A Furious Capstone: On 'Willy And The Poor Boys,' Creedence Brought a Big Year to a Raging Close

The easy answer is the same as every Creedence-related question: John Fogerty’s ego. He wasn’t only writing and singing the hits, he was doing the same for every album cut, not to mention playing every guitar solo, singing every studio harmony, and producing every recording session. For good measure, he was also their business manager and tour booker. These were all Fogerty’s choices. Some of those policies rankled his band mates, but they went along with it all, adhering to a rigorous practice schedule, meticulously pared-down song arrangements, and even a strict sober-while-playing agreement. Once John Fogerty had his childhood dream of music stardom in hand, he wouldn’t relinquish it for anything. He would maintain his grip on the public imagination for as long as he had it, overseeing every element of the band’s existence.

The deeper truth of the matter, however, is that Creedence (the entire group, not only their brilliant leader) were on a creative tear like few others in pop history. They spent 1969 creating music of uncommon technique, enthusiasm, and cross-cultural exploration — an equal mix of two other visionary groups of that year, The Band and Sly & The Family Stone. “Green River,” “Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bootleg,” “Lodi,” and the rest of their groovy, chooglin’ output set a new paradigm: “swamp rock.” That kind of radio-programmer-speak usually puts a band in an instant time capsule, but 55 years later, Creedence still sounds remarkably modern. And Willy And The Poor Boys, where you might expect to feel them slowing down or running out of ideas, is an indisputable masterpiece.

It begins with “Down On The Corner,” a worthy candidate for their most purely enjoyable song. Fogerty is in fine form, singing about their title doppelgängers, a down-home Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The band hits a bouncy, pop-gospel feel, and Fogerty’s put-on cornpone accent never sounded more welcoming. For that matter, he never sounded funnier than on “It Came Out of the Sky,” a Cold War farce about a satellite fallen to earth. It’s a perfect summary of Creedence’s whole style; the music is pure Chuck Berry but the song is subtly forward-thinking, containing the first-ever lyrical mention of Ronald Reagan, who would become a popular subject for punk groups in the 1980s. Fittingly, Fogerty’s Reagan, who was then the governor of California, is obsessed with the possibility of “a communist plot.”

These two opening songs already show the band stretching out the essential elements of their sound and attitude, encompassing churchy choruses and social satire. The music, too, was brighter and looser than on their earlier albums; dozens of shows and hundreds of hours of woodshedding practice will grant a band that confidence, and Fogerty had become a true artist behind the studio boards. But even though the album cover features our heroes posing as the goofy jug band of “Down On The Corner,” the rest of Willy And The Poor Boys is a wide-ranging emotional journey, from an uptempo country-rock cover of Leadbelly’s “Cotton Fields” to the one-chord drone-blues “Feelin’ Blue,” which sounds like James Brown struggling to get out of bed in the morning. 

And on side two, Fogerty delivers three of his most direct social commentaries in very different styles. First is “Fortunate Son,” his deathless, raging blues rocker that is basically shorthand for “Vietnam” at this point. “Don’t Look Now” follows, a Sun Records homage with a country bump and lyrics which indicted the youth movement’s inaction — not exactly pandering material for a megastar. And the album closes with one of Fogerty’s trademark nightmares. (“Bad Moon Rising” came out on Green River; “Ramble Tamble” and “Run Through The Jungle” were yet to come on Cosmo’s Factory.) “Effigy” is Fogerty’s admitted Nixon song, and even mentions “the silent majority.” It depicts a fire on a king’s lawn that spreads to the kingdom and kills everyone. Quite a departure from the album’s opening “bring a nickel, stamp your feet.”

However much the group was overworking themselves and grinding their relationships to dust in the process, they were not suffering creatively for it. Tom Fogerty, John’s vocalist older brother and onetime musical mentor, was already growing restless with his underwhelming role as a strictly rhythm guitarist; he would quit the group within 18 months, after recording another two albums in that span. But Willy And The Poor Boys feels like it was made by a band that could do anything. Any tone, funny to furious. Any musical idea: hard rock, deep blues, or twang. “Feelin’ Blue” and “Cotton Fields” are great examples that a band who seemed to strictly write hits has a rich catalog of deep cuts. But there shouldn’t be any apologizing for hits as rich as “Down On The Corner” or especially “Fortunate Son” (a Top 20 song, yet not nearly their biggest). These are standards at this point, instantly recognizable the moment they pop up in a movie, an ad, a baseball game, a barbecue. But nobody changes the channel; who doesn’t like Creedence popping on?

The brilliance of this band is that you can hear “Fortunate Son” for the ten millionth time and it still sounds angry. It still sounds sonically perfect. You hear other bands’ guitarists play that lead line and it doesn’t sound right, just like you can never quite emulate the balance and insistence of Doug Clifford’s drums, Stu Cook’s bass, and the sinister distortion from Tom Fogerty’s guitar. “Fortunate Son” is about class as much as it is about war, and the hard-toiling members of Creedence Clearwater Revival, all of whom except Cook were raised in financially struggling households, knew what message they were putting across. Everything about this band was purposeful, even if naivete and stress occasionally made their decisions self-defeating. And for a brief time, a group with such fervent purpose, unflashy appearance, and resistance even to love songs could be the biggest band in the world.