Live Review: John Fogerty

Living up to their shaggy namesakes, lovable Canadian longhairs The Sheepdogs did their best to win over the crowd of mostly 50 plus no-hairs who one can assume were probably enjoying their one gig for the year. They responded warmly enough to the band, whose relative youthfulness and firm grasp on riff-led rock'n'roll Americana helped the crowd get into the mood. Humbly finishing their set with a medium sized rock out at the end of their Lynyrd Skynyrd 'inspired' single How Late, How Long, they didn't try and steal any thunder.

The mystery of whether John Fogerty and band would play Creedence Clearwater Revival's Green River or Cosmo's Factory was revealed as the lights went down and when the Green River LP cover appeared on the big screen it brought rapturous applause, but really it was always a win-win situation. Fogerty's young band launched into the opening strains of the title track and were quickly joined onstage by the man himself, who wasted no time racing through side one with only the shortest of interruptions. Obviously Bad Moon Rising got the first real singalong session out of the crowd, but a real highlight was Wrote A Song For Everyone, one of Fogerty's early successes at capturing the essence of his America.

Green River is a short album even by the standards of 1969, so with the Nappy Brown cover The Night Time Is The Right Time finishing off the record, Fogerty was free to do whatever the hell he wanted. The hits came hard and fast, starting with Centerfield, for which he played a guitar made out of a baseball bat. Hey Tonight, The Old Man Down The Road, Proud Mary, Born On The Bayou, Down On The Corner, Fortunate Son – the amount of proper classics Fogerty has penned was abundantly clear as he and his slick (but not too slick) band tore quickly through hit after hit.

He played up to his legacy as well, offering glimpses of interviews from earlier days on the big screens to remind the crowd of his past and he even dragged out the original custom-made amplifier upholstered in hot rod leather he used to record Suzie Q back in the day to perform that particular number.

Despite a very small dig at his Creedence band-mates and some early mic issues, nothing derailed the pure rock'n'roll party of his two-hour set.

Chris Yates