A military parade in Washington DC last year became that day’s internet obsession, thanks, unusually, to one of the songs playing through the speakers.
“Fortunate Son” was written in 1969 to attack exactly the sort of man who throws himself a military parade, the powerful father who sends other people’s sons to war while his own stay safely at home. It is one of the iconic songs of that remarkable era in American history and counter-culture, and next month you can hear an “absolute belting version” live at the Half Moon.
Creedence Clearwater Review, England’s answer to the Californian band that released seven albums, outsold the Beatles in 1969 and split after barely four years together, come to Lower Richmond Road on Friday 3 July, appropriately enough the night before American Independence Day.
John Fogerty wrote the song in an afternoon, the story goes, after reading about the wedding of President Eisenhower’s grandson to President Nixon’s daughter. People tend to file it under anti-war, which slightly misses the point. It is a class song. In Vietnam, the sons of senators did not get drafted. The sons of everyone else did. “It ain’t me” is the ordinary man refusing a burden the comfortable have quietly arranged for him to carry. It runs to under two minutes and reached number three in America with barely any radio play.
Extraordinary catalogue
Creedence themselves were four working men from El Cerrito, California, who sounded as though they had been raised on a Louisiana porch. The brevity of their run is part of the appeal. There is no bloated late period to forgive; the catalogue is all muscle. Bad Moon Rising, Proud Mary, Green River, Born on the Bayou, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Up Around the Bend, Suzie Q: a run of songs most bands would trade a decade for.
Then there is the strange afterlife of that one song, which has become the most reliably misused protest anthem in popular music. It plays in war films and sports arenas, and lately at the rallies and parades of the very men it set out to indict. Fogerty’s cease and desist letters have changed nothing. In January it surfaced yet again, alongside a post about American military action in Venezuela. The protest had become the soundtrack.
He has never been coy about what it is for. “The song speaks more to the unfairness of class than war itself,” he said last year. “It’s the old saying about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them.” More than fifty years on, the sentence has not aged a day.
That is part of why a tribute act can still fill a room. In an age of frictionless, algorithm-sorted listening, Creedence sound like four people in a room playing as though it matters, because it did. You cannot really fake that, and you certainly cannot stream the feeling of it. The songs were built for rooms like The Half Moon.
So who actually turns up to play it on a Friday night in Putney? Four musicians from Essex and Cambridgeshire, billed as the UK’s leading tribute to the band, fronted by singer and guitarist Dale Taylor, who takes the John Fogerty role and has spent more than a decade carrying this most American of catalogues around Britain and Europe.
In 2018 they played the VIP lounge at the O2 Arena for Fogerty’s own guests. They work with period instruments and 60s stage dress, and aim, by their own account, to get as close to the originals as they possibly can.
The Cosmos Factory Tour
The visit is part of The Cosmos Factory Tour, named for Cosmo’s Factory, the 1970 album that caught Creedence at their commercial peak. Expect the hits and the audience participation the band trade on, and a setlist that even non-fans will find they somehow already know.
The Half Moon has been doing this for decades, with fresh energy since its refurbishment this spring. It is the sort of venue that refuses an MP’s demand to cancel a gig on principle.
Dale Taylor keeps it admirably simple. “We don’t just play the songs, we aim to recreate the spirit and atmosphere of a real Creedence Clearwater Revival show,” he says. “It’s about celebrating the music, the era and the incredible connection these songs continue to have with audiences today.”
Half a century of being borrowed by other people, and for one night it belongs to a room in Putney.
Creedence Clearwater Review play the Half Moon, Lower Richmond Road, Putney SW15 1EU, on Friday 3 July, 8pm. Tickets are £22 in advance and £25 on the door; over-18s only after 7pm. Book here.
