Concert Reviews
The 80-year-old Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer played with energy and excitement, as if he was riding a high that had been far too long in coming.
“I had a plan, and the plan was: I outlived all those sons of [expletive,]” so said John Fogerty Friday night at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway as he talked about the folks responsible for the very bad business deals that kept him alienated from his own work for decades.
The Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman and songwriter churned out an almost incomprehensible amount of classic, enduring material over the course of a mere four years, and he owned none of it. And with zero stake in his songs, he forged a path forward without it.
But bit by bit, Fogerty gradually reclaimed his legacy. A visit to blues legend Robert Johnson’s grave made him realize that no matter who they made money for, the songs belonged to him. His wife Julie tracked down the Rickenbacker guitar that he played at Woodstock and gave away in 1972, resulting in an emotional Christmas morning decades later. And most crucially, Fogerty finally acquired the rights to his Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in 2023, more than half a century after they were signed away from him.
So Fogerty stood before the Music Hall crowd as a model of perseverance and (literal) survival. For an hour and a half, the 80-year-old Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer played with energy and excitement, as if he was riding a high that had been far too long in coming. Now that the songs were his, he couldn’t wait to take a victory lap and show them off.
Starting with the spirited rockabilly omen of “Bad Moon Rising,” Fogerty pivoted straightaway to the joyous charge of “Up Around The Bend” before heading to the swamp with “Green River” and “Born On The Bayou.” It doesn’t take much for any band to sound great with a murderer’s row of songs like that, let alone the guy responsible for them in the first place, and Fogerty and his band played with a fire that the material merited.
That’s because Fogerty wrote rock and roll songs that were meant to be played loud and feisty. Even a simple bright chug like the celebratory “Rock And Roll Girls” came off like Bruce Springsteen (albeit in Springsteen’s most casual frat-party mode), and the pre-Creedence Creedence song “Fight Fire” – the young band’s attempt to take its label’s advice in those British Invasion days to “play mod” – was jangle-pop played with gusto and a fierce charge.
Fogerty carried that with him on more introspective material as well. The slow, quavery “A Hundred And Ten In The Shade” was simple and effective, and he made “Joy Of My Life” an outpouring of gratitude. And “Who’ll Stop The Rain” (with footage of Woodstock playing behind) and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” were short, sharp and to the point.
But it was on the louder material that Fogerty proved his mettle. The straight-up rock and roll of “Travelin’ Band” and the politically prescient space-panic parable “It Came Out Of The Sky” both traded on different stripes of whimsy (as did the cut-time country clomp of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”). And the simple one-chord groove of “Keep On Chooglin’” was kept electric thanks to Richie Millsap’s slippery drumbeat and Fogerty’s son Shane on rhythm guitar, hacking the beat in half and keeping it creeping forward like Fogerty’s brother and CCR bandmate Tom once did.
If Tom was a criminally underappreciated rhythm guitarist, then Fogerty himself was the normal amount of underappreciated as a lead player, and he took plenty of opportunities to demonstrate the skills that seemed to have held strong over the years. Alone on stage, the guitarist took a spotlight all by himself, with dive bends and harmonics and open-string pull-offs and two-handed tapping and some nods to classical intonation, like his version of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption.” And sounding great alongside the Creedence classics, “The Old Man Down The Road” culminated in a series of dueling solos between Fogerty and his son Shane that proved the chops of both.
In fact, grandpa jokes notwithstanding, the only thing that really betrayed Fogerty’s age was “Fortunate Son,” which, coming towards the end, meant that he ended up only having the voice to declaim the lyrics more than sing them. But it was potent regardless, and the artist was spry where it counted everywhere else. At one point early on, one 22-year-old attendee declared “He’s 80? That’s crazy!” That was two songs in, with more than an hour left to go. But Fogerty had waited too long and wasn’t about to let another minute go to waste.
Fronted by brothers Shane and Tyler Fogerty, their father’s backing band opened as Hearty Har, and with a spirited brand of wide-eyed and snarling garage psychedelia, they were exactly the type of group that would have opened for Creedence way back when.
Setlist for John Fogerty at MGM Music Hall at Fenway — Nov. 14, 2025
Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Up Around The Bend (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Green River (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Born On The Bayou (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Who’ll Stop The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Rock And Roll Girls
A Hundred And Ten In The Shade
My Toot-Toot (Rockin’ Sidney cover)
Joy Of My Life
Lookin’ Out My Back Door (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Fight Fire (The Golliwogs song)
It Came Out Of The Sky (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Guitar Solo
Keep On Chooglin’ (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Centerfield
Down On The Corner (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
The Old Man Down The Road
Fortunate Son (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
ENCORE
Travelin’ Band (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
Proud Mary (Creedence Clearwater Revival song)
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