John Fogerty's Music / Understanding Nightmares

About the show

In the first half, legendary songwriter and rock musician John Fogerty joined George Knapp to discuss what it took to get the legal rights to his songs, along with his long legacy in music. Recently, Fogerty recounted, he won a lengthy legal battle that goes back to 1968, when, as founder of Creedence Clearwater Revival, he unwittingly signed away the rights to his own music. He attributes the situation to a number of factors, including the band's youthful inexperience in the music business and the lack of adequate management.

Fogerty also outlined his career in music, both in CCR and as a solo artist. Although his earliest musical projects mimicked the popular rock and roll stylings of the day, with its sweet, simple lyrics and musical arrangements, Fogerty traced the influences that led to the formation of CCR to blues artists like Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley. The adoption of their country-tinged, swampy rock sound led to rapid success, and soon the band were rock superstars. After CCR's breakup, Fogerty released a number of solo albums, and has collaborated with artists like Bob Seger, Dolly Parton, Jeff Beck, and Brad Paisley.

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Dream expert J.M. DeBord talked about the various types and meanings of nightmares in the second half. He related that his interest in these dark dreams is rooted in his own history of recurring nightmares as a youngster, which were finally identified by a shaman as a generational curse. DeBord was eventually able to gain enough insight from his own experience to be able to help others with their own nightmare encounters. Currently, he's known as RadOwl, the reddit.com dream expert, advising others as to how to understand and manage their own dream challenges.

Most nightmares, DeBord went on, are metaphorical stories that recreate our internal struggles and anxieties as the characters and situations we know as dreams. Often nightmares are also invitations to take responsibility for the issues they represent, he said. As with DeBoard's own case, nightmares can also be passed across generations as a sort of "memory" imprinted on our spiritual selves.