Kenny Loggins on Being a ‘Moving Target’ Throughout His Career


Just about anyone who came of age since the 1970s has to include a Kenny Loggins song in the soundtrack of their lives. A lot of us have a lot more than one: Whether it's "Your Mama Don't Dance," "I'm Alright," "Danny's Song," "Whenever I Call You Friend," "The House at Pooh Corner" or the one hit that you just can't listen to sitting down, “Footloose.”

The Grammy award-winning rock icon joins Eddie Arruza to reflect on his 40-year career prior to his performance for Soundstage.

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Below, some highlights from our conversation:

On collaborating with bassist, Thundercat:

"Thundercat won a grammy for hip-hop producer/artist collaboration with a Rap artist. They interviewed him and asked, 'Who would you want to collaborate with?’ And he said, ‘Kenny Loggins and Mike MacDonald.’ So my son called me and said, ‘You better call Thundercat and collaborate with him.’ I called Michael and we wrangled Thundercat into a writing session and we wrote a couple of songs. We finished it in time to work it up for this (Soundstage) show. We worked it up on the day of the show. That gets the adrenaline going," Loggins said. 

On writing “House on Pooh Corner” at the age of 17:

"I was graduating from High School and I realized that a big change was happening. That was the beginning of that change–the last chapter in “House on Pooh Corner” where Christopher Robin is leaving the One Hundred Acre Wood. I said ‘that’s me now.’ So that’s the song I wrote," Loggins explained. "22 years ago, I added a third verse to ‘House on Pooh Corner’ and I called it ‘Return to Pooh Corner.’"

On writing “What A Fool Believes” with Michael MacDonald:

"I’d like to say we were writing together before we met," Loggins said. "We had both been hunting each other down to do some writing. As I pulled up to his house I was getting the guitar out of the trunk and the door to his house was open and I heard him in his room practicing song ideas. He had this one idea. He didn’t have any words yet but he did that mumble thing and my imagination grabbed me. As I started knocking on the door, he stops and my imagination kept going and I heard dee dah dah doo doo doo. So I knock on the door and say ‘Mike, hey, I think I know how that next part goes.’ So I went in and we kept writing right on that same song."


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