Who’ll Stop the Rain

“Who’ll Stop the Rain” is a song written by John Fogerty and originally recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival for their 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory. Backed with “Travelin’ Band”, it was one of three double-sided singles from that album to reach the top five on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and the first of two to reach the No. 2 spot on the American charts, alongside “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”/”Long As I Can See the Light”. Lyrically, “Who’ll Stop the Rain” breaks into three verses, with a historical, recent past, and present tense approach. All three verses allude to a sense of unending malaise, pondered by “good men through the ages”, “Five Year Plans and New Deals/wrapped in golden chains”, and the Woodstock generation. Musically, in contrast to the 1950s-Rock-inspired “Travelin’ Band”, “Who’ll Stop the Rain” has more of an acoustic, folk-rock feel to it. Like many folk-rock songs, it starts off with a ringing acoustic guitar riff, though the backing throughout has more of a roots rock sound than that heard on more standard folk-rock recordings Interpreting the song in its time period (1970), and the resigned but somewhat angry feeling of the song, many see “Who’ll Stop the Rain” as a thinly veiled protest against the Vietnam War, with the final verse lyrics and its references to music, large crowds, rain, and crowds trying to keep warm being about the band’s experience at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. For his part, when asked by Rolling Stone about the meaning of the song’s lyrics, John Fogerty was quoted as saying, Certainly, I was talking about Washington, when I wrote the song, but I remember bringing the master version of the song home and playing it. My son Josh was four years old at the time, and after he heard it, he said, ‘Daddy stop the rain.’ And my wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘Well, not quite.’ In 2007 during a concert in Shelburne, Vermont, he said the following about the song: Well, this next song has a bit of a fable surrounding it. A lot of folks seem to think I sang this song at Woodstock way back then. No. I was at Woodstock 1969. I think. It was a nice event. I’m a California kid. I went up there and saw a whole bunch of really nice young people. Hairy. Colorful. It started to rain, and got really muddy, and then half a million people took their clothes off! Boomer generation making its presence known, I guess. Anyway, then I went home and wrote this song.