CONVERSATIONS So, that’s how you came to live in California? Yeah. Well, he came down here to set up a California division of a company he was working for. It never caught on, but we stayed because he wanted me to experience sunshine and outdoor sports, and not be a hockey player.
Speaking of that, music has been your whole professional life. What do you think you would’ve been if that hadn’t worked out? I was really drawn to woodworking when I was young, so I might have been some kind of carpenter. I loved wood carving. As a matter of fact, there’s the scar (points to inside of his arm) from my woodcarving accident.
Oh, wow. That’s why you’re not a woodworker. That’s why I’m not, and why I’m almost not a musician because that closed my hand up and almost didn’t get it back open.
It would be hard to imagine a world without Kenny Loggins, and all those songs you’ve written and/or sang, from the Loggins & Messina hit, to “I’m Alright” and “Celebrate Me Home.” Did you have formal training in music? No, not really. I had a guitar teacher and I had a vocal coach for a short period of time. But that’s it.
It was one of my big brothers, Danny, who pretty much turned me onto rock and roll and R&B, songs like “Hound Dog” back when he was collecting 45s…. I’d be the first one home from school, and I’d raid his room. But I had to be careful. If I moved dust on his desk, he
You have one of the great pop music voices of all time. It’s so
would come home and beat me up, so I could’ve been a master thief
recognizable, it’s so easy to listen to and yet so evocative… And it just came
because I learned how to take anything from his room and keep him
to you naturally? It’s not something you worked on?
from knowing it. I would take the guitar off his wall and learn how to
Not really. Just sort of developed it the way you develop your craft. You’re reading other people’s work, you’re looking at what works
play it, and then I’d have to put it back on the wall before he would come home from school.
for you, what doesn’t work for you. It was the same thing for me. The people that influenced me, everything from James Taylor through
And rearrange the dust so he wouldn’t know.
Steve Winwood, the big rock voices – Aretha Franklin was a major
Yeah, right. Then my other big brother, Bob, was very much
influence on me and I drew from her phrasing a lot. Different things
into folk music, because he was older. He was seven years older than
that you’re raised on.
me, and he’s the one who named me, by the way. I was born on his
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