Few made the most of their opportunity like Creedence Clearwater Revival. Parlaying what could easily have been a one-and-done hit with their cover of Dale Hawkins' "Suzie Q" into a path towards their unlikely, if brief, bout of chart dominance, they had the advantage of leader John Fogerty's creative roll to end all creative rolls. The hits poured out of them through all of 1969 and they showed no signs of slowing down the following year. They already had six Top 10 hits in Canada prior to their first chart topper. In addition, CCR put out no less than three albums in '69 with two more to follow in '70. Pop stars just don't do prolific anymore, do they?
All that said, you have to wonder just why the masses fell for them so hard. Fogerty's faux-southern drawl might have prompted some interest at first but didn't anyone get sick of them after a while? The British may have had the right approach. "Proud Mary" gave them a well-deserved debut Top 10 hit in the UK and it was followed by "Bad Mood Rising" which made it all the way to number one. From there, chart placements were more mixed. The forgettable "Green River" peaked just inside the Top 20 which is fair enough but then fan favourite "Down on the Corner" only made it to thirty-one. From there, CCR would only have two more Top 10 entries in Britain. People got into them, liked some of their singles, couldn't be arsed about others and moved on. A perfectly respectable performance for your average band.
Then again, CCR were never your average band. I'm by no means showering them with praise, only I wish to point out that they were unique in how ordinary they were — and how ordinary they had crafted their image to be. Flower power hippies who tried to pretend they were at home doing swampy bayou blues and they actually got away with it. Your average band doesn't act this way. Their laid back style and songs about aimless dudes going about their business hit a nerve which no one else had even thought about touching. If they weren't the band that the era needed then at least they were what was deserved.
As if knowing that that their shtick would only last for so long, CCR just kept churning out the product. It was only the spring of 1970 when "Up Around the Bend" hit the top of the RPM hit parade but they had only a year-and-a-half left as a serious chart act. And it sounds like it too. "Proud Mary" and especially "Bad Moon Rising" may not have been exceptional singles but they were agreeable enough that they remain karaoke faves and campfire singalongs to this day but the bulk of their subsequent hits lack that connection with the broader public. "Who'll Stop the Rain" looked to the folky singer-songwriters of the age but it lacks poignancy. Country rockers like "Green River" smacked of being a genre exercise. A CCR that knew its place was one thing but when they attempted to branch out they looked like even bigger posers than they already were.
"Up Around the Bend" is yet another example of them subtly jumping from one style to another. In this case, it's the newly popular stadium rock. Considering Fogerty's croaky voice, his spidery guitar playing and the band's overall power, this isn't the worst shift they made. It might be the only one that sort of works. You even just about forget that they were a bunch of Bay Area phonies. In fact, it's more a realignment than a change of direction at all. They were a rock band at heart and this them doing it about as well as they could. It's no "Bad Moon Rising" but it is superior to just about everything to come in what was left of their stint at the top.
As I said above, CCR only managed to top the UK charts on one occasion. Meanwhile, in their native United States, they famously kept coming up short with no less than five number twos. Up in Canada, however, they hit the top spot four times. Considering they had already peaked creatively by the time "Up Around the Bend" reached the summit of the RPM listings, this quartet of reviews ought to chart their rapid decline from passable rootsy rockers to fairly miserable rootsy rockers. Such a meteoric rise merits a similarly rapid decline.
Score: 5
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