Feely Dan
St. Petersburg Times 
Jul 11, 1997; LOGAN NEILL

Things have truly come full circle for Dan Fogelberg. In the midst of the solo tour marking his 25 years as a recording artist, the singer has gained a perspective of his career he hadn't considered before.

"It's enjoyable on a number of levels each night," Fogelberg said by phone from a tour stop in Boston. "For a long time I did my folk thing playing solo in clubs in Illinois. So, when I perform these songs now, I feel more of a personal connection to them than I have in quite a while."

The quarter-century mark has also given Fogelberg a personal mission to re-direct the music he produced over the period into a four-CD Epic Legacy collection called Portrait. The 62-song set, culled from the singer's 15 albums, unreleased tracks and newly recorded material, was the result of Fogelberg's insistence that he be allowed control over the project.

"I consider it the authorized retrospective," Fogelberg said with a laugh. "Last year, Epic released a collection titled Love Songs - something I had nothing to do with - and I was a bit incensed over it because it could have been so much better. With Portrait, I picked the songs, and oversaw the mastering and production of it, so it's much more representative of my wishes."

Over his career, Fogelberg has earned his reputation for being tenaciously protective of his art. Throughout his years with Epic, Fogelberg has often butted heads with label executives looking for ways to push him into writing purely commercial fare.

"It got to be a battle at times," said Fogelberg. "Some of them were just incapable of understanding the reasons why a musician needs to be a musician."

An example of Fogelberg's need for artistic freedom came with the 1985 bluegrass-flavored album, High Country Snows. Although a critical success, the album came nowhere near earning the sales status of its platinum predecessor, The Innocent Age.

"That was never the point in the first place," Fogelberg said. "If you want to remain viable over 25 or 30 years you've got to approach it that way. High Country Snows was me as a musician saying I'm a lot more that just a soft-rock balladeer. I've always needed to be able to grow in that respect, not just to keep slugging out the same thing year after year."

Fogelberg's fans, however, have always appreciated his musical reach. From emotion-steeped ballads such as Longer, to heartfelt rockers such as Missing You, Fogelberg personified the emergence of the seamless FM pop of the 1970s and 1980s that included likeminded friends of Fogelberg's such as the Eagles and Joni Mitchell.

Along the way, Fogelberg took his licks from critics who often dogged him for being pompous and trite.

"For Portrait, I had to go back and reacquaint myself with a lot of my early material, and that's a hard thing for any writer to do," said Fogelberg. "And sure, there is plenty of stuff there that made me say, `What was that all about?"'

Born in Peoria, Ill., Fogelberg got much of his musical introduction by way of his father, a musician and bandleader (and for whom the singer wrote the 1981 hit, Leader of the Band).

But, it was the folk clubs surrounding the University of Illinois, where Fogelberg attended college, that he began to develop his introspective songwriting style.

By the time Fogelberg had moved West at the urging of his manager, Irving Azoff, the pop world had already begun to embrace the folk-based vocal style that characterized the music of James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

In 1971, Fogelberg was signed to Epic. However, his debut, Home Free, recorded in Nashville, didn't exactly set the music world on fire. Instead, it languished on shelves, being deemed "too country" for the rock market.

The 1974 follow-up Souvenirs fared much better, introducing Fogelberg's knack for catchy hooks with the single, Part of the Plan.

"The only two songs I ever wrote that I knew were hits were Part of the Plan and Longer," Fogelberg said. "The rest has pretty much been blind luck."

That blind luck yielded Fogelberg numerous Top 10 hits over the next two decades. Indeed, Same Old Lang Syne, The Language of Love and Hard to Say have become permanently etched in the pop landscape.

Perhaps his greatest testament as a lyrical craftsman lies with the anthemic Run for the Roses, written and recorded in the space of a few days for the 1980 ABC network broadcast of the Kentucky Derby.

In recent times, Fogelberg has eased back on the reins of his music career. He tours less frequently now. This year's solo outing is his first since a sailing accident last year that nearly severed his left pinky.

"It scared me, because for a while I thought I might never do this again," said Fogelberg. Now about 90 percent healed, Fogelberg spent the spring playing guitar to build up the damaged nerve.

"The ultimate reward to me is when people tell you that what you write affects them and their life," said Fogelberg. "I don't think anyone ever writes a song with that purpose in mind. When that emotional bonding occurs, you feel as if you've given someone something truly special