TheUglylucy4's video: Who ll Stop the Rain

"Who'll Stop the Rain" was written by John Fogerty and is the ninth track off of Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1970 release...Cosmo's Factory. The name of the album comes from the warehouse in Berkeley where the band rehearsed early in their career. It was dubbed "The Factory" by drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford, because Fogerty made them practice there almost every day. The LP was the bands fifth album in two years and became an international success, topping the album charts in multiple countries. "Who'll Stop the Rain" topped out at the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Chart of 1970. "Who'll Stop the Rain" is a song that breaks into three verses...a historical, recent past, and present tense approach. All three verses allude to a sense of unending disgust, pondered by "good men through the ages", "five year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains", and the Woodstock generation. The disgust is not defined, but appears to allude to a sense that man's problems have to be dealt with by those who wish to fix them, and that no ancient philosophers, money-promising government, or the Flower Power generation merely pushing them off by thought, money, or communal love, could solve the problems of that time. There could be no end to warfare and poverty with patchwork economic plans which merely reorganize citizens into new productive forces once the pressures for social change have relaxed. The corrupt leadership within a government continued to wage perpetual war contrary to campaign promises. The song's universal topical appeal made it unusual in the time of its release and gives it a quality that helps it maintain its popularity 40+ years later. 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. The line during the song's second verse... "five-year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains"...may indicate a general cynicism altogether about self-centered politicians, hollow social movements, and corporate influence within the government. For his part, when asked by Rolling Stone about the meaning of the song's lyrics, Fogerty was quoted as saying..."Certainly, I was talking about Washington". The half-minute-long fadeout of the song, which reprises the repeating guitar pattern from the intro, seems to reinforce the song's main theme of "the rain" continuing to go on, interminably. One of Fogerty's best. This version of "Who'll Stop the Rain", with Bob Seger, can be found on Fogerty's 2013 release...Wrote a Song for Everyone.