Dan Fogelberg Dies

[filkertom]

At the age of 56. Long, distinguished career. Which of his songs did you like? I was always fond of "The Power of Gold". "Same Auld Lang Syne" and "Rhythm of the Rain", too.

Comments

[grimmbear.livejournal.com]

Oh that's sad. I loved his album "Phoenix".
My favorate song is "Pooh Corners"

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm... do you mean "House At Pooh Corner" by Kenny Loggins?

[grimmbear.livejournal.com]

D'oh. Um... Maybe I should give up the crack.
"Face the Fire" Is great... And actually BY him.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Longer. Yeah, a schmaltzy song but I still love it. And I'm not the least surprised that it's played a lot at weddings.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

"Longer" is my fave too.

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll confess to it. It says an awful lot.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I found him via Twin Sons of Different Mothers (oddly because that was the time my musical tastes were being hammered out, and I was listening to the radio that then played him a lot).

I'm a sucker for Dad songs, so "Leader of the Band" (despite knowing it's a cliche) is still way up there for me. (Want to see me stream tears? Hit me with that and Steve Goodman's "My Old Man" back to back.) I even still like "Longer", if I only hear it every couple of years.

Of the non-hits songs, I think I most like "Netherlands" and "Icarus Ascending".

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Twin Sons is a neat album. In addition to "The Power of Gold" and of course the sweet instrumentals that are the raison d'etre of the project, it's got those really cool cover songs on it. "Tell Me to My Face" by the Byrds, which I hadn't been aware of until I heard it on Twin Sons, and "Since You've Asked," which gave me a whole new level of respect for Judy Collins. I hadn't even known she wrote songs at all, here was her byline on one of the loveliest songs ever, period.

I really grooved on those little jazz instrumentals though. I have a about a dozen old recordings I made on a Casio synth with an 8-track sequencer, using that electric piano/flute/cello combination. Actually, a couple of them were among my best material. Remarkable album.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My favorite by miles was The Reach. "It's Maine, and it's autumn, the birches have just begun turning..."

[huskiebear.livejournal.com]

I loved Longer in high school. It was one of the list I used to sing into my hairbrush - I had weird taste.

[ladyoceanstar.livejournal.com]

Oh that's sad. :-(

I am also a fan of "Longer." I sang it for my final exam in Choir my senior year, and got an A and a standing ovation. :-)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's sad. He went to the same high school as my ex, though not at the same time.

My favorites? "Phoenix" and "Longer", and also that interesting little instrumental bit at the beginning of the "Phoenix" album, which happens to be called "Tullamore Dew".

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

=(

"Leader of the Band."

Stop laughing, that song makes me weep every time I hear it.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's a tie between Serengeti Moon and Holy Road.

[kshandra]

I made a mix CD for an ex once called 100% Pure Mush, and "Longer" was on it. And "Same Auld Lang Syne" is one of the numbers I do at karaoke every holiday season. (Perhaps fittingly, it reminds me of the same ex, now....)

[jcbemis.livejournal.com]

Longer, which we used as one of out wedding songs, Leader of the Band, and House at Pooh Corners. Does that brand me as excessively schmaltzy?

[barbarakitten-t.livejournal.com]

This is so sad. We were just at Channing-Murray in Urbana. It's one of the places he sang when he was just getting started. "Same Auld Lang Syne always makes me cry.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

This is tough news for me, as Dan was originally from my neck of the woods (central Illinois) and was, in fact, one of my major early influences on my songwriting. I have the music books of his first three albums, and spent a lot of time working on those songs. "Part of the Plan" sticks out, as does "Nether Lands", "There's a Place In the World (For a Gambler)" (which I still do frequently), "Run for the Roses", "Loose Ends", "Winter", "The Language of Love", and "She Don't Look Back". He had his on tomes and his off times, as far as I was concerned, but he was always one of my favorite songwriters.

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

Leadder of the band, and same old lang syne,

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, this hurts. I'm a huge fan. And I've always felt he never got the respect he deserved because he got lumped in with a lot of mellow 70s singer/songwriters who weren't fit to change his strings.

I don't think any album has ever had the effect on me that The Innocent Age did. My mom received it as a birthday present in 1980, but I was the one who listened to it until it was worn out.

There was such depth to his material - he had the incredible craftsmanship of the slickest country songwriters, but with the soul and vision of a true artist. Damn. I'm actually crying as I write this.

Damn. Damn. Damn

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

correction - re: The Innocent Age it must have been in 1981, since that's the year the album was actually released. A trivial detail to you, perhaps, but to me, it means that it was August of 1981 when my ^ #$%*%@% life changed, at least to the extent of my deciding that, aha! _that's_ the kind of songs I want to write. I had the same experience with the Indigo Girls several years later, but it's all part of a larger progression...

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Some time in the 70's, I kept my cheap little transistor radio on all night, and sometimes I'd wake up at some odd hour and hear "Nether Lands" playing on the local top 40 station. I never heard it in the daytime, and it haunted me for many years until I found an mp3, and played it enough to get it out of my system. I still like the song, though.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Another musical heavyweight gone too soon from a world that didn't appreciate him like they should have.

While I came to his music late, and regretably don't own a full album, I did discover Same Auld Ang Syne, Longer, and Leader of the Band through singer/songwriter cds I've picked up. I love all three songs dearly. Especially Leader of the Band.

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

On a lighter note (by way of throwing a proper wake), I recently read an interview with Folgelberg which touched on "Same Old Lang Syne." Describing the origin of the song, DF confirmed that a) yes, it was a true story; the incident in the song had happened to him -- pretty much exactly as the lyrics described, and b) yes, the melody of the verse was consciously lifted from the 1812 Overture. He had started writing the song using that melody as the basis as a joke, but once he started telling that story with the song, it became a serious effort, and ultimately a huge hit.

It should also be noted that DF was a gifted graphic artist as well, and his paintings and drawing adorn many of his albums. (If you only own the one with the atrocious drawing of an angel on the cover, don't go by that.)

[lothie.livejournal.com]

"Longer Than"

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[robgonzo.livejournal.com]

Longer and Leader of the Band. Funny, Leader of the band was bouncing around in my head just last week.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

Yet another vote for "Longer". It was the song between myself and my (now ex-) fiance of the time.

Raven

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Since the actual topic was favorite songs, I thought I'd mention a few gorgeous pieces from one of his later albums, "The Wild Places" (1990). (I could go on at great length about any of his earlier albums, but that material is better known, and these tunes deserve some attention.)

"The Wild Places" was a huge relief, because "Exiles," which he released in 1987, was just uniformly awful. No idea what the problem was -- the best theory I could come up with that all along, the secret to his genius was his magical beard, and that, as evidenced by the clean-shaven head shot on the cover, he'd rashly removed it when it finally demanded equal, Lennon/McCartney-style credit.

Anyway, The Wild Places is a fine album. There are a couple of so-so songs, and an instrumental opener that sets the mood for the subsequent song effectively but is otherwise unremarkable; but everything else is stellar.

There's a cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" and one of "Rhythm of the Rain," -- taken at a slower, more leisurely tempo that really brings out the song's strengths (much as that Garfunkel/Taylor/Simon recording of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World (Don't Know Much)" demonstrated just how lovely a song it really was).

Then there are these other 5 songs. The title track, Forefathers, Bones in the Sky, Spirit Trail, and Ever On. It's late and I don't think I've got the energy to describe each one of them, which was my original ambition.

But I want to mention "Forefathers," a meditation on his family heritage, and his place in it, and on what we pass from one generation to another. The music is lovely and plaintive, and the lyrics are intimate and heartfelt, conveying succinctly the breadth of his family's journey, from his grandparents' emigration from northern Europe in the 19th century to himself and his siblings.

The details are specific to his own family, but the story is universal, as summed up in the chorus (which looks a bit cliched on paper, but works perfectly in the context of the song).

Ah, hell, I'm just going to paste in the entire song. It's fitting, under the circumstances.


Forefathers
by Dan Fogelberg

They came from Scandinavia
The land of midnight sun
And crossed the North Atlantic
When this century was young
They'd heard that in America
Every man was free
To live the way he chose to live
And be who he could be.

Some of them were farmers there
And tilled the frozen soil
But all they got was poverty
For all their earnest toil
They say one was a sailor
Who sailed the wide world round
Made home port--got drunk one night
Walked off the pier and drowned.

My mother was of Scottish blood
It's there that she was born
They brought her to America in 1924
They left behind the highlands
And the heather covered hills
And came to find America
With broad, expectant dreams
And iron wills.

My grandad worked the steel mills
Of central Illinois
His daughter was his jewel
His son was just his boy
For thirty years he worked the mills
And stoked the coke-fed fires
And looked toward the day
When he'd at last turn 65
And could retire.

Chorus
And the sons become the fathers
And the daughters will be wives
As the torch is passed from hand to hand
And we struggle through our lives
Though the generations wander
The lineage survives
And all of us
From dust to dust
We all become forefathers
By and by.

The woman and the man were wed
Just after the war
And they settled in this river town
And three fine sons she bore
One became a lawyer
And one fine pictures drew
And one became this lonely soul
Who sits here now
And sings this song to you.

And the sons become the fathers
And the daughters will be wives
As the torch is passed from hand to hand
And we struggle through our lives
Though the generations wander
The lineage survives
And all of us
From dust to dust
We all become forefathers
By and by.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

"Lonely in Love" is one of my all-time favorite songs, and it took me literally over a decade to track it down and identify it because all I could remember were little snippets of lyrics and melody that would keep drifting back to me at unexpected times.

"Longer" is perfectly simple and lovely.

[unclekage.livejournal.com]

Ghosts. By far.

"Down the ancient corridors,
Through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams we have left behind."

[mofilker.livejournal.com]

Damn...

Too soon. Just way too soon...

[geenerswh.livejournal.com]

Unbelievable.
My dad taught me so many of his songs.
"Run for the Roses" has always been one of my favorites.

His songs just have such a powerful emotion to them.
I remember once, when I was very young (read: about 6-ish), I woke up singing "Part of the Plan" and sobbing, with no clue what the song was or why I was crying. About ten years later, my dad was listening to a Fogelberg album, and that song was on when I walked into the room. And the sorrow and longing that had made me cry so many years earlier came flooding back.

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Leader of the Band was released just about the time that my own excellent father passed away. It still makes me cry whenever I hear it, thinking about him. I think he and Dan will have a lot to talk about.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Been a fan "forever" -- own vinyl, but no CDs. I think each time I'd listen to an album I'd hear some lines in one of the songs I'd never noticed before and think "wow".

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

Hrm.... Netherlands. I have it on vinyl downstairs somewhere.

Haven't actually heard it in years, though. The record player is busted. (wanders off to Itunes)

[bar1scorpio.livejournal.com]

My only familiarity with him is a passing mention in Dennis Leary's album, "No Cure for Cancer".

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Liked most of his stuff. Absolutely HATED his cover of "Rhythm Of The Rain."

[rms-butterfly.livejournal.com]

My favorites are "Same Auld Lang Syne" and "The Leader of the Band." Sigh. I was saddened to hear about Mr. Fogelberg's death; his works were lovely and provided a soundtrack to a chunk of my life that I remember fondly.

RIP

[shinymarigold.livejournal.com]

Oh, how sad. Too young. I confess I'm partial to "Longer" and "Leader of the Band" among his better known songs.