Dan fogelberg ibland när vi berör
Paul Zollo.
It felt both very magical and powerful. And I was fearless. With an early genius for both melody and harmony, a soulfully angelic singing voice, and a natural gift for romantic expression, Dan Fogelberg has created songs that have become so embedded in our collective consciousness that they still resound with authentic magic and beauty years after they first emerged.
Immersed in Music: Dan Fogelberg
I was raised by a river Weaned upon the sky And in the mirror of the waters I saw myself learn to cry. His story starts in Illinois. In Peoria, specifically, a little town that in the words of Charles Kurault, is in the middle of the state, in the middle of the country, in the middle of the world. Born the youngest of three sons, he was raised in a musical home. His mother, Margaret Irvine, was born in Scotland and came to Illinois with her parents at the age of three.
Daniel Grayling Fogelberg was born in Peoria on August 13, His father taught music in local high schools and colleges, gave private lessons, and conducted school bands. In church, he loved the music but grew restless during the sermons. To keep him occupied, his folks provided pen and paper, thus fuelling his love for drawing and painting that has extended throughout his life.
He was a constructive kid quick to create his own fun — at a cub scout jamboree where boys hurled baseballs at old records as a kind of carnival sport, he collected all the unbroken ones, a great bounty of old obscure fifties pop and college fight songs.
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His maternal grandfather, a steelworker from Scotland who worked at a foundry in Peoria, gave him an old Hawaiian slide guitar. It had pictures of dancing hula girls engraved on it, as well as steel strings about a half-inch from the neck, tough for anyone, but nearly impossible for an eleven year old beginner. Yet he took to it naturally, forcing him to acquire a strong left hand as he taught himself chords from his Mel Bay guitar book.
He started performing by lip-synching with friends to Beatles records at a variety show before forming his first real band, the Clan, who played all Beatles songs at backyard parties and street dances. While their connection with music diminished, his became more intense than ever, as did his need to express himself in other ways, from drawing and painting to acting.
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By now the music that inspired him the most was the West Coast rock of bands such as the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield, as well as the contemporary folk of Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. Having abandoned the matching black velour pullovers favoured by the Clan, his attire now included moccasins, fringe and silver in the style of Neil Young. Pretty adventurous for kids from Illinois.
These were his river years, as he withdrew daily to a sacred spot between two ancient pines overlooking the Illinois River. I was off in my own trip, deep inside myself. At the same time, I was terribly excited because I was discovering this whole person I never knew could exist, and this music and this creativity. And I knew the river was a conscious metaphor for my escape from Peoria.
I was just waiting to leap on its back and ride it, down to St. Louis and New Orleans and out to the Gulf and on to the world. After graduation, he felt he could have gone in many directions, and eventually decided to pursue acting at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Finding the college acting scene to be more political than theatrical, he switched majors to study art, with aspirations of becoming a serious painter.
Yet music kept calling, this time in the form of a kindred soul, musician Peter Berkow, who ran a little folk music club called The Red Herring. Berkow invited him to perform, and before long Fogelberg was a cherished part of the burgeoning coffee house scene. And it started packing people in. Anyone back then who heard the sophistication of his songs, and the power with which they were rendered, knew that it was only a matter of time before his break would come.
That break arrived late one night when a former high school sweetheart knocked on his door, urgently awakening him from a sound sleep to say that an important music agent wanted to hear him play. Though half-asleep, Dan followed her to a frat party at a funky little bar to meet Irving Azoff, a U.