If you've ever seen a film or TV show about a werewolf, you would have heard 'Bad Moon Rising' by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
John Fogerty, the group's primary songwriter, explained what led him to write one of their best-known and most loved songs.
At the time, the song was rumored to be inspired by Richard Nixon, after legend has it that the song was written the day he was elected as president. Fogerty has rejected this rumor, instead explaining that the song was inspired by the 1941 supernatural horror The Devil and Daniel Webster.
“It’s a classic tale of a guy who is down on his luck, so he sells his soul to the Devil in return for much good fortune here in his earthly life,” Fogerty explained, per American Songwriter.
“He does the deal with the Devil, and a terrible storm comes to the community. All night long, the man is cowering in his barn while he hears this raging storm outside. In the morning, he sees that all of his neighbors’ crops have been destroyed, smashed to the ground, except for his, which is untouched,” the iconic singer/songwriter added.
According to Rolling Stone, although the song was a perfect match for the paranoid vibe of late '60s anti-Vietnam sentiment, it was not intended in that way.
“When you’re a very tuned-in young person, you’re tied to everything that affects your generation,” he clarified. “So I think it was there, but I was more into the idea of natural phenomena and unavoidability.”
So what inspired him?
“It was inspired, really, by the way kids talked in those days, in kind of an astrological sense,” Fogerty explained. “People would come up to each other and say, ‘What’s your sign?’ and the answer might be something like, ’I’m a Sagittarius with Mercury rising,’ whatever that means,” he explained.
Related: 1969 Classic Was the First 'Good Song' This Rock Legend Wrote — Now's It's a Timeless Anthem
A Robbery Changed Creedence Clearwater Sound
John Fogerty has traditionally played a Gibson 175 on CCR's first two albums. However, that guitar was stolen from the back of his car before he could use it to record Green River. But this tragedy, which occurred when the band was days away from recording 'Bad Moon Rising', may have helped the band create an iconic sound.
“I walked in the front door and I said to the man, ‘Do you have any Les Paul guitars?’ The man said, ‘I have one,’” he explained about going to a music store that had just opened in nearby Albany. “He pointed over to the wall. I went over there and looked at the guitar and said,’ But it’s black!’ I had been expecting a sunburst guitar,” Fogerty added.
He took the guitar off the wall, tuned it, plugged it in, and strummed an E chord. “It was magical, epical, really. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My eyes got real big. I looked at the man and said, ‘I’ll take it!’”
'Bad Moon Rising' was the first song he recorded with a Les Paul, using D standard tuning. This moment sparked a long-term love affair between John Fogerty and Les Paul.
Related: 1970 Feel-Good Classic Became One of Rock's Most Beloved Road Trip Anthems
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