What is sometimes forgotten with the passing of time and against the seminal influence of Woodstock is that Creedence Clearwater Revival were one of the few bands to appear at the festival that had already achieved significant success on the Billboard charts. Truth is that there are some that do not even know about the band’s forgotten Woodstock performance shortly after midnight on August 17, 1969. The reason, of course, is that CCR were not in the movie or the album that came out in the wake of Woodstock.

Their hour-long set kicked off with the perfect opener, “Born On The Bayou.” They followed it with “Green River” and then a cover of Wilson Pickett’s “Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won’t Do),” from their debut album, after which it was “Bootleg,” “Commotion,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Proud Mary.” As their set progressed they stretched their material into longer, more improvised, rock songs, which was their normal way of playing them. “I Put A Spell On You” stretched the 5-minute single to almost twice its length, while “Keep On Chooglin'” ran for close to 10-minutes. “Suzie Q,” the Dale Hawkins classic had been their first hit and on the album it ran for 8-minutes; for their encore they kept it rocking for even longer.

Why were they not on the film? Most likely their record company at the time was unwilling to co-operate. Did it affect their career? Well it would have done them no harm on the world stage to have had all that additional exposure. They really were one of the unluckiest bands in that they could never quite break through to achieve the coveted top spot on the America singles chart, although they did in Britain with “Bad Moon Rising.” Their album, Green River came out a month after Woodstock and it topped the charts for four weeks, as did Cosmo’s Factory the following year – it had a nine-week run at No. 1. The fact is CCR were huge…but they might well have been even bigger.

John Fogerty later said, “I could never put my finger on what it was, but we were considered outsiders in our own town.” Maybe they were outsiders in San Francisco but they were at the top of their game when they played Woodstock. John’s unique voice and great song writing had come together as a perfect combination just at the right time. This 180g vinyl 2LP pressing represents the first-ever official release of Creedence Clearwater Revival’slegendary Woodstock performance, in its entirety!