'Portrait' of an Artist:

Dan Fogelberg celebrates new box set with tour

      It's a fact of life for all but a handful of pop music stars: You can only stay at the top so long.

      Presuming you live long enough, the arena tours invariably end, and you're back to playing smaller places for -- as they say in "This is Spinal Tap" -- "more selective" audiences.

      Most acts say this doesn't bother them. And most of them you wouldn't believe for one minute.

      But mellow singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg was never known as an actor. And one senses the genuine amusement in his voice when he reminisces on the telephone about those heady arena rock days. Likewise, there's an equal sense of satisfaction when he speaks of his current one-man acoustic concerts.

      "The height of musical success has never been the driving force in my life," says Fogelberg, who flies solo Saturday at the Hard Rock Hotel. "It's a great job and it's a remarkable thing to do, but it's not the only thing."

      Instead of "freaking out" when record sales start to drop, he says musicians are wiser to think, "What a nice ride this has been."

      "And I ain't done," he adds. "I got a few more years in this old carcass."

      But after 25 years as a working musician, Fogelberg has reached a retrospective point, which he is celebrating with a new four-CD box set, "Portrait." Picking and remastering the 62 songs is "like being able to take a big breath in your life," he says.

      A detailed biography included in the set traces the rise of the Illinois native who became a key voice in the California folk-rock pack of the '70s after he hooked up with manager Irving Azoff (who also handled the Eagles).

      But the box set also includes a gospel-flavored new song, "Don't Lose Heart," which reflects Fogelberg's contemporary interests in jazz and world music.

      While early hits such as "Part of the Plan" and ballads such as "Longer" sound like prototypes for Nashville's "new country" sound, Fogelberg says he isn't tempted to work with any of the young country singers who cite him as an influence.

      "Been there, done that," he says. "That was 25 years ago. It was great, it was fun. We were pioneering a kind of a new sound after Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds and those guys kind of started it."

      But, he says, just as Don Henley's current sound is "radically different from the Eagles ... my music now is radically different than what I was doing in 1975." Not that he blames the new Nashville breed. "What would you do? If you can sound like Randy (Meisner), Don (Henley) and Glenn (Frey) -- they're not doing it, so why not, you know? That's great, but that's not what interests me."

      Though he's been touring more with bands in the '90s, Fogelberg decided the best way to mark the box set was with a solo tour. "I decided I'd do something special for my fans and do a real intimate setting, a real unplugged acoustic show," he says. "Just me and an acoustic guitar and piano."

      It gives him a chance to rework such hits as "Same Old Lang Syne" and "Leader of the Band," which go down enthusiastically not only with his loyal fans, but with most ticket-buyers who have been pre-warned.

      "You have to consciously reach out to them and shrink it down," he says of the one-man shows. "You have to make it feel like a living room. That's not easy some nights. Some nights you just do your show and go on to the next town. Other nights it's just phenomenally magical. People are just hanging there, you can take them anywhere. It's like a journey. It's really flattering for an artist to have that type of attention."

      The box set also notes that a consistent influence on Fogelberg's music has been his love of the outdoors and his ability to live in picturesque settings, be it an island off the coast of Maine or his ranch in Colorado.

      "I've always lived in the country, as far away from civilization as I could get," he says. "It's not for everybody (but) I'm kind of a loner. I stay away from the input of modern civilization."

      As the photos in the "Portrait" collection suggest, Fogelberg notes that his changing hairstyles and neutral features mean he's able to walk around unrecognized.

      During his arena stardom -- which peaked with the 1981 double-album, "The Innocent Age" -- the two lifestyles were "quite a contrast," he says. "I'd be doing those things, then I'd be flying up to a mountain where you could hear the snow fall. I'd just sit there and vibrate for a couple of days. `What the hell was that all about?' " he says with a laugh.

      "Those were fun days. A lot of people never get to go to that level," adds Fogelberg, who turns 46 Aug. 13. "There were so many women, so many drugs, so many parties and you're in your 20s. ... Rock 'n' roll's gotta be a young man's sport. You just kind of knock on the table and say `Thanks,' that you're there but for the grace of God. There's a lot of nights I could have gone down, or any of us. It's a miracle that we survived them when we look back at them."

      But wasn't he one of the mellow ones?

      "That's P.R.," he declares. "Remember, I ran with the Eagles and Joe Walsh and Irving Azoff. I wasn't the nice little mellow folkie. I had a pretty darn good time."

      But he is mellow now, judging by his future plans -- or lack of them.

      "I'm just going to enjoy this (tour)," he says. "Then I'm going to come back here (to Colorado), let the snow fall, do some skiing, and think about what's next."