#2485 - John Fogerty

Go over to my note. The Joe. Wilkin, experience. Train my day, Joe Wilkin podcast my night.

All day. I took your stuff on the floor. It doesn't matter. You can go on the table.

This one. There's water there too in this metal cup. Oh, thanks so much. Okay.

Yeah, you just made a... I have some notes that I'll probably never look at. You got notes? Yeah.

What's on the notes? Oh, just stuff like what I went through with GCR and all that. Tell me something. Did you read up on me or anything?

I'm a huge fan. I don't have to read up on you. I read up on you a little bit just to catch up about how you got out of the... Well, you did do military service, but you got out by smoking a lot of weed and not eating.

I read that. Is that true? No. Is that true?

They lied? It was a story about you smoking a lot of weed and getting emaciated so you can get out of the army. Well, it's not quite in that sequence, but those things did happen. Yeah, I had determined to lose a lot of weight, right?

So I was kind of really skinny about 1967, 68. I mean, like, 129 pounds. Whoa. Yeah.

And then I was going to go to the... I think it was the procedure and I had to meet with the army doctor, right? And my friends gave me a couple of joints and I stuck them in. I used to smoke in those cigarettes.

I stuck it in the cigarette and going across the baby bridge. I smoked them. I didn't even thought about it. So if you're like, yeah, man, he went on a starvation diet, a protest diet and then smoked a lot of weed.

That's right. That way. It's essentially some truth. Some truth.

Do it. You had a legendary career, my friend, legendary. Thank you. Still working on it.

It's incredible, man. You are like one of the main voices of rock and roll in America. If you really think about it, your songs, I mean, you have so many gigantic hits. You know, when the UFC has a lot of walkout songs, you know, when fighters come out and walk out, a lot of guys walk out to music.

I don't even know if you're aware of it. The Forch It's On is a big one. Yeah. Bad mood rising.

That's another big one people walk out to. Great. Wow. I'm not that aware of the UFC stuff, but you know, everybody, whatever floats you about.

Well, people just love your music. So you went through many generations. Like you got your first record contract. How old were you?

I know I signed one when I was around 19. Of course, it would have been an unenforceable. It's not legal at the time. You had to be 21.

Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. There's, well, you're also one of the first rock and roll artists that wrote songs that became very popular about how you get screwed over by the record business.

You know what I mean? So let us get her did it working for MCA. They did that song. But you had Vance Cant dance.

It was actually Vance Cant dance. But you had to change it, right? Yeah. The name of the person was Vance.

It's sold about a half a million copies as Vance, but the record company Warner Brothers in their way of settling somewhat had me change it to Vance. Yeah. Because the guy's name was Vance. That's right.

Yeah. That's right in the middle of that whole thing was a mess. I got sued for sounding like myself. What?

How'd that happen? I'll tell you. So and I didn't find this out. There was eventually a trial.

So it's not many people think that that's funny. You got super sounding like you're so well, that's funny. Well, no, you're getting a legal lawsuit that's probably going to take away a lot of your money and you're going to go through three, four years of anguish. Well, anyway, ended up in a trial.

He was suing me for at the time was an enormous amount of money, $144 million for his, whatever, metal anguish or something. The logistics, I guess you'd call it. I had made a new song called The Old Man Down the Road. It was on my album.

It was my comeback on Cinderfield. I had finally gotten away from fantasy records, which is where Credence was, and so I'll say I'm too owned it. So when you finally escape and get success over somewhere else, the former people tend to be jealous, I guess. So he was suing me.

What had happened though, I found out in the trial, the bass player from Credence was another one of those people, I guess, that couldn't stand that I'd now had success in a later life. He went down to fantasy and saw Mr. Saul's answer and said, John is ripping off Credence. You should sue him.

The irony in all of that is that I had taught Stu every single note that he ever played in Credence. It was not his own create. As we talk, you'll see, I was the guy inventing the arrangements. And so to take possession of Credence was pretty ironic and pretty over the top.

Anyway, he talks Saul into suing me and that Saul had unlimited funds. And so to a trial, I prevailed at trial and got that over with. But they taught you during the process because it takes years and across the enormous amount of money to fight yourself. Yeah, all that stuff.

That is so crazy that they can sue you for sounding like you. Well, it's a blessing to the world, I think, that I prevailed. I mean, what we're really talking about is when you come into the consciousness of the world, I guess, and you have a certain style, if you're lucky. And so you start creating whatever your art is.

You're an actor or you're a painter or, in my case, a musician. And people start liking the style. Well, how unfair would it be that at some point somebody takes ownership of your style and now says, you have to go back and invent some other style, be some other person. That would be really difficult.

Imagine Dylan or Springsteen or all the other people that have their own style, having to reinvent and change the something else. Well, it's just insane to even ask an artist to do that. It's insane because, look, so many artists sound like other artists anyway and no one has a problem with that, as long as they're not ripping off the notes and the lyrics. There's a lot of people that sound like people.

But the idea that you could get sued for sounding like you with new music and new lyrics is, that's one of the most insane things I've ever heard of. I can't believe I didn't get thrown out immediately. Immediately, right. Well, that shows the, I guess, the ego and the possessiveness that people want to have.

You know, I had written a new song and he didn't want me to, he wanted to own the new stuff. He wanted to own me, basically. That was the idea. Well, you could never do anything unless you do it for me.

So I was, but not just for myself, for everyone, for all artists. It was kind of a major ruling and thank God it went that way. Well, thank God it also was public. Like with that song and the lawsuit around the song, you have me to change the name of the song because back then, at least at the time, like this was probably what, the 80s?

Yep. Most people had no idea how evil the music business can be. Unless they were told they had no idea what they did bought the albums, they loved the musicians and they just liked the music. They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.

They didn't know how these people own your catalog. They own the music. Publishing. They try to just get as much money out of you as humanly possible, own your name, own your likeness.

And most fans had no idea. And that's probably the way it really should be. When I was young, I just cared about Elvis and his guitar player. You know, I didn't want to know all, I didn't even know there was stuff behind it.

The Colonel, yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Right.

I picked a good one there, didn't I? Yeah, it's really. I mean, Colonel was evil. That's just too bad.

Another similar situation. Like there's a lot of these great artists get like Prince. He got wrapped up to the point where he had to change his name to a symbol because he didn't own his name anymore. Prince.

Well, if he doesn't want to use it, I'll take it. Yeah, it's just the business itself. I mean, you have these creative artists that make this music that everybody loves and then you have these hyenas that work behind the scenes. They're the ones that are collecting the majority of the money from it and they're not making any music.

And to the average fan like myself, like that's abhorrent. That's disgusting. You see that. It just drives you nuts.

Well, also, you know, the creative people are special. And I mean, you know, look around. There's way more of other types of people than there are creative people. And to douse that, you know, to own that, which is what was going to happen.

It's just an onerous thing. I used to be a lot more angry about all this stuff. I'm a lot older. I can't say wiser.

It's more like I came out on the good side of it. I try not to worry about it too much. It's great that you came out on the good side of it. But it's also great for people to know.

And it's really great for young artists to be aware as they're coming up, especially as they're beginning their journey that this could happen to them. Yeah. And there's all kinds of, you know, bad people around just waiting for you to slip up and sign something that will give you rights away, that sort of thing. I get such a joy out of music.

You know, I mean, I just started that way when I was a little kid. I mean, didn't even know what I was doing or what that was. I was hearing this sound and, you know, and I liked it. And I just kind of went with it.

I didn't try to analyze it too much. And of course, later with all the things, you know, the different roads you go through trying to get to someplace. Happily, I still get that same joy. I mean, I just I'm just so glad.

You know, a lot of this, of course, is from the care of my wife, Julie. If I hadn't met her, I probably would be dead simply that. Really? Yeah.

Wow. What do you think it'd be done? I didn't see any way out. You know, I was really abusing myself, alcohol, mostly.

I really felt bad inside. I mean, when you get like that, Joe, you're not really operating on the same plane in the world that all the other people that you see, you know, walk into a market or something, look around and probably most of the people are kind of normal, you know, whatever we call that. But when you're really hurting inside for whatever reason, I mean, in my case, something really unjust had been done to me. But, you know, however you get there and then you start abusing yourself with drugs, alcohol, whatever, you just kind of become a habit.

You just stay there, right? And so you're not really enjoying the sunshine and the love that's around you and all the rest of it. You become kind of a pathetic person, sad, certainly. So that, you know, that was the deal.

That one Julie met me. I was that guy. There was sort of a, certainly an anger, I mean, but a bitterness too. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where you look for something to go wrong and then it goes wrong.

And you go, see? I told you. It's a terrible mental place to be and I was there. Do you think this was a loop that you got in because of the lawsuits?

Oh, yeah. That it really just got you that hard. Well, there was more than one lawsuit, but the betrayal by the people in my being, you know, I just told you about a very evil man, right? Yeah.

And I'm the only guy from Cretan's who's ever actually mentioned that he's an evil person to the extent that quite publicly my brother Tom, right during the same time, was saying that Saul was his best friend. Oh, Jesus. It's really hard to deal with. The other two guys in the band were kind of just more cowardly about it.

They just never spoke up. Just kind of give me the money. How the fuck was your brother saying that guy was your best friend while he was suing you? He was signed, re-signed after the breakup of Cretan's.

He kind of shopped around and didn't have much success finding a label. And so he went right about the time that this trial was going to happen. He re-signed with fantasy. I'm talking about the first trial.

Which was the first trial? The first trial was about basically the band had lost its life savings. All of us in Cretan's, the record company had gotten us into this offshore tax plan. And I'm saying this with a smile because nowadays it just sounds so, you know, some guy comes walking up to you and got a trench coat on a corner in New York City.

Everybody, you know, you're probably going to avoid that guy. But the record company was in this tax thing. For all we knew we were going to be paying 90% income tax, right? I mean, the tax laws are pretty stringent and pretty high.

And so they offered us, or basically ushered us into this plan, offshore tax plan. And it would allow us to pay a lot less taxes, probably somewhere between 10 and 20%, something like that. So it was a huge financial savings for us. I can tell you that the name of this particular thing was a bank in the Bahamas called Castle Bank.

And we had it checked out, I mean, the people on our side in the band had it checked out by our people, our own accountant. The bass player's father was an entertainment lawyer and had a big firm among other people represented the Oakland Raiders. So we thought they were pretty solid and they checked it all out and said that it was okay, it was legit. So we did it.

That time went on in it seemed to be not legit to the point that somewhere in the 70s, the bank disappeared and all our money in it disappeared. So we sued. Oh, Jesus. Yep.

So here it is. The bank was being used by the CIA to funnel money for covert military operations, including those at Antros Island, a staging area for anti-castro activities. So you, they were stealing your money. How?

I just found out. I don't know. I just typed it in and went to the Wikipedia and I was like, well, that's interesting. So I didn't know any of that.

You didn't know until now? Oh, I knew that now. Or I suspect. Yeah.

Did you know that up until now or did you just find it out just now? You could tell me a lot of things right now and I'd say, oh, yeah, I guess, assumed all that stuff was kind of happening, but I didn't know it at the time in the early 70s when we, or late 60s when we got into this thing. It was actually something. Do you know how anti-American that is?

The CIA stole from Credence Clearwater Revival. No fucking crazy that is. That is so wild. No, I didn't know that part.

The funny thing is I decided to get out of that plan, right? And I'd gone down to see my own people, my accountant, my attorney in Oakland and told them, I just went out on this thing. I don't like the idea that whenever I want some money, like an allowance, you got to call up some bank account somewhere over there and it takes sometimes some few days before I actually received my money. And it was starting to smell.

Now we're talking 1975, 76. And so I actually had the meeting and I said, I want to be out of this plan. I don't want to, oh, I said one of the things I said to the meeting of professionals, look, take a shoebox, put all the money I've ever earned into the shoebox and now hand me the shoebox so I can see how much money have I earned because I didn't know. It was just going straight into this fund, right, into this castle bank, but they couldn't tell me.

So I leave, I get down to the parking lot in the basement of this tall building in Oakland and I'm with the guy that runs my office and I say, we're going to have to have another meeting because even though I told them I want to get out of the plan, I didn't stand up like on the table. Okay. I'm ordering you and you and you get me out of the plan. I realized I could weasel some more time until I actually pointed.

So the next week I showed up and did that. I'm ordering you get me out. Okay. Out of the plan, right?

Pretty quickly after that, a week or two, we hear that the bank has closed. There's a telegram that apparently was sent on Valentine's Day and the bank president has died. He died in a sauna. Whoa.

I've seen that movie. You know, we're having Costello, the mob comes in and they're in those heat things that are up here. The guy sticks a broom in the door so he can't get out. I mean, except that this was serious and there will be no more withdrawals until this thing is understood.

Right. You know, a bank president dies. You don't close the bank of America. You still can go get your money.

And so pretty quick after that, it all just disappeared in a pop of smoke. They just stole the money. Done. Yep.

And it was the fucking CIA. That is crazy. That is so crazy. How much money was involved with all the different people that lost their money?

Like how much money was this bank holding? Do you know? Oh, well, there were other names that I never saw in those days. A lot of sort of moby kind of sounding names.

I will tell you, after the thing closed and we got the telegram that I started, I literally started checking under my cars looking for wires and something funny. I did that for about three months. I finally just, well, I was scared because I was the guy who said I want to get out of this thing and suddenly it goes, kaboom, and the president dies. Right.

And I just figured that I was some kind of whistleblower to them or something. And, you know, I'm in their way. Wow. I guarantee you're the reason why it happened.

I don't think, no, I don't believe that's true. Well, no, I mean, you probably cause a whole thing to close down. I mean, it's not coincidence that it closed down right after you asked for your money back. Yeah, I don't know.

You're a big public name and a big voice. You get out and take your money out. I will say, after that point in time, I really never wanted to talk too loudly about stuff anymore. Oh, am I going to, I'm going to guess.

So there eventually was our lawsuit. Well, actually it was my lawsuit. I got with a lawyer, a tall building, I call it, and proceeded to start proceedings against this fantasy, our own attorneys and experts, the people that designed this plan, all the rest, right? But I was the only one in the band that did that.

The rest of the guys kind of just went along and weren't making any waves. And I was pretty adamant. I'm telling you this because at some point later, more than a year had passed, maybe a year and a half, my lawsuit had been rolling along a while. And then the other guys asked to join my lawsuit because the statute of limitations had run out on them being able to sue anyone because they literally tried to stay in the plan.

I was willing to take the penalty, whatever it was, for being the dumbass that let himself get into some financial thing like this, right? I felt like Joe Lewis. I thought it was going to need an act of Congress to forgive the debt. These experts in the meeting that I talked about who were trying to dissuade me from making a noise and trying to get out of the plan told me eventually, John, if you receive all the money at once, you will pay more than 110% in taxes of what you have earned.

In other words, you're going to go in a hole for receiving it all at once, right? That's why I felt like Joe Lewis. That's the most the same thing I've ever heard. Well, they were trying to intimidate you.

Of course. Sure. Yeah. How much money were talking about?

How much money they steal from? When it was over, they headlined in the San Francisco Chronicle. I mean, you're going to laugh at this. Rock Band, victorious wins 8.1 million.

That was our entire take for everybody in the band. This guy had a little bit different amount, but those numbers sound, I mean, I don't know. Dion wants me to joke at the rock and roll hall I think about Bruce. And he, Dion says, well, I sold 40 million.

You know, you assume, well, Bruce has that on him. It was pretty funny. Yeah. I mean, 8 million was that was our take from all the sales of pretense.

So was that the amount of money that was in the bank that they stole from you? That was what we got returned to it. So you did get the money back? Mm hmm.

Oh, okay. They were just vanish. The money didn't come back from Saul's Ants or Castle Bank or any of those people. What had happened was, the fantasy was let out of the lawsuit by the local judge in the Bay Area.

I don't know why, because they're the ones that got us into the plan. But anyway, they were let out of the whole thing. So who was left was this guy named Bert Cantor in Chicago who designed the plan and our own accountant and lawyers. And so what most of them did was settle for pennies on the dollar.

You know, we said that you owe us a million dollars or whatever and they settled for like $10,000. Really? Right? Rather than go to trial.

But our own accountant's legal team said, we got these guys. They can never win this. So I mean, ironically, they wanted to go to trial and put the poor accountant, you know, who was an old guy, throw a whole trial. And credence got, we retained the money we had lost in that plan.

The 8 million I just mentioned from the law firm, the insurance firm. And it was his insurance companies, lawyers that were representing him and they had to pay. Nobody else had to pay. And CIA or whoever you're talking about got away with it.

Of course they did. They know how to do that. It's kind of crazy too that it's only $8 million. And you think about how much money you probably made the record companies.

Yep. Well, there was 100 million records plus. Right. And do the math.

How much was an album back then? Four bucks. Yeah. So 400 million plus operating expenses, costs, all that stuff.

You know, you guys got a small percentage. That's how it works though. That's why the business is so dirty. But so, you know, the idea is that they help you and they bring you up.

But the reality is they sell art. And if they don't have artists, they have nothing. The artists are what fund their very existence and they make the majority of the money. It's pretty dark when you really think about it.

Yeah. And Joe, I got to tell you, I love making music and I don't do it for the money. I mean, I know that sounds a little naive, but just the happiness in my heart from doing this is from the music. I believe you.

I believe you. Because the only thing is when you, I mean, I'll say, I'm not like, well, maybe I'm an idiot, but probably not about this. When you find out that there was money, but somebody else got it, then that kind of gets your attention. Right.

But for me, at least it wasn't even about being famous. Literally, if you can believe that. It was the joy of understanding, you know, what the music from other people that you loved. And as you grew up from a little first inspiration, you began to kind of understand what it was you liked about what they did.

And at some point then started to try and do it yourself. But that was a long, long time after the initial joy of just enjoying what they did. Yes. It's kind of sad that money always does kind of distort things.

But if you were only interested in money and only interested in fame or if that was your primary concern, there's no way the music would be that good. It's like that has to come from a real place. It's a real place of creativity and enjoyment. 100%.

100%. You know? Well, for me, I just, it, and also the prospect of creating something new tomorrow, you know, and the, what's the word? You get certain feelings.

Well, we all do, but I've learned to, how can I say it, sort of like being in a big swimming pool or something, you know, it's all, it just surrounds you, letting yourself enjoy that feeling and then try to figure out a way to put that into the music, you know, express it. Yeah. Well, you did it, man. It's just, it's, it's a long story with all these different artists that have had to deal with all these horrific managers.

And I was reading this article about Jimi Hendrix manager. So one of his bodyguards wrote a book where he's blaming Hendrix manager for his death. And he was essentially saying that Hendrix was murdered and Hendrix was about to leave his manager. And that's why he killed him.

And I don't know if you know the story about Hendrix, but his girlfriend fell from a roof or jumped off a roof shortly after Hendrix died. And apparently they were trying to get rid of her as well because they knew that she knew the whole deal behind it. Was this the one with kind of a funny foreign name? Yes.

Yes. Yeah. So I mean, Jimi owned his masters. That was remarkable.

That's why his family has the masters, his estate. You know, they're the ones that decide because every so often a new Jimmy album would come out, that sort of thing. I didn't know any of this way back then. I just wondered, you know, who was driving the bus.

So I mean, that part was was pretty good. He had to talk to somebody at Repree's records and some of those people were Repree's Warner Brothers. In other words, about the time I was at Warner Brothers, it must have been a couple of them that decided that way back in the 60s. I guess I was a little envious because I sure didn't own my masters.

That's for sure. How many people owned their own masters back then? Nobody. That's crazy.

How do you think you got that deal? That I don't know. I don't know how it came about that he was able to have that much influence. I mean, that's the part.

I did get the inference from at least one of the books I read about Jimmy that he didn't try too hard to save him. You know, Jimmy was, I guess, was just really f-ed up for a couple of weeks there. No one tried. I almost got the sense that somebody took a bottle of wine and just poured it in him.

That's what I heard. That was what the bodyguard was inferring that they poured pills and alcohol down his mouth. Yeah. Terrible.

Well, I hope they never be in such a state that I can't protest something like that. Right. It's dark because apparently he was ready to leave. He wanted to leave as manager.

And obviously Jimmy was a gigantic star. That guy saw all the money. Well, he still is. He still is.

He's the best member of the day that ever comes out. You know, all the other numbers after two. Right. Keep changing with fashion and all that.

But it's always number one is Jimmy Hendrix. Always. Yeah. Reese's knows a thing or two about great combinations.

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It's the same combo you love just with more ways to enjoy it. So whether you're snacking, sharing or just treating yourself, nothing else is Reese's. Kind of extraordinary when you think about it. The guy died at 27 years old and was already just from another planet.

Like you listen to his like you listen to Voodoo Child, slightly turn. You listen to that song. Like, is this guy from Earth? Like this was so different than any other guitar playing that had ever taken place before him.

He was a complete revolutionary. He was just a completely new creative artist. You know, and one of my favorite musicians, absolutely of all time. That's why I named the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

I wondered about that. Well, there it is. That's it. I'll give you.

Yep. Yep. I should have named it the John Boggard experience. Instead of Credence.

Well, I did create that name. What was the crazy name that the record company called your first bands? Well, it was the same people. Same people.

Yeah, same individual musicians. In high school, or junior high actually, I started a band and called it the Blue Velvet. Not all that crea, you know, earth shaking, but kind of a cool vibe. And we were really the Blue Velvet's.

But you know, I mean, this was really a tree out, but my brother was older. He was in another orbit. So we kind of went through high school, seeing each other every once in a while. It wasn't like we were all tromping around playing gig after gig.

It was more like, you know, every few months there might be a sock hop or something like that. And then after high school, and Tom would come and sing, he was my older brother. He'd come and sing once in a while with us. We made a couple of recordings during that time with real record companies.

But it was always kind of just half hazard. And finally, around the age of 19, I went over and knocked on Fantasy Records door. They had done this special about Vince D'Raldi and they were in the Bay Area. So I went over there and introduced myself.

Anyway, one day I went to another. But I think we were recording. And at that time, I think we made a record with only three of us, me and Tom and Doug the drummer. And I overdubbed a bass part.

This was in 1964. When they pressed the single, one side was called Little Girl, kind of a four chord du wap song. The other side was sort of a English or a British invasion answer kind of thing. Mod music.

It was called Don't Tell Me No Lies. Anyway, we excitedly go over to San Francisco to their warehouse and open up the package and it says the golly wabs. And we look at each other and go, what the hell? No, no, no.

I think we had chosen our name to be the visions. It was just something at the last minute because we weren't really the blue beblets anymore. But that was it. We thought it was going to say visions.

But the record company had decided they wanted to get in on the British invasion mod, whatever, and named us the golly wags. Sounds like polywog. Yeah. Well, a golly wag you see is this doll that when the British soldiers were in India, the kids would have this little doll called a golly wag.

And so that's all we knew about it. As time went on, I mean years and years later, long after I'd been renamed the band or I'd renamed the band Treatness, found out that golly wag was, this was a very racial thing. This was the British soldiers calling the people. Whoa.

Walgs or golly wags. Yeah. That's a golly wag. Yeah, it's a golly wag.

Yeah, it's a golly wag. Wow. Same sort of. And they didn't know this either, obviously.

There's no Wikipedia back then. I don't know. I didn't know that. That's crazy that they could just change the name of your band without you having any knowledge of it at all.

You open up the record and it's right there. Yep. And they kind of insisted. You know, it's that same thing that, well, we're going to own the publishing to your song.

No, no, I should own it. Well, then we're not going to make any records. Oh, okay. You're 19.

Yeah. Well, and you kind of want to make a record. Yeah, you want to make a record. It's right there.

You can taste it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be signed to a record label. I'm going to be a rock star. And then they come to you with a shady contract and that's their modus operandi.

So what they do with everybody. And for, I know they call it business. Funny term. Yeah.

Most of those people, I mean, it's like lottery to them. It's like gambling. They don't have a clue what creativity is. And at that age, the young, I mean, I guess I'm looking at you and saying, if I only, no, what's that?

If I didn't know, no, what I didn't know then, you're a young artist, you don't even know what you got. Right. You know, you have feelings about music and you, but you don't. You know, you're less than a rookie.

Right. You know, maybe you were good in junior high, but that doesn't mean you're really amazed. Right. You know, so that's sort of how that works.

And they sign you up before any of that self realization happens and then you're missed. Yeah. Again, that's what happened to Prince. That's what happened to Skinner.

That's what happened on the most bands. I mean, they're very clever in how they do it. They sign a bunch of people that are emerging and some of them are going to hit and they bank roll it and then they make the majority of the money when those people hit. Well, in our case, Credence was the only thing that ever happened.

Fantasy became a very wealthy record company. Saul eventually went into making movies. So he, that money that I had made for him at the record company, you know, turned into one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Oh, wow.

Some other, Saul even had, in those times, I bought the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the movie rights for Lord of the Rings. So you know, his, his ticket got punched way up high. That's crazy. And we never got a dime, of course, of any of that.

It's crazy how bad people can get ahead like that. Well, that, see, that's, yeah, that's what's disturbing. It's a different, that's why I had a little hesitation when you were talking about that you thought the music came from a, or creativity came from a joyful, good place. But boy, you can share looking at different parts of entertainment and, or business in general.

And see some really bad people have made a lot of money. Well, it takes the good people to create things though, the creative people make the things. And there's always just going to be people taking advantage of people being naive about business. I choose to believe that, at least it works for me.

I choose to believe that you've got to have a good heart. You've got to try to use the golden rule, basically, you know, don't do one, don't do something bad to him that you wouldn't want to have done to you. So do one do others as you would have them do to you. Yes.

I, I believe in God and I believe God is watching me all the time, you know, all of us. So that, that part helps me to feel like there's a reason, you know, to try and be a good person. The reason being you're in God's grace, if you do those things, if you try to live a good life, honest and I guess call it transparent nowadays. Yeah.

You know, don't get me wrong, I'm not running around the world with a thump and a bible or something. I just think it's common sense about how ultimately you want to exist in the universe, right? So, you know, that's how I operate. And so when I certainly now at my age, when I see other people really getting away with stuff, I just, it isn't like I, gee, that's not fair.

I should get the, I don't see it that way now. I just look at that for sap who's being so evil and go, you know, he's going to get his come up in someday. What's a horrible existence? Because no one loves you when you're like that.

If you're, if you're doing that fucking people over, all your relationships are adversarial. It's a bad way to exist. You're on a very bad frequency. The way you exist with the people in your circle.

I think that's true. I believe that. And the people that choose that life just for financial benefit, they choose to just fuck people over and be in that bad frequency all the time. But that's not a good life.

And I agree with you. I think if you live your life like God exists, you'll have a much better life. And the golden rule is just it's provable. Like if you're a nice person and you treat people well and it spreads a lot of good energy around you and positive momentum with all these other people, it's the butterfly effect.

It carries on to other people that they encounter too. They're inspired by how kind and friendly and generous you are. And it's good for everybody. It's good for you.

It's good for the people that you're generous and friendly to. It's good for the other people that they encounter because they're inspired by it. It's just good for everyone. That's how people should exist.

Yeah, I literally, I believe everything you have just said. And literally have sometimes asked God for a, you know, I never sat around and asked for money or I hit recorders. I always thought that kind of poor. That's bad.

I mean, I'd selfish or greedy or something. But I would ask for clarity or, you know, I would ask God to help me figure something out. And amazingly, there would be through a relation, you know, somebody I was dealing with. There would be something, it was like karma, good karma coming back.

And I could see the, see the, you know, to me it was a result of my prayer or my openness of wanting to help get a situation resolved. So for me, to me there's evidence that it all works that way. Did you always have a belief in God? Yeah.

I think there was times, yeah, because I would just brought up that way. Again, I don't believe my, I would just, I was just taught in a kind of nice and simple way about God. It wasn't beat over my head or any, I was raised Catholic. So in some sense, you can't avoid having it beat over your head, I suppose.

And some of that I resisted. But I went to the normal things. I did my first communion, my first confession. I did what you call that when you're 12 years old, the confirmation.

I chose the name for St. Jerome basically because it's a song by Bo Diddley called Bring It To Be Jerome. And Jerome was his, I think Jerome Green was his maraca player. And I really liked the vibe of that.

I'm going to be Jerome. That's my confirmation name. Yeah, it was, it was there in those ways. There was times I was, well, he opened a can of worms here because I was so invested in being a Catholic, even though my parents tried to have me go to Pro-Ochleo School, Catholic School.

I was in the first grade and then I want to say they kicked me out and then I tried to see my mom had me start again in ninth grade at St. Mary's High School. And they kicked me out again. But it wasn't my fault.

Anyway, the one that happened is funny. I mean, it's just, the one that happened in the first grade, I had to take a bus to get there. I lived in El Sabrito and it was the School of the Madeline in Berkeley. And I mean, the first grade, I'm six years old.

So you had to go to the bus stop, get on a bus, get a transfer so that then when the bus came to a certain stop over in Albany, you then got on a train, you know, transferred in other words, got on the train and that one another mile or so into Berkeley and that a certain stop right behind the school, the School of the Madeline, Catholic School, you get off the train and go on down into school. Now what happened, my mom was, my parents had split up. So it's only my mom in the house and she's leaving early because she's got it in a job as a teacher. So she's out of the house before me.

And so it's up to me to get myself together and get to the bus stop on time. Many, many times I was late. I missed it. So I had to get the next bus so I'm late.

So I'm rushing to school. And I get there after they would march every morning to John Philip's Uza, and dah, dah, dah, dah. And go on into school and I get there. Now I'm late, the school yard is empty.

I literally have to climb over the fence because they locked the fence at, boom, eight o'clock or whatever it was. And I'd scale the fence, run in the class without going to the bathroom. This was my first grade experience. sat down in my chair within an hour, I really got a P.

And Sister Damien would not answer. And so she would one day I peed in my seat. It happened again. It became a habit.

Sister Damien, John Fogarty has a puddle under his chair. Oh, no. So you can go traumatizing to me. But ask yourself, how is a six year old getting on a bus all by himself, traveling three four miles, then getting out of the bus going over to where the train station thing is getting on a train going over there.

And I mean, I certainly never let my six year olds do anything like that. I know it is kind of crazy how kids were just able to just leave the house and do anything back then. I think about that. When I was a little kid, I used to just leave my house.

Seven years old, leave the house on your home for dinner time. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. I mean, it's kind of amazing. We all lived.

Yeah, if you stop and think about it, but you have to take a bus and then a train and go to school when you're six years old. That's not so I went to Catholic school too for first grade only. And that screwed me off of religion for a long time. Because I thought of God back when I was a little kid before I went to Catholic school as, you know, God is all knowing and God is love and God created the universe and God is God's looking out for you.

He's just got some rules you have to follow made sense to me. And then when I went to Catholic school, there was a lady, I don't remember anybody's name from back then. But I remember her sister Mary Josephine. She was so mean.

She was just a mean lady. She did the whole thing. The whacking people with rulers tell you you're gonna have to stay overnight and you're gonna have to sleep on a nail in the closet like just evil like wanted you to cry when I would cry. She called me a crybaby.

And I remember thinking after that, like, I don't want to have nothing to do with religion ever again. Right when I left first grade. I hated it. And I was like, whatever God is, this is not God.

Like these people have nothing to do with God. There's no way this lady is the messenger of God. This lady's mean. That took a whole lifetime to figure out to realize, well, this is just a man made thing.

God's there. And some man made thing over here. You know, they became Mormons and some man made thing over there. They became Muslims.

You know, then it's just all man made it isn't actually God. Right. And so you and man is fallible, of course. He's not infinite and he's not infallible.

And so all these things were that but that took a lifetime for me. I'm sure I was in my forties still working on that. Yeah, that God's okay, John. You don't have to resist when somebody wants to make a prayer or say, you know, it's it isn't God's fault that you peed at your desk when you were in the first grade, etc.

It's the mean none. Yeah, I have a similar perspective. I think I think all religious scriptures, they're trying to document a real thing, especially Christianity, which is the one I paid the most attention to. I think they're trying to document a real thing.

But the hand of man is clearly all over it. That's the problem. The problem with anything that's written down. We know that just in like the religious canon, the books that were included in the Bible, human beings had a decision on what goes in, what doesn't go in.

It was rabbis that kept the book of Enoch out of the Old Testament. There's a lot of this weird stuff to it that you go like, why do people, why do people of any say, why is a human have any say and what the word of God is? That sounds crazy. And when you read the scriptures, you're like, somebody wrote that down and someone told that story for who knows how many years before it was ever written down.

But I think the origins of it, there's truth to it. It's just you have to get through all these many layers of confusion to try to decipher what God's original message was. And like, what, how was it received? Who got it?

How did it, how did it even get relayed? Like, what was the original event that led to this oral tradition that led to it being written down? I'm smiling because this sounds exactly like a young musician has come to see this more learned person and tell them about his experience. And the more learned person turns into the manager or the record company says, I want to own this.

Right. And you know, they take all that, all that good intentions and faith. And somebody ends up owning it. So you end up paying a tithe, you know, into a play.

That's certainly an organized religion, especially when it gets to like these huge mega churches and preachers like that's exactly what it is. Yeah, someone taking advantage of this good thing, profiting off of it immensely. Yeah. But the thing I think the point of like, if you live your life, like God's real, it'll be a better life.

I agree with that. But I think you also know, I think you just there's something there. It's it's sensible that you try to share that you try not to be greedy. Yes.

You know, I don't mean you have to be a fool. I just mean that you don't have to be overtly always taking way more than your share. Be kind. Be kind and be fair.