You can argue about the cumulative catalog of various rock and roll bands when stacked up against their peers. But when you’re talking about the sheer amount of brilliant music released in a short amount of time, what Creedence Clearwater Revival did from 1968 through 1971 is hard to top. And it all peaked with their 1970 standout album Cosmo’s Factory.
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We’d say that the album seems like a greatest hits package, but that belies the fact CCR chalked up a slew of other smashes in the immediate years preceding and following it. Let’s just say that it was the artistic apex of their career, which started to unravel not long after this album was released.
Factory Work
John Fogerty was by his own admission a demanding bandleader. He insisted on working his bandmates hard in perfecting their parts for each of his songs, a scenario that would later lead to rancor within the group. But it was still viewed lightly enough in 1970 that the title of the album playfully nodded to it: The “Factory” was the garage space they used to rehearse, and “Cosmo” was the nickname of drummer Doug Clifford, who played for hours at a time to please Fogerty.
Of course, Fogerty was no less hard on himself. Feeling the group needed to strike while the iron was hot and continue churning out singles and albums while they were at the height of their popularity, he kept up a ruthless songwriting pace. That helped fuel the band’s insane productivity, as Cosmo’s Factory, their fifth studio album, came out just two years to the month after their debut.
CCR (which also included Clifford, Fogerty’s brother Tom on rhythm guitar, and Stu Cook on bass) kept up this blistering schedule in part because they didn’t believe in waste. They knew which songs would be on each album beforehand, and they then worked up the instrumental parts to perfection well before they reached the studio.
The band also bucked the notion that singles featuring songs on an album shouldn’t be released before the LP itself. In CCR’s case, these were double A-sided singles since John Fogerty didn’t believe in throwaway B-sides. Before Cosmo’s Factory arrived in July 1970, singles “Travelin’ Band”/”Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Up Around the Bend”/”Run Through the Jungle” were already radio staples.
Although they somehow missed out on a No. 1 single (they had five No. 2s!), CCR scored their second chart-topping album with Cosmo’s Factory. Simmering tensions between John Fogerty and the rest of the band soon rose to the surface, and the band was essentially kaput following the release of Mardi Gras in 1972 (by which time Tom Fogerty had already split).
Listening Fresh to Cosmo’s Factory
While CCR is often labeled as a hybrid of Southern and swamp rock, Cosmo’s Factory shatters that limiting notion with its staggering variety. Just the singles alone showed what they could do. “Travelin’ Band” is a furious romp Little Richard would have enjoyed, while its flip, “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” showed John Fogerty writing with anguished wisdom about the troubled times.
“Up Around the Bend” is a hopeful raver, contrasted by the creeping menace lurking in all the margins of “Run Through the Jungle.” The final single from the album further cinched the deal. “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” delivered childlike whimsy. On the other side of the 45, “Long as I Can See the Light” offered a band doing gospel as convincingly as any of their rock peers.
The remainder of the tracks don’t let up at all in the greatness department, and they gave the band the chance to spread their instrumental wings a bit more than on the tight singles. Album-opener “Ramble Tamble” wanders with purpose to unexpected areas, while the 11-minute, jammy version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” took a song that audiences had heard to death (it was a No. 1 twice over just a few years before) and made it essential listening all over again.
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s run of greatness was admittedly short. But they packed so much into that truncated stretch of time that they certainly gave us our money’s worth. Cosmo’s Factory epitomizes that idea in microcosm, as the band delivered a nigh unmatchable album that in about 40 minutes or so, gives a listener all they could possibly want and then some.
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