5. Creedence Clearwater RevivalBayou Country
Bayou Country was huge for us.
D. Boon, that was the only band he knew! It was the only band he knew, at the start! But for me… I mean I kinda liked them, but I also liked Cream and The Who, and T. Rex. I sorta had more arrows in my quiver, y’know?
But… there was definitely something about Creedence – something about their guitar and their song structures. And then there was Fogerty’s voice – it had a little bit of the old rock & roll feel to it, a little bit Little Richard, but also a bit country. All in all, Creedence had a lot of shit in it, which definitely was influential on Minutemen.
Y’see, at that time it was all prog, which was OK. But it was a little hard for us to play. I mean, keyboards were so expensive back then: we didn’t know one person who had a keyboard. We didn’t even have Gibson and Fenders, we had these $15 pawn shop things! But with Creedence, you could learn guitar from their records.
We also learnt a lot from this guy who lived in his car. Roy Mendez Lopez he was called, this hippy guy we knew when we were like 13. He built his own guitars, taught us how to learn off records, and he taught D. Boon flamenco guitar! He was very influential on us.
But Fogerty’s words man! [Starts quoting Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Up Around The Bend’]. We didn’t know what was up there "round the bend", but goddamn, if this guy wanted to go there then we wanted to fucking get with him! [laughs]. It was like the Stooges man, when Iggy sang: sometimes it’s not about the meaning. Well it was. But it wasn’t as… literal as that.
