CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL - “Bad Moon Rising”
(#276, 20th September 1969)
One of rock’s jauntier doomsdays, a feeling solidified for me by its status of party fixture on my college bar jukebox. Jaunty doesn’t always mean friendly, though. Creedence keep things brisk, lean and simple, and there’s only a touch of wildness in John Fogerty’s voice. ”Bad Moon Rising” has no patience for melodrama, and this cold matter-of-factness is its strength: Fogerty and his boys know what’s coming and sound ready for it - they’re just passing the word on to you, and leaving you to deal with it as you can. 7
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Doctor Casino on September 24th, 2006
Ehhhh……. I hear what you’re saying, and I do dig its folksy apocalypse (”Hmm, my gitchy knee is acting up, reckon there’s trouble coming, young feller”) but it’s just never done all that much for me as a song. It plays well on houseboat parties, where you’re all just floating down the river and’t much care if the music is going anyplace either… but for a number one it seems weirdly without any moments of climax or shifts in the drama. The arrangement is too continuous, the texture turgid.
Much prefer “Green River,” for its more distinctive guitar activity cutting at angles through Fogerty’s twangy “Weaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllll,” and “Fortunate Son” for its fusion of hillbilly dirt farmer pride and contemporary political outrage.
FT's Tom on September 24th, 2006
Yeah it’s far from my favourite CCR, but I do think it’s a fine, tight record, and it always sounded good on that jukebox.
FT's GeorgeB on September 24th, 2006
This is a terrific song. Ok, John Fogerty and Creedence were great technicians and it does tick all the right boxes, maybe in a bloodless way - good intro, simple lyric, vocalist with the right kind of catch in his voice, sharp ending, right length (doesn’t outsay its welcome) - but I’ll still argue with anyone who considers it perfunctory and cold. Apocalyptic subject matter has rarely been put across so “jauntily”. Does anyone know what kept it off number one in the US? To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded this one being given a 9 or even a 10 - guess it’s up to the Archies now.
FT's Ward Fowler on September 24th, 2006
The subject of an advert ’spoiling’ a song - or at the very least locking it into a set of possibly unwanted or unwarranted associations - came up recently w/ regard to ‘Something in the Air’. Well, when I hear this song now I ALWAYS think of the big transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London - it’s an obvious but effective juxtaposition (and the film is full of ‘moon’ songs) but it does, for me, rob ‘Bad Moon Rising’ of some of its secondary, Viet Nam-era connotations (”looks like we’re in for stormy weather” etc etc), which is a bit of a shame.
Chris Brown on September 24th, 2006
I’ve always hated this one. Sorry, guys, that whole charoogle southern boogie thing just turns me off.
Catchy, though.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 24th, 2006
american werewolf in london is a metaphor for vietnam! london = washington, lycanthropy = antiwar radicalism, when he sees him dead in the mirror = the spectre at the media feast of those who won’t be returning, beefeaters = the vietcong er er
fivelongdays on September 24th, 2006
Does anyone know what kept it off number one in the US?
“Get Back” by The Beatles
Marcello Carlin on September 25th, 2006
An interviewer once mentioned to Fogerty that the chorus line was frequently misheard as “There’s a bad moon on the Right.” Fogerty replied he was happy with that, since that was actually what he meant.
FT's Martin Skidmore on September 25th, 2006
I always wished I had the chorus line of this on some sort of ansaphone type push-button thing, so that when guests at my last home asked where the toilet was I could have John Fogerty intone (what I always thought sounded like) “There a bathroom on the right.”
I love Creedence, and would have marked this higher though, yeah, it’s not my favourite of theirs either.
FT's wwolfe on September 25th, 2006
I love the juxtaposition of “In the Year 2525″ with “Bad Moon Rising”: two apocalyptic songs, one pure cheese, the other really good. I think that says something about the times: lots of folks aspired to the Big Statement, a few of them succeeded, and the cheesy stuff might sell just as well as the good stuff. Something similar is true of every era, of course, but I think the urge to make the Big Statement ( or at least to give the appearance of doing so) was at its peak in this era.