ly & the Family Stone, Tommy Roe, Henry Mancini, The Archies, and Simon & Garfunkel had all taken turns preventing Creedence Clearwater Revival from scoring its first Billboard #1 hit. But once again as the band went back to bat for a fifth try at #1, something was standing in its way -- Diana Ross's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

"Lookin' Out My Back Door" was written for Fogerty's young son. In Bad Moon Rising, John explained: "The idea of a parade going by came from a book I read as a kid called To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street.

"Lookin' Out My Back Door," the third of three Top 10 singles off CCR's Cosmo's Factory LP, first charted on August 15, 1970, and spent 12 weeks on the US pop charts. The Cosmo's Factory album was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, and it spent a total of 69 weeks on the charts.

To a youngster, a parade is very exciting, goofy and bizarre in a kind of way.... I wanted 'Lookin' Out My Back Door' to be a kid's song. My son Josh was about three years old when I wrote it. I knew he would love it if he heard me on the radio singing, 'doot doot doo, looking out my back door'."

Coupled with "Long As I Can See The Light," "Lookin' Out My Back Door" debuted at #56. In its ninth chart week the song became Creedence Clearwater Revival's fifth #2 single. That placed the band alone in first place among acts with the most #2 singles, exceeding Elvis Presley's record of four. However, Elvis had peppered his #2 singles with a variety of chart-toppers, so the honor was somewhat dubious since the band never had a #1 song. Nevertheless John Fogerty considered the single among his best work. He stated, "It may actually be our best record. I always thought it was the culmination. By that time, Creedence had all these records and we looked back and put everything on it. It was almost redemptive, you might say. We'd done all these things and it was like 'Boom! There I said it again'."

However, the cracks in the band were starting to show. Tom Fogerty left in early 1971, and the remaining members of the group wanted more say in the direction of the band. Finally John agreed on the album Mardi Gras. Although it spun off a Top 10 hit ("Sweet Hitch-Hiker," #6), it was the group's poorest performing album since the band's debut. Drummer Doug Clifford could feel that the end was coming. As he stated in Bad Moon Rising, "At that point we should have called it a day, realizing we weren't a band anymore if we weren't going to share in the process. You've been together for fourteen years, and you love each other like brothers and you've been through as many things as we have. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to give up Creedence. Maybe it overshadowed my better judgement."

Although the group's members had gone their separate ways by the end of 1972, time didn't heal all wounds. Nowhere was that more evident than when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. John Fogerty, apparently feeling that he was Creedence Clearwater Revival, didn't let the other members of the group perform with him onstage. Tom Fogerty was unable to share the honor, though, because he died on September 6, 1990.

- Christopher G. Feldman, The Billboard Book of No. 2 Singles, Billboard, 2000.