RIP Dan Fogelberg

I was away from the house pretty much all day yesterday, so I missed the sad news that Dan Fogelberg had passed away. I can not claim to be a fan of Fogelberg’s music, but there’s little denying that he was a skilled musician and songwriter, and that his music resonated strongly even today. Ed Morrissey, who is a Fogelberg fan, had a touching elegy yesterday that deserves to be quoted a bit:

Fogelberg was primarily a balladeer, with folk-music sensibilities in his songwriting. He could write with the emotional range of Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot, and his music was accessible while skillfully supporting the tenor of the lyrics of his songs. “Same Auld Lang Syne” might sound like easy listening, but anyone paying attention to the lyrics understood the pain and loneliness of former lovers coming to terms with their choices.

Even had that been the only song Fogelberg had given us, his career would have been noteworthy. However, he also wrote the elegant and poetic love ballad “Longer”, a sweet and heartfelt pledge for a lifetime commitment that has found its way into many wedding celebrations. Fogelberg also sang about the conundrum of what comes after passion in “Make Love Stay”, and a tribute to his father in “Leader of the Band.” Fogelberg rarely used a cheap rhyme or a trite phrase…

I’m one of those who put Fogelberg squarely in the “soft rock” category, not with any malice, but because that’s just the way his music has always sounded to me. Regardless of what you call it, a great many people will miss the music he would have written had cancer not claimed his life.

Those of you who were kids of the 80s might remember Fogelberg from this reference. If you were cool enough to get a fond reference in a Bloom County strip, it didn’t matter if your music was “soft rock” or “elevator music” or whatever. You were just cool.

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Category: In Memoriam, Music