I love rock star memoir/biographies and Creedence is one of my all time favorites. I loved it. Keep ‘em coming please!

I picked this book up because over the years I’ve collected a few Creedence albums on vinyl and found that besides their music, I didn’t know anything about the actual band. They’re known for catchy, popular oldies but have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. This book was the perfect remedy for that.

John Lingan’s writing style made this book a pleasant read and I enjoyed the journey following the band from their young beginnings. I will admit it did feel biased: John Fogerty is made out to be something of a musical genius but ends up tyrannical in his takeover. While I don’t doubt the events it was clear that this book was more of a project from the other members, a good thing since Fogerty already has his own book telling the entire story of himself and his own rise. Even the name of this book--A Song for Everyone--implies that all members held importance, and that they were aiming to make music for the world–not for their own agendas. While John Fogerty’s Fortunate Son comes across very “look at how well I've done.” I recommend this book if you’ve ever thrown an easy Sunday jam or wondered how such a solid group with top hits could seem to fall apart in such a short time.

Thank you to the publisher Hachette Books for providing an eARC of this book for review!

A book about one of the top bands from the late sixties and early seventies. Most people have heard of Creedence Clearwater Revival or the songs. I have been bought their albums back in the late sixties and seventies only to be disappointed when they broke up. Always wondered what the reason was and felt it had to do with the owner of Fantasy Records and his not paying out royalties which were part of it, but it seems a lot of it was from John Fogerty's controlling of the band. It went so far that he even had them not do encores no matter the venue. Which seemed like the pushing point.
The author takes you back to how each began to get interested in music and then how they would end up meeting. Of course, John’s brother Tom was also in the band and the oldest age-wise and was really leading everything at first, but things change after their first hit and John took over singing writing, and how it was to be recorded. He even would do the contract negotiation with Fantasy records thinking that the guy would not screw with him because at one time they actually worked together on the loading dock when in fact he did just that twice. His wanting to be in control and not having a lawyer, manager, agent or anyone older than him looking over things really was the downfall and the problems. This would eventually lead to him not talking to his own brother or even before he passed or the other two members. This really was a sad book when I think of all of the music that could have been made. Overall a good book and worth the read.

Readers should realize that this book relied heavily on the input of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford which the author augmented with well researched past interviews and comments by John Fogerty. John Fogerty, the very talented, narcissistic front man, songwriter, producer and architect of the Creedence Clearwater Revival sound was not involved with this book. That said, it presents a good overview of the band's career, interspersed with contemporary social commentary. It seemed like a stretch at times to link Creedence Clearwater Revival to the political upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies This was a great singles band that had cross demographic appeal specifically because they were intentionally apolitical. I enjoyed the book, and recommend it but wish it would have stayed more focused on the individuals in the band and their music.

3.5 Stars

As a child of the sixties and seventies I was drawn to read this book about the rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival, "CCR" for short. I'm pretty sure I have a greatest hits LP in storage from decades ago! Sometimes you forget just how many infectious hits they had on the radio that defined its cultural era. Well here are a bunch of them:

Susie Q
Proud Mary
Bad Moon Rising
Green River
Down On the Corner
Travelin' Band
Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Up Around the Bend

The last two are my favorite. My son has an indie band but they also do covers and currently perform 3 songs out of the list above. The lead guitarist is a huge John Fogerty fan and keeps bringing his songs in to cover, which has also piqued my interest in CCR. I love to read rock biographies so when I saw this new biographical offering I seized upon it. CCR was comprised of John Fogerty on lead guitar, his older brother Tom Fogerty on rhythm guitar, Stu Cook on bass guitar and Doug Clifford on drums. Tom passed away in 1990, but Stu and Doug consented to be interviewed for this book, while John declined. The author utilized various John Fogerty interviews published over the years as well as information culled from John Fogerty's own autobiography "Fortunate Son" to flesh out the book.

The book began with the band members meeting each other in a school environment in El Cerrito, California. They came from different economic, religious and familial backgrounds, but stood firmly united in their love of music. Their tastes were rooted in soulful, black music. I thought about my trip to Memphis in 2019 when I visited Stax Records with my family, because this historical gem had a huge impact on CCR. They loved Booker T and the MGs who recorded an infectious, pulsating instrumental tune there called "Green Onions" (my son's band performs that song also!). I loved reading about the ingenuity of Doug cobbling together a homemade drum set because he couldn't afford to buy one. The Fogerty brothers were an interesting pair because Tom was the older brother who already had a little experience with other bands in the recording studio. He also had a naturally great singing voice that people took notice of. At first they were happy to have Tom sit in on gigs and handle the singing. But, at a certain point John Fogerty took over not just ALL the singing but the writing and management of the band as well. He sounded like a control freak, but you couldn't argue that his efforts culminated in hit after hit. His business deals for the band didn't fare as well, where they lost millions and ownership of their songs. John Fogerty also had a ridiculous rule about never performing an encore. This caused a lot of heated resentment with band members who would have been quite happy to perform these encores for lingering fans. One time they performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London and some Beatles and Eric Clapton were present. They wanted to go backstage after the gig, but because the fans were fired up and calling out for an encore, they had to stay put.

The time period covered is from the band's youth and meeting each other until the band's demise. After years of threatening to do so, Tom finally left the band. He and the other band members felt so stifled by John's total control of the content, from insisting on recording all the vocals (including any harmonies) and writing all the music. After Tom left they continued on for awhile as just a threesome, and ironically enough, John Fogerty finally allowed more involvement with writing and singing. But it seemed they lost the high standards / quality output from the original lineup. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, where to Doug and Stu's surprise (and simmering anger) John performed with other famous band members like Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson of The Band- instead of them.

The writing style was fine, but I think this band as far as people were just kind of boring to read about. The author also included what was going on at the time as far as the Vietnam War, protests, and the political climate. I didn't enjoy those passages as much, but they informed John Fogerty's writing. John Fogerty wasn't such a likeable character to me, so perhaps that put me off a bit. Overall, this was a quality book and I'm glad I learned something more in the rock realm of my nostalgia.

Thank you to the publisher Hachette Books for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Books for an advanced copy of this biography and cultural study of this American Travlin' Band.

Some bands seem to have that spark, when the road is rough, the times are tough, but hard work, perseverance, musical chops and killer songwriting gets them to the top, like holding lightning in a bottle. And just as quick that bottle is empty and the band is no more with only greatest hits to remember them by. Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of those bands. Able to ride the times and turmoil of the sixties with musical skill, drive, and songs that that not just touched a generation, but became a soundtrack to the era, even now in movies, the band seemed unstoppable. Until they did. John Lingan in his book A Song For Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival is a biography of both the band and the times they grew up in their influences, and the undercurrents that made them come together and work so hard, and yet splinter so easily.

Doug Clifford, drummer. Stu Cook, bassist. Tom Fogerty rhythm guitarist and older brother to John Fogerty lead vocalist, lead guitarist, principal songwriter and spine of the group Creedence Clearwater Revival. No movie of the sixties is complete without a song from this band on their soundtrack. For a band that lasted a short period of time, the band had a tremendous amount of hit records. Bonding over a love of music especially blues and early rock songs by black artists Doug and Stu met in school, later to be joined by John who they heard playing songs that he had learned from listening to the radio on a school piano. Later Tom, John's older brother joined and the band began to practice and take the idea of music seriously, practicing up to eight hours a day to get their sets tight, and perfect. John was the songwriter, a machine who write a tune, figure out a hook and add in song lyrics that he kept in a book that he always wrote in. Soon they gained a reputation that slowly expanded, even as the world around them was changing. However with success came more pressure, mostly in bad business deals, and John keeping a tight control on the band, as he didn't want to mess up and loose what they had. Only John wrote the songs, only John sang the songs, John controlled the deals, again which were awful, and the band stopped being fun. One member left, the band went on as a combo until one day they decided not to. With animosity among the surviving members to this day.

An extremely well written book about a band that I knew, but did not. I knew about the bad music deals, but until I read the book I never put all the songs that John Fogerty wrote together. The band had an incredible string of hits. That is again a soundtrack to the 1960's. To read how the songs came together so quickly, and how they practiced so much is astonishing as from the pictures this doesn't seem like the band that would be that driven to succeed. Boy were they driven. The writing is very good never losing sight of the story, calling on many sources, band members, histories, other interviews to tell a story of the band and an era. The want, the need, and after a while the greed and the anger among the band is all captured, and while it doesn't make sense, from the tale that is told readers understand why the band feels the way it does. But still there is a lot of anger. And a lot of great music.

A great book about a band that readers can hear everyday on classic radio, but not really know much about. A book with no axe to grind and no scores to settle, which can be rare in entertainment books. It's not Hammer of the Gods, no stories of excess or black magic, but it is an American story, work hard, make bad business deals, get famous, hate each other break up, and the record label makes money, and the band never really talks again. Recommended for music fans, people interested in the California music scene and for creative types to learn to read about business, don't sign contracts without a lawyer, and to work hard for your art.

“A Song for Everyone” is a biography about the 1960s American rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival. Like most people, I can name at least 5 of their songs, yet I knew nothing at all about them and their story.

The author spoke with two of the band’s surviving members, which means the book has a lot of interesting details that many music biographies lack. If you hate dry non-fiction, fear not. The author’s writing style is engaging and never drags. I also liked that the book includes a lot of 1960s history for context.

CCR was one of my favorite bands back in those days, but I liked them more before reading this book. I don’t remember if I actually read any of the earlier books about the group or just picked up info along the way about their bitter partings with each other and their record label, but I vaguely knew most of what’s described in the book. The author interviewed Clifford and Cook; Fogerty declined, so his book was used to present his opinions.

I enjoyed what the author had to say about CCR’s music, and especially about its place within preceding and contemporary music. But as someone who, unlike the author, lived through it, I found his broad and necessarily shallow recap of that time’s social and political events less successful. Although the times affected the band, they were less heavily identified with those events than many other groups of the time, so placing them against the social background felt a little forced to me. I have to add that it sometimes seemed the author was more interested in Ellen Willis than he was in CCR.

I’ll go back to enjoy the music and forget the personal issues.

Thanks to Hachette and NetGalley for the early copy to review.

A well researched title. I thoroughly enjoyed the author’s writing style. The stories kept me moving forward to want to see the end.