I wandered into the Red Herring Coffeehouse in the basement of the Unitarian-Universalist Channing-Murray Foundation at Oregon and Matthews during the winter of 1969 during my freshman year at the University of Illinois. From the day I set foot in the home of alternative culture on campus I haunted the place and it haunted me. Unlike a former president and a current candidate, I never tried drugs of any sort in college making me one of the very few people hanging out at the Red Herring in an unaltered state. Bill Taylor, the resident manager in the spring of 1969, allowed me to coordinate booking folk music at the coffeehouse. I already hosted Changes on WPGU, a folk music program that I proudly admitted was an imitation of The Midnight Special on WFMT in Chicago, which is the radio program I currently host.

Peter Berkow became the resident manager in the fall of 1969. One evening in early fall as I ambled down the stairs, Berkow animatedly beckoned me over and proclaimed: "You have to hear this guy!" pointing at Dan Fogelberg. Laidback Fogelberg looked the role of aspiring folk singer-songwriter. I listened to several songs in what felt like a private audition. Fogelberg at that time owed a debt to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, mainly Young. I commented to Berkow that Fogelberg certainly showed potential, but had a way to go.

Fogelberg played frequently on weekend nights at the Herring and attracted a loyal following. He grew as an artist, writing increasingly involving and melodically captivating songs performed in his own evolving style. Berkow became Fogelberg's first acolyte. Berkow also hatched the idea of recording LPs of the musicians in the Red Herring's fall and spring folk festivals, which had become a popular campus event. Unlike today when CDs are easy to produce, making an LP was a major expense and effort in 1969. Berkow arranged with his friend Roger Francisco to professionally record the folk festival artists in his Rofran studio at Washington and Race in Urbana. The quality of talent on those LPs holds up amazingly well, leaving little doubt that Fogelberg had a future.

Fogelberg, a nimble guitar picker, was musically generous and loved to jam with other musicians hanging out at the Herring. He frequently played with Berkow and with Elliott Delman. Delman became and remained one of Fogelberg's closest friends. He continues as a professional musician, composer and arranger. Fogelberg also enjoyed singing with Linn Brown a talented singer-songwriter in her own right who has released a few CDs since those days. In the candlelit coffeehouse all these spirits coalesced.

One facet of my radio show was broadcasting live and recorded local folk musicians and events. In addition to the Saturday night Changes, I hosted Morning Again from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM on Sunday mornings. On several occasions Fogelberg and the Herring group trouped down to jam on the show in the wee hours. Then we'd scandalize the church crowd with a celebratory breakfast at the old Uncle John's.

A broken heart often leads to great art. Like most men of our young age, Fogelberg thought he had found the woman of his dreams, Donna Gibbons, only to lose her. In the process she introduced him to a local talent agent, Irving Azoff, who ultimately rocketed Fogelberg to stardom. Today Azoff is acknowledged as one of the greatest star makers in the music industry. Fogelberg's yearning for Gibbons infused most of his songs of the period and those songs were prominent on his first album Home Free. I only met Gibbons once, but immediately understood Fogelberg's attraction to her. Sadly, she died in 1994 of sudden heart failure.

The Red Herring Spring Folk Festival in April of 1971 revealed the Fogelberg ready for fame. Fogelberg and Brown had been singing together for the fun of it the night before and on Saturday night at the folk festival she joined Fogelberg who was performing a set with Delman. Lee Busch also jumped up on stage. My tape recorder was rolling. They launched into an improvised Fogelberg medley of Anyway I Love You (which appeared on Home Free) with Let Me Go inserted in the middle. The results were explosive. When they finished the audience went wild. Fogelberg and Brown performed one more song together and then he finished with a few solos, including a thunderously ominous performance on the piano of a new song The River.

Fogelberg and several of the musicians converged at my apartment for a spaghetti dinner the next day to listen to the tapes. We all knew magic occurred. I took the tape to WPGU and copied Anyway I Love You / Let Me Go to a tape cartridge used for the rock music programming and convinced the program director to place it "in rotation" in the parlance of pop radio, meaning it would be played frequently. At that time WPGU was the dominant radio force on campus and Anyway I Love You became a hit. I also carried the tape to Ray Nordstrand, the host of WFMT's Midnight Special who played it. Fogelberg gained celebrity far beyond the Red Herring.

It almost didn't happen. After the song's first day on WPGU I received a furious telephone call from Irving Azoff telling me I had no right to play the Fogelberg recording on the radio and ordering us to cease and desist. I complied and erased the cart. I phoned Berkow and told him to tell Fogelberg what happened. Fogelberg called me about 10 minutes later saying the Azoff did not speak for him and begging me to please put the song back on the air. I told him to meet me at WPGU in 15 minutes and sign a release form. Fogelberg eagerly signed and I recopied the master tape onto a cart. All was well in the world.

I assumed that recording went along with Fogelberg's other demos to Clive Davis at Columbia Records, the label that signed him. Davis was looking for young male artists at the time, signing Fogelberg in the same period as Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

Fogelberg left town soon after that, but he left an impressive legacy. He inspired dozens of musicians who continued to make music in town. The Ship, a quartet of Todd Bradshaw, Steve Cowan, Mark Hamby and Steve Reinwand (now Billy Panda) formed in Fogelberg's wake and eventually scored a record contract with Elektra. They originally envisioned Fogelberg as part of the group.

Fogelberg deservedly became a star. I saw him in concert once at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago a few years later, but we never spoke again. I kept doing my radio show until 1974 when I left for WFMT in Chicago. I returned here in 1986, but by that time the Red Herring was a very different place, with great food, but not a lot of music. We had a musicians reunion there in 1987, but Fogelberg was touring and absent. Perhaps some late Saturday night I'll sneak back and put my ear to the wall to hear Fogelberg exuberantly singing Anyway I Love You.