Getty Images
Finally — nearly 50 years after they split — Creedence Clearwater Revival has scored a Number One hit on a Billboard singles charts. The group, led by songwriter John Fogerty, scored a whopping 17 Top 30 era-defining hits between 1968 and 1972 — with no less than four of them stalling at Number Two. At last, the band has topped the charts with their 1970 classic “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” hitting Number One on Billboard’s Rock Digital Song Sales Chart for two consecutive weeks.
Additionally, Creedence is having a resurgence with their hits “Bad Moon Rising” and “Fortunate Son,” which also landed in the magazine’s Rock Digital Song Sales Top 10, hitting Number Nine and Number 10, respectively. The band’s RIAA Diamond-certified 1976 compilation, Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits, recently broke the Top 10 on iTunes’ Top Albums Chart, with the album going one to peak at Number 29 on the Billboard 200.
John Fogerty told us that despite being one of the biggest hit makers of the late-’60s and early-’70s, he can’t tell a hit from a flop — and usually lets others suggest the singles for his albums: “I’ve learned over time that I seem to have a sense about what is a good song when I really let myself focus and do the work. It seems that later on — what I do when I’m really traveling on all cylinders or working on all cylinders — it seems that those works later on seem to last very well. I couldn’t sit there and say, y’know, ‘Put your money on Number 27 on Tuesday,’ y’know what I’m saying? It’s just, I don’t have that much clairvoyance about it.”
We asked Creedence drummer Doug Clifford if when the band was walking such a fine line between being an AOR and singles act, where he actually saw the band fitting in: “I thought we were more of an FM band, because we were right at the epicenter of FM rock — and that’s where we got our first radio play and got started. I think it was sort of an extra little gold chip in the bucket to have the AM success.”