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Creedence Clearwater Revival might be the greatest singles band never to reach the #1 spot on Billboard magazine's pop charts. Despite churning out a long string of brilliant, commercially successfully recordings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, not once did the group manage to hit the top of Billboard's pop singles chart, instead landing an amazing five #2 singles (all in an eighteen-month span), as well as five other entries that peaked at the #3, #4, #6, #8, and #11 spots. At the end of 1969, Creedence pulled off the rare feat of sending both sides of a single to the upper reaches of the pop charts, as Down on the Corner climbed to the #3 position, while its B-side got all the way up to #14. That B-side was Fortunate Son, John Fogerty's angry anti-privilege, anti-hypocrisy condemnation of those who would wield their wealth and influence while paying lip service to freedom and patriotism — but only so far as their own interests were protected and served: Although the lyrics gave no indication that John Fogerty had any specific person in mind when he wrote the song, some listeners continue to speculate about the identity of the senator's son referred to therein — a young man who presumably avoided military service in Vietnam through his father's influence. At a remove of two generations from the song's original release, there was really only one son of a Vietnam-era U.S. senator who was of draft age in the late 1960s and had a name prominent enough to be widely recognized: former U.S. senator and U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Jr., whose father represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate from 1953 to 1971. The Gores didn't really fit the thrust of the song's message, though, as Al Gore, Sr., was not a Vietnam War supporter (indeed, his opposition to the war is one of the factors commonly cited as contributing to his defeat in the 1970 election), and Al Gore, Jr. didn't duck military service through his father's influence, but rather enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an Army newspaper reporter in Vietnam. (Fogerty had already written the song by the time the younger Gore enlisted, though, so it's not completely implausible that Al might have been one of the inspirations behind the lyrics.) The name of U.S. president George W. Bush is sometimes mentioned in connection with Fortunate Son (albeit far less often than Al Gore's), as he too is a prominent political figure who was the son of a Vietnam-era politician. However, his father, George H.W. Bush (himself a former U.S. president), had been representing the state of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives for just a little more than one two-year term when Fortunate Son was written in 1969, so it's unlikely that either father or son was notable enough at that time to be the focus of John Fogerty's attention. As it turns out, Fortunate Son was indeed inspired by the descendant of a prominent political figure, and since John Fogerty has named him while discussing the song's origins, we don't have to speculate about his identity: He is David Eisenhower, the grandson of former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the son-in-law of former U.S. president Richard Nixon (through his marriage to Nixon's daughter, Julie). One of Fogerty's explanations of how he came to write Fortunate Son is quoted in Hank Bordowitz's unofficial history of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising: A compilation of other comments by Fogerty on Fortunate Son is included in Craig Werner's oral history of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Up Around the Bend: To head off some obvious questions, we'll note that John Fogerty himself was drafted in 1966 but, in his words, he was able to finagle [his] way into an [Army] reserve unit instead because he had contacted them before [he] got drafted. He served at Fort Bragg, Fort Knox, and Fort Lee, with a total of six months on active duty. David Eisenhower (for whom the presidential retreat known as Camp David is named) enlisted in the Navy Reserve in 1970 and served three years on active duty, most of it as an officer aboard the USS Albany in the Mediterranean Sea.
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