Photo courtesy of Robin Risvold
When his sister came to visit her rock singer brother Fergie Frederiksen in Mound, she called him "Denny" and everyone in the room looked at her like she was crazy.
Then she learned to toe the line around her younger brother, who was the second lead singer of the Grammy-winning, hit-making Los Angeles band Toto. He recorded only one album, "Isolation," with the band, in 1984,and stayed with Toto for only two years. But he sang with many rock bands including Trillion, LeRoux and World Classic Rockers.
Frederiksen, who lived in the Twin Cities since the 1990s, died Saturday of liver cancer in his home. He was 62.
"He loved music, he loved golf, he loved his family and his kids, and he loved the Lord first of all," said his sister, Charlene Wilkerson, of Kentwood, Mich.
Frederiksen last performed in the summer in Sweden and Japan with Legends: Voices of Rock, a collection of classic-rock singers including Bobby Kimball of Toto and Bill Champlin of Chicago.
On Dec. 15, friend Mike Woodley helped put together a celebration of Frederiksen's life at the Bayview Event Center in Excelsior. "There was a turn-away crowd," said Woodley, a veteran Twin Cities broadcaster, "and people flew in on their own dime – Bobby Kimball, Jimi Jamison of Survivor, Alex Ligertwood of Santana, Fran Cosmo of Boston. Isn't that cool to do something while you're still around? He was still strong enough to talk."
Woodley figures that Frederiksen was "lucky because he fixed everything that was wrong in his life." That included taking his ex-wife on a date to the State Fair in 2012 to see Loverboy singer Mike Reno perform.
