“Vietnam turned this whole country into [a] dark street, and unless we’re able to walk down those dark alleys and look into the eyes of the men and the women that are down there and the things that happened, we’re never gonna be able to get home. You guys out there, you’re eighteen or nineteen years old… it happened once and it can happen again.”
–Bruce Springsteen, on stage in Los Angeles, August 20, 1981
He’d been covering it throughout the River Tour–more than eighty times–without ever saying a word about it.
Until one night he did.
The date was August 20, 1981, the first night of six in Los Angeles. Opening nights of a multi-date stand are often unremarkable, but this was no ordinary Night One.
Seven weeks earlier, Bobby Muller made the decision to shutter his fledgling. financially strapped, publicly ignored Vietnam Veterans of America non-profit. He’d been doing his best to draw attention to America’s neglect of its veterans for years. Despite a slate of high-profile media interviews and stories in the New York Times and Good Morning America, the public response was deafeningly quiet. It was time to call it quits, he told himself.
And then the phone rang.
On the other end of the line was Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau, who asked Bobby if he’d be willing to meet with Bruce at his Independence Eve show at the Meadowlands. Muller agreed, figuring it would be one of his last acts as president of his three-year-old organization.
In a 2019 interview, Muller recalled, “Landau said Bruce has been following the Vietnam vets. He cares about it a lot… so literally the next night, he was doing a concert in Jersey. I went to the concert and talked to him for maybe twenty minutes and laid out my spiel. He said, ‘Okay, let me think about it.’ Next day, he calls me and said, ‘Can you come to Los Angeles next week?'”
Muller compressed the timeframe a bit (the shows were actually seven weeks apart, but we can forgive his memory after almost four decades). However, Bruce really did decide to re-purpose a scheduled date in Los Angeles as a benefit for the VVA, and he wanted Muller to be there. Not only that, he wanted Muller on stage to open the show with him.
For five minutes–before playing even a single note–Bruce and Bobby started a national conversation that never stopped.
Bruce had been opening his shows on that leg of the tour with “Badlands” or “Thunder Road.” Occasionally he’d mix it up with a cameo of “Prove It All Night” or even “Born to Run.”
This night, however, he opened with a cover that was usually deep in the main set.
It was a perfect selection.
John Fogerty’s classic was already a decade old by then, but it was as relevant as ever. The first of five singles to fall victim to the Creedence Curse (the band never had a number one hit but had five singles stop one notch short), “Who’ll Stop the Rain” was widely considered one of the best Vietnam War protest songs to emerge from that era.
Bruce paid close attention to Fogerty’s lyrics, however, and he knew that the song was far more than an anti-war song. In fact, it wasn’t even really that. Only the second of three verses refers to the war at all, and only through a single oblique reference to “the storm.”
“Who’ll Stop the Rain” is actually about the frustration and futility of trying to put an end to society’s ills. It’s like trying to stop the rain from falling. The song is as applicable to domestic homelessness and joblessness as it is to foreign wars and political oppression.
It’s still relevant today, which is why “Who’ll Stop the Rain” continues to be covered in the studio by artists ranging from Bill Haley to Garth Brooks, and on stage by countless others. Rolling Stone ranked the song #188 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
Springsteen’s August 1981 benefit concert is still widely regarded as one of his most powerful and memorable. With the possible exception of his 1988 East Berlin show, it may also be the most impactful.
“The fact that Springsteen put us in the public light the way he did,” said Muller, “changed everything. Everything. We went from being totally ignored, to all of a sudden being kind of popular. Within thirty days, we had a concert by Pat Benatar, who was big at the time. Charlie Daniels gave us a tremendous infusion of money. Bruce that night gave $100,000. We were okay after that. Without him, there would not be a coherent veteran’s organization or movement. That is really what made the difference.”
The VVA is still around, still tackling, promoting, and supporting issues important to America’s Vietnam vets. And of course, Springsteen continues to support America’s veterans from all wars, not just Vietnam. When his second River Tour stopped in Washington D.C. in early 2016, his acknowledgement of Muller (who was in attendance) was a fitting bookend to their joint appearance on the original River Tour.
Bruce continued to perform “Who’ll Stop the Rain” in concert over the years, updating its context to fit the world’s current concerns. In 1993, for example, he offered it as “a prayer for Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
When Bruce plays it these days, however, it’s usually in a completely non-political context.
If you’re fortunate or unfortunate enough to catch an outdoor Springsteen show in the rain, odds are pretty decent that you’ll get a cover of “Who’ll Stop the Rain” in the setlist, often even as the show’s opening song.
Occasionally, I’ll see online criticism of Bruce’s literal interpretation of a beloved protest song, but Bruce actually has it right: only two of Fogerty’s three verses are metaphorical. The third verse truly is literal: it’s about his experience at Woodstock when the skies opened and drenched the crowd.
Is it an odd way to end the song? Maybe. But one could also posit a subtle message from the songwriter: sometimes you have to find a way to embrace the joys life brings, even while the rain is falling all around us.
Bonus: Despite their many appearances together over the years, Bruce and John have only ever performed “Who’ll Stop the Rain” together once: at the induction of Creedence Clearwater Revival into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Check out the clip below, and keep an eye out to spot Roy Bittan, Robbie Robertson, Don Was, and Heartbreaker Benmont Tench in the band as well.
Who’ll Stop the Rain
First performed: December 18, 1980 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: February 18, 2017 (Hunter Valley, Australia)
