Keep the Fire by Kenny Loggins

Keep the Fire – Kenny Loggins

Released in 1979 by CBS Records

Honestly, when this album came out, I vaguely knew Loggins from his days as a duo with Jim Messina. And in 1978, Loggins had this big hit with Stevie Nicks singing back-up on “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’”. I liked that song because I was a massive Nicks and Fleetwood Mac fan.

By year end of 1978, the Doobie Brothers released their monster album, Minute By Minute, that contained the song, “What A Fool Believes” and was written by Michael McDonald and… Loggins.

McDonald and Loggins were on a roll and wrote the song, “This Is It”, which was the first single from Loggins’ 1979 album, Keep the Fire.

Now that year, 1979, was the first time I began to listen to the American Top 40 that was played every Sunday on 99.5 RT. I was in Grade Six and if I wasn’t playing my less than 10 records, I would listen to DZRJ and DWRT and tape songs on the radio.

“This Is It” was a massive hit that year and I could be wrong here but if I recall correctly, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” was the top song. Other songs from the California soft rock scene included Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind”, the Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why”, and the Dirt Band’s “An American Dream”.

I remember this time because Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” entered the charts and who didn’t have a crush on Benatar? I did.

Around this time and it was early 1980, the second single from Loggins’ album, the title track, “Keep the Fire” was released as a single. I like it so much. The use of the vocoder in the beginning of the song. The way the Loggins sings on the song especially at the end, a McCartneyesque wail out. Loved it.

I purchased the single (the album much later when I could afford it on my meager schoolboy’s allowance because the priority was Pink Floyd’s The Wall) at Musikland in Ali Mall.

Cut to about six years ago from today, a fictional short film about the cover of Keep the Fire was released in some indie film fest. Having lost the album through the years, I went out and got it. Again. And I just love listening to it now (Michael Jackson does backup vocals on “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong). Listening to that album brings me to a happy place at a time when I opened up to music. I wasn’t just into the heavy/hard rock that is now classified as “Classic Rock” but I was expanding.