Green River

Green River is the third studio album by American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, released on August 7, 1969 by Fantasy Records. It was the second of three albums they released in that year, preceded by Bayou Country in January and followed by Willy and the Poor Boys in November. Background In January 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival released their second studio album Bayou Country featuring their breakout single "Proud Mary" (backed with "Born on the Bayou"), which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Producer and primary songwriter John Fogerty was the driving creative force behind CCR, which would record three albums in 1969 alone. The band saw themselves as more disciplined than other San Francisco-based bands, with drummer Doug Clifford recalling to Jeb Wright of Goldmine in 2013, "We went to see the local bands and they were so stoned they weren’t even in tune and they were really terrible...We made a pact on the floor of the Fillmore, right then, where we would do no drugs or alcohol. We decided to get high on the music, or get out of the business." Going against the grain at the times, Creedence eschewed the acid-inspired free-form jams favored by many rock bands, for tightly structured roots music with an unmistakable rockabilly edge. "I didn't like the idea of those acid-rock, 45-minute guitar solos," Fogerty explained to Uncut'''s David Cavanagh in 2012. "I thought music should get to the point a little more quickly than that." Composition CCR's third studio album includes two of their biggest hits, "Bad Moon Rising" and "Green River", both of which peaked on the U.S. chart at No. 2, as well as the highly regarded "Lodi" (No. 52) and "Commotion" (No. 30). "Bad Moon Rising" is notable for its jaunty, happy music juxtaposed with its dark, ominous lyrics. It was inspired by a scene in the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster involving a hurricane, with John Fogerty stating that the words told of "the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us. It wasn't until the band was learning the song that I realized the dichotomy. Here you got this song with all these hurricanes and blowing and raging ruin and all that, but...It's a happy-sounding tune, right? Regarding the title track, Fogerty recalled in 1993:Green River is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California. I went there with my family every year until I was ten. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there.