Opinions and Judgements

This week the Classic Track Look Back features 3 artists who stood out from the rock & roll pack as individuals who were proud to go their own way. Two of them are still with us, both with ample reasons to be proud of what they have accomplished and are still accomplishing. The third, no longer with us, blazed a trail which took him from rock's roots through the 70s and into the mid 80s.

1966 - Beach Boys

First, let's head back to this week in 1966 when the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations entered the U.S. singles charts. Of course it was a future #1 which is still played today. The track, written by Brian Wilson an Mike Love, took 6 weeks to record, a feat that was spread among four Los Angeles studios. The recording engineer later commented that the final take sounded exactly like the first.

Good Vibrations

1971 - Rick Nelson

October 1971 found Rick Nelson enthusiastically booed at a Madison Square Gardens oldies show show for playing new material instead of sticking with his 50s and 60s hits. I expect that the audience was judging him for his audacity to believe that his new stuff was also relevant and worth sharing. The performance and the audience's reaction served as the inspiration for Rick's last big hit. (And get it? "Garden" Party!).

Random Fact: Maindog's fave line in the song: "But if memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck."

Garden Party

Squaring off: Fogerty vs. Creedence Clearwater Revival

This week in 1988, Creedence Clearwater Revival's label and John Fogerty squared off in court. The claim, advanced by the owners of songs written by Fogerty for the Creedence catalog, was that the song writer ripped off his own Run Through the Jungle when writing Old Man Down the Road. Since he no longer owned Run Through the Jungle, the owners of the song believed their claim to be actionable.

Fogerty won the case, but it would be years before he would be allowed to perform songs which he had written for Creedence. Crazy? Welcome to the run through the jungle which is the justice system. And how about those 2 songs. Was there indeed a similarity? You be the judge. First up:

Run Through the Jungle


Next up is Old Man Down the Road. The link to that song, featured here, is the only studio version of the song that we could find that contained no audio anomalies.

Old Man Down the Road

Till next time, that's another Classic Track Look Back at rock history. Oh and don't forget that last week's #rockhistory tweets and links are now Storified. Check out the stories from the last couple of weeks, all in one place.