Trivia / Mardi Gras

• Colbert Bump: Todd in the Shadows' Trainwreckords episode on the album has increased its notoriety among internet music fans.
• Creator Killer: This album turned out to be their last. Marred by fierce Creative Differences over John Fogerty's control of the music, the album attempted to give each band member A Day in the Limelight, but the result was derided as half-baked and and got barely any play on the radio. The band's final concert ended with them getting pelted by coins and walking off, incinerating what was left of the goodwill in the band and ending it for good. To this day, John is not on speaking terms with Doug Clifford and Stu Cook. He was also still estranged from his brother Tom at the time of the latter's death in 1990.
• Hostility on the Set: It's common knowledge that conflicts between the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival permeated the Troubled Production of the album, but the precise details are a matter of dispute. Either way, the tension eventually led to the breakup of the band after the album's release:
  • The part of the story that everybody basically agrees on is that Doug Clifford and Stu Cook were not big fans of John Fogerty's leadership — either because Clifford and Cook were envious of all the attention Fogerty received or because Clifford and Cook were fed up with Fogerty's dictatorial I Am the Band tendencies, depending on the source. It was because of John's egotism that his brother Tom quit CCR before the recording of Mardi Gras.
  • According to Clifford and Cook, Fogerty tasked them with composing their own individual songs for Mardi Gras, despite their reluctance to contributing more to the album than they were used to. To hear it from them, this was Fogerty's attempt to set them up to fail and be seen as inferior musicians; to reinforce this point, Fogerty did not involve himself in either of their songs.
  • In his autobiography, Fogerty states that it was Clifford and Cook's idea to individually contribute to the album, and that they basically forced him to give them greater power in the band's creative process.^note Fogerty refers to this incident as the "night of the generals" When Mardi Gras was released, Fogerty says, his bandmates blamed him for their songs being panned by critics.
  • No matter how exactly things went down, the failure of the album heralded the end of CCR not long afterwards, and the surviving members have literally spent the decades since suing each other.
• Reality Subtext: "Someday Never Comes" reminisces over a narrator growing up to leave his family just like his father did to theirs. In addition to the band breaking up, this was directly inspired by the messy divorce between Fogerty's own parents, as well as his present relationship with then-wife Martha Paiz falling apart (it's unclear when they did split up, but some sources say they managed to stay together for another 10 years).
  • Predictably, many, many allusions to the band's mutual acrimony and restlessness abound, each supporting the songwriters' own versions of what was going down. "Lookin' for a Reason", by John, is exactly what it sounds like: a man who's grown disillusioned with the "dream" he once shared with others, and wants to find any excuse he can to leave this mess behind him ("I used to like it here, I can't remember why"). A couple of Stu's songs, both solo and co-written with Doug, are no less blatant — "Sail Away" is about pretty much the same thing, but includes a reference to a "captain" that the protagonist grew tired of hearing bark orders; meanwhile, "Take It Like a Friend", about a domineering tyrant who abused everybody but now is losing control and melting down over it, couldn't be more blatant if it was more literally titled "Eat Shit, John".
• Troubled Production: Mardi Gras broke a long-standing pattern for the band by coming out two years after their last, instead of the usual six months or so (1969 alone saw the release of Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys). Over the course of those two years, John Fogerty's I Am the Band attitude caused the other three members to openly revolt and demand more control. Then Tom Fogerty quit anyway, taking with him 25% of the band. Then, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, the decision was made that the next album would be an equal split in contributions between the three remaining members: Stu Cook and Doug Clifford would have to write, sing and produce their own songs, instead of John having full control. (Fogerty claims the other two demanded the chance to write their own songs; Cook and Clifford originally said Fogerty asked them for help because he was so burnt out, then pivoted to insisting that it was more of an ultimatum, intended to punish them; and both sides have clear motives to paint themselves as the wronged party and the other as the asshole(s) who doomed CCR.) The resultant album was, unsurprisingly, an absolute mess that crashed spectacularly; the band broke up not too long afterwards, apart from a couple of very short-lived reunions, and Cook, Clifford and Fogerty would cheerfully piss on each other's graves to this day.

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