News and Guts Media/AXS TVVeteran pop-rock singer/songwriter Kenny Loggins is the guest on the latest installment of the Dan Rather-hosted AXS TV series The Big Interview, which premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.
Loggins’ conversation with Rather was recorded at Cleveland’s Severance Hall after Kenny’s May 2018 concert with the 100-piece Youth Contemporary Orchestra. He chats about a variety of aspects of his long career, including the popular songs he’s recorded for successful films like Footloose, Caddyshack, Top Gun that helped win him the nickname “king of the soundtracks.”
“The movie thing is an interesting synergy, because the movie lifts the song, the song lifts the movie,” Loggins notes in a preview clip from the program. “And back then, it hadn’t been done. Pop music and movies were not necessarily symbiotic. And all the sudden it was working. And MTV…was playing the videos from the movies.”
In another clip from the show, Kenny shares a story about how a high school girlfriend offered some unexpected help after he ran into a legal hurdle regarding a song he wrote that would become one of Loggins and Messina’s most enduring tunes.
“I had a song that I’d written called ‘House at Pooh Corner,'” Kenny recalls. “And I was a senior in high school and I was about to graduate…And then I find out that the Disney lawyers have put the kibosh on it, and there’s no way they can record it.”
As luck would have it, the girl he was dating at the time was the daughter of Disney’s then-CEO, and thanks to her, his song was able to be released.
Other highlights of Loggins’ Big Interview episode include Kenny sharing some backstage memories from the recording of the famous charity single “We Are the World.”
Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.