| Subject: Peoria Journal Star article |
Author:
D. Hatch
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Date Posted: 20:13:50 01/20/08 Sun
In reply to:
Mountainbird
's message, "Your all very happy today" on 10:49:44 12/21/07 Fri
"His music will live forever
Friends remember Fogelberg
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Danielle Hatch
of the Journal Star
PEORIA - It's the fairy tale story that everyone loves to follow: The friendly neighborhood boy with a knack for piano and guitar gets his foot in door of the music industry, then makes it big.
And ever since the 1970s, central Illinoisans have been keeping tabs on Dan Fogelberg, a Peoria native who started out playing in area basements and rose to fame with hits like "Same Old Lang Syne" and "The Power of Gold." Fogelberg died Sunday morning at his home in Maine after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 56.
The friends and acquaintances who crossed Fogelberg's path over the years were mourning his loss Monday and remembering the mark his music left on the world.
John Mabee attended Glen Oak grade school with the star and played drums alongside him in his first band, The Clan. The band practiced in Mabee's parents' basement on Kinsey Street, near OSF Saint Francis Medical Center. Even back then, Mabee knew he was in the presence of a talented musician.
"It was very apparent that he was an artist, I guess, is a good way to put it," Mabee said of the performer, who was born Aug. 13, 1951, in Peoria to Margaret Irvine and Lawrence Fogelberg, a band director at Woodruff High School. "He could play the guitar by ear, he could play the saxophone, the piano. Heck, he could play the drums better than I could."
The Clan started getting gigs at area high schools and Expo Gardens and were regulars at the VFW hall in Eureka.
"If we had a good stretch, we'd make enough to buy another amplifier," Mabee said. "We never made any money at it, but it kept us out of trouble and it was a lot of fun."
Fogelberg went on to attend the University of Illinois and then to bigger and better things. Mabee said they lost touch over the years, but he always followed his career. So did Bill Roeder, who attended Woodruff High School and served on the student council with Fogelberg.
"I remember him as a really outgoing, kind of vivacious guy that everybody liked," said Roeder, who now lives in Madison, Wis. "He was so clean cut. . . . When he actually went into music on his own, it surprised people that he took the initiative to go ahead and do that."
Words to live by
Fogelberg probably is best known for songs like "Same Old Lang Syne," which was inspired by a chance encounter with a past lover who is now married. The story goes that they bumped into each other at a convenient store at the corner of Frye and Prospect in the mid-1970s. It was Christmas Eve and the snow was falling.
"I was surprised it turned into a song, because it wasn't that important a thing in my life,'' Fogelberg told the Journal Star in 1999.
Perhaps he was just being modest. The singer was well known for his heartfelt lyrics, like those in "Leader of the Band," which he wrote about his father.
Local musician Craig Moore said, "As a songwriter, it was all over every one of his albums. He was a sentimental homeboy. He was mama's boy. I mean that in the best sense. He had his roots and his family and his friends, and it comes out in his music. He was sentimental, nostalgic, romantic. That part of him came out in his writing, but on stage he could rock out."
Keeping it personal
Fogelberg's first album, "Home Free," was released in 1972, but it wasn't terribly popular. His sophomore album, "Souvenirs" sold more than 2 million copies.
"I think his acoustic concert was the best I've seen," Roeder said. "When he's just on the piano playing and singing, you can tell he really loves what he sings and it comes through. If people never went to his acoustic concerts, they really missed something."
Besides being a high school acquaintance, Roeder met him in a different capacity years later. Roeder was working as the assistant Sunday editor at the Journal Star in the late 1970s when he scored an interview with Fogelberg in his heyday. Fogelberg wasn't the type to give interviews to just anyone who asked.
"Even though he was outgoing and everything, he wasn't really somebody that looked for publicity," Roeder said. "He was kind of a personal, private person. . . . I think the whole thing of having a successful music career was sort of new to him. He was kind of surprised, I think, that he got in the door and just sort of took off."
True to his roots
Over the years, Fogelberg returned to his hometown for the occasional concert. He played in front of a Civic Center crowd of 1,600 in June 2003.
Dianne Turner of rural Bartonville is a fan who attended more than 20 of Fogelberg's concerts around the Midwest. She also collects memorabilia, everything from concert T-shirts to albums to a handwritten get-well card that Turner's sister talked Fogelberg's mother into arranging.
"My dream never came true to meet him, but I'll be playing his music. I told my husband that when I die, if we have a visitation I want them to just play Dan music."
John R. Pulliam, who is business editor at the Galesburg Register-Mail, attended grade school with Fogelberg. Pulliam said back in the 1970s he had planned to buy each and every album of Fogelberg's, but with raising a family it was difficult to keep up with the purchases. He hopes to get his collection back on track, and hopes that younger generations take the time to embrace his music as well.
"I always felt for whatever reason, that Dan was really underrated as a musician," Pulliam said. "I looked up one thing on the Internet today and it said his music was soft rock. But it was so much more than that."
Danielle Hatch can be reached at (309) 686-3262 or dhatch@pjstar.com.
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