This 1941 Supernatural Classic Inspired One Of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Best-Charting Singles

Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 classic "Bad Moon Rising" opens explosively with the title line, and it remains an instantly recognizable staple of classic rock radio. But despite its upbeat instrumentation and driving tempo, the song is, as the name implies, a deeply foreboding song that seemed to signal the end of the optimism initially attached to the countercultural movement of the 1960s and the so-called Summer of Love and the arrival of a much darker period of human history. And according to songwriter John Fogerty, it was inspired by a supernatural movie he had seen decades earlier.

The movie in question is titled "The Devil & Daniel Webster," which was originally released way back in 1941. As Fogerty explains on his official YouTube channel, the Faustian tale tells the story of a farmer who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for material success, resulting in the coming of a hurricane that flattens the crops of all the farms in the area except Webster's. It was this image that became central to the atmosphere Fogerty creates in "Bad Moon Rising."

Despite the song's themes of impending doom, "Bad Moon Rising" actually came at a very fortuitous time for Creedence Clearwater Revival. As John Fogerty himself recalled in an interview with Louder, the popularity of the band's early singles was a double-edged sword; while it meant they were heading in the right direction, it also piled on the pressure to come up with a radio-friendly follow-up.

"At the start of 1969 we were walking the tightrope between fire and ice," Fogarty said. "We'd just put out 'Proud Mary,' and in two weeks had gone from being one-hit wonders with 'Suzie Q' to being on our way up. But I was looking ahead. I was desperately worried we were about to fall flat on our faces. In those days, you put out singles every few weeks, so when 'Proud Mary' was on the radio I knew we had to write the next one."

Fogarty has said that he came up with the chords for the song first, and then delved into a notebook in which he had written down a list of potential song titles. The phrase "Bad Moon Rising" was inspired, he says on his official YouTube page, by the penchant of young people in the 1960s to describe themselves in terms of astrology. He says that he liked how the phrase sounded, although evidently the title also invoked for him images of the hurricane scene in "The Devil & Daniel Webster." Before long, Fogarty had the song sketched out.

After John Fogerty shared what he had come up with with the other members of Creedence Clearwater Revival, sessions for "Bad Moon Rising" began. And according to his Louder interview, they went perfectly, with the instrumental emerging from the sessions resulting in the lively recording we know today. If John Fogerty was looking to replicate the success of "Proud Mary," which was released in January 1969, with "Bad Moon Rising," which debuted on the charts just four months later, he couldn't have been happier with how things turned out. The two singles have identical performances on the Billboard Hot 100: both spent a total of 14 weeks on the chart, peaking at No. 2, the first of five singles to do so in Creedence Clearwater Revival's career. Both songs narrowly missed the No. 1 spot, but it's a chart performance that they never bettered, despite other classics like the anti-war protest song "Fortunate Son" arriving in the years that followed. 

Surprisingly, however, Fogarty himself was far from convinced that he'd struck gold again with "Bad Moon Rising." As he admitted to Louder: It's a funny thing ... but I didn't feel it was up to the standard of 'Proud Mary.' I was worried that maybe I was already on my way down. It was a lot more rock 'n' roll, whereas 'Proud Mary' had connections to early American standards." But arguably, with "Bad Moon Rising," Fogarty and CCR had produced a standard of their own.