I Can’t Stand The Rain
JOHN Lennon once told Billboard that Ann Peebles’ 1973 R&B hit “I Can’t Stand The Rain” was “the best song ever”. His appreciation didn’t stop there. Peebles was aware she had a diehard fan on her hands when Lennon turned up at her show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in February 1974. In the throes of his ‘Lost Weekend’, it transpired that Lennon voiced his approval a little too enthusiastically.
“I got up there, looked down and saw John Lennon,” Peebles recalls, laughing. “He’d had a little too much to drink, and he started hollering my name out. He had a sanitary napkin tied over his head and he was screaming, ‘Ann, I love you!’ He was flying! He was just expressing himself, I think. He was really something.
I appreciate him saying the song was great. He really loved it.”
It’s not so hard to hear what got Lennon all shook up. A perfect 145 seconds of Southern soul, “I Can’t Stand The Rain” is the quintessential sound of Willie Mitchell’s Hi Records school of excellence, housed at the old Royal Movie Theatre in Memphis. Inspired by a chance remark made among friends on a stormy night, the song was written by Peebles and her future husband, Don Bryant, Hi’s in-house songwriter, with help
