RIP Dan Fogelberg

I have a Dan Fogelberg ringtone.

RIP. haven't heard his albums but 'Longer' is a favorite.

gonna come out of the lurker shadows to rep him. "nether lands" is a great album.

he was one of my mom's favorites, so some childhood nostalgia here.

i've never had a particular opinion about him beyond his name being kind of a punchline as representative of squishy singer-songwriteriness. but kiki and herb's version of "same auld lang syne" sold me on at least that song. r.i.p.

Haha, Tipsy, I just talked about Kiki and Herb and that version in my brief blog note on this. And like Tremendoid it's pretty much about "Longer" for me -- this 2006 EMP presentation on it was a treat.

he was one of my mom's favorites, so some childhood nostalgia here.

Same here.

I didn't start going to church on a regular basis until my parents split up. My mom married a Polish/German guy and my dad took up with an Irish gal. Suffice to say, I got baptized in the Catholic church pretty quick.

The priest at the church was a pretty cool dude and helped me along through some of my misgivings about my parents' divorce. How this relates to Dan Fogelberg is this:

This priest was given to some gimmicky type sermons. During one sermon, he held his arms out in a cross formation for fifteen minutes, showing how difficult that position is. During another sermon, he stood at the lecturn silently while the choir stood up, picked up these cardboard hearts, and walked around the church while "Leader of the Band" played over the P.A.

The best part was, it was the shortest sermon I ever had to suffer through.

When you think about it, Dan Fogelberg did have a bit of a Jesus look to him.

Holy crap.

All I ever think about with him is 1) his beard and 2) how I was in a record store once in Ohio when a guy came in with a Jewfro, a tan, shorts, sandals, and a ridiculous smirk and told the clerk, "Yeah, I'm here to pick up America's Greatest Hits and The Best of Dan Fogelberg."

I guess the third thing I'll think now is that he's dead.

Oh man, Souvenirs was one of the very few albums my parents had next to the turntable when I was growing up and I must have listened to it hundreds of times.

laughed until i cried

Really weird--I just wrote a Christmas card to a friend, and the only things I wrote, as a gag, was a quote of the final lines of "Same Old Lang Syne". The song has long been one of our major in-jokes: we used to chuckle at the sensitive vocal delivery, the wistful Harry Chapin run-in-with-a-lost-love storyline, and the gaudy Kenny G sax line at the end...but deep down, I think we both truly loved it.

I knew he had been battling cancer for a while. One other thing of his I liked is the song "Morning Sky"--I've never heard his version, though like Chris Hillman's cover of it (with a rippin' mandolin solo) immensely.

R.I.P.

I played "Longer" on a bar jukebox last Wednesday, which nearly started a riot

internet jukebox? love those.

yeah. "would you like to play this song immediately" "no thanks"

I recognise the name, but none of the songs mentioned ring a bell.

Obviously a USA name, but what's he known for in the UK?

I dunno.

higher than any bird ever flew

RIP

xpost - He was kinda the American Roger Whittaker, maybe. (Or, I could be way, way off on that.) Me, I always found it easy to confuse him with Dan Hill. Not any more, I guess. RIP

same old lang syne

NTI, tell me you were working at

Sorry. I thought better of that post before I finished it.

Leader of the Band is pretty much my dad's theme song. he's played it on guitar and sang it more times than i can count. he thinks it's the story of his and his father's relationship, but it's just as much ours. i called my dad on monday to tell him about the passing of both my maternal grandmother and fogelberg, and not surprisingly, he seemed a little sadder about fogelberg.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0mq51fQymFM/R24O3jAbgrI/AAAAAAAAAKI/PC6n0vT010M/s400/Dan%2BFogelburp.jpg

RIP, Dan Fogelburp. I didn't know you were dead until I googled you.

'the Foge'

Dan Fogelberg made me a pussy in the 70's

don't blame dan fogelberg. dan fogelberg is a hardcore punk legend.

A quiet man of music
Denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once
But his music wouldn’t wait

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BZ9eNAmf-Y

On his awful big hit, but he's such a weird guy that it's like he set out to write plaints for somnambulists.

He died?

10-plus years ago

I'm obsessd with this guy's sappy, often effective New Age balladry that got him into the top 20 well into 1984.

can't believe he died again. RIP again Dan.

My big theory is that The Innocent Age is the double-LP capstone to the singer/songwriter movement as it was understood in the 70s. Unfortunately it only has maybe two good songs.

For a few months when I was 17 (1979), the Dan Fogelberg/Tim Weissberg 7 minute long cover of the Hollies' album cut "Tell Me to My Face" was my absolute favorite song ever.

Surprisingly for a song from Fogelberg and a flute player on an album of mostly instrumental elevator music, it totally rocks.

Which Innocent Age tracks -- the singles?

I'm surprised 'Leader of the Band' has become his biggest single.

One of the most self-regarding voices in pop history.

Nonetheless a major influence on many. You know Garth Brooks was maybe even getting laid after covering Fogelberg in some motel room in Oklahoma.

I'm listening to a 1985 album album called High Country Snows, a surprisingly convincing bluegrass move w/none other than Ricky Skaggs.

I've heard that. What's totally frustrating is that he was real good, technically. Great guitarist.

This thread bump is timely.

I am a sappy acoustic folkie at heart, and every time we get to the Christmas/New Year gap (the taint of the year) I think about "Same Old Lang Syne." It's sappy as fuck but I can't resist its charm. Like, there was a time in this nation when it was totally normal to drink a six-pack in a car with your ex-girlfriend. Pretty sure I've done exactly that at least twice.

Then I think about the video for (I think) "Go Down Easy," where Dan is a cross-country skier for some completely stupid reason.

I don't really listen to his music anymore, but I don't need to. It's in my memory, recallable at will. Await your arrival with simple survival, and one day we'll all Fogelstan.

"Go Down Easy" is on High Country Snows and it sounded fresh.

Unlike, say, this three-years-too-late stab at The Knack or something which somehow got to #14 in spring '84, his last top 40 hit (and heavy MTV play!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvviV7VfPhA

Which Innocent Age tracks -- the singles?

The title track and "Run For the Roses", the latter because of the way it builds to the repetition of the last line of the chorus, tossing in an otherwise unheard E♭ major 7th chord.

"once upon a time" is such an earworm. dunno if i've ever heard anything else by him but that one lives in my head. the harmonized lead guitars, that big swooping and rising chorus melody

oh boy -- you're right. And he's playing all the guitars.

"Phoenix" had some moderate FM radio play in SoCal and I dig how it's chock-full-of-riffs. Probably could have been a hit if it wasn't 7 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbZCi0vK7mM

A buddy just reminded me of the existence of "Hard to Say."

I once had an almost-serious argument about the lyrics "so you flounder drifting ever nearer the rocks."

I maintained that the correct verb was "founder." A ship founders. Dan was just thinking about the fish.

Turns out I was wrong, in that either can refer to a ship in distress.

I just watched a spring '84 MTV countdown on YouTube and fucking "The Language of Love" was the number three single that week.