Creedence Clearwater Revisited
-
Stu Cook Speaks......
....... in August
1998!
Date: Sat, 15 Aug. 1998
From: ? ( no sender address )
To: mixac.support@swipnet.se
Here's the Stu Cook interview in full ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival's classic back catalogue remains in demand
more than a quarter century after the band split. CONRAD COX meets the founder
member recreating the 'Bad Moon Rising' band's greatest hits.
A grin steals across Stu Cook's face as the familiar strains of 'Born On
The Bayou' drift in from the living room. "You know," he says. "That's
the song that sums up Creedence Clearwater Revival for me.
"That takes me back to the days when we were full of naive idealism,
when we lived for the band and we were all the best of friends. That was the real
essence of the Creedence experience before it soured."
In the space of five short years the band released seven studio albums,
their success peaking in 1970 when they were acknowledged as the biggest
Rock'n'Roll band on the planet.
The gravely vocals of John Fogerty, rhythm guitar of big brother Tom
and tight rhythm section of base player Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford
introduced the swamp rock genre to the world.
Now 53 years old and living with his second family in sleepy Incline
Village, Nevada, Cook has had ample time in which to come to terms with
the acrimonious breakup that followed, not to mention deal with the
ticker-tape procession of law suits which have followed.
Together with Clifford, he is fronting Creedence Clearwater Revisited, a
band which began as a social get-together for barbecues and bar mitzvahs,
but which now plays up to 100 gigs a year, recreating the music they made
famous between 1968 and 1972.
The use of the Revisited name was greeted by an immediate injunction
from Fogerty, from whom the duo are perhaps irreparably estranged, and Cook's
band had to change their name to Cosmo's Factory.
"That led to another lawsuit," says Cook. "John didn't want us using the
name of one of our old albums. That made us see red, and we challenged
him in the courts. Finally the Court Of Appeal allowed us to use Revisited
again.
"There comes a stage where you get weary of dealing with lawsuits, and
you have to make a stand. We were pushed so far, and then we decided that
we'd had enough, that we weren't going to budge."
Folklore has it that the rot set in the original Creedence when Fogerty
succumbed to demands from Cook and Clifford to have more of a say in the
running of the band, and more of a share in the song writing stakes.
The resulting 'Mardi Gras' swan song was dire, unanimously lashed by the
critics and labeled by Rolling Stone as "the worst album ever made by a
leading group". Cook and Clifford, it was widely accepted, had killed the
golden goose.
"Not so," says the bass player. "It was never that way. Over the years
the truth has been ignored - there was only one person to blame for the
demise of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and that was John Fogerty.
"He insisted that we each write a third of the 'Mardi Gras' album, and
threatened to quit if we didn't. He was sick of writing all the songs. We
didn't want to do it, but we were desperate to keep the band going.
"With hindsight we should have made more of a stand, maybe called his
bluff. He refused even to sing or play guitar on our songs, and I admit
that we were way out of our depth. John wrote great songs. We couldn't
live up to that.
"I couldn't play lead guitar to save my life. It took me up to 60 takes
to get anything that sounded half decent. Doug and I didn't have good
singing voices, except for back-up. It was a miserable experience.
"We didn't want it. The fans didn't want it. Quite simply, the spirit
and the chemistry were gone. That album did a lot of damage to the good name that
we'd worked so hard to earn over the years."
Cook maintains that the recording sessions and farewell tour were really
going through the motions, and that deep-seated doubts sprang up after
the decision of onetime band leader Tom Fogerty to quit in February 1971.
"It used to be Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets, but John gradually
took control," says Cook. "Tom used to be the lead singer, but he ended up
playing second fiddle to his kid brother. His ideas and his songs were
routinely rejected by John.
"Over the seven albums Creedence made, we covered just 11 songs by other
artists of which perhaps 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' was the most
successful. It would have been good for John to have let Tom sing on a
couple of them.
"John always said, perhaps rightly, that he had a unique voice that was
best-suited to his own compositions. So why wasn't he a little more
democratic on the cover versions that we did?
"Tom threatened to leave - decided to leave - on several occasions but
each time we managed to talk him into staying. When he finally went, it was a
big mistake. Neither he nor the band were ever the same again."
It's for that reason, says Cook, that his new Creedence Clearwater
Revisited band refuses to include songs like 'Sweet Hitch Hiker' and
'Door To Door' - performed on the farewell tour - from their 1998 set.
"We only do the songs we originally recorded as a quartet," he explains.
The trio really wasn't the Creedence that we want people to remember".
John wrote some great songs, but he also did some great wrongs."
The wrangling has continued ever since the day Creedence finally split.
Fogerty claims that legal battles with former label Fantasy Records and
record boss turned movie director Saul (The Last Patient) Zaentz
precluded any performance of CCR classics for the best part of a quarter century.
Cook inevitably disagrees. "There never were any problems that prevented
any of us from doing the old songs," he insists. "John in his bitterness with
Fantasy just refused to perform them. It didn't seem to matter that the
fans wanted to hear them.
"We stepped back from the experience and went on to do our own things
individually. Doug and I set up our own Factory Productions - named after
the 'Cosmo's Factory' album - and worked with likes of the Don Harrison Band.
"I played in a country band called Southern Pacific alongside guys from
the Doobie Brothers, learned to fly an airplane and bought a place in the
Sierra Nevada mountains. Doug played with Doug Sahm, amongst other
things.
"But bands all over the world continued to play Creedence songs in
barrooms and clubs. If the music was locked away somewhere, how come
they were all still playing the old songs?"
Cook freely admits that the title of the new album 'Recollection' was a
jab at Fogerty's chin. "He decided to call his 'Premonition' so we
thought it'd be cute to call ours 'Recollection' - looking back to the real
thing," he says.
"In fact, our album was due in the stores a week ahead of John's, but
the plant where the CDs were being pressed was overwhelmed by the work for
Bill Gates' Windows 98, and we were put back a week.
"That meant we both released on the same day. At least ours is a genuine
live album, recorded at the end of a series of gigs up in Canada at
hockey arenas and convention centres, and it feels live.
"John's album was recorded on a Warners sound stage in front of a
hand-picked audience in controlled circumstances. There are a lot of
retakes on that album - he struggled with the lead vocal, and did all the
backing vocals himself, too.
Would he, could he, ever share the same stage with John Fogerty again?
"Personally, yes, I could play with John again," he muses. "You never
say never again. Whether John or Doug could do that is another matter. I
think they've gone way too far down the road for that ever to happen.
"There's been a lot of venom from John, and he's had more press than the
Pope, more platforms from which to direct criticism at the two of us. I
don't think he could put so much misery and self-pity aside.
"But listen, why should it ever happen? We have so much to enjoy,
getting out on the road and playing the music that we love second time around. Why
should we enlist a guy who's determined to do us down?"
CCRevisited, Recollection,
Fuel 2000
Written by: Scott Cooper
Sender: (unknown)
You probably know the story by now. CCR bassist Stu Cook and drummer
Doug "Cosmo" Clifford hire a John Fogerty sound-a-like to sing, tour under
the name Creedence Clearwater Revisited, get sued by John Fogerty, blah, blah, blah.
In case you missed the band's live set, here's an action-packed, two-disc package
to settle the score. It may not be as authentic as it could be but it's still great.
New singer John Tristao really does sound like Fogerty but with more growl. Meanwhile,
Elliot Easton from the Cars handles Fogerty's guitar parts with equal parts believability
and creative flair. Of course, Clifford and Cook gave the original CCR it's rootsy
groove so it should come as little surprise that this band still rocks with the same
rhythmic panache. Recorded live, most of the tunes get the do-it-as-close-to-the-original
treatment and stay under four minutes. However, the band stretches our for a 10-minute
version of "Suzie Q," a 15-minute version of "Heard It Through the Grapevine," and an
eight-minute version of "Run Through the Jungle." Ironically, they don't do any of the
CCR tunes written by Clifford or Cook, opting instead to stick with CCR standards.
They cover Fogerty's CCR material ("Born on the Bayou," "Down on the Corner," "Proud Mary")
and they dip into the catalog of tunes that CCR recorded back in the old days ("I Put a
Spell on You," "Cotton Fields," "Midnight Special").
While Fogerty enjoys his recent solo success, Clifford and Cook can rest assured that
they've hereby proven that CCR was more than just Fogerty, his voice, his guitar and
his pen. CCR's sound was, and still is, a product of a band, not just one person.
