If someone would write a tell-all, I'd be the first in line.

And it's a shame, because all due respect to Van Halen and The Eagles, they were/are America's best basic rock band.

I know there were issues with Creedence Clearwater Revival's record label back in the day. I've read about infighting among the band, John Fogerty's brother Tom quitting, John's controlling, domineering ways and how the group's final studio effort, "Mardi Gras", was oft described as the worst album by a major rock act ever done.

Then there was John's disrespectful behaviour towards Stu Cook and Doug Clifford and CCR's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

Still, I am shocked and curious regarding the outright venom he spits at them at every chance: yes, forty years later.

Again, who really knows what went on behind the scenes, but I can recall a moment during VH1's "Behind the Music" featuring CCR when Fogerty stated that although everyone considered the band's many hits Creedence songs, those were actually "John Fogerty, songs".

Wow.

Cook and Clifford currently tour as "Creedence Clearwater Revisited": not a bad show, you know all the songs and they and their lead singer (described as a "Fogerty sound-alike" - he's not) put their hearts and souls into their perfromances.

But the fact that the act exists at all further draws the ire of the band's former leader. He's admitted recently to The Canadian Press that it concerns him that "Revisited" plays some of the same markets that he and his current solo group perform in.

"I would prefer that that didn't happen. We had an agreement among ourselves way back in the day that we would never do such a thing, and having seen the result of these guys doing this now I still have the same opinion. I think it really confuses the fans."

Fogerty, who wrote and produced nearly all of the Creedence catalogue went on to say, "Using the name is sort of a sacrilege to what we believed when we were young guys in a band together -- but y'know, I don't sit around and worry about it too much."

For years, Fogerty refused to perform CCR songs live (once saying he didn't think anyone wanted to hear them anymore). But now he says says that out of respect for both Creedence fans and the songs themselves, he tries to keep the song's live arrangements note-for-note as they were played on the record: "I just feel that because of the fact that touring, and even my career, has been so interrupted for long gaps of time, I think it's up to me to kind of reinforce the reverence that I have for those earlier songs -- and also, I think the way the audience treats them. So that's a way of explaining why when I do 'Bad Moon Rising,' it still sounds like 'Bad Moon Rising.'"

John Fogerty recently played Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake. Creedence Clearwater Revisited will Grand Casino Mille Lacs August 26th and 27th.

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