Dan Fogelberg

Dan Fogelberg's music occupies a plane somewhere between Jackson Browne's Classic Rock singer-songwriter stylings and the straight-up glitz of England Dan & John Ford Coley. There's no small amount of Crosby, Stills, and Nash in Fogelberg's music as well, but his primary focus was always on commercially viable pop craft as opposed to CSN's pot-headed artistic journeys. Fogelberg was a somewhat fringe figure throughout the 1970s, fostering a respectably-sized following until he sealed his festival-circuit status with a major hit in the 1980s called "Leader of the Band." After issuing a pair of records in the '90s that focused loosely on environmentalism and employed elements of world music, he returned to writing acoustic ballads for 2003's Full Circle. He quit performing after being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2004 and he passed away in December of 2007 at the age of 56.