Spring '24 - Who'll Stop the Rain?

Rain has been a metaphor for personal crisis and societal malaise throughout the history of recorded music. It's a backdrop to The Blues. In New England it's not a metaphor, but a relentless reality.

Suddenly it’s Spring. Not really, but that’s what the calendar says. The cover of the 1977 Peter Gabriel album captures my mood at winter’s end. New England holdouts have endured a really dismal winter among decades of dismal winters. Not much snow here in the Great Woods of central Connecticut, but more a relentless series of storms, primarily on weekends, bringing rain or a wintry mix, with frequent power outages. If the rain would just stop once spring arrives, but we know it will continue into May. So the theme of the new Spring ‘24 Spotify playlist is Who’ll Stop the Rain? Yes, that’s right, a playlist full of rain songs. You’re not going to believe how many rain songs I found on Spotify and I’m just scratching the surface. We’re going to embrace another rainy spring in New England. Better wear your L.L. Bean rain slicker and duck shoes.

Creedence in Vietnam

How did the songs of John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival become so entwined with the Vietnam War? The 1978 movie Who’ll Stop the Rain, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Nick Nolte, took its title from their 1970 hit on the album Cosmo’s Factory. It was the height of the Vietnam War with increasing numbers sent over into combat and increasing casualties (11,000 Americans killed in 1969 alone). Back at home, the anti-war movement was surging as Richard Nixon started his “enemies list” that would lead to Watergate and his resignation.

In my mind, Fogerty’s song was asking the same question as Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding: “Where are the strong and who are the trusted?” It’s interesting that neither Fogerty’s nor Lowe’s song titles ended with a question mark. Not sure if there’s meaning there, but the title of this post does end with a question mark.

John Fogerty, left, of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1970 with drummer Doug Clifford, brother/guitarist Tom Fogerty, and bassist Stu Cook.

Who’ll Stop The Rain was one of three Creedence songs on that movie’s soundtrack, along with Hey Tonight and Proud Mary. The film was based on the 1974 Robert Stone novel Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1975. I actually slogged through Stone’s grim drug-runner fable back then. The film moves the plot from South America to Saigon at the peak of the Vietnam War. Nolte plays Ray Hicks, a desperate sailor, and Michael Moriarty plays John Converse, a jaded war correspondent, who hatches a get-rich caper to smuggle a ton of heroin from Saigon to San Francisco. Converse’s wife Marge, played by Tuesday Weld, is the love interest and a heroin addict. John Converse says to Ray early in the film: “I desire to serve God and to grow rich like all men.” What could go wrong with this scheme?

All-American heartthrob Tuesday Weld in the early 1960s; as Diane Keaton's free-spirit sister in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977); and strung-out with Nick Nolte in Who'll Stop the Rain (1978).

One shock is seeing Tuesday Weld, the All-American sweetheart of the 1960s, go cold turkey in withdrawal as Marge. I had a crush on Tuesday Weld when I was a boy. She played the love interest on two favorite shows: with Rick Nelson in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and with Dwayne Hickman in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. By 1978 Weld was 35 and taking on heavier roles. She had just been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1977 as Diane Keaton’s free-spirit sister in the dark and violent Looking for Mr. Goodbar. In that movie her relationship with a much older college professor ends badly, while Keaton’s ends very badly. Both are disturbing films best watched only once and I won’t share any spoilers. They’re as dark as Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and that’s saying something. See the exciting trailer below for Who’ll Stop The Rain.

I decided to go up-river to find the source of Creedence’s association with Vietnam films. I thought their songs were on the soundtracks of Apocalypse Now (1979) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), but they were not. I checked the soundtracks of other movies, including Oliver Stone’s Vietnam trilogy Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven and Earth (1993), but only Born on the Bayou was included in the 1989 film.

Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, also released in 1978, had no Creedence on its soundtrack. Even Coming Home, the 1978 movie directed by Hal Ashby and starring Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Jon Voight, had no Creedence. Fonda and Voight both won Oscars in 1979 for Best Actress and Best Actor. Hal Ashby was nominated for Best Director, but lost to Michael Cimino for The Deer Hunter, which also won Best Picture over Coming Home. It was a banner year for Vietnam aftermath movies. Who’ll Stop the Rain was not even nominated, nor were its director or lead actors.

Based on my exhaustive research, I’ve determined that Who’ll Stop the Rain in 1978 was the earliest use of Creedence tracks in Vietnam War films. Creedence did not become fully synonymous with the Vietnam War until the 1983 PBS documentary Vietnam: A Television History, based on the reporting of war correspondent Stanley Karnow. The series used three Creedence tracks multiple times across 13 episodes, including Bad Moon Rising, Run Through the Jungle, and Fortunate Son. At that time it was the most-watched PBS documentary ever with an average of 9.7 million viewers per episode.

The intensity and chaos of Vietnam jungle warfare was portrayed via Run Through the Jungle in the clip below.

Ten years later came the 1994 release of Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks in the title role, and the deal was sealed with Fortunate Son on the soundtrack as Forrest arrives In Country via helicopter. It’s the rare family-friendly Vietnam War film and was a huge hit.

The 2017 release of the WGBH documentary The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynne Novick further solidified Creedence as part of the Vietnam experience. The companion soundtrack on CD offered 38 tracks associated with the era, including Bad Moon Rising by Creedence. Spotify shows the song has been streamed 791.4 million times! That’s more than Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones (579.1 million), For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield (573.9 million), or The Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel (552.7 million). These songs became Vietnam clichés and are still used in reportage on the political/social chaos and combat violence of that era. However, I have to admit those 38 songs were well-chosen by Burns and Novick. Their soundtrack is a good introduction to The Sixties for you younger readers. Check it out on Spotify via the link below.

One reason Creedence Clearwater Revival is so tied to the Vietnam War in our collective memories is they were selling more records than The Beatles during the peak war years of 1968-70. Creedence was all over the AM and FM airwaves as more and more soldiers were sent off to Vietnam. Songs like Fortunate Son addressed the social inequality of a war fought disproportionately by lower income and black soldiers. Creedence was called swamp rock, but also reflected the values of small-town, blue-collar America. Like The Band, Fogerty with Creedence wrote timeless songs that defined Americana before it became a genre.

There was also a business reason that Creedence was used so frequently in films and later in commercials. Legally, the music rights were easily obtainable, because Fogerty had signed away distribution and publishing rights to Fantasy Records. He believed that Saul Zaentz, Fantasy’s owner, had conned him into it. They engaged in a nasty lifetime battle over those rights in court and in the court of public opinion. They trash-talked each other at every turn for decades. The battle only ended with Zaentz’s death in 2014 at age 92.

By all reports, John Fogerty hated the use of his music in all films and commercials because Zaentz was profiting from his music. Zaentz took every opportunity to monetize Fogerty’s songs. Without those rights and royalties, Fogerty still continues recording and touring like a road warrior to this day. He was elected to my virtual Hall of Cultural Heroes decades ago.

Coming on Friday

My readers know I like to occasionally go down the rabbit hole about forgotten Standards from the American Songbook. On Friday we’ll keep to our rain song theme with a ballad from an ill-fated 1950s Broadway musical. It’s only noteworthy today because it was created by a legendary Hollywood director on the downside of a long career. Thanks for reading, watching and listening. Let it rain.