What is Creedence Clearwater Revival song ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ actually about?
There’s one song in Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s songbook that frontman John Fogerty claims is one of his “very favourite songs in the whole wide world” despite having written it himself.
Leading 1970’s Pendulum, along with double A-side ‘Hey Tonight’, ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ was released during a pivotal moment of flux for the band. It marked the end of a prolific six-album run that lasted only two years. Finally, Mardi Gras was dropped before the group’s dissolution a few months later.
Much has been read into the single’s thematic use of rain as an elemental harbinger of doom. With The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ dropping a year earlier and its similarly apocalyptic motif of storm clouds, it’s tempting to view ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ through the prism of the 1960s’ death knell.
It’s not hard to see why. Countercultural idealism gave way to the top-down pessimism that emanated from the ascendent Richard Nixon administration, the Kent State massacre ushered a new and bloody precedent for state oppression, and the deadly chaos at Altamont’s free festival disaster struck a bitter blow to the peace and love ethos of the era.
While Fogerty would touch on political themes, his staunchly blue-collar background and aversion to the psychedelic excesses indulged by his peers meant he held little investment in the plight of the hippies whom he felt a scant affinity with. The ruminative fuel to the lyrical disquiet of ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ was triggered by the internal fractures in the band and the ebbing relationship between him and his older brother and rhythm guitarist Tom.
Despite their acclaim, any comradely cheer was left wanting. “That song is really about the impending breakup of Creedence. The imagery is, you can have a bright, beautiful, sunny day, and it can be raining at the same time,” Fogerty told Rolling Stone in 1993. “The band was breaking up. I was reacting, ‘Geez, this is all getting serious right at the time when we should be having a sunny day.’” Tom left shortly after Pendulum‘s release and pursued a moderately successful solo career before sadly dying of tuberculosis in 1990.
Never one to sink into too deep a funk, Fogerty ensured the single’s flip-side ‘Hey Tonight’ was a reassuring affirmation that the band would soldier on over the hurdle life had thrown at them. The song’s meaning has also changed over time for its writer, with Fogerty introducing the hit at a 2012 Arizona show: “This song was originally written about a very sad thing that was going on in my life. But I refuse to be sad now. Because now this song reminds me of my little girl, Kelsy, and every time I sing it, I think about Kelsy and rainbows.”
It’s a CCR cut that has enduring appeal, with everybody from the Ramones, Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart, and Boney M all taking a stab at Fogerty’s uneasy ode to the ruptures that threaten brotherly bonds. Marking the final single as a quartet, ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ stands as a canonical track while also spelling the band’s beginning of the end.
