- The smooth singer of the soft-rock hit ‘I’d Really Love to See You Tonight’ passed away on March 25, 2009
- Seals had been given the nickname ‘England Dan’ because he loved the Beatles so much that he affected an English accent.
The smooth tenor voice of Dan Wayland Seals, who died of cancer in 2009 at the age 61 of cancer, is still reverberating the country music airwaves thirteen years on.
Dan Seals’ “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” spent seven weeks in the Top 40 in the autumn of 1976. While that song has since gone on to be a staple of soft-rock radio and Valentine’s Day-themed marketing, Seals enjoyed much greater success in the US.
Seals was born into a musical family in Pleasant Grove, west Texas – his father played with the country singer Ernest Tubb and he had two older brothers, Jim and Eddie, who were also musicians. Eddie played with the country singer-songwriter Jim Reeves and would enjoy a taste of success as part of the Champs, who scored a 1958 pop hit with Tequila. Dan played string bass in the family band.
After his parents divorced when he was 10, Seals moved with his mother to Dallas. Here he formed several high-school bands, the last of which, Southwest FOB, developed a local following, opening for groups including Led Zeppelin and signing with the Memphis soul label Stax/Volt. With his fellow band member John Coley, Seals formed England Dan & John Ford Coley in 1969, the duo deciding they wanted to pursue a softer sound than their band mates.
Seals had been given the nickname England Dan because he loved the Beatles so much that he affected an English accent.
Moving to Los Angeles, the pair quickly won a recording deal with A&M, but while they scored a No 1 hit in Japan in 1971 with the song Simone, the US market remained unimpressed and A&M dropped them. Dan’s older brother Jim was experiencing huge US success as part of Seals & Crofts in the early 1970s, and this encouraged Dan and John Coley to keep trying, even though they were not offered a recording deal for four years. In 1975 their manager suggested they record a song he had found on a demo from the Mississippi songwriter Parker McGee. That song was I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, and it not only won the duo a new recording contract but reached No 2 in the US and became a worldwide hit, selling more than two million copies.
The duo went on to enjoy several more US Top 10 hits, but by the 1980s tastes had changed; realising that their soft rock would not appeal to the MTV generation, the pair split. Seals released a solo album, but it flopped, and his house, van and bank accounts were seized because his management had not paid his taxes.
Signing to Capitol, Seals shifted to Nashville and began to record as Dan Seals. He initially struggled, but his voice and sentimental manner suited Nashville at a time when country music began to soften its rural styling. Seals started scoring hits on the country music charts in 1984. A 1985 duet with Marie Osmond, Meet Me in Montana, reached No 1 and Seals followed this with a run of eight chart-toppers. More hits followed, including his 11th country No 1 with a cover of Sam Cooke’s Good Times in 1990.
Just as the pop-rock market had changed radically in the 1980s, so did country music in the 1990s with the arrival of Garth Brooks’ turbo-charged anthems. Seals devoted more time to his family and his Baha’i faith, though he continued to record and tour; he performed at the Baha’i World Congress in 1992.
Among his popular tracks are: Everything That Glitters, You Still Move Me, Big Wheels in the Moonlight, They Rage On, Everybody’s Dream Girl, One Friend and You Really Go for the Heart.