How to explain Dan Fogelberg to future generations.

I know it's not good to speak ill of the dead. 

This post isn't about Dan Fogelberg the human being who died recently from prostate cancer at the age of 56.  Instead, it's about the mixed-at-best legacy of Dan Fogelberg the musician.

Fogelberg first burst into national prominence with the album SOUVENIRS (in 74/75) and the moderate hit single "Part of the Plan."  He was a member of the Irving Azoff management stable--and was blessed with Joe Walsh as the album's producer and Graham Nash plus sundry Eagles singing backup.

By the late 70s, the career of John Denver (if you buy any John Denver albums, get early titles like ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH and FAREWELL ANDROMEDA when Denver was still mixing in a few John Prine covers and the "gosh and golly folks" persona hadn't quite taken hold yet) had peaked and was heading downward. 

This turned out to be a boon for Fogelberg, who probably enjoyed his greatest success from 1978-81 with gentle soft-rock ballad singles such as "Longer" and "Leader of the Band."  Unfortunately, Fogelberg dropped a huge pile of impossible-to-rinse-off bathos on America: a song called "Same Old Lang Syne".  It's a lachrymose retelling of the old "I saw my old lover again and gee look how much we've changed" tale that makes Harry Chapin's duology of "Taxi" and "Sequel" (covering the same ground) take on the hard  edge of Joy Division by comparison.

To put it mildly, "Same Old Lang Syne" is a song Satan probably uses to torture most newcomers to Hell.

Sometime during the 80s, Berke Breathed had Opus the penguin make a reference to Fogelberg as "Dan Fogelburp" in the comic strip BLOOM COUNTY.  It seemed apt at the time.

But to give Fogelberg his due before he returns to the obscurity his death briefly interrupted, "Part of the Plan" and "There's a Place in the World for a Gambler" (the latter song I heard on the soundtrack for the 1978 film FM) are catchy, quite memorable examples of 70s lite-pop/rock and would make good candidates for a mixtape/CD and/or iTunes playlist.

UPDATE (1/10/08): I received this comment from castmyvote:

The writer of this blog has obviously not listened to any early Dan Fogelberg....albums like "Home Free", "Souvenirs", "Netherlands" and "Captured Angel"...and obviously not much of John Denver's later environmental works either. Too bad the writer just had to write something without knowing much of anything!

 

castmyvote is welcome to add his/her knowledge of Fogelberg or post-RCA John Denver to this blog entry to cover areas I wasn't addressing.

Tags: Dan Fogelberg, Berke Breathed, BLOOM COUNTY, John Denver