266

32 The Shit Kicker Three 275

33 Savaged 285

34 The Music in Our Heads 293

Acknowledgments 309

Bibliography 311

Notes 323

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

Variety, "Best Music Books of 2022"

"...[C]ritics have tended to characterize John Fogerty as a songwriter foretelling nothing but doom... Such gloomy characterizations weren’t wrong, but Lingan explains much of C.C.R.’s appeal with a simple reminder: melody and groove matter, too... Perhaps the time has even come when we can see C.C.R. for the innovators they were to begin with."—New Yorker

“Diagnosing the push-and-pull of John Fogerty’s unnavigable conflicts—between populism and artistic sophistication, control and collaboration—is where A Song for Everyone is at its best."—Wall Street Journal

“Lingan provides an impressively detailed history of both the band and the East Bay music scene of the era.”—Variety

"A Song for Everyone will be greatly appreciated by Creedence and Fogerty fans for further insight into the band whose music seems to be everywhere, but whose story has been far less ubiquitous."—Houston Press

"[An] excellent biography."—Yahoo, "The It List"

"...[T]he dramatic undercurrent in John Lingan's story-line bubbles up to the surface with understated but nonetheless unmistakable intensity."—All About Jazz

"Well-researched... [Lingan] does a fine job of weaving the CCR story through American cultural history of the their era, helping to bring the tale to life for the reader and widen its scope."—Vinyl District

“Accurate and authoritative…the writing is exceptional when dealing with the purely musical aspects of the group’s career…The book is at its best when Lingan is rapturously breaking down and describing some of CCR’s best-loved hits with a fanatic’s eye and ear for detail.” —Winnipeg Free Press

"Compelling."—David Yaffe, author of Reckless Daughter, Air Mail

"[A] frankly excellent book... What John Lingan has done with this book is restore the rightful position of Creedence Clearwater Revival as one of the great American bands. By focusing on the political background to their rise to popularity, and refusing to pay too much attention to the personal issues and internal spats that eventually brought them down, he has ensured that their music, and it’s importance to its time, is front and centre throughout the pages of what is as much social history and social commentary as it is the biography of a band. Previous books about the band have come down on one side or the other in the 'whose fault was the break up' debate. With this telling of the story of Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Lingan may well have written a book for everyone."—Americana UK

"Entertainingly told."—Spectator (UK)

“John Lingan's A Song for Everyone is a well-written and fascinating account of the convoluted history of one of rock’s most successful bands. Surprising and thoroughly engrossing.”—Richard Thompson, musician and author of Beeswing

“Creedence Clearwater Revival rose with the Sixties and collapsed soon after that decade folded. Set against the tumultuous events of those years, John Lingan’s evocative and deftly written portrait of this beloved but often misunderstood band beautifully proves the way in which art, history and people are often bound together.” —David Browne, author of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“A Song for Everyone is a historical masterwork. It's the story of a band whose music can, at a glance, appear perfectly calibrated for universal adoration. But Lingan's biography of Creedence Clearwater Revival meticulously documents how this fame was hard-won. Theirs was a sound and fury forged in the fires of the Vietnam War.”
 —Elon Green, author of Last Call

"Like the best Creedence songs, John Lingan's A Song For Everyone reads like it was in your head before you even picked it up. Lingan has composed a work of serious reportage, tremendous insight, and most of all, killer storytelling. This is a book for everyone."—Eric Nusbaum, author of Stealing Home

From the Publisher

08/01/2022

In 1968, guitarists (and brothers) John and Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, known collectively as Creedence Clearwater Revival, hit the charts and began an amazing run with seven consecutive gold albums and nine top-10 singles. They performed before muddy masses at Woodstock and rock royalty in London's Albert Hall. Despite the outwardly visible success, a lack of shared direction led to the departure of Tom and the internal collapse of CCR in 1972. The last 50 years have been fraught with lawsuits, grudges, bitterness, and resentment. The tale has been widely told, perhaps most effectively in Hank Borowitz's Bad Moon Rising, and John Fogerty told his side in Fortunate Son. Lingan adds to the canon with new interviews from Cook and Clifford and emphasizes the contributions of the rhythm section, although there isn't a great deal of revelation. He is, however, most effective at placing the compositions and performances in their cultural context. VERDICT An updated bio of one of the most successful bands of the late 1960s. CCR's unique swamp rock vibe and the timeless compositions have assured that classic rock staple CCR will remain popular for some time to come.—Bill Baars

Library Journal

2023-04-13
An affectionate history of one of the most successful bands in American rock history.

Lingan begins in 1958, with future band members Stu Cook and Doug Clifford at Portola Junior High School in the Bay Area suburb where they grew up. They discovered a mutual interest in rock music, especially Southern Black artists like Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry, “who took the rhythms of Black music and wrote narratives that appealed to everyone.” In due time, the two began trying to play the music they were hearing. When Clifford heard another young boy playing piano in the same idiom, he invited him to join their band. That boy was John Fogerty, who became the group’s leader. Fogerty was already finding his way on an electric guitar, a joint purchase with his older brother Tom, who would eventually join the band as rhythm guitarist behind John’s lead work. The band went through several preliminary configurations, under various names, before landing a recording contract with Fantasy Records—a label previously identified with West Coast jazz—where they turned out an impressive string of hits and several well-received albums. Lingan provides ample background about his subject, covering the members’ personal lives as well as the recording sessions, tours, and eventual breakup. During it all, John Fogerty did more than anyone to shape the band’s direction, with his guitar work, vocals, and distinctive songwriting. Given his central role in the band from start to finish, it is unfortunate that Lingan was apparently unable to get his version of the band’s history on record. The book would have been stronger with his input. Still, the author gives anyone interested in Creedence a solid overview of the band’s career and a good excuse to pull out the old records for one more listen.

Recommended to anyone with fond memories of the band and of the era of which it was a central part.

Kirkus Reviews