Bad Moon Rising

Hey there Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew is spinning Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" off the Green River album right now, and man, does this one still hit hard after all these years. John Fogerty has shared some wild stories about how this tune came together in interviews over the decades. He has talked about the late sixties when astrology was everywhere and folks would ask what your sign was. Fogerty used to joke around and say he was a double asparagus with a broccoli rising just to poke fun at all that. He kept a little notebook of song title ideas, and "bad moon rising" was one that stuck with him because it sounded cool, even if he was not sure what it meant at first.

The real spark for the lyrics came from an old black and white movie he loved as a kid called The Devil and Daniel Webster. In that film, a farmer down on his luck makes a deal with the devil for some good fortune, and then a huge hurricane rolls through and destroys everybody else's crops and houses while his fields stay untouched. Fogerty has said that image of the raging storm stuck with him, and he turned it into the song about the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us. He told Rolling Stone and others that the words are full of hurricanes blowing and rivers overflowing, the voice of rage and ruin, but the melody is so upbeat and happy that you almost miss how dark it is. He has admitted he did not even notice the contrast until the band was learning it. It is a happy sounding tune with all that doom in the words, and it did not bother him one bit.

There is another great story about the guitar on this track. Fogerty had his favorite guitar and amp stolen from his car right outside the Fantasy Records offices in San Francisco just days before they were set to record. He rushed over to a music store that had just opened in Albany and asked if they had any Les Paul guitars. The guy pointed to a black one, which was not the sunburst Fogerty expected, but when he tuned it down and strummed that first chord it was pure magic. He bought it on the spot and that black Les Paul became his go to for a lot of the swampy hits. Bad Moon Rising was the first song he cut with it, and he has said it set him off on a lifelong love of those guitars. The riff itself has a little nod to Elvis and Scotty Moore from the Sun Sessions, that kind of sideways rockabilly feel that keeps it simple and powerful, which is something Fogerty has always stuck with.

Folks have had fun with the lyrics too. That line about a bad moon on the rise gets misheard all the time as bathroom on the right, and Fogerty has played along with it in concerts. He has pointed the wrong way on purpose sometimes and laughed about fans holding up signs with arrows. The song hit number two in the States and number one in the UK, one of those big ones that helped put the band on top. It came out as a single before the Green River album even dropped, and it just kept climbing while the times were feeling pretty turbulent with everything going on in the country. Fogerty has said he was not writing a straight political song, more about natural phenomena and that sense of something unavoidable coming, but it fit the vibe of those days perfectly.

Now if you want to dig into how Creedence Clearwater Revival even got going, it is a classic story of some high school buddies from El Cerrito, California who stuck with it for years. John Fogerty met up with Stu Cook on bass and Doug Clifford on drums back in junior high around 1959. They started out as the Blue Velvets, mostly playing instrumental covers and some jukebox standards with John singing a bit. John's older brother Tom Fogerty joined them on guitar and vocals, and they became Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets for a while, playing local gigs and cutting a few singles that got some airplay on Bay Area stations. When the British Invasion hit, their label pushed them to change the name to the Golliwogs to sound more with the times, and they put out a handful of singles that did not go far.

John spent some time in the Army Reserves in the mid sixties, which he has said shaped a lot of his views, and when he got out the band was ready for a fresh start. They hated the Golliwogs name, and one Christmas Eve in 1967 John was watching TV when a beer commercial came on with all these beautiful green forests and clean water scenes. Right after that was an anti pollution ad, and the idea of clear water stuck with him. He mixed that with Credence, from a friend of Tom's named Credence Nuball, and added Revival to signal they were rebooting after all those years of grinding it out in bars and little towns. By early 1968 they were Creedence Clearwater Revival, with John taking the lead on writing, singing, and producing. Their first album came out that year with a cover of Suzie Q that started to break them, and then Bayou Country and Green River followed quick, with John drawing on old blues, country, and Southern rock influences even though they were California kids. The whole thing came from imagination and records and stories, not from living down in the bayou. It is that combination of tight, simple arrangements and Fogerty's raw voice that made them stand out from the psychedelic scene around San Francisco.

You can check out more from the man himself over at his official site at John Fogerty, and catch the band pages on Facebook, Instagram, and X, plus John's own at Facebook, Instagram, and X. And of course, keep it locked here on THE ZOO for more of that freeform album rock the Zoo Crew loves to share with all you Zoo Freaks. This one has that driving beat and those warning words that still sound fresh no matter how many times it comes around on the turntable.