A Song for the Ages: How Dan Fogelberg’s ‘Leader of the Band’ Came to Be

“My father? I never knew him,” Eminem once lamented. “Never seen a picture of him.” His father’s absence drove much of the Detroit rapper’s work and life. Singer-songwriter Dan Folgelberg’s experience was the polar opposite: He not only knew his father but experienced the love—and example—of a good father.

For the privileged men and women who just finished celebrating Father’s Day—and having a good father is indeed a privilege—few songs elicit more emotion than Fogelberg’s tribute to his dad, “Leader of the Band.” It may be the best song ever written about a son’s love for the man who raised him.

“If I could’ve written only one song in my life, it would’ve been ‘Leader of the Band’ because of what it meant to my father and to me,” Fogelberg once told a reporter. “There’s no way I could quantify that or even explain it.”

That’s the thing about good dads: Their impact on the lives of their sons and daughters is, as Fogelberg noted, inexplicable. And takes distance—sometimes decades—to properly comprehend. Sometimes it takes sons and daughters becoming parents themselves to appreciate their fathers. To appreciate their significance.

Fogelberg went on talking about the importance of “Leader of the Band” in his life and his dad’s. “My father passed away over 10 years ago now, and he got to hear that song. He got to enjoy the success of that song,” he said. “People were calling him on the phone and interviewing him in his last days, you know, asking him, ‘Who is this man, the leader of the band?’ He loved that, and I loved that.”

Who was the man whom Fogelberg’s song was written about? Paul Zollo, who writes on Fogelberg’s official website, provided some answers. “His father, Lawrence, was a ‘legitimate musician’ as Dan referred to him,” Zollo wrote. “He was a bandleader who led big bands long before Dan was born.”

Fogelberg’s dad led bands and taught music all of his adult life. In Illinois, he was a music teacher at Woodruff High School in Peoria and Pekin Community High School. In Peoria, he directed the Bradley University band at football and basketball games. Fogelberg’s dad was also the director of the Pekin Municipal Band, which played “Sunday in the Park” concerts every summer near the Mineral Springs Park Pavilion.

Dan Fogelberg performs at the Chicago Stadium on October 30, 1981. “If I could’ve written only one song in my life, it would’ve been ‘Leader of the Band’ because of what it meant to my…

Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images

In short, Fogelberg’s father’s life was music, and music was his life. And he used music to bring communities and generations together. Evidence of the impact on his community was the obituary on the top of the front page of the Pekin Daily Times on August 6, 1982. Besides being a great musician, beloved teacher and community leader, the obituary said, Fogelberg’s father excelled at swimming.

“A world-class swimmer in his youth, Fogelberg swam second to Johnny Weissmuller’s first in the 1928 Olympics,” the obituary read. “He joked to his friends that ‘if Johnny Weissmuller hadn’t beat me out, I might have been Tarzan.'”

Fogelberg talked about the impact his father’s musical life had on him. “I don’t think I’ll ever be as accomplished a musician as he was, but I’ve had a different gift,” Fogelberg said. “It came to me in a different way. I’ve been able to reach and touch people with these songs of mine. And that one has probably touched more people more deeply than anything I’ve ever done.”

Fogelberg talked about what it was like to sing the song in concerts after his died.

Every night when I sing that song, I feel him. He’s there with me. It’s a difficult song to sing some nights. Some nights it’s, it’s ebullient. Some nights it feels great. I celebrate his life. Sometimes it’s very sad because I really miss him. I miss having that guy, you know, that, that strong central figure that I respected so greatly. In the long run, that song is maybe one of the most important I’ve written simply because it has helped bridge the gap between fathers and sons, or daughters and fathers.

The song, Fogelberg went on, didn’t just touch men; he heard from women too. “There’s a lot of women that’ve said that it helped them communicate their love to their father and to solidify that relationship and express that relationship while there’s time,” he said.

But the most significant legacy of the song, Fogelberg said, was how it caused so many of his fans to reconnect and reconcile with their fathers. “One of the worst things that can happen to people is if they don’t express the love to their father and their mother while they’re alive,” Fogelberg said. “There’s always difficulties in family relationships, but I think it’s one of the most important things you can do in your life is to make sure that’s all done while everybody’s still around. And the song ‘Leader of the Band’ cemented our relationship. There was nothing left unsaid when he passed away.”

In 1979, Fogelberg played a concert at New York’s world-famous Carnegie Hall. His father, who’d been to the hall only once decades earlier—to see Arturo Toscanini conduct the New York Philharmonic—was there to see it. It was a night that both father and son never forgot.

“Leader of the Band” appeared on Fogelberg’s 1981 chart-smashing double album, The Innocent Age, which generated not one but four top 20 hits: “Same Old Lang Syne,” “Run for the Roses,” “Hard to Say” and the tribute to his father. “I still think most highly of that album,” Fogelberg, who died in 2007, told Zollo. “Making it was certainly one of the high-water marks of my life.”

Few songs stand out as extraordinary through lyrics alone, let alone tell a story as specific and universal at the same time. “Leader of the Band” is one of them.

Here are the lyrics, which are well worth reading—and singing:

An only child alone and wild, a cabinet maker’s son
His hands were meant for different work
And his heart was known to none
He left his home and went his lone and solitary way
And he gave to me a gift I know I never can repay

A quiet man of music denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once, but his music wouldn’t wait
He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band

My brother’s lives were different for they heard another call
One went to Chicago and the other to St Paul
And I’m in Colorado when I’m not in some hotel
Living out this life I’ve chose and come to know so well

These lyrics alone make this song a song for the ages. But it’s when Fogelberg switches gears and lists the things he’s thankful for that the song packs its emotional power.

I thank you for the music and your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough
And Papa, I don’t think I said I love you near enough

For those of us who had or have fathers who did their best to raise and love us, who were themselves leaders of their own band—their own family—thank you. Thank you for the encouragement. For the freedom, the discipline, the patience. And the kindness. And thank you most of all for your love.

Not enough is written about you, the men taking on the responsibilities, pleasures and disappointments of fatherhood. Your steadiness and steadfastness may not make for good fiction, but it makes for a good life. Good communities. And a good world.