He will be sorely missed as a marvelous lyricist with a sweet soothing voice.
Mr. Fogelberg learned 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 wrote. “I thank you from the very depths of my heart.”
Mr. Fogelberg’s music was powerful in its simplicity. He did not rely on the volume of his voice to convey his emotions; instead, they came through in his 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 for his performance, but also for their engaging story lines.
Mr. 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. Mr. Fogelberg put out his first album in 1972.
Read it all. It seems such a commonplace to say it now, but there is no substitute for music and I have a memory of a teenage boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1970’s whose heart was repeatedly touched and helped by Dan Fogelberg in a way for which even now I am genuinely grateful–KSH
Update: I enjoyed this too.
Wow. I kinda lost track of Dan Fogelberg somewhere in the last decade, but I, too, was deeply touched by his music. [i]The Innocent Age[/i] is still, I believe, one of the best projects to grace vinyl, and I was quick to buy it when it was re-issued in CD format. My wife and I still smile at each other poignantly when we hear “Longer”. I pray he did not meet his Lord as a stranger.
I never met Dan personally, but we are from the same hometown with numerous common connections. His music spoke to my friends and I even more deeply because we knew where some of it was coming from.
What a great song writer he was. I hope you precious fellas will be inspired to have regular preventative checkups. Most folks can survive prostate cancer if caught early on.
I was very sorry to hear about this. I had prostate cancer surgery last May. I guess I shouldn’t have been quite as blase about it.
I am actually quite upset about his passing. His music is a notch or two more elegant than most in the soft folkish-poppish genre.