Interview by James Jensen
PART OF THE PLAN
Dan Fogelberg’s accidental journey back to the acoustic guitar
In her classic song "Big Yellow Taxi" Joni Mitchell sings "Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you got till its gone", and that sentiment certainly pertains to the acoustic guitar playing of well known singer songwriter Dan Fogelberg. While sailing a couple of years ago Fogelberg severely injured, in fact almost severed the little finger on his playing hand, creating concern about his future as a guitarist. Picking out instrumentals on his nylon string to help rehabilitate his finger had the side effect of dramatically rehabilitating his love of playing the instrument which had waned over a couple of decades on the road.
While many folk/pop artists dating back to the seventies are lucky to have careers given the always changing musical landscape that is pop music, Fogelberg’s audience has been constant. His summer ‘97 tour, a solo acoustic affair in support of the generous 4 CD career retrospective box set "Portrait", found him filling the large and prestigious Greek Theater in Hollywood. When I showed up at his hotel room the next day for our interview Fogelberg was busy fingerpicking on his trusty Martin D-45 and playing bottleneck with a metal slide. I found him to be very excited to talk about his love of guitar playing, songwriting and the accident which he now views as a blessing in disguise.
When did you start with the acoustic guitar?
DF: Well, I started playing when my grandfather gave me an old Hawaiian steel guitar when I was about eleven years old. This guitar was black with hula dancers, palm trees , and the moon painted on it. It was made for slide with action about a half an inch off the neck and was supposed to be played with a sit-down slide, which I didn’t know about . I started to develop calluses really fast , and not knowing the difference I was trying to play Buddy Holly and Beatles songs, as well as basic and minor chords, which I was able to do. After I got over the hand injuries (laughs) I developed pretty strong hands because of that guitar. About a year later I realized the way that guitar was to be played and talked my dad into getting me an electric guitar. I learned initially on acoustic but jumped right into electric for playing in bands and stuff when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. In my second band I put my Strat away , and played an Eko twelve string acoustic, getting into fingerpicking styles, and Travis picking which I had gotten from the Peter, Paul and Mary, and Paul Simon. I took that band into more of an " acoustic folk-rock" kind of place , performing Buffalo Springfield material and Beatles songs like "You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away".
In the liner notes to "The Innocent Age" double album you point out folk artists like Gordon Lightfoot as influences, did you study his twelve string playing?
DF: Oh sure, and Red Shea (Lightfoots lead guitarist) was a big influence, and even played on "The Innocent Age". His picking was instrumental to what I do as far as when I’m layering guitar parts while recording. The guy was so tasty with his work with Lightfoot. While Gordon was singing and playing a basic Travis picking pattern, Red was playing these beautiful little lines that seemed inseparable from Lightfoot. It was a great sound , and yet you have to be incredibly sensitive to put those type of chops in a tune and not get in the way of the song.
Was playing guitar an obsessive kind of thing for you and did you take lessons?
DF: I have a great story for you about "formal" lessons. I took em for about a month because my dad insisted, as he was a trained musician. He really looked down on the guitar as an instrument, but he felt that if I wanted to take up an instrument I should be trained and do it right. The deal was he would buy me a Stratocaster if I would take the lessons, which I of course agreed to. I went to see a teacher twice a week for about a month, in the meantime I was already playing gigs. I came into the store one day after learning the opening lick of The Beatles "I Feel Fine" from watching the top cover band in town the night before. I was practicing this lick when my teacher arrived late for a lesson, and hearing me doodling around with this riff , he asked me to show him how to play it (laughing). I told my dad that it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to pay this guy to show him how to play, and that was my last guitar lesson.
You also spent a little time enamored with Luis Bonfa, and playing Bossa Nova-style instrumentals?
DF: I really got turned on to Bossa Nova music in the sixties because I was a huge fan of Jobim and his music. I love that style of music , and I love playing it, and still write in those terms once in a while if I have a project that will allow it.
In concert you mentioned that you injured your finger a year ago?
DF: I cut it real bad, almost took it off, you can still see the scar goes from here all the way to here (points to a very noticeable scar on the little finger of his left hand). I caught it in the mechanism for taking up an anchor on my boat. It was about six months before I could play guitar with it again. The playing actually became therapeutic in that the recuperation went faster the more I played. I still lack some feeling in some spots on it however.
Were you worried that you may lose the use of it permanently?
DF: I began thinking in terms of Django Rheinhardt (who played with only two fingers on his fretting hand) and feeling that I would have to adapt. I just didn’t know, and I couldn’t even press down on a piano key because without feeling you don’t know how much pressure you are applying. There is also a little chunk of it missing...
Oh great, I forgot to bring my macro lens for a close-up photo!
DF: (laughing) It is funny now, but I was terribly frustrated, and this solo acoustic tour is consisting of two hour plus concerts because once I start playing I am having so much fun playing again. It really is like having the water in your well run dry, and its like being rededicated to the act and the joy of playing, because you do get jaded when you do it for so many years. In the long run this accident has been a real blessing because it has really brought back the true joy of playing, and I have been writing all these medieval lute-type guitar pieces. I don’t think in terms of the commerciality of what I am writing, I just sit down and come up with all these cool guitar based tunes. I don’t know where the interest in that style of music came from , I do know that it began because I was playing more gut-string guitar as it was easier on my finger , and on that instrument I don’t think in "Pop Music" terms, I think of Spanish or Bossa Nova, or Classical. And I have been writing (he picks up his Martin and begins a very Renaissance influenced tune) very medieval kind of stuff , which may be used for a Christmas album with a lot of instrumentals like that cause they sound Christmasy.
You were playing solo acoustic shows in the mid-eighties, a half a dozen years before "unplugged" phenomenon happened. What is your take on all of that?
DF: I laughed because I had been doing it since I was fifteen. The disappointing thing was that MTV didn’t call. I felt like I had done it more than anybody, and done it well, but I guess I wasn’t hip and groovy enough for MTV. I had MTV people come to my shows and say, "wow we have to get you to do this" and then never call, so who knows (laughing). I mean some of the people they had do it were not very capable, although Eric (Clapton) did a very nice job with it obviously , but I thought they should have people like myself or Bruce (Cockburn) on who really do it. They are playing to a young Rock crowd and Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn, and myself don’t figure to that crowd so much.
I am happy that the whole "unplugged" thing has nurtured acoustic music. One of the reasons I recorded "High Country Snows" (a 1985 Bluegrass flavored album featuring many of the genres best players) was to nurture acoustic music , being a huge fan of these great players. Everyone is listening to Garth Brooks , but David Grisman and Tony Rice are phenomenal musicians.
When you toured after that album, you played a half set solo, and then introduced these musicians to your fans, which were a much larger audience than they were used to playing to.
DF: I think in some instances it kind of kick started a few things for some of the guys. Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson (along with John Jorgenson) formed the Desert Rose Band , and had quite a successful run in Nashville. I am not saying that wouldn’t have happened without me, but I remember when we recorded that album in Nashville and there was a kind of buzz around town because Ricky (Skaggs) was working on it , and Vince Gill, and these other young cats who weren’t really legit yet in Nashville, because it hadn’t really happened for them. The old school didn’t really like Ricky Skaggs and Sam Bush (with the New Grass Revival) pushing the envelope. I have always been a big fan of that type of acoustic music.
What are some of the benefits, and limitations, to putting on a solo acoustic show?
DF: Emotionally and artistically it is really rewarding because it feels like I am putting on a concert. If you have an audience there that is really ready to listen, it is very different from a Rock show with the lights and the band and the up crowd. It is frustrating for me because I can’t perform the entire breadth of my music as I am an electric guitarist as well. I love the subtlety and tonal range of the acoustic guitar , and really work for a sound which is satisfying to me so I can have fun.
It sounds like sometimes you use altered tunings to present some of your band arrangements in a solo context.
DF: You can’t just play the same parts you played on the record when you play solo, so you have to come up with new arrangements. Someone told me recently that when I play the solo version of "The Reach" which is a strummed and flatpicked riff-groove, that it sounded like two or three people playing. It is not how I made the record, on which I was able to overdub the riff on electric and just strum the rhythm chords. I use a D modal (often called double dropped D as both E strings are dropped down a full step to D)and I use that for slide and blues ("Road Beneath My Wheels" from the live record and video) I never got into experimenting with many like Joni Mitchell, I just use the few plus dropped D on songs like "Make Love Stay". I rarely play standard tuning on stage, other than the nylon string stuff, in fact last night other than "Leader Of The Band" and "The Last Nail" all the songs were in something other than standard tuning.
The fingerpicking influences you’ve mentioned , who influenced your flatpicked playing?
DF: Living in Nashville I was always picking with people, but I must say that I was a huge Doc Watson fan in High School , and used to try and pick out his leads.
The solo show is also a real showcase for the songs.
DF: Absolutely, Its not flash, so it has to depend on the song and the performance. I really have to project a big version of the songs when I play them solo.
You seem to be a lot warmer to the audience than I remember.
DF: I am having more fun than I have ever had in my life performing, and again it may be the loss of my playing for a while, I just realized what a great job I have and how much fun it is. I have always been very serious about performing and now I am more concerned about having fun! It seems that the more fun I have , the more the audience enjoys it as well. I have been hearing all throughout the tour that I seem more relaxed than in the past. I am not a real serious kind of guy , but in the past I never projected or allowed that part of me to come across in the concerts until this last summer.
Does some of that come from helping to assemble the recent "Portrait" 4 CD career retrospective ?
DF: Yes, Its a kind of sense of accomplishment, like Joe Walsh. Have you seen his anthology? It is titled "Look What I Did" which is the most hilarious cover and a great idea for a title. Yeah, I feel pretty good about where I am.
Did you participate in the song selection, and packaging?
DF: One hundred per cent , it was all my baby. I told them I would do it if I could do it the way I want, so I began the song selection about four or five years ago. The recent repacked CD "Love Songs" made me mad because I didn’t even know it was out until someone brought it to me.
Isn’t that kind of par for the course when you leave a label?
DF: Yeah, they are going to try to sell anything they can, but they really did want the box set, so it was all my pick. The bad thing about a box set is that your never going to satisfy everybody, so I decided to satisfy myself. I also knew from performing these songs for so many years which ones really worked with the audience, which ones they want to hear , and which ones meant something, and those are all there.
Your live CD and video "Greetings From The West" seemed very successful from an artistic point of view, were you happy with the way it turned out?
DF: Absolutely, especially when you consider that it was taken from only one show, and most bands record ten shows to make a live record or video. That record and that video was us, that was a damn good band. That band was the best band I ever had for my music, and when we got to New York I thought it was time to put together a live album or video , even though I had never wanted to before. I was prepared to beg to have Epic let me make this document, but fortunately they were already convinced after seeing the show at the Beacon theater. We only had one more indoor show on the schedule at the Fox theater in a week, so we had a very hectic week preparing for that show. The day of the concert was the craziest day of my life , and the day I am most proud of , and my dad would have been most proud of me, because I was producing a record, starring in a video , and managing this whole insane day with the buck stopping with me for all decisions! Jim Shea (the director) who comes from a cinematic point of view gave us a great look. We put it on film , and used eight cameras so it would look like a film , and not a concert or video tape. The thing I am most proud of though is that it really was a live performance, we didn’t go back in and redo the whole bloody thing, I was really proud of the band.
Getting back to last nights live show, you played three instrumentals on a nylon string guitar, pretty heady stuff for a singer songwriter.
DF: I always used to put in a gut-string set in my old shows, and I hadn’t done it in years but when I picked up that guitar after I injured my finger because it was easiest to play I started to revisit the instrument and that repertoire. I have been getting good feedback from people who are happy to just see me play guitar. A lot of people come to my shows because their wives or girlfriends bring them and they could care less about my romantic stuff, but when you show them that you really are a musician and can play they take notice. Part of it is selfish because I want to play and show off as a guitar player a little, because I don’t want to be pigeonholed as just a singer/songwriter of soft ballads! I am not complaining about my hit records at all but at the basis of all this is still my love of playing the instrument. I have had only one other player solo on a record of mine in twenty five years , but when people see me play with my band in concert they still say "I never knew you played electric guitar" (laughing) well what does it say on the record!! I guess they are used to people posing with instruments for image sake.
Bruce Cockburn told me he is always writing lyrics, and when he gets some that truly inspire him he searches for the right music with his guitar, what is your formula if you have one?
DF: I am sure he does, and that is totally different from me. You have to come from a very literary place to do that , and Bruce is a poet, first. I am a musician first, and then I write lyrics, I write good lyrics, but I am not a poet. Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen are all poets... and Canadians (laughing). My songs all come from music, I could write you a dozen melodies in an hour, but the lyrics take a long time , if at all. Ocaisionally I can come up with a title like "River Of Souls" but that is the rare exception. "Run For The Roses" was a song I was hired to write for the Kentucky Derby , and that was fun. I work really well when somebody says "we need a song by tomorrow , an here’s your subject" I could probably be a great jingle writer, that’s easy. The hard thing is to come up with something unique,new, and imaginative , out of nothing. You start with a deep emotional part of yourself which you don’t even know how to access or to say correctly, but if someone says "write me a song about race horses" how hard is that? I never write away from an instrument either.
Until I read your liner notes in the box set , I never had the impression that you were writing from your own experience so much. Did you purposely take a little of the first person out of your songs for a more universal feel?
DF: There is not a lot of "I" in my music. I often couched it in third person, or looked at it like an analyst, I think of myself as more of a journalist. I am looking at relationships in my own life, but then I am trying to back away and say something bigger, its not just "oh my heartbreak" its this is why hearts get broken, this is what we do to each other. I am always trying to find something from my experience which can translate to someone elses, and try to find something as to the essence of what this thing is about. When you look at a song like "Sweet Magnolia" it really is a story , but it’s my story, and my first wife. It is couched in a pretty dramatic way , that song, so often times its a little easier for others to see it. A lot of what people tell me what they get from my music is that they feel I have written about their life, how did I know? If I was writing from a really personal standpoint the songs wouldn’t connect like that .
Your CD "Exiles" is a personal favorite of mine, and I guess going through a divorce at the time it came out gave me that same feeling you describe. I never thought , Oh Dan must be going through this as well.
DF: Interesting... that is some of the most brutally autobiographical stuff I have ever written, but there is still a "crane-shot" (referring to the camera angle from above looking down on a scene) or overview of what happened. I wasn’t interested in writing an album of "Oh my god , my marriage is falling apart and I feel like shit" that’s not it, it is looking at it and saying " what happened here? what did I do ? what did she do? how does this happen to peoples lives? how do we heal it? how do we grow?". I have always subconsciously tried to temper everything I do with a sense of hope. I don’t want someone to feel bad, they already feel bad, I want to offer comfort , " It’s okay buddy, it happened to me too, you’re not alone up there" , and I think that ‘s key to communicating and one of the reasons people are still with my music all these years, we’ve been through a lot of the same changes.
Are there songs you have trouble playing live?
DF: "Hearts In Decline" from Exiles, as much as I like it, and it was a powerful production at the time, it puts me in a place I don’t need to be again. I rarely perform "Longer", but people want to hear it, and I’m not sure what its all about. I don’t dislike the song , I just think I have written so much better, it seems just like a pretty little piece of pulp to play at weddings... great, hooray.
You double tracked acoustics on that one?
DF: I always used to do that on the fingerpicking stuff from my early records, I probably got that from Stephen Stills and Buffalo Springfield. It spreads out the sound a little. I also use a high strung guitar (string up a regular acoustic with the octave strings from a twelve string set) layered into many records guitar sound. People wondered at the time if I was using an autoharp or harpsichord on songs like "Believe In Me" and "There’s A Place In The World For A Gambler" because of the unfamiliar sound.
You played an instrumental last night on a Yamaha set up as a High-Strung.
DF: I played that instrumental last night ( George Harrison’s "I Need You" on a high strung guitar) in the show with both E strings tuned down to D because I thought it would be fun to play something a little unusual sounding and play it delicately. I usually play a Martin OOO-18 for the high strung stuff but was worried about traveling with it so we used the custom Yamaha. The sound using the Sunrise pickup is pretty warm with that tuning, and since I fingerpick with flesh its a little warmer and fatter than with a pick.
Did you ever use fingerpicks or thumbpicks?
DF: On my opening song last night "Nexus" I used a thumbpick and fingerpicks. I spent years playing with fingerpicks, all the Paul Simon songs etc.
Back to songwriting for a minute, are you prolific? Do you go into a project with a lot of material?
DF: Yeah, I write a lot. I haven’t written a lot in the last few years, and I don’t have an explanation for that. I don’t feel the same urgency , to be honest with you, after twenty five to thirty years of this it’s like; (A) how much more is there to say?, and (B) is this the same passion I had when I was twenty? I doubt it. I love music but the thought of sitting down and grinding out songs doesn’t appeal to me like it used to.
What excites you most these days?
DF: Playing guitar, just playing and having fun. I don’t feel any great responsibility to the world lyrically. Although I could sit you down and play you twenty unrecorded songs (laughing)!
Leader Of The Band performance notes:
DF: The only strange thing about "Leader Of The Band" , and I’m not sure what this chord is , but its right here , its a G7th of some sort to start off the song with. I played that song for my father before the album "The Innocent Age" came out , and that was pretty difficult. It became such a big hit that the press wanted to know if it was true, and who was this guy? So the press was interested in talking to him , and he was doing phone interviews with people from all over the country , and it was really cool because he was a great guy. I am probably the proudest of that song, even though I wouldn’t pick it musically but lyrically I would because it was so real , and honest, and meant so much to our family. But the biggest reward is that it has meant so much to other people. As a songwriter , it is great to do this for a living, but when you actually touch peoples lives, that is a bonus that I never saw when I started doing this. That song has got a long life, and I had no clue it would be a "hit" when I wrote it.
