Proud mary ccr5/5/2023 ![]() He actually had no idea what it was about or what it meant. The inspiration was the words ‘Proud Mary.’ I didn’t write the song right away.” Whoosh.He shared in a Facebook post back in 2917, “After about a week, I finally had an inspiration and I wrote it down in my little music book. That’s right: John Fogerty says he wasn’t into Beethoven’s composition of the Fifth. 2 on Billboard’s pop chart in March for three weeks. Then Bruce said, “Wow.” The single came out in January ‘69 and topped out at No. Back at the studio, I played them the song with my vocals. I recorded my solo line twice so it sounded more pronounced.Īt the restaurant later, the guys were still angry and threatened to quit. I also overdubbed a guitar solo using a Gibson ES-175-a big jazz guitar that I bought for the recording session. I stayed behind and overdubbed all the background vocal parts. Bruce Young, our road manager, took them to dinner. When I told the guys I was going to overdub the vocal harmony tracks myself, we had a big fight. The band’s background vocals sounded abrasive - like punk rock, not harmonious. Listening to the playback, I wasn’t happy. Luckily we had enough on there to create a fade-out in the final mix. Just as we were extending the final chorus at the end of the last and best take, the 2-inch reel of tape ran out. When we recorded the tracks at RCA Studios in Hollywood in October ‘68, I channeled Wilson Pickett and Howlin' Wolf with my lead vocal. I showed them how the song went, but for a period of days it didn’t sound right. We had been rehearsing in my brother Tom’s garage in nearby El Cerrito. There was “Proud Mary.”Ī few weeks later, I played the song for the band. Then I opened my notebook for a song title. The line “rollin' on the river” was influenced by a movie I once saw about two riverboats racing. I had always loved Mark Twain’s writing and the music of Stephen Foster, so I wrote lyrics about a riverboat. When I added rhythm to the chords, the song had the motion of a boat. I preferred hitting the first chord hard for emphasis, not the fourth. I didn’t like how Beethoven had composed it. The chord riff was based on the opening to Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” which I had first heard on TV growing up. Then I went inside, picked up my Rickenbacker guitar and began playing a song intro I had been working on. I did a handstand and flipped a few times on the small lawn out front. In the blink of an eye, I was a civilian again. One day in the early summer of ‘68, I saw an oversize envelope on the steps of our apartment building. I was still in the Army Reserve and was concerned about being sent to Vietnam. My first entry was “Proud Mary.” I didn’t really know what those two words meant but I liked how they sounded together.Īt the time, I was living in an apartment in Albany, California, near San Francisco, with my wife at the time and our newborn son. CCR frontman John Fogerty explains the origins and recording of the hit, which would go on to be covered by Tina Turner, Solomon Burke and many others:īack in the fall of 1967 - before the release of our first Creedence album - I bought a small notebook and began keeping a list of song-title ideas.
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