For years Fogerty, who turned 80 in May, refused to play “Born on the Bayou,” “Down on the Corner,” and the scores of other songs that made CCR one of the most enduring bands of the 1960s. If he did play them, they were often relegated to one portion of his live set.
On Friday, the last stop on his 2025 “Celebration Tour” before a New Year’s Eve gig in Las Vegas, Fogerty dedicated the show to his band’s legacy, roaring through more than a dozen Creedence staples with plenty of help from a couple of ringers: his sons Shane and Tyler.
They opened the show with a short set from their own band, Hearty Har, which makes original hard-edged psychedelic music that borrows liberally from the old man. Shane is a guitar obsessive, like his father. Tyler was a wild card, skipping from guitar to keyboard and maracas, stomping like a flamenco dancer.
Papa Fogerty’s set began with video clips of him in the studio during the recording of his latest album, a collection of re-recorded Creedence hits called “Legacy.” For years, as he said on camera, he was on a path “to pass away and not be connected to my own songs.”
A huge full moon rose on the screen, and the band tumbled onstage to the ominous “Bad Moon Rising,” with its lyrics about “rivers overflowing” and “the voice of rage and ruin.”
Fogerty, wearing a trademark flannel shirt and a bandana tied around his neck, cowboy-style, was remarkably active all night. He trotted across the stage and wrestled with his guitars. (His guitar technician brought out a new one for every song).
Reels of archival footage unspooled on the big screen: old clips of bikers on choppers cruising the California hills for “Up Around the Bend,” backwater footage of alligators and stilt houses for “Born on the Bayou,” the crowds at Woodstock for “Who’ll Stop the Rain.”
Before that song, he introduced the 1969 Rickenbacker he’d just strapped on, which he reacquired some years ago after giving it away when CCR broke up. He’d been inspired to modify the guitar by the British guitar heroes of his day, he said — Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton. Playing through Marshall amps, they made “the coolest sound that ever was made in rock ’n’ roll.”
But for the middle portion of his set, Fogerty let his inner dork take a turn. He brought out a saxophone player to join the band on “Rock and Roll Girls,” one of three tracks he played from his 1985 comeback album, “Centerfield.” The band leaned into “Fight Fire,” a garage-rock nugget recorded by the Golliwogs, Fogerty’s high school band, and covered the zydeco party staple “My Toot Toot,” with Tyler Fogerty scraping away at a washboard. The title track to “Centerfield,” with its plea to “put me in, coach!,” landed in this set like a team mascot running onto the field during a tense moment in the game.
But it was the Creedence material that made the night a special one. The heavy drone of “Keep on Chooglin’,” the nostalgic singalong of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?,” the infectious lope of “Down on the Corner” — these were the songs the audience came to see, and the ones Fogerty was clearly most eager to play.
The two-song encore (“Travelin’ Band” and “Proud Mary”) went by in a flash. The real exclamation point came on the last song before the encore: the scathing Vietnam-era anthem “Fortunate Son.”
“It ain’t me,” Fogerty howled. “I ain’t no fortunate one.” But with his most beloved songs back under his control, he’s finally feeling otherwise.
JOHN FOGERTY
With Hearty Har. At MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Friday
Here’s the setlist from Friday, according to setlist.fm. Keep checking back as the list continues to update.
