1.

GREEN RIVER [2:34]

[2:34] 2.COMMOTION [2:42] [2:42] 3.TOMBSTONE SHADOW [3:37] [3:37]
4.WROTE A SONG FOR EVERYONE [4:57] [4:57] 5.BAD MOON RISING [2:19][2:19] 6.LODI [3:10]
[3:10]
7.CROSS-TIE WALKER [3:17]
[3:17] 8.SINISTER PURPOSE [3:20 [3:20] 9.THE NIGHT TIME IS THE
RIGHT TIME [3:07]
[3:07] (Brown/Cadena/Herman)
(Brown/Cadena/Herman)
BONUS TRACKS:
BONUS TRACKS:
10.BROKEN SPOKE SHUFFLE [2:39] [2:39] 11.GLORY BE [2:47]
[2:47] 12.BAD MOON RISING (LIVE (LIVE IN
IN
BERLIN, GERMANY,
BERLIN, GERMANY, 9/16/71) [2:07] 13.GREEN RIVER/SUSIE Q (LIVE
9/16/71) [2:07] (LIVE IN
IN STOCKHOLM,
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN,
SWEDEN, 9/21/71)
9/21/71)
[4:27] 14.LODI (LIVE
[4:27] (LIVE IN
IN HAMBURG,
HAMBURG, GERMANY,
GERMANY, 9/17/71)
9/17/71) [3:19]
[3:19]

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 Released in August 1969, a month before
Woodstock, Green River is utterly of its time, a throwback to
early rockʻnʼroll, and a visionary work that imagines the world
yet to come. The album has to be of its time, because with a
string of remarkable hits, Creedence Clearwater Revival
helped shape its era. The singles here “Green River,” “Bad
Moon Rising,” “Lodi,” and “Commotion” define the everyday
quality of the bandʼs music, the melodies and rhythms you
seem to have known forever before youʼve heard them all the
way through once.

Thatʼs what makes these songs throwbacks to pre-psyche-

delic rockʻnʼroll. Their kinship with the music of the ʼ50s and the
pre-Beatles ʼ60s is expressed in many ways, from John
Fogertyʼs New Orleans drawl to Doug Cliffordʼs “Susie Q” back-
beat, from the homage to Ray Charles in “Night Time Is The
Right Time” to the hints of rockabilly raveup in “Green River”
and “Commotion.” John Fogertyʼs songs distill an essence of
rockʻnʼroll, even when heʼs taking guitar liberties that are
absolutely late Sixties
 But this is not the late ’60s in Haight Ashbury; itʼs the late ʼ60s
of poor boys from an unhip town in the East Bay. The Green River album
portrays the future in darker terms than any other ʼ60s rock band would
have dared. Fogertyʼs fatalistic, desperate insights—a kind of realistic para-
noia—crop up in the very first lines of the very first song: “Let me remem-
ber things I donʼt know,” he sings and suddenly, you realize that there is
grimness lurking even in the bucolic bliss that is “Green River,” as sweet
and joyous a place as exists in the rockʻnʼroll atlas. This guy is lost in a
world grown cold—heʼs a modern Robert Johnson by that measure and
the only place he can think to turn is very likely a myth. (“Let me remember
things I donʼt know” could have been the motto of the greatest mythmaker
of all, Ronald Reagan.)

But the turmoil of the era is as real as 4/4 time and if what comes out of
it isnʼt going to be a love revolution, disaster impends. Thatʼs the way
Fogerty sees it. He takes it personally in “Tombstone Shadow,” with its very
conscious echo of Johnsonʼs “Crossroads,” and “Lodi,” which is the life heʼd
have lived if “Proud Mary” hadnʼt scored. But thatʼs small potatoes. “Bad
Moon Rising” offers a complete social cataclysm.
 Fogerty sings in an Old Testament prophetʼs voice, warning the
righteous and unrighteous alike. He sings like these images and
ideas—the earthquakes, the lightning, rivers overflowing, the
voice of rage and ruin, the dread in the bass line are pulled out
against his will. He sings, in short, like the truth of the matter is just
coming clear and leaves with him about half a prayer: “Hope you
have got your things together?” Now the nature that offered sol-
ace up in “Green River” has itself revealed a sinister purpose.

But there is also another vision here. It is halting, as

unsure of itself as “Bad Moon Rising” is dead certain, but in the
end, just as powerful. “Wrote a Song for Everyone” is perhaps
John Fogertyʼs lost classic, a statement of profound fatedness,
related somehow to that scathing Strother Martin line from Cool
Hand Luke “What we have he-ah is a fail- yuh to comMUNikate”
in a Southern voice exactly as affected, precisely as credible as
Fogertyʼs. “Wrote a song for everyone / And I couldnʼt even talk
to you.” If you knew soldiers stumbling home from ʼNam, civil
rights workers crawling back from the South, revolutionaries who
wound up face down in the mud of some farmerʼs field, then what
Fogerty had to say here was past, present, and future all wrapped
up in one: “Saw the people standinʼ / Thousand years in chains /
Someone said itʼs different now / Look, itʼs just the same?”
 Itʼs not just that Fogerty canʼt
communicate, that heʼs cast into
some existential isolation. That
would be a righteous bore, as
hordes of singer- songwriters soon
proved. No, the thing that really
makes him desperate is that John
Fogerty is a true rockʻnʼroller and
what he wants, more than anything,
is to drill his point home, to make
you believe that all he says is true,
that if we donʼt stop turning our
backs on love and one an-
other, we really are going to
wind up nothing but the
shadow of our own head-
stones. Even more, he
needs to know that heʼs
drilled it down in the depth
of his bones, and if he canʼt This is as far from “Green River” as you can get. Itʼs not just
feel it, heʼs lost. a world where fate overrules hope; itʼs a world where almost all that exists
is despair. In a way, itʼs amazing that anyone this bitter, scarred, and scared
could rise out of bed, let alone make music so heartbreaking.

Fogerty gets himself out of it in the usual fashion. He goes to church.

Thatʼs all “Night Time Is The Right Time” is, really. Sheer gospel, the letting
loose of all the rage, yearning, and depression that these excursions into
damnation have bottled up. Fogerty cuts most of it loose with his mouth
shut, through a blistering guitar solo. You canʼt say itʼs great gospel itʼs not
gospel any gospel singer would recognize but it is an absolute purgation of
somebodyʼs soul, and that counts.

All that has nothing to do with how I think of this album. I remember “Green
River” and “Bad Moon Rising” sluicing out of the radio, their beat an antidote
to pretension, offering the joy inherent in hearing a great rhythm section speak
its mind—a mind that may, indeed, have been at cross purposes to the lyrics
but then thatʼs the whole purpose of having a band, right? Doug Clifford, Tom
Fogerty, and Stu Cook were maybe the most underrated rhythm section in
rockʻnʼroll in those days and just listening to them roll on these tight, dramatic
songs is sheer pleasure.
 SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES ON BONUS TRACKS

Broken Spoke Shuffle – From an experimental session at San Fran-

ciscoʼs Wally Heider Studios prior to recording the Green River album,
this is the instrumental track to a song John Fogerty never finished. It was
Fogertyʼs custom to record only the basic instrumental parts with the band
and complete the recording later, overdubbing by himself.
Glory Be – Another one of the three unfinished tracks the band tried in a
test session at Wally Heiderʼs, while the band first checked out the re-
cently opened studio where Creedence eventually did record the Green
River album.
Bad Moon Rising – Recorded live in Berlin by the three-man Creedence
on the bandʼs final tour of Europe in 1971 (previously unreleased).
Green River/Susie Q – Also from the bandʼs 1971 European tour, this
unreleased outtake was recorded in Stockholm for the Live In Europe
album.
Lodi – Recorded in Hamburg during the last European tour by the trio,
also never before released.
— Joel Selvin
But when you listen, rather than just recall, thereʼs an undertow that pulls San Francisco Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
you toward the nightmares and wonʼt let go. Maybe it comes from the sin-
gularity of Fogertyʼs vision, or maybe itʼs just the residue of playing all those
nights in “Lodi”-style bars. Maybe itʼs the commotion in everyoneʼs head,
maybe itʼs what happens when you have enough stardom to look down and
see where you came from, how far you now have to fall. (This was, after all,
only Creedenceʼs third album, only its second big hit.)

In the tumultuous world that its greatest album foresaw, Creedence Clear-
water Revival is no longer mistaken for a teenybopper hit singles band.
Long after the hippies have been filed and forgotten, these East Bay work-
ing boys reign. And they should. They gave us everything they had past,
present, and future, vision and reality, love and fear and it is not at all their
fault that we have lived down to worst expectations. In a funny way, the fact
that so many of the permanent strangers who inhabit the bleak world of the
21st century can still relate to the heart in this music is one of the few things
that makes me want to live in it.

— Dave Marsh
Dave Marsh is editor of Rock and Pop Confidential
GREEN RIVER

1. GREEN RIVER [2:34]

2. COMMOTION [2:42]
3. TOMBSTONE SHADOW [3:37]
4. WROTE A SONG FOR EVERYONE [4:57]
5. BAD MOON RISING [2:19]
6. LODI [3:10]
7. CROSS-TIE WALKER [3:17]
8. SINISTER PURPOSE [3:20]
9. THE NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME [3:07] (Brown/Cadena/Herman)

BONUS TRACKS:

10. BROKEN SPOKE SHUFFLE [2:39]

11. GLORY BE [2:47]
12. BAD MOON RISING (LIVE IN BERLIN, GERMANY, 9/16/71) [2:07]
13. GREEN RIVER/SUSIE Q (LIVE IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, 9/21/71) [4:27]
14. LODI (LIVE IN HAMBURG, GERMANY, 9/17/71) [3:19]

All compositions by J.C. Fogerty except as noted.

John Fogerty—lead guitar, vocals
Tom Fogerty—rhythm guitar, background vocals
Stu Cook—bass, background vocals
Doug Clifford—drums, background vocals

Produced and arranged by John Fogerty

Reissue Produced by Chris Clough

Mastered by George Horn Mastering at Fantasy Studios
Liner Notes: Dave Marsh & Joel Selvin
Art Direction: Larissa Collins
Design: Geoff Gans
Photos: Cover and outtakes by Basul Parik
Tracks 12-14 recorded by DSR Production
Project Assistance: Rikka Arnold, Bill Belmont,
Jennifer Peters
Special Thanks: Robert Smith, Cheryl Pawelski,
Robert Bader, Russ Gary and Jeffrey Spector

www.concordmusicgroup.com
P &© 2008 Concord Music Group, Inc.
100 North Crescent Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying, reproduction, hiring,
lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited.
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL
GREEN RIVER 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION