Today’s classic song of the day is “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Released in April of 1969 as the flip side of a two-sided single (the other side was “Bad Moon Rising,” which went to #2 on the charts), this track only rose to #52 on its own in the Billboard Hot 100. Still, it’s a song we all know and remember today.
John Fogerty wrote “Lodi” about a down-and-out musician playing empty clubs in a small California town. Things get so bad for the guy he can’t even afford bus fare out of town. (“Oh lord, stuck in Lodi again.”) Here’s what Fogerty remembers about the song:
“On ‘Lodi’, I saw a much older person than I was, ’cause it is sort of a tragic telling. A guy is stuck in a place where people really don’t appreciate him. Since I was at the beginning of a good career, I was hoping that that wouldn’t happen to me.”
Fogerty had a slight personal connection with Lodi, as his parents shipped him and his brother Tom to camp at Lodi Lake (then called Smith Lake) when they were kids, and they hated it. Drummer Doug Clifford recalls that the band, in its early days, actually played a bar in Lodi:
“There were nine people in there, they were all locals, they were all drunk and all they did all night was tell us to turn it down.”
Lodi, the town, is smack dab in the middle of California’s Central Valley. Its population today is a hair over 66,000; when Fogerty wrote the song, they had fewer than 30,000 residents. The town is best known for its wine grape production.
And here’s your daily bonus track of the day, CCR performing “Lodi” live in concert, somewhere in Europe, in September of 1971. This was after John’s brother Tom Fogerty had left the band, so they’re performing as a trio with John playing both rhythm and lead guitar. They were a pretty good live band!
