This week has been a great one for music listening. In preparation for this week’s commentary I took the time to listen to a lot of Kenny Loggins music. I listened to so much of his music, at one point my smart phone just started playing Loggins’ music through my bluetooth. I had a good laugh as I said the phone must have felt I needed to hear music at that particular time. If that were true, the choice of the smart phone was excellent. Kenny Loggins holds a special place in my musical memory. He is one of the select few songwriters who helped me decide to write music. The height of his career coincides well with my late high school and college years. He is without a doubt one of my favorites in the music industry.
Early this year I could see advertisements for his upcoming May 15th show here in South Florida. Those signs brought back memories of some fantastic musical times. It also made me look at the number of years that had gone by since those solo hit songs for Loggins. Yes, it has been a long time. I never, ever thought a time would come when Kenny Loggins would get older. Possibly because of the nature of his music, the higher tone of his singing voice, or a combination of those factors the singer would seem forever young. Perhaps he is how a friend of mine was described a few years back – always young at heart.
Kenneth Clark Loggins was born January 7, 1948, which means earlier this year he celebrated his 70th birthday. The superstar singer/songwriter was looking back on a stellar career filled with hit songs and a lot of success. Still touring, it points to music that many people, including many of you reading this blog today, enjoyed as well.
Loggins was born in Everett, Washington and is the youngest of three brothers. His mother was Lina (née Massie), a homemaker, and his father, Robert George Loggins, was a salesman. They lived in Detroit and Seattle before settling in Alhambra, California. Loggins attended San Gabriel Mission High School, graduating in 1966. He formed a band called the Second Helping that released three singles during 1968 and 1969 on Viva Records. Loggins had a short gig playing guitar for the New Improved Electric Prunes in 1969 before writing four songs for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which were included in their Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy album.
Jim Messina, formerly of Poco and Buffalo Springfield, was working as an independent record producer for Columbia Records in 1970 when he was introduced to Kenny Loggins, then a little-known singer-songwriter who was signed to ABC-Dunhill. “I knew that Jimmy had worked with Buffalo Springfield and that was one of my favorite acts of the 60’s,” Loggins says of the producer and onetime Poco member. The two started to work on Loggins’ solo début with Messina behind the glass, and Kenny fell in love with a track his producer had penned called “Peace of Mind.” Before he knew it, the pair of creative partners had morphed into a duo, and Loggins and Messina was born.
Their first album, Kenny Loggins With Jim Messina Sittin’ In, came out in 1971, featuring Loggins’ own version of “Pooh Corner” and the beautiful ballad “Danny’s Song,” which he’d written when his brother’s wife gave birth to the couple’s first child. “That was the beginning of his family,” Loggins remembers, “and many of those lyrics were taken right from a letter he wrote me.” The prolific recording and touring duo released a studio album every year from 1971 to 1976, wrapping with Native Sons.
Now came the time for Kenny Loggins to start his solo career. The start would be the album Celebrate Me Home which included the successful song “I Believe in Love”, sung originally by Barbra Streisand in “A Star Is Born.” The title song went on to become one of Loggins’ better-known songs, especially as it became a popular staple of radio stations’ Christmas music playlists due to its opening line (“Home for the holidays”). The album may not have enjoyed the commercial success of other Kenny Loggins albums, but it was certainly memorable. It represented a slight move away from the folk-rock leanings of his previous recordings towards a more polished, soft rock sound. The production work of Phil Ramone and Bob James brought in some of the great studio musicians of all time that would mark a new beginning for the young singer.
Kenny Loggins would go on to open for the very popular Fleetwood Mac on the Rumours tour, and he went from playing large rooms to arenas overnight. He struck up a friendship with Stevie Nicks, who generously offered to sing one of his songs. Loggins wrote the perfect tune with his friend, Melissa Manchester – “Whenever I Call You Friend” from his 1978 LP Nightwatch – which he credits as “the moment that launched my solo career.”
The hits just kept on coming. Loggins pulled up for a songwriting session at Michael McDonald’s house and heard the opening melody of “What a Fool Believes” coming out of the door. “He stopped playing after 8 bars, but my imagination kept going. So I like to say we were writing together before we met.” The pair won a Best Song Grammy – Loggins’ first – for the tune in 1979. The following year, the pair picked up a second Grammy for “This Is It,” off Loggins’ third consecutive platinum solo album, Keep the Fire. As the decade progressed, Loggins kept expanding his musical range, impressively exploring new textures of jazz, rock, and pop with ambitious production.
At this point in his career, Kenny Loggins had become a huge star. I always thought that Loggins basically did whatever he wanted musically. If he wanted more of a rock sound, you got it. If he wanted more R&B, no problem. That’s what I’ve always about him and his music.
In the 1980s, Loggins also earned a new title: king of the movie soundtrack. Film producer Jon Peters called him in to see a rough cut of “Caddyshack”, and Loggins provided the cult classic’s smash “I’m Alright.” When a pal asked Loggins to write a few songs for an as-yet-unmade picture called Footloose, he whipped up a No. 1 blockbuster: “I had a little up-tempo thing I’d been messing with that I probably wouldn’t have written if it hadn’t been for the movie,” Loggins says. He scored a track on Tom Cruise’s Top Gun (“Playing With the Boys”) and performed that movie’s indelible hit “Danger Zone.”
Of course, Kenny Loggins went on to write and record a lot more music, but that period of the 1970’s and 1980’s was a special time. The combination of beautiful songs about love and life, along with the music for movie soundtracks reached a lot of music fans. The music still feels like it’s for young people. Even today, after thirty plus years.
There is no way to turn the clock backwards. The music is now a part of history, even though it might rightly be labeled timeless. Although young at heart, Kenny Loggins is still seventy years old today. However, for one brief concert, Loggins might just turn back that clock for a few hours. It happens for me each time I listen to his music.