Dan Fogelberg 1951-2007

Well, damn. I just wasn't in the mood for this.

Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" helped define the soft-rock era, died Sunday at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer. He was 56.

Maybe it's because he's only slightly older than me, this death leaves me melancholy. I'm not that familiar with most of his music, but the songs I did hear him sing have a bittersweet quality and depth beyond most of the stuff that surrounded him on the radio. The two songs the reporter cited may be the best examples of that.

And then there's this one, which takes me back to another time and another place ...



We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.