The Quick Chek Festival of Ballooning kicks off Friday July 27 and runs through Sunday July 29 at the Solberg Airport in Readington, NJ. This event features entertainment throughout its three days, culminating with a 3 p.m. headlining performance by Creedence Clearwater Revisited featuring bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford of the original Creedence Clearwater Revival.
"I love airports," said Cook as he discussed the upcoming show and much more. "I'm a former pilot; well I'm still a pilot but I just don't have my medical certificate anymore. I loved it, it was one of my indulgences, I flew a variety of light aircraft, Cessna, Pipers etc but I ended up owning a Cessna 185 which is a giant workhorse aircraft; I flew mostly up in Alaska because it was great for mountain flying. It had really huge tires and special wings so that I could take off and land in half the distance of other planes. I learned to fly in a tail dragger, one of the old style airplanes with a tail wheel instead of a nose wheel because it just seemed like a challenge and I figured that nobody would steal it because very few people can fly those."
Creedence Clearwater Revisited has been reviving Cook and Clifford's glory days for more than two decades. Cook explains how the duo decided to do so; even it was not their intention.
"Well, historically speaking, I ended up living in the same small mountain town as Doug which seemed like a good place to live after seven or eight years down in Los Angeles. We started hanging out, drinking beers and decided that we needed a music project. So we put the band together with the idea of playing some private parties and we knew there were a lot of fans out there and that the music was spread across a lot of demographics and we thought that we'd have a chance to play some private parties and corporate events but it didn't work out like that. We ended up playing in public and have been doing so and for the last 23 years we've been mostly playing to fans all around the world. We're lucky, we always were lucky, Creedence was lucky and we have a great catalog and legacy to build on and so we go out and celebrate it every time we go on stage."
However; what would rock 'n' roll be without struggles? Rock music is deep seated in blues music and the hardships of the Deep South and Mississippi Delta regions; so why should this version of Creedence be any different? Cook remembers the struggles he and Clifford went through as they tried to bring the music that affected generations back into the public eye.
"John (Founding member/guitarist Fogerty) sued us in 1996 saying that we didn't have the right to use the name and of course we prevailed and that went away and Tom (Fogerty) passed away in 1990 so he's not complaining and his widow supports what we're doing. This is our twenty third year and we've overcome everything. We've overcome everybody who said, "You can't do it, you shouldn't do it" and we've served it all to them cold."
With those struggles behind them, the current line up, much like the original band has stayed intact with only a couple of minor changes. "Originally we had Elliot Easton from The Cars on lead guitar and John Tristao was our singer, Steve Gunner our utility man and of course Doug and I on drums and bass. We've now moved into, as time goes on some people last longer than others, Dan McGuinness is our lead singer and our lead guitar player is Kurt Griffey; Steve has been with us from the very beginning."
How does one replicate that legendary vocal style that gave the band their very distinct sound? According to Cook they asked themselves that very same question.
"Yes and no," he said with a slight laugh when asked if the search was tough."From the very beginning it was difficult but the quest was a simple one; find someone who understood the music, the kind of almost plainness of it which is unique in its simplicity, someone who knew when to be aggressive and when to be calmer. Having a good or even an appropriate voice wasn't the only criteria. I mean you really had to know and understand the songs and that was the difficult part. John Tristao nailed it from the beginning and he was our singer for 20 years and he just killed it every night. Over the years I found an understudy which was Dan McGuinness who is now in the lead singer chair. He slowly worked into that over the years, filling in for John when he was sick which of course everybody gets sick but when the lead singer gets sick it's pretty much over. We groomed Dan to our version of the catalog and he stepped in in 2016 and he became an official member in 2017; so this is his third year with us and he's doing a great job. It's been a very stable project and we really pick people first, everyone with us has been considered a world class player so we're not worried about their professional credentials we're looking for good people. We've been very fortunate to have great guys in the band and great crew members for the entire 23 years; when there is peace in the valley you can get a lot more done (Laughs)."
Cook feels and rightfully so, that this music which has transcended generations and ethnicity worldwide for decades should always be the main focus; when speaking with him, there's a sincerity in his voice that lets one know he feels that deeply passionate about this as they try to keep pace with changing markets, industry techniques and an evolving fan base.
"The music still is, it is beyond the band members and our internal disagreements; whatever they're based in. It has certainly been 45 or 50 years of nonsense as far as that goes but it's the music that's the whole reason for any of this. It's the reason Doug and I are still playing and for that matter John. We had a great chemistry, a great magic as a band and had a really creative explosion; the records we made are still played and loved today. Our whole generation of artists got a huge boom with classic rock radio and the compact disc; everything started over again. Now its all come apart because physical product is pretty much gone and there are so many formats, the market is so fragmented but Creedence is still Creedence, we're a legacy artist and we still sell millions of albums per year either physical or download and now that streaming has taken the lead in the industry economic model I'm sure we'll get tons of airplay and we have been. Our performances have been huge, I think we have more fans now than we ever did. There's three generations, although they're dropping off on my end, the original herd is thinning but there's still a lot of love for it out there and that's what keeps us going. The chemistry between the band and the audience is amazing. Doug and I are 73 years old and we're still enjoying the heck out of this. It's weird, it's just as tough as a guy in the NFL; when are you really done? Travel, food, hotels and all that stuff is not what I prefer at this point in my life but the playing; there's nothing like it and there's no replacement anywhere else. Until we can't do this physically, we're probably going to keep doing it but we've cut it back to 45 shows a year from a peak of 106 so we're trying to rein it in. We all have grand kids, most of us do anyway, life is short and you can't say that we haven't rocked the world. We're in our golden years, Cosmo calls us, "Rust Buckets" but we're still kicking. We've still got functioning parts so we're still going (laughs)."
With longevity and success in the business, the surviving members of CCR both old and new have adapted to technology and weathered the changes; some artists have struggled to work within today's music industry and Cook understands their pain.
"I could imagine people downloading one or two songs for economic considerations; they pick their favorites and go for it. That's how a la carte and Apple ruined the album business; it's back to where it was when people bought 45s and nobody bought albums, they just bought the hits. Record companies thought, well we can take a hit or maybe two and then put them on an album and sell it for 10 or 20 times what the single cost. Singles were roughly 99 cents now downloads are 99 cents or a buck twenty nine if it's premium and then CDs came out and they were $19.99. The 10 dollar album went to 20 bucks and people bought it, they went for it and then they thought, we have to buy a player and it's new technology. That whole thing went on and on and then people re-bought everything in their catalog and all the vinyl went away and then radio stations evolved and played classic rock so we moved into the new physical product, "New Medium" as they call it in the contracts; they refer to anything that hasn't been discovered as,"New Medium." Streaming is the new medium which resulted in a mass wave of contract re-negotiations. The whole digital thing did; how are you going to get paid on iTunes? There's no real possession of digital downloads because there's nothing to hold, you still get a mechanical royalty on it because it's considered a sale but for the longest time the record companies tried to say that you get the same royalty rate but all of the artists are saying, no they're third party deals. Even Steve Jobs said these were third party arrangements for the record companies so they eventually lost that after years of fighting it and many lawsuits and now they're down to streaming. So it's tough for new artists, it's OK for Creedence and The Rolling Stones, artists who have a huge popular catalog, we're not hurt so bad but it's really tough to get into the music business. I expect my royalty statements to get smaller and smaller unless we find some other source. I think Congress is finally going to create a law that requires the artist to get paid for terrestrial radio performances; we get paid for that everywhere else in the world except the United States. The House of Representatives passed it 435 to 0 so there's a fairly good chance if it gets the votes in the Senate that we'll finally get paid for radio plays which was criminal that artists couldn't get paid for their radio play, so hopefully it will change."
So as they press on doing what they love, making music and attracting new fans; what can we expect to hear from a catalog as vast and rife with hits as theirs?
"Well," started cook with a chuckle. "It's sort of what our set list is; it's A sides, some of the B sides and a couple of long tracks and that comes out to 100 minutes. They want us to do 90 but we always make it a hundred. It's a dilemma, we do have a lot of material to choose from and some people criticize us for focusing on the more popular tracks and we used to play a longer show where of course we could get deeper into the catalog but things being what they are we are asked to keep it to 90 minutes. For our own enjoyment we play other stuff at soundcheck (laughs), it's not like we only know 19 or 20 songs but time constraints keep it pretty much a greatest hits show."
To discover more about Creedence Clearwater Revisited, please go towww.creedence-revisited.com. To purchase tickets to the show and/or the Balloon Festival, please visit www.balloonfestival.com.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
