18 thoughts on “Dan Fogelberg’s Most Profound Song About Death”

1. I was a huge fan of Dan Fogelberg all my life starting back with his Captured Angel album. To me his music and lyrics took you into a world of wonder and imagination like being somewhere few ever get to go. During my high school years in the late 70’s I pushed real hard for Part Of The Plan to be the class of 1978 song. It never happened. I heard that song hundreds of times but when Dan passed away I heard it for the first time. Dan was an atheist and that blew my mind. That what he said in the song and I couldn’t believe it so I looked it up. There was an Eden and there sure is a Heavenly Gate.
   Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

2. Bill – Really appreciate your comments. A bit unsure of your final sentence though. Here are the lyrics:

   There is no Eden or
   Heavenly gates
   That you’re gonna make it to one day
   But all of the answers you seek
   Can be found
   In the dreams that you dream on the way

3. I think Bill is saying that Bill himself is a believer and was blown away that Dan wasn’t and contradicted Dan’s lyric with his own belief

4. I find it extremely hard to believe that Dan was actually an atheist. Listening to his lyrics and music for the past 45 years, it seems to me that he had a great deal of faith, although he might not have practiced any organized religion.

5. I think we are inclined to identify most closely with those who share our own beliefs, but it’s certainly not incomprehensible to believe that anyone with a different concept of a personal God would be incapable of appreciating and creating beauty.

6. I am delighted to find this. Dan Fogelberg was the first concert my future husband and I went to in Jackson, MS. It was being simulcast on our local FM oriented radio station. My future hub set it up for his parents to listen to it. Great! Until Dan sat down to play The River and said he hoped he didn’t fuck it up. David and I looked at each other and he said, oh no. Sure enough, they were waiting up for him to complain about that word!!! But we saw Dan many more times, I saw him in the gym at my university. Very cool. Home Free and Souvenirs, we played them so much. My children’s safe word was “Dan Fogelberg” and I would tell them to let me nap unless it was Jesus or Dan Fogelberg. But my husband, too, was diagnosed with terminal rectal cancer in May of 2004 and died two weeks before Dan died. I cannot listen to Home Free at all any more, and only a couple of songs off of Souvenirs. No Leader of the Band, nor the Same Aulde Lang Syne. Cannot listen to his Christmas album. My favorite song ever is Sutter’s Mill and most everything off of the High Country Snows album. Cancer really sucks. But I am happy to have found you. This last December was the fourteenth anniversary of my husband’s and Dan’s deaths. It hit me so hard, I sobbed for weeks, screamed and cussed out a friend. Argued with my son. Could not get out of bed. Did not open mail. And did absolutely nothing for the holidays. My five year old smarter than me granddaughter kept asking if I was okay. That is how bad it hit me. I raged against cancer taking good people while sparing people who just really do not belong on the planet. That’s it. Thanks.

7. Hi Trisha:

   Thank you very much heartfelt comments. I read them with great interest. So sorry for your loss. And I too think death is a great tragedy, a cruel trick, as I argue in my post “Death Should Be Optional.” all the best, John

8. I started Listening too Dan Fogelberg in the 70’s in CA. My Friend Dan Russo turned Me on Too Him! And He has been the Only Artist that could Reach into My Soul ! A very Special Person ! Who thank God I got too see in Ct. And My Home on Cape Cod! God Bless You Dan and Hope Too Meet You “On the Other Side” !

9. Dan was so young and merely beginning his adult journey through life, when he wrote Part of the Plan. As we all do, he may have broaden his original life concepts as he aged and faced his own mortality.

10. It’s amazing what leaving off ‘s will do to a sentence let alone the meaning of an entire paragraph…

    I was a huge fan of Dan Fogelberg all my life starting back with his Captured Angel album. To me his music and lyrics took you into a world of wonder and imagination like being somewhere few ever get to go. During my high school years in the late 70’s I pushed real hard for Part Of The Plan to be the class of 1978 song. It never happened. I heard that song hundreds of times but when Dan passed away I heard it for the first time. Dan was an atheist? The lyrics he wrote in the song blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it so I looked it up. He wrote it! I know there was an Eden and there sure is a Heavenly Gate. If Dan took that concept to the grave, he was absolutely right about no Heavenly gate…for him. What a shame. To have gained the whole world and to lose his own soul. Like James Taylor, Dan knew enough to use metaphors throughout his music. Both men have made a choice based on their life experiences. James admitted that the only reason he thinks the way he does is because he was raised that way. That’s worse! He actually understands why. He has thought about it enough to actually know the difference.

    Matthew 7:13-14
    New King James Version
    13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 [a]Because narrow is the gate and [b]difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

11. It must be nice to know the truth in an unimaginably vast and ancient cosmos. Glad you have access to it. Unfortunately, I don’t; I’m just not that smart.

    So I’m with Dan and James. I’m just a poor seeker. But then again perhaps the search for truth is greater than the mere affirmation of it.

12. I started listening to Dan Folgerberg in the early 70’s. We had music on in the shop and when one of his songs, I had to stop what I was doing and listen to the words. My wife and went to his concert in around 1975. We felt like he was singing to us and touched our souls and our hearts. He was so special to us and he has been since then.
    I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and it had metastasized it to my back. All these years I still think of Dan and that concert my wife and I went to so long ago. I am not sure why I am still alive and he died. I am an atheist as Dan was. I know he found songs and words that kept me in hopes that he went to a beautiful place that I want to go too where he is. I am listening to his music while I am writing this note. He has made life worth it and that I found a women like my wife as we have been married for 52 years. We still listened to his music and feel he is singing to us and we sing still sing them to each other. Thank you Dan for everything.

13. thanks Jerry for your words. they really touched me. Dan’s great lyrics have given a little more meaning to my life. I so hope you melt into a river of souls.

    John

14. When I listen to Part of the Plan, I don’t get the sense of atheism necessarily. What I hear is that concepts like “Eden” and a “heavenly gate” are human concepts that we invented to make sense of something we could never understand in this lifetime. We get the answers when we die. Wether the answer is that life is finite and ends in a spectacular and beautiful finale of light, peace, and comfort, or that we go forth into a mysterious and very real unknown is only known to those who’ve made the journey. No matter one’s faith, anyone who is honest with themselves will admit that they don’t know what’s after this life. What we do know is that it’s up to us to make the best out of this life we have. If there’s something after, it’s most certainly beyond our comprehension. As a skeptical but practicing Catholic, I like to believe there is life after this one. I guess we’ll all find out in time.

15. “To everything, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,
    A time to be born and a time to die “.

    THIS fairly well clarifies AND satisfies a myriad of subjective arguments for me.

16. Je suis une Française de 70 ans et j’ai acheté les deux premiers albums de Dan (Home Free et Souvenirs) en 1974 à Lafayette (Louisiane). Depuis bientôt 50ans, j’écoute toujours Dan avec autant de plaisir et d’émotion! Merci Dan! Repose-en paix!

17. Thank you for your comments about Dan, and all the way from France!

    Translation

    “I am a 70 year old Frenchwoman and I bought Dan’s first two albums (Home Free and Souvenirs) in 1974 in Lafayette (Louisiana). For almost 50 years, I have always listened to Dan with so much pleasure and emotion! Thanks Dan! Rest in peace!”

18. I read an interview with Dan a couple of years before he died and he said that his last wife, Jean, was a Catholic and when they married he converted. That certainly tells me that he was not an atheist.

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