Whenever I Call You "Friend"

About Whenever I Call You "Friend"

"Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" is a song written by Kenny Loggins and Melissa Manchester, which Loggins recorded for his 1978 album Nightwatch. Issued as a single, "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" reached #5 in the autumn of 1978. "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" is a duet with Stevie Nicks, who, though credited on the album track, is not credited on the single, making "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'," in effect, Loggins's first major solo hit. Melissa Manchester would say of her one-off songwriting collaboration with Kenny Loggins: "It came out of the oddity of the times - he and I kept running into each other at televised award shows, which were fairly new. .. We were frequently paired up to present awards together. We would meet and chat in the Green Room, and finally he asked if we could get together and write something. He came to my house one night and we polished off that song."Manchester would record her own version of the song for her 1979 self-titled album in a duet version with Arnold McCuller: Charles Donovan of AllMusic said Manchester's version was a "far more supple, elegant song" than the Loggins-Nicks duet. In 2012 Manchester, commenting on the absence of her version of "Whenever I Call You Friend" from her retrospective release Playlist: The Very Best of Melissa Manchester, stated: "The reason that it's not [included] is because I don't feel that I have a satisfactory version of the song... Kenny and I have not been able to schedule time to record it together, though we would both like to. We almost got together but our schedules just would not allow it. But the universe is going to create a better time for us to do that." more »