Craft Recordings
Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s chart-topping 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory celebrated its 50th anniversary last month, and to mark the milestone, a half-speed-remastered, 180-gram vinyl reissue of the hit-packed record was released today.
Cosmo’s Factory features many of the band’s most-enduring songs, including “Travelin’ Band,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Up Around the Bend,” “Run Through the Jungle” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”
Reflecting on the album’s popularity, CCR bassist Stu Cook tells ABC Audio, “Well, it’s our…biggest single selling album. I guess you’d have to say that was the high point of Revival’s career…It really was our peak and…I’m glad I’m here to celebrate it.”
Explaining the band’s approach to making Cosmo’s Factory, Cook notes, “The Creedence recording process was unlike most artists of the time. We would just record singles, and when we had, say…six songs, three A-[sides and] three B-sides, then we’d go in and finish the album.”
One song CCR recorded to finish Cosmo’s Factory was an 11-minute-plus rendition of the classic Motown tune “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which featured a long psychedelic jam. Cook tells ABC Audio that putting together the cover was his “most memorable experience” of the Cosmo’s Factory sessions.
Stu recalls that the band members had been messing around with what became the jam section of the track separately from “Grapevine,” and about two weeks before CCR were going to record the cover, John Fogerty told the group that he wanted to stick the jam at the end.
“I think we did it in the first or second take,” he recalls of the recording.
Regarding the reissue, Cook says, “I think this return to high-quality vinyl is a great opportunity to bring people back [to CCR’s music].”
By Matt Friedlander
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