Centerfield by John Fogerty

Centerfield, John Fogerty's third solo album, arrived on Warner Bros. on January 14, 1985, and it broke nine years of silence. After shelving his Hoodoo album, the old Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman had walked away from the business, worn down by legal battles with his record company, and when he came back he came back alone: he produced it and played every instrument himself, overdub by overdub.

It doesn't sound like a hermit's record, though. It's sunny, swampy, stripped-down rock and roll. "The Old Man Down the Road" gave him the only top 10 hit of his solo career, "Rock and Roll Girls" followed, and the title song, a baseball number with a beat-up glove on the cover to match, made the whole thing feel like opening day. It went on to sell two million copies in America.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.