What Have They Done To the Rain – The Searchers.

I went to see Mike Pender, the lead singer with the Searchers, last night. A nice bit of nostalgia. He was good too!

Back when I were a lad, in 1963, Merseybeat swept the country riding on the tails of the Beatles. I was fourteen and swept up into it. The Searchers were my second favourite Merseybeat group. It was a phase that only really lasted a year before most of the Mersey acts were displaced by the harder, R&B Blues of the Beat groups like the Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, Kinks, Them, Prettythings and Downliners Sect.

But I still have a great deal of affection for the Searchers. They started off as a rockin’ R&B band but a little later developed that jangly guitar sound that was taken up by the Byrds and were doing some Folk covers. They took the Malvina Reynolds song What Have They Done to the Rain into the charts – one of the first meaningful protest songs.

What have they done to the rain? What are we doing to the planet?

It is a song about the effects of nuclear fallout from a nuclear war. Malvina was a great song writer – very feisty!

What have they done to the Rain?

Just a little rain falling all around
The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound
Just a little rain, just a little rain
What have they done to the rain

Just a little boy standing in the rain
The gentle rain that falls for years
And the grass is gone, the boy disappears
And rain keeps falling like helpless tears
And what have they done to the rain

Just a little breeze out of the sky
The leaves nod their head as the breeze blows by
Just a little breeze with some smoke in its eye
What have they done to the rain

Just a little boy standing in the rain
The gentle rain that falls for years
And the grass is gone, the boy disappears
And rain keeps falling like helpless tears
And what have they done to the rain
What have they done to the rain