Dan Fogelberg

It’s oddly reassuring to rub elbows with famous people who had prostate cancer, like Dan Fogelberg, the soft-rock singer who grew up here in Peoria, Illinois. I can walk to the places he lived, went to high school, and to Bradley University where his dad was the band director and let him conduct a rehearsal when he was 14. Fogelberg’s songs like “Leader of the Band” and “Longer” were a mainstay of the soft-rock era of the 1970s, ’80s, and early ‘90s.

This is what I’ve been able to piece together about Dan’s cancer. If anyone knows more, please let me know. Most of the details are murky about when Dan realized he had a serious medical problem, or what treatments he received. I’ve been told that his wife Jean is working on a biography of Dan that will share the entire story. When I asked members of the New Dan Fogelberg Group on Facebook, the consensus was that during a routine checkup before he went on tour, his PSA was found to be elevated. His tour in 2003 went to both coasts and ended up in Chicago on August 8 where he played for the PBS Soundstage. Then there was some kind of miscommunication, maybe a missed phone call or appointment, and when he got back from the tour, his cancer had spread outside his prostate.

In May 2004, Fogelberg was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. In June, doctors found cancer in his bones. Dan and Jean decided to get treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, only five hours from the house they were building in Maine. In August 2005, Fogelberg announced the success of his cancer treatments. However, his cancer returned and on December 16, 2007, at 6:00 a.m., Fogelberg died at his home on Deer Isle, Maine, at the age of 56. His ashes were scattered on Eggemoggin Reach off the coast. Jean and Dan had been together for eleven years.

After his diagnosis, Fogelberg encouraged fans to be aware of prostate cancer and urged men over fifty to get their PSA tested. After he died, Jean began to design holiday cards with proceeds going to Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) for cancer research. It’s because of continuing cancer research that treatment options have greatly improved over the last twenty years.

The 2020s have seen the development of the PSMA-PET scan that can detect minute amounts of cancer, the advent of somatic testing of gene mutations, and the development of therapy drugs that can target specific receptors and prevent cancer cells from spreading further for men who have castrate-resistant, or metastatic, Stage 4 cancers. Men who once expected to die within five years are now living longer.

After Dan’s death, Jean produced three albums of his music, including Love in Time, a collection of eleven previously unpublished songs that Fogelberg had asked her to release after he died. Love in Time became the first Dan Fogelberg album to chart since River of Souls in 1993, reaching number 117 on the Billboard Top 200 on October 10, 2009. The live album of his performance at Carnegie Hall reached number 71 on the Billboard in June 2017.

In tribute to Fogelberg, Peoria renamed Abington Street in the city's East Bluff neighborhood "Fogelberg Parkway." The street runs along the northeast side of Woodruff High School, Fogelberg's alma mater, and where his father was a teacher and bandleader. There are also boulders with Dan’s words on them in Peoria’s Riverfront Park and in the Forest Park Preserve. Each year in Amarillo, Texas, the "Friends of Fogelberg" raise funds and awareness for prostate screenings. In 2026, the Dan Fogelberg Celebration Weekend in Peoria is April 17-19.

Today I went over to the convenience store at the corner of N. Prospect and E. Frye where Fogelberg ran into an old girlfriend one Christmas Eve, and I hear him singing his “Same Old Lang Syne.” Music never dies, nor do the musicians we love.

© 2026 Mark Liebenow