John Fogerty rocks and rolls along the Fox River in Aurora

By Tom Siebert

Rock legend John Fogerty vigorously ripped through his revered Credence Clearwater Revival songbook in a powerful two-hour concert before more than 6,000 fans at scenic RiverEdge Park in Aurora on Wednesday night.

The John Fogerty Celebration Tour of the U.S., Canada, and Europe made this stop along the Fox River, 40 miles west of downtown Chicago, to share the good news that the heralded songwriter recently won a decades-long legal battle to regain the rights to his iconic music catalogue.

“I got my songs back!” he announced to the Baby Boomer-dominated audience on this last evening of July. “And I’m so happy, I’m gonna play everyone one of them for you!”

Fogerty opened with “Bad Moon Rising,” one of an astonishing 14 consecutive Top Ten hits that Credence Clearwater Revival compiled between 1969 and 1972.

Many in the lawn chair-sitting audience sang happily along, as if to rejoice in the fact that the song’s apocalyptic lyrics never came to pass:

“Don’t go around tonight,” Fogerty sang in his high-pitched howl. “Well, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

The next number was “Up Around the Bend,” with its immediately recognizable, screeching guitar riff. Then came the title track from Green River, one of three landmark albums that Credence Clearwater Revival released in 1969, surpassing The Beatles in sales.

Like many of CCR’s songs, “Green River” evokes the American South through an eclectic blend of rockabilly, Delta blues, and country music.

Fogerty is an age-defying 79 who can still hit the hard notes, play complex guitar solos, and strut across the stage with obvious joie de vivre.

And he has to stay young because his guitar-playing sons Shane, 32, and Tyler, 31, are in his band.

The brothers Fogerty did double duty on this hot sticky night. Their psychedelic garage band Hearty Har was the opening act for their famous father.

The elder Fogerty still sounds as if he were born on the bayou. But John actually hails from El Cerrito, California, a San Francisco suburb, where he learned to channel the voices and spirits of black blues greats such as Lead Belly, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson.

He, his fellow guitarist brother Tom, bassist Stu Cook, and drummer Doug Clifford began performing around the Bay Area at sock hops and banquet halls as early as 1959, taking ten years to become an “overnight success.”

John Fogerty emerged as the primary artistic force of the group, writing and singing some of the most enduring songs in rock history but leaving the other band members feeling left out and resentful.

After Credence broke up in 1972, Tom Fogerty launched a solo career that lasted until 1990, when he died at 48 from tuberculosis complicated by an AIDS-infected blood transfusion that had been performed on him during the late 1980s.

In 1995, Cook and Clifford formed Credence Clearwater Revisited, recruiting well-known musicians and performing CCR’s songs throughout the U.S. and overseas for nearly two decades.

John wrote “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” following the band’s storm-swept performance at the seminal Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969. The beautifully bittersweet ballad has come to represent the rainbow that is his life today.

Fogerty told the attentive Aurora audience how he dejectedly gave away his Rickenbacker 325 Sunburst electric guitar in 1974, only to have his wife Julie secretly hunt down and repurchase the prized instrument and place it under the couple’s Christmas tree in 2016.

So tonight’s lucky concert-goers got to hear “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” with the guitar on which it was written.

Many of them heartily joined the plaintive chorus: “I wanna know. Have you ever seen the rain? Coming down a sunny day.”

And the hits kept coming, sometimes one segueing right into another, while others were interrupted by just a brief change of guitars.

The Prairie State crowd roared at the line “just got home from Illinois” from the 1970 tune “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor,” so much so that Fogerty repeated it at the end of the rollicking toe-tapper.

He dedicated “Joy of My Life,” first heard on his 1997 Grammy-winning album Blue Moon Swamp, to Julie, who sat stage-side while her husband and sons performed. The couple has been married for 33 years and has four other adult children from their previous marriages.

John Fogerty grew up as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, developing a relentless sense of right and wrong. So he was deeply disillusioned when Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz literally stole the rights to his songs and sold them for use in movies and TV commercials.

Eschewing Credence songs for years, John emerged as a solo star in 1985 with the hits “Centerfield” and “The Old Man Down the Road,” over which Zaentz sued him, claiming the song sounded too much like CCR’s 1970 single “Run Through the Jungle.”

At last night’s concert in Aurora, Fogerty busted out his bat-shaped guitar for “Centerfield,” which drew cheers from much of the RiverEdge audience.

The ode to the national pastime is played at ballparks at every level across America and is on a continuous loop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

With CCR and on his own, Fogerty has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. His 2009 induction speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was delivered by longtime fan Bruce Springsteen.

“As a songwriter, only a few did as much in three minutes as John Fogerty,” Springsteen said at the time. “He was an Old Testament, shaggy-haired prophet, a fatalist. Funny, too. He was severe, he was precise, he said what he had to say, and he got out of there.”

Fogerty is a Vietnam-era veteran who wrote perhaps the most important anti-war song of all time, “Fortunate Son,” which Ed Sullivan allowed CCR to play on his variety show in 1969, after the TV giant had tried to squash the performances of other controversial songs by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and The Doors in prior years.

The hard-rocking “Fortunate Son” was the showstopper and “ender” Wednesday evening. The song’s searing lyrics recall English author Samuel Johnson’s quip about patriotism being the “last refuge of scoundrels.”

“Some folks are born made to wave the flag. Hoo, they're red, white and blue,” Fogerty screamed. “And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’, ooh, they point the cannon at you!”

When the somehow-patriotic anthem ended, the crowd exploded in cheers, hand-clapping, and peace signs as the house lights dimmed.

About two minutes later, Fogerty reappeared, tearing into the Little Richard-inspired “Travelin’ Band” off the 1970 masterpiece album Cosmo’s Factory.

And the grand finale was––What else?––“Proud Mary,” the instant classic that propelled Credence Clearwater Revival to global renown and has been covered by more than 100 recording artists, most popularly by Ike and Tina Turner in 1971.

Seemingly everyone at RiverEdge Park knew the words and sang along:

“Left a good job in the city. Workin' for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute of sleepin’, 'worryin' 'bout the way things might have been. Big wheel keep on turnin'. Proud Mary keep on burnin'. Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river.”

At song’s end, Fogerty waved at his fans and shouted: “Thank you! God bless you! I love you!”

Then, the once-troubled troubadour departed the stage for parts well- and lesser-known to make joyful sounds for many more.