The Daily Feather — There’s a Bathroom on the Right
“Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye”
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Fears of being a flash in the pan worked wonders in the spring of 1969. Legendary rocker John Fogerty recalled, “At the start of 1969, we were walking the tightrope between fire and ice. We’d just put out Proud Mary, and in two weeks had gone from being one-hit wonders with [1968’s] Suzie Q to being on our way up. But I was looking ahead…desperately worried we were about to fall flat on our faces. I knew we had to write the next one.” He grabbed a little book in which he jotted down words on the run since 1967. “Bad moon rising” jumped out at him and summoned a scene from The Devil and Daniel Webster, a classic film noir about a down-on-his-luck man who sells his soul to the devil. Fogerty said he saw once more, “the devastating hurricane; furniture, trees, houses, and everything blowing around. That story and that look really stuck in my mind and they were the germ for the song.”
Bad Moon Rising sealed Creedence Clearwater Revival’s place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As was commonplace, the band broke up soon thereafter. Last Friday, we were hoping another band was not getting back together. In January 2019, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and former chair Ben Bernanke shared a stage on which the former changed his tune. The song, Powell Pivot, went platinum overnight on Wall Street. Holding our breath, we said a silent prayer that the sequel not resemble the original. Maybe Powell could channel his inner Fogerty and purposefully misspeak the lyrics, as the 77-year-old singer does for delighted audiences who for years thought they were singing along to, “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
By the looks of it, Powell needed a bathroom on the right. He was as nervous as we’ve ever seen him, and we haven’t missed a minute since his first Congressional testimony in February 2018, when he sounded like the resolute person who sold his soul after that first stage appearance with Bernanke. We’ve stood firm that he’d reunited with his former rational self after being resoundingly reconfirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 12, 2022. But one year of playing Mr. Tough Guy later, Powell is clearly shaken.