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A Long, Long Time Ago: “Travelin’ Band/Who’ll Stop The Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

By Marcello Carlin





The first double A-side to appear in this list does an excellent job of summarising the two and possibly contradictory impulses which informed rock music in the seventies – the optimistically celebratory, and the pessimistically reflective. Yes, “Travelin’ Band” is essentially “Long Tall Sally” – an out-of-court legal settlement at the time confirmed that – but it is an electrifying rock ‘n’ roll record, Fogerty damning the winds of unwarranted change as he sings about being on the road as something to be happy and joyful about, which in the seventies would prove to be a rarity. Powered by the band in peak form, Fogerty howls about state militia and flying to gigs, giving flight and touchdown the same beneficent futurism that Chuck Berry gave to “Promised Land.” In so doing, he and CCR set a template for knowledgeable back-to-basics which would unpredictably come home to roost in the British glam-rock boom (Roy Wood’s Fogerty impression on The Move’s “California Man” was an early indicator, and where do you think Brian Johnson, of Geordie then AC/DC, got it from?).

But the flipside indicates that this surface elation does not come without a dark and ongoing backstory. “Who’ll Stop The Rain” is one of the great American popular songs, and in managing to convey a kaleidoscopic view of rock ‘n’ roll, its performance and reception, and the future tunnel to hell, in barely two-and-a-half minutes, it completely trumps “American Pie”; whereas McLean sings of 1959 (which at the time he wrote and recorded it was only about a dozen years before) as “a long, long time ago,” Fogerty can sing “As long as I remember” and convince you that he remembers everything that has ever happened. His voice bears the indelible power of the powerless; he knows the boat is sinking (cf. Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”) and also that he is in no position to do anything about it. But the band burns through a quarter of a century’s worth of worthwhile traits in popular music; no rock music this side of The Band and that side of R.E.M. (and The Mekons) achieved quite the same balance of thrust and patience. CCR perform the song like a band possessed – particularly Doug Clifford’s near-demonic drumming – with the cautious confidence, underpinned by a dutiful dread, that they could carry on playing this song, and the rain continue to pour, for ever.

Date Record Made Number Two: 7 March 1970
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel
UK Chart Position: 8 (only “Travelin’ Band” listed as an A-side)

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