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When Doug “Cosmo” Clifford and bassist Stu Cook started touring together again as Creedence Clearwater Revisited — dusting off songs they’d recorded as Creedence Clearwater Revival with Tom and John Fogerty — they had a five-year plan.
“And it ended up 25 years,” he says.
It was a good run. But the childhood friends retired from the road after a farewell tour in 2019, around the same time Clifford found his next career move while spring cleaning the recording studio at his Lake Tahoe home.
He found quarter-inch tapes on a reel, which got him thinking that he may have stashed some other reels in his garage. “And sure enough,” he says, “there were close to 10 of these things.”
Clifford is speaking by phone from his winter home in Scottsdale, built on a plot of land he bought in 1994. He and his wife have lived there four months of every year since then.
“This time we got an extra month with our pandemic,” he says, with a laugh.
Clifford spent a good part of that extra time promoting the solo record he assembled from those tapes, which were recorded after CCR had come to an acrimonious conclusion and before he’d started touring again on the music that earned them a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In the course of a 40-minute conversation, the drummer spoke freely about everything from why he moved to Arizona to the evolution of his previously strained relationship with John Fogerty, the man who wrote the hits upon which Clifford built his legacy.
On John Fogerty: ‘We’ve been through a lot together’
“I probably have a good six or so albums,” he says of the reels he found in his garage.
The first of those releases, “Magic Window,” features Clifford on lead vocals singing songs he either wrote or co-wrote, only one or which sounds anything like CCR. And that one sounds a lot like CCR, which he assures us was intentional.
“I have a resume,” he says. “And it’s pretty impressive. Look at what Creedence Clearwater Revival did. So that’s a card. And if I’m doing business, then I want to play that card.”
Tensions have cooled between the drummer and John Fogerty, who sued his former bandmates in a failed attempt to stop them from using the nameCreedence Clearwater Revisited. He and Fogerty even started a new LLC together to sell merch.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a warm and fuzzy thing,” he says. “But I’m at the point in my life, I’m 75 years old and I’ve got a real great opportunity with ‘Magic Window.’ He’s off playing with his kids now. We’ve been through a lot together. And I wish him well.”
It’s better for his health this way, he says.
“Life is pretty short and I’m a lot closer to the end than I am the beginning. So I might as well have it be as pleasant as it can possibly be.”
For all the anger that once drove a wedge between them, his relationship with Fogerty allowed him to create a legacy beyond his wildest dreams.
“When we started as 13-year-olds, our dream was to have our songs played on the radio,” he says.
“Our songs have been played on the radio for 52 years and they’ll be played for another 30, 40, years, long after I’m gone. So my lucky stars have been pretty darn nice to me, and all of us really. I should probably focus on the good part.”
What to expect on ‘Magic Window’
“Magic Window” is his second solo album.
The first was “Cosmo,” a 1972 release that Clifford says was “an experiment to see if we could record in Cosmo’s Factory and use it as a recording operation, not just a rehearsal studio.”
Of the other reels he plans to use on future releases, one is a collaboration with the legendary Bobby Whitlock, who appeared on George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and wrote or co-wrote more than half the songs on “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.”
Another features Steve Wright of the Greg Kihn Band, whose co-writing credits include “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” and “Jeopardy.”
As a drummer, Clifford learned to play piano well enough to write a song.
“It’s a very good instrument,” he says, “because if you put your hands on the keys and your fingers are lined up right, it sounds like Elton John.”
Why Cosmo built a winter home in Scottsdale
It was a hurricane that brought him to the Valley. Previously, his winter home was an oceanfront condo on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
“I don’t like snow,” he says. “And as a drummer, I couldn’t ski because if I broke a leg, I couldn’t play.”
When a hurricane destroyed most of the island, just as another hurricane had done a decade earlier, he figured it was time to find another place to spend the winter months. And he and his buddies would often escape the Tahoe winter by spending a week in Scottsdale golfing.
“I told my wife, ‘I know a beautiful spot and they don’t have hurricanes there,'” Clifford says, with a laugh.
As beautiful as Scottsdale is, he wouldn’t want to stay year-round.
“No, that would be a silly thing,” he says.
One summer, Clifford went to see Tom Fogerty in Scottsdale, where the CCR guitarist lived for several years preceding his death in 1990 from tuberculosis.
“It was 122 degrees,” he says. “And I burned my leg getting into the car. I sat on the seatbelt and I was in shorts. It burnt the crap out of me. I said, ‘I can see why I wouldn’t want to be down here in the summertime.’ But Tahoe summers are about as good as they get, so I’ve got a nice yin and yang here.”
What’s next for the musician (and honorary fire chief)
As to why the album he’s promoting has been sitting on a shelf since 1985, he had been working toward a record deal that fell through around that time.
As he was decompressing from that disappointment, Clifford got distracted by more pressing matters in Lake Tahoe.
“We were in a severe drought and fire danger was running rampant,” he says. “And I had a biological background and knew about the problems of forests. So I started a program.”
Working with the University of Nevada biology department, he put together a handbook on how to deal with what was going on.
“The project I created became the No. 1 program in the nation, so deemed by the Department of Agriculture,” he says. “They were sending busloads of guys up from Washington to have me show them what I was doing. I’m an honorary fire chief still up there. I have a badge.”
Since 1995, he was focused on touring with Cook. But Clifford decided it was time to give that up last year for health-related reasons.
“I’ve got some physical problems,” he says. “Drummers generally have bad backs. And I had radiation for my cancer that’s had a lingering effect in some areas. I have Parkinson’s disease. And then I have five grandchildren and a wife of 52 years. So it’s time to spend more time with the family.”
Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.
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