John Fogerty

John Fogerty's solo albums decisively prove that Creedence Clearwater Revival was a phenomenal band. While his own raw guitar and rawer vocals clearly dominated America's best straight rock outfit of the early '70s, the ramshackle grace of CCR's rhythm section provided crucial, spontaneous verve. Urgency, in fact, was Creedence's hallmark. The band responded to its fitful times with songs crammed with messages and metaphors of tumult and apocalypse: Vietnam, America's own civil war, and the crashing end of the utopian '60s provoked remarkable songwriting from Fogerty and great, ragged playing from the group.

While crafty and sometimes entertaining, Fogerty's early solo records lack the spontaneity inherent in inspired collaboration, and his once edgy lyrics are blunted. No longer confronted with high-profile upheaval, he doesn't have much to say about America's more insidious, ongoing crisis; here, he trades mainly in nostalgia or writes good-time stuff. A well-meaning attempt to pay tribute to Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, and trad country music, Blue Ridge Rangers is actually Fogerty alone in the studio, playing everything. Such hermeticism, of course, is the antithesis of the familial spirit of classic country, and while Fogerty's musicianship is impressive, it's a cold virtuosity. Even more unfortunate are his vocals. With Creedence, Fogerty expertly mimicked blues belters (Screamin' Jay Hawkins), but steered wisely clear of its subtler interpreters (Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson). On Blue Ridge, he's deaf to the complex grace of country singing, hitting all the notes but missing the nuance.

On John Fogerty's "Rockin' All Over the World" and "Almost Saturday Night," he returns, thankfully, to rock & roll. A solid set, though a little too heavy on (pro forma) oldies, the album is Creedence-lite. Hailed at the time as a return to form, Centerfield (1985) hasn't held up. "The Old Man Down the Road" is functional swamp rock, "Rock and Roll Girls" is charming but slight, and attempts at his former, seemingly effortless significance fall flat: Neither the title track's baseball-player/journeyman-rocker metaphor nor the baby-boom elegy "I Saw It on TV" lead anywhere. The music, at times, tries to extend beyond Fogerty's trad-rock limits, bespeaking commendable ambition, but the syn-drum break on "Vanz Kant Danz" is the kind of thing a Spandau Ballet roadie could have handled with more panache. The lovely "Sail Away," from Eye of the Zombie, features Fogerty's best singing in years; the rest of the record, however -- all studio gloss and labored funking -- simply marks the high point of his professionalism. And for this soulful artist, professionalism should be a dirty word.

In 1997, after a decade's hiatus, he astonishingly returned to strength. Blue Moon Swamp, edgily produced and driven by the powerhouse single "Southern Streamline," was vintage Fogerty: primal rock & roll sung in a voice deepened by experience. Somewhat in the fashion of the grizzled Neil Young, Fogerty was hailed as an elder statesman of jagged guitar power and roots-rock credibility and saw his album rewarded with a Grammy for Best Rock Album. The following year, he released the strong live Premonition, a tour de force featuring new work and CCR classics. (PAUL EVANS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide