Lyrically, John wrote within the formal restrictions of the blues, and kept his descriptions as skeletal as possible. The wisps of physical detail in the new song could be read as a horror story or a bucolic romance. John insisted that Green River was just the name of a soda. But the song did grow out of his own real California childhood. His parents had taken him to Putah Creek, near Winters, between Sacramento and Napa. He might not have known a labor camp on the premises, but “Green River” was, compared to “Born on the Bayou,” a personal statement. He’d been somewhere and was thinking back on it, recalling it as a place to come back to when the world was on fire.
He could’ve used such a place himself. John made his living with a guitar, but he felt like a mug on a factory floor. He’d backed himself into sole responsibility for every aspect of the band’s success with minimal share in the rewards. How could he not be nostalgic, even for leaner times? Everything was too complicated now. And he was not prepared for this moment. There were never any records or songs about contracts and business management when he was growing up. He was at sea, even as his greatest successes came.
Around this time, Kathy Orloff, an L.A.-based music writer for the Toledo Blade, was invited to see the band’s show in Anaheim. She loved the music, but Orloff was even more struck by the men themselves. “From the records, I had the impression they were going to be Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones—very nitty gritty, tough, above the whole scene,” she wrote for her paper. The Stones were in fact preparing their first tour of America since 1966, since Brian Jones’s death. Based on their recent preoccupations, it promised to be a Dionysian assault, demonic and sexual. The Stones were committed to that bit now, they always had to up the ante.
But Creedence, to Orloff’s surprise, were nothing of the kind. “Berkeley’s Daily Californian was right when it said they are ‘a credit to the business.’ They’re both, great musicians and beautiful people. Creedence Clearwater Revival is four very nice, personable, articulate and interested young men. The kind you think you remember from high school when they played all the sock hops and sports nights. They did.”
John was mystified. How could he sound like Mick Jagger, feel like a Pete Hamill schlub, and come off like Beaver Cleaver? However it happened, he’d found the perfect combination to prevent anyone from taking him seriously. And he was the only one of the four that critics respected.