A Song For Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival

Between 1969 and 1971, as the United States was convulsed by political upheaval and transformative social movements, no band loomed larger than Creedence Clearwater Revival. They unleashed a two-year barrage of top-10 singles and LPs that served as an omnipresent soundtrack to one of the most volatile periods in modern American history, and their music remains a staple of classic rock radio and films depicting that era. Yet, despite their enduring popularity, no book has previously sought to understand Creedence within the context of their time.

A Song for Everyone finally tells that story: the thirteen-year saga of an unassuming suburban quartet's journey through the wilds of 1960s pop, and their gradual development of a sound and ethos that were almost mystically aligned with the anxieties of the decade's end. Beginning in middle school, these Californian friends and brothers carved a working-class path through the most expansive decade in American music, playing R&B, country, and rock 'n' roll under various names as each of those genres broadened and evolved. When they finally synthesised those styles under a new moniker in 1968, Creedence Clearwater Revival became instantly epochal, only to later disintegrate under the strain of personal grievances that stretched back to their adolescence.

As musicians and as individuals, they embodied the contradictions and complexities of their time, and these dimensions of their career have remained unexplored until now. Drawing on extensive research into the social and musical developments of 1959-1972, numerous original interviews with surviving Creedence members and associates, and unpublished memoirs from those who knew the group intimately, A Song for Everyone stands as the definitive account of a legendary and still-beloved American band. Simultaneously, it offers a cultural history of those same years – from Elvis to Altamont, Eisenhower to Watergate – viewed through the lens of four men who encapsulated them in song for all time, as told by a rising voice in contemporary music writing.