Dan Fogelberg passed away on Sunday, at the young age of 56, of prostate cancer. At one time, in my teens specifically, his kind of music - bittersweet folk songs - was my favorite, whether in English or Japanese, which was sort of unusual since I wasn't of music-cogniscant age during their real heyday of the early '70s or so.
Sometime in my early 20s I grew to dislike that kind of music almost as much as I liked it. It was too sweet and sentimental for me. I stopped listening to Dan Fogelberg and Bread and early James Taylor and Carly Simon and all of them, (not to mention Masashi Sada and Alice) for quite a while. Looking back, that's when I started to get increasingly cynical and pessimistic, even though on the surface my life was brighter and I was getting more independent.
I pulled up some Dan Fogelberg songs from my iTunes today to re-listen. Now I finally can hear the bitterness a bit more, behind the lilting sweetness of the music and his voice. Same Old Lang Syne, after all, is for someone of my age now, not a teenager or a know-it-all girl in her 20s.
It seems that Dan Fogerlberg also had his tonsils out as an adult. From the official web site:
Unfortunately, during my 20’s, I had a set of badly infected tonsils, which would flare up at the most inopportune times, make me very ill and force me to cancel concerts. The Dodger Stadium show in Los Angeles was canceled because I had a 103 degree fever and was unable to leave Colorado. In 1980 I finally had the tonsils removed which radically improved my overall health but lowered the pitch of my voice. To me, it was certainly a worth while trade off.
Hmm, it really makes me think about it.
Wow— Dan Fogelberg fell