Some Sage Advice from Kenny Loggins

Kenny Loggins is still kickin’ around.

For you young’uns, Loggins was a rock star in the 1970’s when that term actually meant something.  Then he started doing soundtrack work in the 1980’s (like the Top Gun song and the song from that movie where Stallone is a professional arm wrestler who can only win when his hat is turned backwards, and obviously he did the Footloose song, etc).

Anyway, he’s got a mini-profile in New York Magazine and I really like his honesty and sagacity here:

Loggins started his career “spoiled” by the early success of Loggins & Messina. At 22, he surfed the instant fame (“People showed up singing ‘Danny’s Song’; our tour was really profligate”) and left the details to the pencil pushers. “Later, I found out that accountants want you to lose money on the tour because they want you to keep touring—their percentage stays the same,” he says. “If you think stardom is the answer to your problems, you’re sadly mistaken. And if you can do something other than this, you should. I watch American Idol, with all these kids who think being a star is going to solve their problems, and I think, You fucking idiot. Stardom is good if you want a nice table and a ticket to a show. It’s not a free pass around all the problems of being human. And it can cripple you if it hits too young.”

Loggins hit financial white water about a decade ago—lousy manager, lousier market, a costly divorce from his second wife. The fallout rolled back the gains of platinum decades and made this behind-closed-doors greatest-hits victory lap that much more urgent. “In music, you can get better and better, but you can’t control what people want to buy.”

All kinds of truth in there, head over below if you want the whole thing.

Source:

53 Minutes With Kenny Loggins (New York Magazine)