In April 1970, Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the group and breaking up the Beatles. As Creedence Clearwater prepared to record the band's sixth album, the Beatles loomed large over their shoulders. The boys from El Cerrito had actually outsold the mop tops the previous year and there seemed to be a throne vacant.
No less a palace player than Allen Klein, the hardball accountant whose though business practices contributed to the split between McCartney and his bandmates, turned up for a meeting at the Factory, the warehouse in industrial Berkeley that served as Creedence's headquarters. Klein had gone so far as to check sales figures of the band's previous album, Cosmo's Factory, with the plant that printed the album covers. The record sold more than five million copies.
Not content with merely being the top selling rock group in the world, coming off seven consecutive Top Ten hits, the members of Creedence chafed under the band's dismissal by the hip underground cognoscenti as nothing more than a Top 40 act. They determined to launch a campaign to take their rightful places in the contemporary rock pantheon. A big-time Hollywood public relations agency was hired. Interviews dutifully trooped in and out of the Factory daily. It seemed like a strange reaction to success. Why would they want to do this?
John Fogerty didn't have to give the question a moment's thought. He was sitting on a stack of cartons that contained thousands of little plastic games--roll the b.b.'s into the holes on the photo of Creedence Clearwater. The dime store toys were awaiting shipment to the nation's great disc-jockeys. He shot back the answer instantly. "Because I want John, Tom, Stu, and Doug to roll off people's tongues like John, Paul, George, and Ringo."
Behind the scenes, the other three members led a mutiny. They insisted singer-songwriter-producer Fogerty relinquish his complete control of the group's recordings. He reluctantly agreed. Pendulum would be the last Creedence album John Fogerty would produce.
As was the band's custom, rehearsals began daily at noon. The musicians' vans pulled into the warehouse and the band assembled behind a blue velvet curtain in the corner. John Fogerty conducted the rehearsals from the bench behind a Hammond B-3 organ, a stylistic shift he planned for the new album, inspired no doubt by Booker T. & the MGs. The famed Memphis soul instrumentalists had not only been an early influence on Creedence, the band paid big money for Booker and the guys to appear as special guests on Creedence's triumphant 1969 headline tour. Organist Booker T. Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper were filmed jamming with Creedence at the Factory for a Creedence TV special.
The four musicians spent six weeks practicing the basic instrumental parts to John's songs. The other band members didn't know the titles, the melodies, the lyrics. Every afternoon, they would go over the instrumental tracks with a jeweler's eye for detail. Drummer Doug Clifford taped masking tape targets on his cymbals. Stu Cook joked about rubbing Vaseline on his amplifier speakers to get that funky bass sound.
After having the basic tracks drilled into them, the four musicians repaired to Wally Heider's Studio in San Francisco, where they laid down the tracks in short order. For once, a couple of new songs bloomed during the sessions. "Pagan Baby" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" were actually rehearsed and recorded in the studio. The album took a month to finish, a long time by Creedence standards, while Fogerty fussed with horn parts he was playing, keyboard overdubs, even group choral background vocals on "Sailor's Lament."
With the album set to ship one million copies the day of release in December 1971, Creedence invited the entire rock press from across the country to Berkeley to celebrate the release. Several hundred writers were flown in, wined, dined, and driven around town in buses. They saw the TV special. They ate a catered dinner at the Factory, followed by a short performance by the band. After a few of the songs from the new album, including Creedence's next Top Ten hit, "Hey Tonight," the band offered an encore of the epic "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" from the previous album. "This is for Saul Zaentz," said John Fogerty, "who believed in us when the whole world was a $400 lead guitar amplifier." Most of the articles resulting from the expensive press junket--dubbed "The Night of the Generals" by some members of the band--largely ridiculed the group.
Two months later, Tom Fogerty quit the band. The golden age of Creedence Clearwater was ended.
-- Joel Selvin
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Supplemental Notes On Bonus Tracks
"45 Revolutions Per Minute" (Parts 1 & 2) - The rarest of the Creedence collectibles, this was a two-sided promotional single in a white cover with a dour message comparing Creedence to the Beatles ("A black flag flies at the Beatles' Apple headquarters..."). Produced under the spell of "Revolution No. 9," the tape montage tries to get across the elusive Creedence humor with the help of camp-in-his-own-time Top 40 Bay Area deejay Tom Campbell as imitated by Doug Clifford.
"Hey Tonight" - Previously unreleased, recorded live in Hamburg by the three-man edition of the band on the 1971 final tour for the Live In Europe album, the band's last public performances.
-- Joel Selvin
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