{"id":226968,"date":"2025-10-15T17:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/226968\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T17:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:02:09","slug":"about-a-quarter-mile-out-some-guy-is-flicking-his-lighter-john-fogerty-on-the-band-that-nearly-ruined-creedence-clearwater-revivals-woodstock-set-and-the-audienc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/226968\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAbout a quarter mile out, some guy is flicking his lighter.\u201d John Fogerty on the band that nearly ruined Creedence Clearwater Revival\u2019s Woodstock set \u2014 and the audience member who saved the show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woodstock was the defining concert of 1960s rock and roll. The three-day event held in August 1969 boasted some of the day\u2019s top acts, including Jimi Hendrix, the Who (whose set was famously interrupted by Abbie Hoffman<\/a>), and CSN&Y<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But two of the biggest groups to play the festival refused to let their performances be included in the 1970 concert movie or its companion album: the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival.<\/p>\n

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As it happened, the two groups performed one after the other as Saturday, August 16, turned to Sunday, August 17. And the problems that went down during the Grateful Dead\u2019s set affected CCR\u2019s, causing the group\u2019s set to suffer.<\/p>\n

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Dead guitarist Bob Weir<\/a> explained that a downpour made the stage a danger zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stage was wet, and the electricity was coming through me. I was conducting!\u201d he recalled. \u201cTouching my guitar and the microphone was nearly fatal. There was a great big blue spark about the size of a baseball, and I got lifted off my feet and sent back eight or 10 feet to my amplifier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matters weren\u2019t helped by the fact that the band were incredibly high, resulting in a haphazard performance even before the rain began.<\/p>\n

“We had this thing about the big shows \u2014 ‘blowing the big ones’ \u2014 and I’m not sure why that was,” drummer Bill Kreutzmann told Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a> in 2015. “It was so bad that we didn’t allow it to be in the movie. It was terrible.”<\/p>\n

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CCR guitarist John Fogerty watched it all go down from the side of the stage. He says his group \u2014 then one of the biggest acts in rock thanks to 1969 hits like \u201cProud Mary<\/a>,\u201d \u201cBorn on the Bayou,\u201d \u201cBad Moon Rising\u201d and \u201cGreen River\u201d \u2014 were originally scheduled to go on much earlier in the day.<\/p>\n

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\"Rock\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: David Greenberg\/Conde Nast via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were promised a prime time on a Saturday night, like nine o\u2019clock,\u201d Fogerty told O’Brien<\/a>. \u201cWhat they didn\u2019t tell me is, \u2018You\u2019re gonna follow the Grateful Dead.\u2019<\/p>\n

“Things went sorely wrong after they hit the stage. Everybody was running late, of course.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut what they didn\u2019t tell us until the \u201990s was they had all taken LSD just as they went onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s drug intake, combined with the hazardous stage conditions, caused delays in their set. Fogerty \u2014 who at the time was rocking his iconic “ACME” Fireglo Rickenbacker 325<\/a> electric guitar<\/a> \u2014 claims that at \u201cabout the middle of their set, it went dead silent. It was quiet for about an hour and then they started playing again.”<\/p>\n

He says Creedence finally went on at \u201cliterally 2:30 in the morning\u201d \u2014 although many sources say it was actually 12:30 \u2014 only to find the audience dead asleep.<\/p>\n

“I come running out \u2014 \u2018cause this was a big chance; there was a half a million people there \u2014 and I look down there and I see a bunch of people who look a lot like me, except they’re naked. And they’re asleep. They were all kind of piled together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like one of those pictures of the souls coming up out of Hell, like Dante\u2019s Inferno, or something. But they were all asleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we started rocking out in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere, trying to get things going here.\u201d<\/p>\n

After about five songs, he addressed the crowd, hoping to rouse a response from the sleeping masses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Well, I hope you\u2019re enjoying some of this. We\u2019re having a great time up here; we just want you to like us,\u2019 you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Rock\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: David Greenberg\/Conde Nast via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd waaay out there, about a quarter mile, some guy is flicking his lighter. He says, ‘Don’t worry about it, John! We’re with ya!’<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in front of a half a million people, for the rest of my big Woodstock concert, I played for that guy.”<\/p>\n

In the end, Fogerty decided the muted reception didn\u2019t look or sound good for the group\u2019s image. He refused to let the footage or audio from their set go into the Woodstock film and album.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, one bad show wasn\u2019t enough to ruin what ended up being a banner year for Creedence Clearwater Revival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came home, and after a couple of days I realized, \u2018What the heck, that\u2019s just one disappointment; Creedence is still moving forward,\u2019\u201d Fogerty recounted to GP. \u201cSo, I didn\u2019t worry about it too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fogerty, who won a 50-year battle for the ownership of CCR\u2019s music in 2023, recently celebrated by releasing Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years, which features his new takes on classic CCR tracks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woodstock was the defining concert of 1960s rock and roll. The three-day event held in August 1969 boasted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-226968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}