Almost Saturday Night

Background

“Almost Saturday Night”, backed with "Sea Cruise", was the second 45 rpm single John Fogerty released in 1975 after signing with Asylum Records. The song was recorded at Wally Heider Recording in San Francisco and engineered by David Coffin. Fogerty plays all the instruments by himself. The single was released in October 1975. It only peaked at #78 in the USA. The tune also opened the B-side of the original John Fogerty album.

The roots of the music of John Fogerty are in rock and roll, blues and country, Instead,  "Almost Saturday Night" comes somewhere from the mid 60's, echoing the ageless "teenage" pop sounds of the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

John Fogerty wrote this promise of the weekend on a low-tuned Telecaster in his Albany studio (Key Route Boulevard).  The demo existed already in 1974 when he was still at Fantasy Records (John Fogerty, Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, 2015; interview with Fogerty on KSAN, San Francisco, October 18th, 1975). 

Collector's notes

The single was released with different cover sleeves in Denmark, Germany, Netherlands. The US version didn't have a cover sleeve. (Peter Koers, Green River: The Illustrated Discography, 1999). 

The John Fogerty album is only available as an imported item in the USA.

Trivia

In his autobiography (2015), John Fogerty revealed he inserted glockenspiel to the recording to add colour.

"Jody" is a mythical character showing up in Fogerty's lyrics to such songs as ”It Came Out of the Sky”, "Hey Tonight" and “Almost Saturday Night”. "Jody" might be a homage to an American rocker Jody Reynolds, one of the early influences of John Fogerty. The Creedence frontman recorded a cover version of Jody Reynolds' "Endless Sleep" in 1997. He also used a couple of phrases from the lyrics of ”Endless Sleep” in his song “Searchlight” which appeared on the Centerfield album in 1985.

Live versions

John Fogerty performed "Almost Saturday night" sparsely in 1997-2000. It was added to the setlist in two first concerts of the Premonition Tour (Indianapolis on June 13 and Milwaukee two days later) - and then dropped. Besides these shows, he played the song live with the band on the Mark & Brian Radio Show on KLOS, Los Angeles, on June 9th, 1998. 

"Almost Saturday Night" made a bigger return to Fogerty's programming in summer 2004. On subsequent tours, he delivered it occasionally on stage. Nonetheless, the frequency of plays didn't quite come up to the level of "Rockin' All Over the World".

One of the exceptions was the tour in autumn 2013 when the American and Canadian audience enjoyed "Almost Saturday Night" regularly. The recordings of the concerts were made officially available as files.

John Fogerty played "Almost Saturday Night" for Roseanne Barr in her TV show on September 16th, 1998. He also performed the song in his birthday concert in Los Angeles on May 28th, 2013.  The bash was broadcast live by AXS TV in the USA. Unfortunately, the version he delivered at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on July 3rd, 1998, was left out of the NBC's Today Show.

The song appears on two John Fogerty concert DVDs: Premonition (1998) and Comin' Down the Road (2009). The version he delivered at the Premonition sessions in December 1997 was the song's world premiere as a live performance.

On the 1997-1998 live versions, Fogerty was backed up by the singing group The Waters (Julia Waters, Maxine Waters and Oren Waters).

Critical reception

"Only "Almost Saturday Night," which combines a guitar line that sounds like the Beatles with a marvelous double-tracked vocal, really breaks the predictable pattern." -Dave Marsh, The Morning Record, September 18th, 1975.  

"As a lyricist, Fogerty is unique not for sheer eloquence but for his transformation of commonplace words, phrases and metaphors into vital and personally expressive elements. The word ‘locomotion’ in ‘Almost Saturday Night’ instantaneously links romantic American dreamscapes (trains chugging through the night) with teen-party vernacular (Little Eva). Here, as in just about all of Fogerty's writing, context is everything. Walls, dreams of flying, urges for traveling and flowing symbolic rivers are among the universal, all but hackneyed elements Fogerty so deftly applies to his own ends. If these elements seem terribly conventional, so are the musical elements he works with. If Fogerty were a mechanic he'd fashion found junk into customized '56 Chevies and '65 GTOs." -Bud Scoppa, The Rolling Stone, October 23rd, 1975 

"But the best songwriting is on the fast side-openers--"Rockin' All Over the World" and "Almost Saturday Night," neither of which could be called an illumination. This is what happens when rock devolves from a calling into an idea--you can't even be absolutely certain it's him rather than you, but you know he'll never get away with it twice. B" -Robert Christgau, Consumer Guide

"Fogerty's uplifting voice and nice guitar work highlight the tune. And the famed Jody makes a brief appearance, this time going to a rodeo!" -Matt Loewen

"Almost Saturday Night" was a gloriously passionate hymn to the promise of the weekend, as its hero gazes out his window, feeling the excitement build as the word around him gears up for a night on the town. "Let the music have it's way/Let it steal my heart away," Fogerty sings, but it's obvious from the song's first chords that his heart was won away long ago, and he's just waiting for the band (or the jukebox) to fire up and help make the evening's dreams come true." -Mark Deming, Allmusic

Fans' views

"This may be John's most underrated song. All of us --- know how great it is, but most of the world probably has never heard it. That's their loss. It should be as classic as "Bad Moon Rising". It's as good as anything he ever did with Creedence."

"It is very "teenage" sounding with all the boldness of being young and yet a feeling of longing and dreaming for something. Fabulous lyrics."

"Great guitar intro. Amazing vocals "yes I mean it" and a little melancholic sound in a happy song. Just a song that have everything in his....... It has the right mix to be timeless."

"It was first recorded while I was in college, and it captured that feeling you get at the end of the week, when you've worked hard all week and now you're looking forward to the weekend. I still think it captures that feeling very well -- perhaps better than any other song. I can't sit still when I hear it."

Legacy

"Almost Saturday Night" was voted as the best John Fogerty song of his solo career in a survey held by the John Fogerty Swamp Internet Mailing List in 1999.

In a similar survey covering the entire catalogue of John Fogerty (including Creedence Clearwater), "Rockin' All Over the World" made #22 in 2014.

The 2013 remake

John Fogerty recorded a new version of "Almost Saturday Night" with Keith Urban for the John Fogerty collaboration album Wrote a Song for Everyone which came out in spring 2013.  The video of the version features fans' pictures of what it means for them to be "almost Saturday night".

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