Clocking in at just over two minutes in length, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" is a rock and roll tour de force. Doug "Cosmo" Clifford kicks the song off with just a simple drum line, followed closely by John Fogerty with what may be one of the most understated yet powerful guitar lines in the history of rock music. It has a heavy twang that resonates in your ears for days.
This intro sets the stage perfectly for Fogerty's raspy, unrestrained vocals. The vocal melody kicks in with a kind of power and verve that leaves you feeling like all hell has broken loose for the next two minutes. Maybe in this sense, the song itself is an apt metaphor for America's role in the Vietnam War. What seemed at first like a simple and straightforward project soon degenerated into noisy chaos.
"Fortunate Son" represents what you might call a great, big grumble from below—a perfect anthem for the ever-growing share of Americans in the late 1960s who were coming to see the war in Vietnam as a terrible mistake. Creedence Clearwater Revival, even more than other antiwar musicians of the era, were able to give voice especially to the class-based grievances let loose by the Vietnam War. "Fortunate Son" was an anti-Vietnam War protest song, sure. But it was also a Springsteenesque working-class anthem—just one that happened to be written well before Bruce Springsteen himself broke onto the scene. And "Fortunate Son" was every bit as poignant a protest song as anything written by Bob Dylan—only this song, unlike most of Dylan's stuff, is a tune you can rock out and dance to.
Even decades after its release, "Fortunate Son" remains a song that makes you want to pump your fist. This is punk rock before punk rock was even invented as a musical genre. (Now that's pretty punk rock.)
Like Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," Creedence's "Fortunate Son" has often been misheard as a simple, un-ironic, patriotic anthem. Just as many fans hear Springsteen's spar-spangled chorus and totally miss the bitterness of the words in "Born in the U.S.A.," here many tune out after the opening lines:
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
Many then miss the strong anti-establishment message that follows. Both artists also work in a style drenched in Americana, making it easy to assume that the lyrics contain messages that are patriotic or even jingoistic in viewpoint.
But oh no, folks. Don't get it twisted. "Fortunate Son" is 100% a protest song (although Creedence frontman John Fogerty would argue, of course, that there's nothing unpatriotic about protest). "Fortunate Son" is a strong, impassioned statement against the Vietnam War and the political establishment in late-1960s America.
