Grin In 1968, Lofgren formed the band Grin with bassist
George Daly and drummer Bob Berberich. Daly and Berberich were former players in the DC band The Hangmen. The group played in venues throughout the Washington, D.C., area. Lofgren met
Neil Young while Young was performing at the
Georgetown club
the Cellar Door, and began a long association. Young invited Lofgren to come to California and the Grin trio (Lofgren, Daly and Berberich) drove to California and lived for some months at a home Young rented in
Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. Lofgren would eventually use his album credits from working with Young to land Grin a record deal in 1971. Daly left the band early on to become a
Columbia Records A&R executive and was replaced by bassist Bob Gordon, who remained through the release of four critically acclaimed albums from 1971 to 1974, with guitar as Lofgren's primary instrument. The single "White Lies" got heavy airplay on Washington, D.C.-area radio. Lofgren wrote the majority of the group's songs and often shared vocal duties with other members of the band (primarily drummer Bob Berberich). After the second album, he added brother Tom Lofgren as a rhythm guitarist. Grin were released by their record company due to disappointing sales.
Solo career After Grin disbanded in 1974, Lofgren released his
self-titled debut solo album which was a success with critics; a 1975
Rolling Stone review by
Jon Landau labeled it one of the finest rock albums of the year, and
NME ranked it fifth on its list of albums of the year. Subsequent albums did not always garner critical favor, although
Cry Tough was voted number 10 in the 1976 NME Album round up;
I Came to Dance in particular received a scathing review in the
New Rolling Stone Record Guide. He achieved
progressive rock radio hits in the mid-1970s with "Back It Up", "Keith Don't Go" and "I Came to Dance". His song "Bullets Fever", about the
1978 NBA champion Washington Bullets, would become a favorite in the Washington area. In August 2014, a box set,
Face the Music, was released on the Fantasy label. The career-spanning retrospective contains nine CDs and a DVD covering 45 years. The creation of Lofgren's 2015 live album
UK 2015 Face the Music Tour was inspired by his wife Amy commenting that his recent live shows were the best she had seen him perform, as well as fans wanting to have a recording of the show they had just seen. Lofgren was a guest on a "Private Lives" one-hour radio special on East London Radio in the UK in October 2020. This series is shared across radio stations online and on FM/DAB, covering much of the UK. On July 21, 2023, he published his last album entitled Mountains. On February 6, 2026, Lofgren released the song, “No Kings, No Hate, No Fear”, as a free download on his website. The song was in response to
President Donald Trump,
ICE and the killings of
Renée Good and
Alex Pretti. Springsteen himself a little over a week earlier also released a song title "
Streets of Minneapolis" which touched on the same topics as Lofgren's song. Lofgren compared the current times to the
Vietnam War era saying “I have such
PTSD from those times. And this time … this is worse. And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to try writing an anthem that was primitive, that was honest, that didn’t have a lot of words, that was repetitive. Because we need that. I mean, I thought we evolved from the late ’60s with some of the great civil rights laws. And I just thought we were past that and evolving as a people. … we’re all watching in horror as people are getting killed in the street, and not just Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Other people are being killed, too. And our heart goes out to all of them. But it’s just unacceptable and horrific, and we gotta try to get out of it.”
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert featuring Lofgren as guest In 1984, he joined
Bruce Springsteen's backing band, the
E Street Band, In 2020, Springsteen released his album
Letter to You, which featured the E Street Band; a supporting tour was delayed until 2023 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Lofgren tested positive for
COVID-19, forcing him to miss one show on the tour in February 2023. It was the first show Lofgren had missed since joining the band in 1984.
Other work The late novelist
Clive Cussler lived close to Lofgren's Arizona home, and collaborated on a song with him titled "What Ever Happened to Muscatel?" On August 17, 2017, Lofgren was inducted into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame. In May 2018, Lofgren replaced
Frank Sampedro in Crazy Horse for their reunion concerts with Neil Young. On January 29, 2022, Lofgren pulled his music from
Spotify, after
Neil Young and
Joni Mitchell had done the same. This was in response to their belief that
COVID-19 misinformation was spread by the streaming service's
The Joe Rogan Experience. ==Musical equipment==