"Off in the nether lands I heard a sound like the beating of heavenly wings.
And deep in my brain I can hear the refrain as my soul as she rises and sings.
Anthems to glory and anthems to love and hymns filled with earthly delight
Like the songs that the darkness composes to worship the light." Nether Lands, 1977
I feel deaths. Of course I feel the deaths of close relatives and dear friends, but I feel the deaths of people I've never met, especially when those people have touched my life as deeply as did Dan Fogelberg. When I read of his death on December 16, 2007, I cried.
My favorite Sirius/XM station is Channel 32, The Bridge. The station plays soft rock 24/7 from the 70s with no commercial interruptions. The station seldom plays Fogelberg so I was pleasantly surprised when they played Longer on my way to work yesterday. It was still playing when I got there so I just shut off the car and let it play. I could have listened to Longer anytime on my CD or on Spotify, but there's something special about hearing a favorite song on the radio.
I was introduced to the music of Dan Fogelberg during the summer of 1981. My sister was living in the family beach house for the summer. She had a pretty good stereo and a lot of good records. It was a rather dark, rainy morning at Laguna Beach, Florida. I don't remember why I was the only one in the house at the time, but there I was with nothing better to do than play some of my sister's tunes. The silhouette of the rather "hippie" looking singer on the album cover of Nether Lands caught my eye. I pulled the album out of the sleeve being careful to hold it against the palms of my hands, placed it on the turntable and dropped the needle. There's this thing that happens to me from time to time when I listen to music. This thing usually happens when I'm driving and what I'm hearing and seeing all melt together in a mysterious wedding of blissful feelings. I dropped that needle nearly thirty seven years ago and I still remember what I felt that morning. My psyche remembers it as I listen to Nether Lands now. Mix the beauty of a dark and rainy Florida panhandle morning with my immediate enchantment with Fogelberg's Nether Lands and it was a recipe for pure pleasure. And a lifetime of music.
I own nearly all of Fogelberg's CDs and have listened to all of them a multitude of times. Considering that much of that listening was on the road, those tracks probably have traveled with me several hundred thousand miles.Besides the recorded music I was able to attend two of his concerts in Chattanooga. The first one, at the Tivoli Theater, was my favorite, but I enjoyed the second one as well at the Memorial Auditorium. At his second concert he was having some vocal issues and was not able to sing his signature falsetto. He had to sing alternate melodies for some of his most popular songs. I was listening to what he was singing, but my mind was editing it as he sang. Occupational hazard. It was one of those times that it was to be the last time I would see him alive, but I had no way of knowing that. After 90 minutes of singing during that first concert he announced an intermission. Only instead of leaving the stage, he put down his guitar, walked across the stage and sat down at the grand piano. I certainly took no intermission either. He played the unmistakable broken opening chord to To The Morning. To have that memory of Fogelberg playing that song on a stage flooded with blue light is very special to me. It felt like he played it just for me,.
The week after Christmas 1981, my son's first Christmas, I was pulling into the parking lot of a grocery store a few miles from my home to buy a few supplies for a youth retreat to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Some songs I've never heard before, I know from the first note that I'm going to like it. Same Old Lang Syne hit me in my musical and emotional wheelhouse that cemented it to my soul. As Fogelberg sang the last line, "Just for a moment I was back in school and I felt that old familiar pain. And as I turned my way back home, the snow turned into rain.", it started snowing. I think in the end, the universe is a kind and benevolent place. I never pass that store or shop there without recalling my introduction to Same Old Lang Syne in the winter of '81,
It's no wonder I feel so connected to Dan Fogelberg. In a radio interview in 1977, he asked about the meaning of his song Nether Lands. He said, "It's about the two forks of existence, acceptance or denial. It comes down to that. That's the only thing we have if you think about it. Any other choice we have is contingent on that. Either accept the life you're given or deny it and commit suicide. It's either one. You have to make that choice every day."
Dan Fogelberg died nearly ten years ago at 56 years old after a three month struggle with prostate cancer. Since I only knew him through his music, as I listen now to To the Morning I feel as close to him as ever. I'm sure to his wife, his friend and collaborator Tim Weisberg and those who knew him best, the loss is much deeper. I can't speak to that.
"Cloudy and warm
Maybe a storm
You can never quite tell
From the morning." from To the Morning, 1972
If there's a rock and roll heaven, I'm quite certain there'll be folk rock as well. And I'll bet the farm that Fogelberg's got his falsetto back. Hope so anyway. I don't want to spend eternity editing his music while he sings.
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