Rain King

A band composition, lead singer Adam Duritz wrote the lyrics to this song. He got the title from the book Henderson the Rain King, written by Saul Bellow in 1959. Duritz read the book when was a student at the University of California, where he was an English major. A few years later, he wrote the song, including the line "Henderson is waiting for the sun" as a reference to the main character, Eugene Henderson, who is a guy that disrupts the lives of others, making a mess of everything around him. The song isn't about the book specifically, but relates to how Duritz felt about his art. On Counting Crows VH1 Storytellers special, he explained: "The book became a totem for how I felt about creativity and writing: it was this thing where you took everything you felt inside you and just sprayed it all over everything. It's a song about everything the goes into writing, all the feelings, everything that makes you want to write and pick up a guitar and express yourself. It's full of all the doubts and the fears about how I felt about my life at the time."

Duritz has said that his songs are very personal, and he is indeed the Rain King he sings about on this track. He considers it a very spiritual song about the forces that spur creativity and energize art. It's similar in concept to Steven Tyler's "Mama Kin."

In America, Counting Crows didn't release any songs from August And Everything After as singles, which worked well for them when the album sold over 7 million copies there. Duritz says that "Rain King" is the song he felt would be their most popular, but radio stations made "Mr. Jones" the hit. On the Billboard Airplay chart, "Round Here" and "Einstein On The Beach (For An Eggman)" where then next hits for the band, followed by "Rain King."