not the same Auld Lang Syne: RIP Dan Fogelberg

Johnny, I'm listening to Same Auld Lang Syne right now and I can't help but think that just about everybody alive would think about an ex they maybe wish wasn't an ex while listening to that song.

Thanks for sharing the story.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about, too. Thanks and RIP Dan.

 

this might help IJAG ...

 

this is as good as it gets on youtube ...

 

I just watched that. And sadly, got a little older as I did.

Beautiful stuff.

 

And the snow turned into rain ...

:'(

 

The girl I took to my high school prom loved Dan Fogelberg. I didn't get it at the time, but gradually came to deeply appreciate the music on Netherlands, Souvenirs, Captured Angel. There is some incredibly beautiful songwriting there.
After I came to be a fan, I still remember being enraged by a review in a Rolling Stone book that said, "Records himself to sound like a one-man Crosby, Stills & Nash."
By the time I met the woman who has been my wife for 24 years, I loved Fogelberg's music. Which was a good thing, because my girlfriend/fiancee/wife adored Fogelberg. In every way. So we ended up seeing him in concert at least five times. He was an excellent performer who could hold an entire arena's audience by himself with a guitar or piano. Not many have that degree of talent. He will be missed, certainly in this household.

 

I heard Same Auld Lang Syne on the radio earlier today. I never saw Fogelberg live, so I can't judge that skill, but man, was SALS the studio song overproduced to the nth power. Must have overdubbed his voice 20 times over, and thrown in snippets of every instrument known to man. Very poignant lyrics, mind you, but still.

 

I'm a musical illiterate, but in columns I have quoted Dan Fogelberg a dozen times if not more on the lyrics already posted by 21....the best line ever written on any sport is "the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance".....makes my heart pound every time....

 

That is so sad that Fogelberg passed away. Weird timing as his holiday hit was being ranked on the SJ threads among the worst tune of the season.

RIP Fogelberg.

 

I just listened to "Same Old Lang Syne" for the first time in a long time. From my perspective, there is often a fine line between what people consider an overproduced studio song and a well-produced record. That line is also subjective.

"Rosanna" was considered one of the best-engineered records ever at the time of its release, but the layering of solos and the other qualities that made it so were impossible for Toto to match in concert. The song typically fell short of expectations in live performance. Loud had to replace what engineering could not reproduce on the stage.

Fogelberg certainly spent a lot of time crafting a specific sound on "Same Old Lang Syne" in the studio, and people who might have heard him perform it later in his career could have easily determined he was incapable as an artist of pulling it off live. To me, that's the definition of an overproduced studio song -- slickness and layering to mask a singer's shortcomings. But Fogelberg in concert made "Same Old Lang Syne" breathe in an entirely different way as a solo piece, and one even more poignant stripped to its bones.

By the mid to late 1980s, he could no longer do so. He had developed infected tonsils in his 20s and sometimes had to cancel concerts when he became ill as a result. Soon after recording "Same Old Lang Syne" he had his tonsils removed, and his health improved tremendously. The loss of his tonsils, though, combined with his getting older, steadily lowered the pitch of his voice.

If you find a video of him performing anything late in his career, you'll hear that he can no longer hit the notes he used to easily reach in his younger days. Some of the live recordings of "Same Old Lang Syne" can be a disappointment for this reason. I remember him singing it in a 1980 performance that took my breath away. Three years later in Baton Rouge, he was still learning how to perform the song with his new octave issues.

I've never considered it overproduced, but that's probably because I always appreciated his ability to play so many instruments. A friend thought he was showing off. I just thought the man liked to play as many instruments as possible and was having fun.

Fogelberg's love of classical music and his dad's career as a musician and band leader had a lot to do with Fogelberg's studio work, but I never considered any of his more "slick" songs to be "studio songs" because I knew he could, in his earlier years, bring chills in concert with one voice and either a piano or acoustic guitar.

 

We shared the same birthday, although he was several years older.

I saw him in concert with the Eagles at a big stadium show in 1975, and he was outstanding.

"There's a Place in the World for a Gambler" always makes me think of my best friend from college, who now lives on the other half of the country.

And have a memory of a great night in Jan., 1982, with his music playing in the background.

One of my all-time favorites. RIP.