Craig in Indy
Your cool Uncle
I hope I didn't overstep my bounds calling this thread "official." If so, then Mods, do what you must.
Dan Fogelberg was one of the biggest selling individual pop/rock musicians of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s. His unique blend of soft rock and heartfelt ballads made him extremely popular in his prime, though that same material also made him the target of more cynical critics of the time. My own Fogelbergian experiences are kind of a mixed bag – there were things of his I loved, some I hated, but in almost all cases I admired his musicianship and abilities.
Fogelberg was born in my home town of Peoria, IL. If he had been living in the same part of town as me, we would have been in high school together (he would have been a senior when I was a freshman). As it is, the story is told that an old friend of mine was the person who first taught Fogelberg how to fingerpick. And as most people know by now, Fogelberg’s father (about whom the song “Leader of the Band” was written) was a music teacher and the band instructor at Pekin High School, across the Illinois River from Peoria.
Fogelberg came from a musical family and was writing his own songs by the age of 13. One of his early bands was called The Coachmen, a group I saw perform once or twice when I was a kid, though I could hardly have known who Fogelberg was at the time, let alone what he would become. After high school he went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (also the breeding ground of REO Speedwagon), where he studied acting first, then switching to art (painting). While there he had the opportunity to play in a club owned by a friend, and after becoming a regular there he started gaining a local following. It wasn’t long after that that he came to the attention of fellow U of I alum Irving Azoff. The rest, as they say, is history, if you don’t count one or two false starts and periods where his label didn’t know exactly what to do with him. His 1972 debut album Home Free had some difficulty finding its place on the airwaves and in the pop music culture of the time, being thought too country for the rock charts and too rock for country, a situation other artists of the time, like Poco, faced as well. The album received critical acclaim, but sales were meager, as no hit single was pulled from it and it received little marketing support from Columbia, his label.
And, IMO, here's the best song from that first album:
Fogelberg continued to work as a session musician during this time, appearing on albums by artists like Buffy Saint-Marie and Jackson Browne (he contributed to the latter’s seminal album Late for the Sky). All the while Azoff was working behind the scenes with Columbia and his own Full Moon label to arrange a new deal for Fogelberg on Epic records for a joint Epic/Full Moon production. It was under this arrangement that Fogelberg’s breakthrough album Souvenirs was recorded. Gone was the country-influenced production of Norbert Putnam, and in his place was Joe Walsh. Walsh brought in a whole raft of famous names to help out with the record and it went double-platinum. Fogelberg was on his way.
Heading up a band of fellow Illinoisans called Fools Gold, Fogelberg embarked on two full years of touring. I saw two of those concerts with the band, and a third one at which the band never showed, but once Fogelberg got over his justified annoyance it turned into a tremendous solo concert, under the stars at the University of Miami student center patio.
Subsequent records found Fogelberg expanding his songwriting into more ambitious directions, and performing more and more of the instrumental tracks himself, to the extent that some seemed entirely self-produced efforts. In fact, his third album, Captured Angel was very nearly a completely solo record. Fogelberg had spent an extended period in Peoria while his father was ill, and recorded, by himself, demo tracks for the new album while he was there. Azoff and Clive Davis heard the demos and declared it a “finished” album. Fogelberg wasn’t quite ready to put out that kind of record though, and he negotiated with Azoff and Davis to allow Russ Kunkel to provide new percussion tracks and Al Perkins and David Lindley to add pedal steel and fiddle respectively. The album was a hit, and a followup tour with the Eagles (also under Azoff’s management) solidified his position in the southern California rock pantheon.
Here's one of the better ballads from that album, and a good example of the kind of stuff he wrote before he sank into the dreck of songs like "Longer":
Fogelberg’s songwriting and production work became increasingly sophisticated through Nether Lands, Phoenix and then into The Innocent Age (his ambitious two-record “song cycle”). Unfortunately, at least IMO, he also started a trend at this time toward saccharin balladry and overt sentimentality in some of his songs, which made much of his work almost unlistenable for me, particularly when he drenched many of those songs in syrupy strings. “Leader of the Band” was touching, but others like “Run for the Roses” and “Same Old Lang Syne” were just too much for me to take. And don't even get me started on the aforementioned and truly godawdawful "Longer." Consequently I started to lose interest in his output. Still, I was saddened to learn of his premature death from cancer in 2007.
Dan Fogelberg was one of the biggest selling individual pop/rock musicians of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s. His unique blend of soft rock and heartfelt ballads made him extremely popular in his prime, though that same material also made him the target of more cynical critics of the time. My own Fogelbergian experiences are kind of a mixed bag – there were things of his I loved, some I hated, but in almost all cases I admired his musicianship and abilities.
Fogelberg was born in my home town of Peoria, IL. If he had been living in the same part of town as me, we would have been in high school together (he would have been a senior when I was a freshman). As it is, the story is told that an old friend of mine was the person who first taught Fogelberg how to fingerpick. And as most people know by now, Fogelberg’s father (about whom the song “Leader of the Band” was written) was a music teacher and the band instructor at Pekin High School, across the Illinois River from Peoria.
Fogelberg came from a musical family and was writing his own songs by the age of 13. One of his early bands was called The Coachmen, a group I saw perform once or twice when I was a kid, though I could hardly have known who Fogelberg was at the time, let alone what he would become. After high school he went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (also the breeding ground of REO Speedwagon), where he studied acting first, then switching to art (painting). While there he had the opportunity to play in a club owned by a friend, and after becoming a regular there he started gaining a local following. It wasn’t long after that that he came to the attention of fellow U of I alum Irving Azoff. The rest, as they say, is history, if you don’t count one or two false starts and periods where his label didn’t know exactly what to do with him. His 1972 debut album Home Free had some difficulty finding its place on the airwaves and in the pop music culture of the time, being thought too country for the rock charts and too rock for country, a situation other artists of the time, like Poco, faced as well. The album received critical acclaim, but sales were meager, as no hit single was pulled from it and it received little marketing support from Columbia, his label.
And, IMO, here's the best song from that first album:
Fogelberg continued to work as a session musician during this time, appearing on albums by artists like Buffy Saint-Marie and Jackson Browne (he contributed to the latter’s seminal album Late for the Sky). All the while Azoff was working behind the scenes with Columbia and his own Full Moon label to arrange a new deal for Fogelberg on Epic records for a joint Epic/Full Moon production. It was under this arrangement that Fogelberg’s breakthrough album Souvenirs was recorded. Gone was the country-influenced production of Norbert Putnam, and in his place was Joe Walsh. Walsh brought in a whole raft of famous names to help out with the record and it went double-platinum. Fogelberg was on his way.
Heading up a band of fellow Illinoisans called Fools Gold, Fogelberg embarked on two full years of touring. I saw two of those concerts with the band, and a third one at which the band never showed, but once Fogelberg got over his justified annoyance it turned into a tremendous solo concert, under the stars at the University of Miami student center patio.
Subsequent records found Fogelberg expanding his songwriting into more ambitious directions, and performing more and more of the instrumental tracks himself, to the extent that some seemed entirely self-produced efforts. In fact, his third album, Captured Angel was very nearly a completely solo record. Fogelberg had spent an extended period in Peoria while his father was ill, and recorded, by himself, demo tracks for the new album while he was there. Azoff and Clive Davis heard the demos and declared it a “finished” album. Fogelberg wasn’t quite ready to put out that kind of record though, and he negotiated with Azoff and Davis to allow Russ Kunkel to provide new percussion tracks and Al Perkins and David Lindley to add pedal steel and fiddle respectively. The album was a hit, and a followup tour with the Eagles (also under Azoff’s management) solidified his position in the southern California rock pantheon.
Here's one of the better ballads from that album, and a good example of the kind of stuff he wrote before he sank into the dreck of songs like "Longer":
Fogelberg’s songwriting and production work became increasingly sophisticated through Nether Lands, Phoenix and then into The Innocent Age (his ambitious two-record “song cycle”). Unfortunately, at least IMO, he also started a trend at this time toward saccharin balladry and overt sentimentality in some of his songs, which made much of his work almost unlistenable for me, particularly when he drenched many of those songs in syrupy strings. “Leader of the Band” was touching, but others like “Run for the Roses” and “Same Old Lang Syne” were just too much for me to take. And don't even get me started on the aforementioned and truly godawdawful "Longer." Consequently I started to lose interest in his output. Still, I was saddened to learn of his premature death from cancer in 2007.
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