Hope you are quite prepared to die
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Green River
Of Creedence’s albums, Green River is the one that most carries with it a sense of dread. As a theme, impending doom was never far from them, even given their retro/pastoral leanings. Songs like “Effigy” and the “Run Through the Jungle” all spoke of dark times ahead, but Green River is heavy with it from beginning to end. Even the title track, to look at the lyric sheet, one would figure it to be another light-hearted celebration of living the easy life in the countryside that would be right at home on Bayou Country (this album’s cheerful but somewhat bland counterpart). However, the sound of the song is dark and sinister, suggesting not the ideals of the country but the grim realities of the cities, where ‘the whole world is smoldering.’ “Commotion” backs that up, a rare description (albeit negative) of city living from CCR, of its endless noisy hustle.
The rest of it is portents of doom. “Tombstone Shadow” is pretty close to a classic blues standard, similar in theme to “Born Under a Bad Sign” with its talk of bad omens and gypsy prophecies of danger. “Wrote a Song for Everyone” is, next to “Fortunate Son” perhaps the most political song CCR ever did, concerned with the draft and the soul-searching need of a songwriter to address injustices. Of course, “Bad Moon Rising” is one of the most referenced songs of trouble a-brewing. The song exhausts the dread, and “Lodi” is just exhausted, a story of being broke and mired in a small town, playing for ungrateful backwoods audiences. “Cross-Tie Walker” is a spiky song about drifting aimlessly, and then “Sinister Purpose” brings back the sound and dread of the beginning, before the peculiar finale with “The Night Time Is the Right Time” (originally by Ray Charles and just weird in CCR’s hands). In all, Green River doesn’t add up to quite the same knockout that the next two incredible albums they put out were, but it does show the dark clouds gathering.
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