Stu Cook and the Dreadful "Sail Away"

Lock the door, don't let Stu sing

Many terrible things have been written about the final, terrible Creedence Clearwater Revival album Mardi Gras.  You know, that it was "Fogerty's Revenge" because Stu Cook and Doug Clifford wanted to get their lousy songs on the albums.  So John Fogerty relented on the stipulation that the two clowns sing their own tunes as well.  Apparently, they didn't want to do that, but John gave it to them as an all or nothing proposition.  Thus, the album was created.  Oh, it still managed to chart and have some hit singles thanks to Fogerty, of course, but the other dudes in the band didn't have such an easy go at it.

"You guys can sing your crummy songs and I'll still be laughing."

So kids, I want to focus on Stu Cook's really bad song entitled "Sail Away" from this turd.  When you listen to Mardi Gras, you get the feeling that Stu and Doug were trying to emulate John Fogerty as much as they could in their singing styles.  Both of them try to do the rough-yet-smooth twang that Fogerty capitalized on.  While Clifford's attempts are just sub par, Stu Cook's mangling of the Fogerty style on "Sail Away" is enough to induce immediate laughter as soon as the guy starts singing.

It sounds like he's being strangled from the get-go:  "LAWK the DOOOOR, sun's a FAWLIN' / POKE the FAHR, don't LET the COLD IN / Gonna try to SAIL AWAY from the REST of MYYY LIIIIIFE."

The emphasis is weird, the meter is facked, the whole thing sounds like it's being sung by some drunken, gargling robot crashing into everything in its path.  When you listen to it and how generic Fogerty's guitar work is on the track, you can't help but begin to understand his plan of deep-sixing the group in one fell swoop.  Hell, who can argue with a dude who cranked out tons of great hits over the course of a nice handful of albums in just a two or three years?  Why relinquish creativity to a couple hacks with no real skills at all?

Please keep your mouth shut, Stu.

But of course Cook and Clifford are still cranking out those old chestnuts under the moniker "Creedence Clearwater Revisted."  It's bad.  You know, like any type of that once great band now doing the county fair circuit sort of situation.  At any rate, I urge you to listen to "Sail Away" and have a good, hearty laugh that will hit you right in the gut every time you hear it.  I guarantee Creedence Revisited isn't ever going to revisit this crapper.  Fogerty must have had a hard time not laughing when it was all originally going down.


The terrible culprit.




You'll dance to anything...