The song John Fogerty wants to be remembered for: “Even though I wrote it”
It’s not often you remember where you were when you first heard a song, but I imagine it’s pretty commonplace when it comes to the arresting croon of John Fogerty.
Thousands of corroborations will differ dramatically, but the utterance will always be the same: ‘Who is that?’ There’s a fierce fervour and emotion in Fogerty’s paradoxically comforting howl. It’s an experience unlike any other in music. His songs land like a cold splash of water that are somehow as soothing as a warm bath.
Interestingly, that’s almost exactly the arc that his own favourite John Fogerty tune forms. The song arrived in January, 1971. In a prolific two-year burst prior to that point, Creedence Clearwater Revival had scored a whopping nine top ten hits. The band even outsold The Beatles’ swansong in 1970. So, they seemed set to seize the Fab Four’s fabled mantle. That’s not how things worked out.
“Here we were, we were achieving all of our dreams,” the singer reflected on Howard Stern, “and everything is great. Instead of being happy, we were miserable.” Much has been made of the legal battles that followed, but there was already a hint before they even arrived in court that all wasn’t rosy in the form of ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’.
Speaking about the classic track that peaked at eighth in the US and second in the UK, the eternally plaid-shirted performer commented, “The metaphor of seeing rain come down on a clear sunshiney day, it seemed to be what we were.”
In typical Fogerty-like fashion, the song not only explained his own band’s disposition, but also the coming downpour of the 1970s. The Summer of Love had, in effect, ran out of steam, sapped by the heavy hand of the powers that be, and the Winter of Discontent lay ahead. However, at least this denouement resulted in some beautiful music. That music remains, even if the ideology has faded for now.
The changing story of John Fogerty’s favourite Creedence Clearwater Revival song
Creedence’s style was typified by this mingling of personal introspection with the wider subconscious of the zeitgeist. When Fogerty sang of looking out his backdoor, he wasn’t just gazing at his own garden getting stoned… well, he might’ve been, but his desire to kickback and mind his own yard for a moment delivered a similar call to calm for the rest of the world.
So, his songs stand as a time stamp of how people lived in a certain point and time, and with ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’, he captured something so timeless that its truth bends with the winds of change. Of course, it was written with the downpour of his divorcing band in mind, but Fogerty also reconciled that summer was never too far away as well.
In 2001, despite ongoing legal battles at that time, the clouds were parted significantly by the arrival of his daughter Kelsy. He came to see her as a spirit who had shifted the rain and let the sunshine return. The same warming rays that he felt at the height of the ‘60s shine on in a manner akin to what The 5th Dimension sung about in their cheesy, psychedelic classic, were back.
In some ways, he figured he had almost codified the gift of her into his song ahead of time. So, he began to see it as his defining anthem, and every time he sang it, he thought of Kelsy. It wasn’t a song of a parade being drenched, but rather a reflection on life’s cycles. As Frank Sinatra sang it, ”Life is like the seasons / After winter comes the spring / So I’ll keep this smile awhile / And see what tomorrow brings”.
Smiling a while brought a wife and child to Fogerty, both of whom gave him strength in his bid to own his songs once more. So, before a performance in Arizona in 2012, the cowboy-booted crooner introduced ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ by saying: “This next song is one of my very favourite songs in the whole wide world, even though I wrote it. It started out as a sad song many years ago, about 40 years ago. It was about a sad occasion in my life. But I refuse to be sad now.”
He continued: “Anyway, these days, it’s a very happy song because it reminds me of my beautiful little baby girl, Kelsey, and that is the truth. Kelsy rules my world, and she knows it. Anyway, Kelsey is a rainbow in my life, and this song has a rainbow in it. Every time I sing it, I think about Kelsey and rainbows.”
So, in many ways, it has become more than just the song he wants to be remembered for, it has become the mantra that he lives by.
