Singer Eric Lowen on living with ALS
By Karen Meyer
August 12, 2007 -

video at http://abclocal.go.com:80/wls/story?...cal&id=5561092

Every day 15 people are diagnosed with the Lou Gerig's Disease. Three years ago, it struck singer-songwriter Eric Lowen, and he has vowed to fight back and raise awareness about the disability wherever he can.


Lowen has learned how to live, despite many physical changes he has been dealing with. Last month, ABC7 Chicago's Karen Meyer with Eric about living with ALS and performing:

Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro have celebrated their 20th anniversary.

"The biggest hit we ever had was with Pat Benetar in 1984, a song called 'We Belong,' and we've also had other hits that don't seem to stick around as long. We've had some songs with the Bangles, the Four Tops, several other artists. Dan wrote one for Dionne Warwick. I wrote one for David Lee Roth. There's been a lot," Lowen said.

But, March 17th, 2004, was a day Eric will never forget.

"I was starting to notice problems with walking. I had what's referred to as foot drop, when your muscles can't pick your foot up enough to clear the ground, and I tripped a couple times and had some bad falls," the artist said.

"Instead of going to the doctor, Eric went to a Web site to look up neurological disease.

"And I looked up Parkinson disease and multiple sclerosis figuring that it was something neurological and wanted to check on those two. I went to ALS just absolutely by chance. It was the first thing I went to after I ruled out the other two, and I looked at the symptoms, and I realized that 's exactly what I had right way," Lowen said.

The first person Eric told was Dan.

"The first thought I had was, 'No. Come on. You don't want that. That's incurable, untreatable and fatal. You don't want that. Nah, nah, it's got to be something else,'" Dan said.

As time went on, Eric changed physically.

" I guess the hardest thing for me to do, aside from the all the things of daily life which have become very difficult, but I'm losing the ability to play guitar, and it's been my friend since I was 14 years old, you know. Got me through difficult adolescence and everything else," Eric said.

Eric has written songs like "How mighty is the silence' that promotes ALS awareness.

After twenty years together, Lowen and Navarro are still touring as long as the music goes on.

" We've been working together in one form or another for almost 27 years, and I just want to keep it going we like this. This is fun, where you know, we're not doing this because we have to, even though we do have to, we do it because we want to," Dan said.

"Life is a journey. We're all on a journey&I think, to make it too morbid or just too concerned with poor me or the dark nature of the whole thing would be a mistake. So, we try to keep the songs that I write about, I write about the feelings that come from it and try to make it something that everyone can relate to," Eric said.

To learn more about Lowen and Navarro and ALS go to www.lownav.com or www.alsa.org.


ABC7 News Team

Karen Meyer, Feature Reporter on Disability Issues, ABC 7 News

RELATED: Karen's BIO
http://abclocal.go.com:80/wls/story?...cal&id=5561092