Still Alright: A Memoir

by Kenny Loggins, Jason Turbow (With)

Overview

You know Kenny Loggins for his megahit soundtrack themes and chart-topping collaborations. Now you can know him through the intimate stories behind his five-decade career as a legendary songwriter and pop icon. 
 
In a remarkable career, Kenny Loggins has rocked stages worldwide, released ten platinum albums, and landed hits all over the Billboard charts. His place in music history is marked by a unique gift for collaboration combined with the vision to evolve, adapt, and persevere in an industry that loves to eat its own. Loggins served as a pivotal figure in the folk-rock movement of the early ’70s when he paired with former Buffalo Springfield member Jim Messina, recruited Stevie Nicks for the classic duet “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend,’” then pivoted to smooth rock in teaming up with Michael McDonald on their back-to-back Grammy-winning hits “What a Fool Believes” and “This Is It” (a seminal moment in the history of what would come to be known as yacht rock). In the ’80s, Loggins became the king of soundtracks with hit recordings for Caddyshack, Footloose, and Top Gun; and a bona fide global superstar singing alongside Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson on “We Are the World.”
 
In Still Alright, Kenny Loggins gives fans a candid and entertaining perspective on his life and career as one of the most noteworthy musicians of the 1970s and ’80s. He provides an abundance of compelling, insightful, and terrifically amusing behind-the-scenes tales. Loggins draws readers back to the musical eras they’ve loved, as well as addressing the challenges and obstacles of his life and work—including two marriages that ended in divorce, a difficult but motivating relationship with the older brother for which “Danny’s Song” is named, struggles with his addiction to benzodiazepines, and the revelations of turning seventy and looking back at everything that has shaped his music—and coming to terms with his rock-star persona and his true self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306925368
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	28,812
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kenny Loggins emerged with Loggins & Messina, one of the bestselling musical duos of the 1970s, with their six releases between 1971 and 1976 (plus three live albums and four compilations), counting for 16 million units sold. Loggins has released 14 solo records since then with more than 25 million albums sold, charted five top-10 singles, and won two Grammy Awards for “What A Fool Believes” and “This Is it,” and received one Academy Award nomination for “Footloose.” Loggins’ song “Conviction of the Heart” was hailed as the “unofficial anthem of the environmental movement” by Vice President Al Gore, and his environmental television special for the Disney Channel, This Island Earth, won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Writing and for the title track.

Loggins has also cut two live albums, two greatest-hits compilations, and three children’s records including Return to Pooh Corner, which remains the bestselling children’s album of the last two decades. He recently donated use of his single “The Great Adventure” to the San Diego Zoo for their Kids TV network which airs in children’s hospitals and Ronald McDonald Houses around the world, supporting his belief that “every child'should experience the healing power of music.” Known as “The Soundtrack King,” Loggins has had his music featured in several iconic films including Footloose, Caddyshack, and Top Gun. Loggins has millions of followers and listeners across social and streaming platforms and continues to sell out live shows both domestically and internationally.

Jason Turbow is the author of the bestselling The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls, as well as Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic, about the Swingin’ A’s of the 1970s, and They Bled Blue, about the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among many publications.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 California Here We Come 7

Chapter 2 Out and About in LA 29

Chapter 3 Messina and Me 59

Chapter 4 Kenny's Song 75

Chapter 5 I Am the River and You Are the Shore 89

Chapter 6 This Is the End 115

Chapter 7 Going Solo 135

Chapter 8 This Is It 149

Chapter 9 At the Movies 165

Chapter 10 Let's Start Giving 187

Chapter 11 Trust Love 199

Chapter 12 Leap of Faith 215

Chapter 13 "Pooh," Part II 229

Chapter 14 Apart/Together 245

Afterword 289

Acknowledgments 293

Credits 297

Editorial Reviews

05/23/2022

Legendary songwriter Loggins brings the energy of his live performances to the page in this exhilarating look at his career. His lively recollections whisk readers from his rise to fame as a member of the 1970s rock duo Loggins & Messina through his peak as a solo artist, his decline into drug addiction and depression, and his triumphant return to the stage as a legacy artist. While he hits all the requisite details—writing his two most famous songs (“House at Pooh Corner” and “Danny’s Song”) at age 17, the creative differences that led him and Jim Messina to dissolve the band and later cut ties, his “post L&M life,” the excesses of touring (including an addiction to benzodiazepines)—Loggins’s frank reflections on his craft are what beg an encore. In one particularly memorable passage, in which he fondly recalls the recording sessions that led to the release of his 1977 hit album Celebrate Me Home, he even admits to “blow it” with James Taylor: “I’d brought the guy in specifically because nobody plays acoustic guitar like James Taylor, then, through some combination of ego and insecurity, proceeded to tell him how to play.” Fans won’t want to skip this one. (June)

Publishers Weekly

A wonderfully written book…very honest and very entertaining.”—Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post

"Highly entertaining."—Spin

“A good beach read for the yacht-rock generation.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Legendary songwriter Loggins brings the energy of his live performances to the page in this exhilarating look at his career.... Loggins’ frank reflections on his craft are what beg an encore.... Fans won’t want to skip this one."—Publishers Weekly

“Still Alright seems almost perfectly balanced in that includes plenty of words of all three legs of a good Rock Memoir Stool: creative/recording process, personal revelations/insight, and stories/anecdotes.”—HoustonPress

“Loggins’ thoughtful reflections on the process of songwriting turn this memoir into more than a run-of-the-mill rocker’s reflections on a life of sex, drugs, and, oh yeah, rock and roll. Songwriting occupies the center of Loggins’ narrative…His appealing memoir celebrates him home in fine form.”—No Depression

From the Publisher

06/01/2022

Loggins has had a highly successful career, moving from the gentle folk/pop of his Loggins and Messina days, to becoming king of the 1980s film soundtrack with songs like "Footloose" and "I'm Alright." At 74, he looks back over a life fairly well lived, recounting his burgeoning music career in California in the late 1960s and his meetings with almost every major star of the 1970s. Loggins takes readers on an informative but fairly familiar ride through the life of an American rock star. An interesting through line is his older brother, about whom he wrote "Danny's Song" when Danny first realized he was going to be a father. Danny was also instrumental in his brother becoming a recording artist as he worked in A&R for Columbia Records in 1970. Some of Loggins's anecdotes are surprisingly shallow, but he does provide great stories about songwriting and the recording process, and he's very candid about his two marriages and his relationships with people like Jim Messina, Michael McDonald, and many other musicians and writers with whom he's collaborated. VERDICT A sure hit, but just for devoted Loggins fans.—Peter Thornell

Library Journal

2022-04-08
A breezy journey through a prolific musical career and some personal turbulence.

Loggins (b. 1948) comes across as a genial guy who is eager to please. He details relationships in which he was the disciple who followed the leader only to resist and resent that sort of direction. Case in point: Jim Messina, the author’s longtime collaborator. Loggins had the voice, songs, and onstage charisma, but Messina was indisputably the leader who retained control (and had a more lucrative contractual detail). We also see this pattern in the breakup of Loggins’ second marriage, to a younger woman who had served as a kind of therapist and spiritual guide. When he developed ideas of his own about the relationship that conflicted with hers, she left him. With such narrative framing suggesting a lot of soul searching, the author mostly keeps things light, hitting all the marks common to rock-star memoirs: family struggles during childhood; the salvation through rock music, especially the Beatles; confidence gained through successful performing; and the drugs, groupies, depression, and dependence on antidepressants. Loggins doesn’t come across as the deepest thinker, but he’s clearly someone who works well with others, as his relationships with Michael McDonald, Stevie Nicks, Barbra Streisand, and a host of top-flight producers and studio musicians attest. As changing trends scuttled the careers of so many of his peers, he was able to navigate his way from country-tinged rock to blue-eyed soul to what would become known as yacht rock. In addition, Loggins scored big with soundtrack hits such as “Footloose” amid the music industry’s upheavals through disco and MTV. It has been decades since the author’s commercial peak, and he lost his major-label contract in 1998, but he has a fairly interesting story to tell, and he enjoys telling it. “At this point in my life,” he writes, “the struggle for the kind of acclaim I knew in the ’80s is a waste of energy.”

A good beach read for the yacht-rock generation.

Kirkus Reviews