by Steven Mirkin

It’s been 50 years since they formed Creedence Clearwater Revival with brothers Tom and John Fogerty, and more than 20 years since they hit the road as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, but Doug Clifford and Stu Cook are happy to Keep on Chooglin. They may have reduced their touring schedule to some 50 shows a year – down from more than a hundred when Revisited launched; for Clifford it means more time to spend with his family, while Cook likes to spend his down time traveling – but they still look forward to going out and performing the music they had a major part in creating.

For both Cook and Clifford, one of the real pleasures of touring is seeing how their audience has expanded. “There are now three generations of Creedence fans,” Cook says. Clifford describes playing to enthusiastic crowds who range from “eight to 80.”

Creedence was arguably the most popular American band from 1969 to 1971, with four Top 10 albums and a run of nine singles in the Top 20, but what accounts for their lasting popularity? For Cook, it’s the songs. “They’re just good songs. They tell simple stories in a straightforward way.” In addition, they still “pop” when you hear them on the radio. “I don’t care what you play on either side of them, those records grab your attention; they just jump right out at you.”

Related: Review of the Creedence Clearwater Revival 1969 box set

Clifford, a more laconic conversationalist, simply describes them as “great rock’n’roll.”

But with a catalog of seven studio albums to choose from, the band’s setlists stick to about 20 songs, including the biggest hits: “Proud Mary,” “Traveling Band,” “Who’ll Stop The Rain” and ”Down On The Corner” among them. Classic songs all. It’s not that they don’t love their more obscure tunes (“We save those for sound check,” Cook admits), but years on the road have honed their sense of what works and what doesn’t.

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“Our audiences aren’t die-hard Creedence fans who know every song on every record,” Cook explains, “they’re just rock music fans out for a good time.” Clifford says that when the band plays a lesser-known album track, the lack of interest is obvious. A song such as “Effigy” or “Tombstone Shadow” was a cue for “folks to get up, use the bathroom, or get another beer.”

“Our audiences aren’t die-hard Creedence fans who know every song on every record,” Cook explains, “they’re just rock music fans out for a good time.” Clifford says that when the band plays a lesser-known album track, the lack of interest is obvious. A song such as “Effigy” or “Tombstone Shadow” was a cue for “folks to get up, use the bathroom, or get another beer.”

But the songs they do play, Clifford and Cook both say with pride, are played as well as ever. After line-ups that have included other classic rockers such as former Cars guitarist Elliot Easton and Tal Morris from the Sons of Champlin, Creedence Clearwater Revisited has settled into a line-up of vocalist John Tristano – whose mid-60s band, People!, hit the Top 10 in 1968 with “I Love You” – Kurt Griffey and Steve Gunner on guitars, keyboard and backing vocals, with Cook and Clifford supplying the crisp, authoritative bass and drums that powered the original recordings.

At this point in the conversation, the specter of John Fogerty is impossible to avoid. Given that Creedence Clearwater Revisited performed without their famous frontman, how do they respond when fans complain that it can’t be Creedence without Fogerty? Clifford shrugs off the thought. “Maybe when we first started,” he says, “but by now, everyone knows.” Besides, he adds, their name should tip them off. Cook says that no one has come up and said anything to his face.