Craft Recordings
Craft RecordingsAs recently reported, an album featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s full 11-song set from the 1969 Woodstock festival will be released August 2. Now, Billboard.com has premiered a performance of the band’s classic hit “Proud Mary” from CCR’s Live at Woodstock collection.
The album can be pre-ordered now, and will be available on CD, as a two-LP vinyl set and digitally. Those ordering advance digital copies of the record will receive instant free downloads of “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the world’s top rock acts when it played Woodstock, but the band declined to appear in the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary and the successful soundtrack album focusing on the festival, mainly because frontman John Fogerty wasn’t happy with the group’s performance.
Explaining the decision to keep CCR out of the film, Fogerty tells Billboard, “Nobody really understood what the movie would be. The track they wanted to use was ‘Bad Moon Rising’; I just didn’t feel it was our best work. At that point in time Creedence was the No. 1 band in the world. I felt like, ‘Why go backwards?'”
The singer/guitarist says he eventually had a change of heart about releasing the Woodstock set.
“Maybe around the late ’80s I began to think that, historically, it is what it is,” he notes. “It doesn’t matter if it’s well done or not well done, it became more a fact of history. Therefore, nobody was hurt by it.”
CCR bassist Stu Cook tells Billboard that the group had differing opinions about the performance.
“I thought we played good, and in some cases I thought we played great,” Cook recalls. “It’s a shame we weren’t in the film, but that was not my decision.”
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