Photo credit: Julie Fogerty
“He looks great, he sounds great,” muttered one disbelieving observer at John Fogerty's free concert last night at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan. Another wondered if the show was really live, since it sounded so single/album perfect.
But the non-record fiddle break in Fogerty‘s Creedence Clearwater Revival classic “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” which followed opening Everly Brothers cover “When Will I Be Loved” and John Prine‘s “Paradise,” made it clear that this was not Memorex but live all the way. It also showed how seamlessly compatible and correlative the country songs and arrangements of his new covers album The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again are next to the swamp-inspired blend of rockabilly and r&b that made Creedence one of the greatest American rock bands ever.
The new album is a conceptual sequel to his first solo album The Blue Ridge Rangers (1973), for which Fogerty played all the instruments. He used other musicians this time, and at the Seaport brought out 10 backers, including fiddler, pedal steel guitarist, keyboardist and two backup singers, with estimable drummer Kenny Aronoff and guitarist Billy Burnette recognizable as past Fogerty band members.
Garbed in black cowboy clothes and hat, Fogerty fielded several formations, the hardest being five- and seven-piece guitar rock groupings. His own guitar play was as sharp and riff-laden as ever, though on the keyboard-based Creedence hit “Keep On Chooglin’” he took a swampy harmonica break. In the same stylistic vein he proffered “Jambalaya,“ his hit Hank Williams cover from the first Blue Ridge Rangers album (other solo career songs included the hits “Rock And Roll Girls” and “Centerfield”--the latter, of course, played on his Louisville Slugger guitar--and the Eye Of The Zombie album track “Change In The Weather,” which he remade for the new album’s only original) and the Creedence hits “Born On The Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising” and the closing “Proud Mary.”
But the new album’s cover of Gene Simmons’ 1964 novelty hit “Haunted House” merits special mention. On the stage built on the pier between the Seaport shops and bars and the 1911 Peking barque moored there as a museum piece, Fogerty pranced about with the energy and abandon of a teenager--on a song he first heard as a teenager. With looks, voice and guitar play intact and invigorating, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer proved himself anything but a museum piece.
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