John Fogerty reclaims his classic Creedence songs in great arena concert Sunday (2024)

The songs came pouring off the Pinnacle Bank Arena stage Sunday – “Bad Moon Rising” followed by “Up Around The Bend,” then “Green River,” joyously performed by their writer John Fogerty and his band.

“I just got my songs back,” Fogerty told the 4,000 who filled the arena floor and part of the lower bowl. “I’m going to play every one of them.”

Well, maybe not every one. But 15 of the show’s 21 songs were written for, recorded and performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and lost by Fogerty for decades.

“It’s a really big deal for myself and my family,” Fogerty said of regaining control of his songs. “It took a long time, 55 years, almost all my adult life ... People asked me what my plan was (to get them back). I outlived the sons of bitches.”

Fogerty’s family was with him on stage, sons Shane and Tyler, who played guitar and sang, and his wife Julie, who he said was sitting on the side of the stage. That, perhaps, added an extra layer of joy to the performance that found Fogerty beaming, bouncing up and down and moving across the stage to trade licks with Shane. “The Old Man Down The Road,” one of Fogerty’s solo numbers, turned into a two-guitar, match-this contest.

To be honest, dad won out. Fogerty’s always been a great guitarist— he’s No. 40 on Rolling Stones' list of the 100 best of all time. At 79, he’s as good as ever and he can still sing, sounding very much like he did in CCR’s late '60s-early '70s heyday.

The songs, of course, are rock ‘n’ roll classics that, heard more than 50 years after their release, have a nostalgic, emotional function for those who lived through the era, recalling, as I was told by one concert-goer how he and his older brother were hearing “Fortunate Son,” the set-closing Vietnam War protest song, the younger still in high school, the older in a bunker in ‘Nam.

But they hold up as among the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever. And they were brought fully to life by Fogerty, who handled nearly all the lead guitar work, and the seven-man band, with the saxophone blowing up “It Came Out of the Sky,” the band vividly catching the swamp rock groove of “Born on the Bayou” and nailing the British Invasion sound of “Fight Fire,” a song by The Golliwogs, the pre-Creedence band that found the teenage Fogerty and company trying to “play mod.”

The rain that had been forecasted didn’t arrive Sunday evening. So the concert could have been held as scheduled at Pinewood Bowl. But the move to the arena made for a better show production-wise, allowing the lighting and screen to fully function, the latter delivering both the close-up view of Fogerty and video clips that put the songs into context.

The latter started with a short film of Fogerty talking about songwriting— from his first effort at age 8 onward and found, to choose one example, black-and-white baseball footage from the '40s and '50s playing during “Centerfield,” perfectly timed so Willie Mays made his famous over-the-shoulder catch at the peak of the chorus.

Fogerty, of course, played his baseball bat guitar on “Centerfield,” one of what had to be a dozen instruments that he used throughout the night.

One of those was a Rickenbacker guitar he purchased in 1969, fitted with a humbucker pickup to try to match the sound being created by Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck— “I played this guitar at Woodstock,” he exclaimed, then he gave it away to “a kid” who asked for one of his guitars.

Some 44 years later, Fogerty’s wife Julie tracked down the guitar, gave it to him for Christmas, and he, appropriately, played it on “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” the song he wrote after Woodstock.

The 100-minute show ended with an exuberant blast of the definitional “Travelin’ Band” and Fogerty’s biggest hit “Proud Mary,” capping a concert that, as was suggested to me as I walked out, could be reviewed with a single word — great.