John Fogerty has revealed that a series of pilgrimages to Mississippi, culminating in a visit to blues legend Robert Johnson's grave, helped him reconcile with his back catalogue after the bitter break-up of Creedence Clearwater Revival. The dispute left Fogerty legally barred from performing his own songs for years and soured his relationship with music altogether, but reconnecting with the roots that had originally inspired him proved pivotal in restoring his love of performing.

Fogerty explained that he had been making repeated trips to Mississippi to seek out old bluesmen without understanding why, comparing the compulsion to Richard Dreyfuss's unexplained fixation in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He said it took seven years for him to realise the visits were leading him to Johnson's grave, where he had an "epiphany" that it was acceptable to perform his own songs again, since fans valued them as heartfelt work rather than as a source of dispute over money.