Dan Fogelberg dies

[sgt.null]

NEW YORK - Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" helped define the soft-rock era, died Sunday at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer. He was 56.

His death was announced in a statement released by his family through the firm Scoop Marketing, and it was also posted on the singer's Web site.

"Dan left us this morning at 6:00 a.m. He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side," it read. "His strength, dignity and grace in the face of the daunting challenges of this disease were an inspiration to all who knew him."

Fogelberg discovered he had advanced prostate cancer in 2004. In a statement then, he thanked fans for their support.

"It is truly overwhelming and humbling to realize how many lives my music has touched so deeply all these years," he said.

Fogelberg's music was in the vein of fellow sensitive singer-songwriters James Taylor and Jackson Browne, and was powerful in its simplicity.

He didn't rely on the volume of his voice to convey his emotions; instead, they came through in the soft, tender delivery and his poignant lyrics. Songs like "Same Old Lang Syne" — in which a man reminisces after meeting an old girlfriend by chance during the holidays — became classics not only because of his performance, but for the engaging story line, as well.

Fogelberg's heyday was in the 1970s and early 80s, when he scored several platinum and multiplatinum records, fueled by such hits as "The Power of Gold" and "Leader of the Band," a touching tribute he wrote to his father, a bandleader. Fogelberg put out his first album in 1972.

Among his more popular albums were "Nether Lands," which included the song "Dancing Shoes," and "Phoenix," which had one of his biggest hits, "Longer," a song about enduring love.

Fogelberg's songs tended to have a weighty tone, reflecting on emotional issues in a serious way. But in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 1997, he said it did not represent his personality.

"That came from my singles in the early '80s," he reflects. "I think it probably really started on the radio. I'm not a dour person in the least. I'm actually kind of a happy person. Music doesn't really reflect the whole person.

"One of my dearest friends is Jimmy Buffett. From his music, people have this perception that he's up all the time, and, of course, he's not. Jimmy has a serious side, too."

Later in his career, he wrote material that focused on the state of the environment, an issue close to his heart. His last album was 2003's "Full Circle," his first album of original material in a decade.

A year later he would receive his cancer diagnosis, forcing him to forgo a planned fall tour. After his diagnosis, he urged others to get tested.

Survivors include his wife, Jean.

same auld lang syne
youtube.com/watch?v=IhjYbfK9vrk

Leader of the band
youtube.com/watch?v=cy3GHCy49Dw&feature=related

[lucimay]

Wysteria, did you change your face again
Those of us who loved you when
Can't even find you.

Wysteria, did you lose another man
Did you make him understand
That he can't touch you.

Was he just like all the rest
When he got to the sad part
Did he stay a bit too long
To save his heart.

Wysteria, did he take you to the fair?
Were the folks that you met there
The same that we met?

Wysteria, did he teach you how to dance
Did he bring you paper fans
to hide your secret?

Was he just like all the rest
When he got to the sad part
Did he stay a bit too long
To save his heart.

Wysteria, are your lips still lily white
Do they still bloom just
At night and die at sunrise?



Dancing shoes
On the wall above your bedside
Saw it all as we performed
our pirouette
Fleshes fused
As the flicker of the candles
Threw upon the wall a
single silhouette.

Tu es dan ma coeur et dans ma t'te

Dancing shoes
We have loved on distant beaches
Where the winter never reaches
There we fell
Dying swan
On the dawn you danced before me
Though your eyes were dark and stormy
I stood still.

Qui peut dire le faux et le r'el?

Dancing shoes
Though the distances divide us
There's a paradise inside us
We can't lose.
Me and you
Dance a 'pas de deux'
Forever
And I pray you never
Shed your dancing shoes.



Somewhere on a lonely muddy country road
I heard your song, crow, for the first time.
Somewhere in the distance wicked, black and low
Made me feel as I was running from a crime.
Made me feel as I was running from a crime.

Some say she died of drowning in the river deep
Some say she died of a sudden start
Some say they found her swinging from my old man's tree
And some folks say she died of a broken heart.
And some folks say she died of a broken heart.

I can't believe they would pay men just to hunt me down
But silver coins to each one do they give
And by now there's a gallows standing in the town
And I wonder how much more I have to live
And I wonder how much more I have to live.

Somewhere on a lonely muddy country road
I heard your song, crow, for the last time.
Somewhere in the distance wicked, black and low
Made me feel as I was running from a crime
Made me feel as I was running...
from a crime.

[A Gunslinger]

He was much maligned and unfairly so. Yeah "longer" is something of a sap-fest, but he was ...well, perhaps it is good enough to say that he was the thinking man's John Denver...and a far better musician at that.

1) Same Old Lang Syne

2) Power of Gold

3) Part of the Plan

Great songs all!

[onewyteduck]

How sad!

From The Innocent Age

Ghosts

Sometimes in the night I feel it
Near as my next breath and yet untouchable
Silently the past comes stealing like the taste of some forbidden sweet
Along the walls in shadowed rafters
Moving like a thought through haunted atmospheres
Muted cries and echoed laughter
Banished dreams that never sank in sleep
Lost in love and found in reason
Questions that the mind can find no answers for
Ghostly eyes conspire treason as they gather just outside the door
And every ghost that calls upon us brings another measure in the mystery
Death is there to keep us honest and constantly remind us we are free

Down the ancient corridors, through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of days that we've left behind
Down the ancient corridors, through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams that we left behind

Sometimes in the night I feel it
Near as my next breath and yet untouchable
Silently the past comes stealing like the taste of some forbidden sweet
And every ghost that calls upon us brings another measure in the mystery
Death is there to keep us honest and constantly remind us we are free
Down the ancient corridors and through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of days that we've left behind
Down the ancient corridors and through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams that we left behind

[Infelice]

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow
Ill be in love with you.


*Goes to search for her waffle *cry*

[dlbpharmd]

Godspeed, Mr. Fogelberg.

[danlo]

Back in the day you couldn't enter a girl's room without hearing Dan Fogelberg. Tam has four CDs by him and loves him...she's quite sad today. I was a big Tim Wiesberg fan (of his instrumental flute albums) so I did own Twin Sons of Different Mothers and throughly enjoyed it. RIP Dan.

[dlbpharmd]

My boss is really sad about this - he says Fogelberg gave one of the best concerts he's ever seen, just Dan and a guitar with a microphone.

[lucimay]

My boss is really sad about this - he says Fogelberg gave one of the best concerts he's ever seen, just Dan and a guitar with a microphone.

yes, that's how i saw him too, just he and his instruments. (he played piano too)

i saw him early in his career. captured angel might have been out when i saw him but i'm not sure. yeah he had a schmaltzy streak a mile wide but he was pretty tasty at schmaltzy. the first four albums are my favorites.

[dlbpharmd]

The real story behind "Same Old Lane Syne."

'It's a memory that I cherish'

Phil Luciano
NEWS COLUMNIST
Saturday, December 22, 2007

At Woodruff High School, Jill Anderson had a typical teen romance: on-again/off-again with the same boy over several years.
He'd write a lot of poetry and share his insights with Jill. But as they went to separate colleges, things cooled off. They tried to stay in touch, but he moved out West and she headed to Chicago.

And that might've been the sum of a sweet memory, if not for a chance reunion one Christmas Eve at a Peoria convenience story - one music fans know well.

Jill's old boyfriend was Dan Fogelberg, who memorialized their convenience-store encounter in "Same Old Lang Syne." Since the song's release in 1980, Peoria - as well as the rest of his fans worldwide - has wondered about the "old lover" referenced in the song. Fogelberg never would say, and only a handful of people knew the ex-girlfriend's identify.

Jill, now Jill Greulich of Missouri, feels she can finally share the story.

"It's a memory that I cherish," she says.

She says she had kept publicly mum because Fogelberg was such a private person.

"It wasn't about me. It was about Dan. It was Dan's song," Jill says.

Further, though she and Fogelberg only rarely had communicated over the past quarter-century, she feared that her talking about the song somehow might cause trouble in his marriage. But in the aftermath of his death - he passed away of prostate cancer Sunday at age 56 - she has been sharing her secret with old friends in Peoria.

"I don't want this to overshadow Dan," Jill says. "When I heard the news that he died, I was very sad."

She and Fogelberg were part of the Woodruff Class of '69. They would date for long stretches, break up, then get back together.

Often, they would head to Grandview Drive, take in the vistas and listen to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Fogelberg often would pen poetry, some of which he gave to Jill.

"I still have some of those in a drawer at home," she says.

After high school, Fogelberg went to the University of Illinois in Urbana to study theater, while Jill attended Western Illinois University to major in elementary education. They stayed in touch, even continuing to date for a while. But the romance ended for good when he left the U of I early to head to Colorado and pursue his music career.

After graduating college, Jill relocated to the Chicago area, where she worked as an elementary teacher and flight attendant. Not long after college, she married a man from that area, and her connection to Fogelberg faded to memories.

But on Christmas Eve 1975, Jill and her husband visited her parents, who still lived in the Woodruff district. Also at the home were some friends of the family.

During the gathering, Jill's mother asked her to run out for egg nog. Jill drove off in search of an open store.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a similar scenario was playing out at the Fogelberg home, where Dan Fogelberg was visiting family for the holiday. They needed whipping cream to make Irish coffees, so Fogelberg volunteered to go search for some.

By happenstance and because almost every other business on the East Bluff was closed, Jill and Fogelberg both ended up at the Convenient store at the top of Abington Hill, at Frye Avenue and Prospect Road. She got there first, and Fogelberg noticed her shortly after arriving.

They bought a six pack, sipped beer in her car and gabbed away. "We had some laughs," Jill recalls.

As two hours flew by, Jill's family and friends grew worried.

"We were like, 'Where is she?'" says a laughing Eileen Couri of Peoria, one of the friends at the gathering that night.

When Jill returned, she simply explained that she had run into Fogelberg, and the two had caught up with each other. No big deal.

Five years later, Jill was driving to work in Chicago. She had on the radio, and a new song popped on. First, she thought, "That sounds like Dan."

Then she listened to the lyrics, about two former lovers who have a chance encounter at a store. "Oh my gosh!" she told herself. "That really happened!"

They would not discuss "Same Old Lang Syne" until years later, during a conversation backstage at a Fogelberg concert. Two parts of the song are inaccurate. Blame Fogelberg's poetic license.

Jill does not have blue eyes, but green. In fact, when they dated, Fogelberg called her "Sweet Jilleen Green Eyes" - a combination of her full first name and his twisting of a song title by Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Fogelberg explained that he took the easy way out for "Same Old Lang Syne." As he told Jill, "Blue is easier to rhyme than green."

Also, her then-husband was not an architect but a physical-education teacher. Jill doubts Fogelberg knew what her husband did for a living. She thinks Fogelberg probably just thought "architect" sounded right for the song.

But those are minor details. The heart of the song hangs on its most chilling line: "She would have liked to say she loved the man, but she didn't like to lie."

Still, even decades later, she declines to discuss that line of the tune.

"I think that's probably too personal," she says.

But the song had no impact on her marriage. By the time of its release, she had divorced.

"Somebody said he waited until I was divorced to release the song, but I don't know if that's true," Jill says.

In 1980, the same year of the song's release, Jill married Chicago-area native Jim Greulich. Eventually, they would move to a St. Louis suburb, where she now teaches second grade.

A few of her school associates have known her secret about the song. So has Fogelberg's mother, who still lives in Peoria and exchanges Christmas cards with Jill.

This week, Jill sent e-mails to a few old pals in Peoria, lifting the lid off the "Same Old Lang Syne" mystery. One of the e-mail recipients was Wendy Blickenstaff, a Woodruff classmate of Jill's and Fogelberg's.

"I had a big suspicion" it was Jill, says Blickenstaff, now the head counselor at the school. "I'm happy for her. It's really cool. ... That's a memory that she treasures."

Jill agrees. Yet her memories of Dan Fogelberg stretch far beyond "Same Old Lang Syne."

"I'll always have a place in my heart for Dan," she says. " ... Dan would be a very special person to me, even without the song."

www.pjstar.com/stories/122207/PHI_BF98B7KI.054.php

[Dromond]

Great read, dlbpharmd, thanks.