Loggins to take Center stage

James Meier

Kenny Loggins considered retiring a few years ago.

“I told my young son, Luke, that I wasn’t going to sing anymore,

that I wasn’t going to leave anymore, that I was going to stay at

home and play,” the 54-year-old musician said Monday. “Luke then told

my wife, ‘Mommy, if he doesn’t sing, daddy’s going to die.’”

Though that may have been extreme, Loggins took it to heart. He

continues to tour and even plans to put out a new album in mid-2003.

On Dec. 7, the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning singer-songwriter

will make a pit stop during his five-week tour to play an evening

show at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Jerry Mandel, the Center’s president, said Loggins fits perfectly

into the Center’s formula.

“Kenny’s a real icon of pop music ... We always want to bring

popular artists here,” Mandel said, noting that the Center tried to

recruit Loggins before but scheduling conflicts arose. “We do so much

here, so we don’t always have the perfect schedule.”

Loggins’ career has spanned more than 30 years. It began to take

root as a teenager.

“When I started performing, I was a junior in high school,” he

said during a call from his hotel room in Tampa, Fla., where he was

playing a concert in nearby Clearwater. “Even when I made some money

on the weekends, I always thought I’d have to get a job at some

point.”

Luckily for Loggins, who didn’t have a backup career in mind, the

music gig worked out. By 1968, he “hit the road with the Electric

Prunes,” and it stuck. Four years later, he was singing with Jim

Messina.

The Loggins and Messina duo lasted fewer than five years, but the

two created hits like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” and “Danny’s Song.”

Loggins proved just a couple of years later that he could make it

on his own, and his second and third albums, respectively, spawned

hits “Whenever I Call You Friend” and “This Is It,” which earned him

a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal.

Several of Loggins’ most popular songs, which are still his

calling cards today, came off 1980s’ soundtracks, starting with “I’m

Alright” from the movie “Caddyshack.”

Loggins said he came into soundtrack work by “luck.” A friend of

his called him up and told him “Caddyshack” executive producer Jon

Peters was looking for someone to write and sing original songs for

the film. He then saw the movie, loved it and wrote the opening song,

“I’m Alright.”

For “Footloose,” the song for which he is best known and that most

energizes him on stage, Loggins actually read the screenplay and then

wrote the song before filming began, he said. The song earned him his

first Academy Award nomination. He would later be nominated for “For

The First Time” from the film “One Fine Day.”

“‘Danger Zone’ was another moment of luck,” Loggins said of the

song from “Top Gun.” “Toto was supposed to sing ‘Danger Zone,’ but

they were a few days late on it. I was in the studio singing ‘Playing

With The Boys’ for the film. They needed [‘Danger Zone’] finished,

and I was there.”

In 1994, Loggins released an album geared toward children that

adults could still enjoy. “Return to Pooh Corner” featured a song of

the same name that was actually born more than 25 years earlier in

“House at Pooh Corner.” There were two reasons he wrote the song as a

teenager.

“One was that Winnie the Pooh books were some of the first I read

as a kid,” he recalled. “I wrote it the last few weeks of high

school. I was kind of saying good-bye to my childhood.”

But once Loggins had his own child, though long before 1994, he

“realized you never lose your childhood.” So the song returned.

Today, his eldest son, Crosby, is also a musician and actually opens

for him on the road.

Loggins’ new album in 2003 will boast a combination of his three

styles -- “jazzy, rocky and bluesy,” he said. The songs will focus on

life from his current perspective.

“I think the door is open now to being an artist that can express

the emotional reality of people my age,” he said. “There are not a

lot of artists left that are willing or able to, lyrically, talk

about the things we’re going through at this age -- 40 on up.”

For those who won’t be able to catch Loggins at the Center at 8

p.m. Saturday, “Essentials,” an album of about 30 of his greatest

hits, came out Nov. 19.

“It’s a deserted island collection -- what Kenny Loggins songs you

would take to a deserted island,” he said. “God forbid you only take

music.”