Gordon Lightfoot - Summer Staff Picks

this podcast, musician Gordon Lightfoot. My conversation with the Canadian singer songwriter of the nineteen seventies hits If You Could Read My Mind, Beautiful Sundown, and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald covers his beginnings in the industry, what changed in importance to him over time, and his battle with some serious health issues. Here's my two thousand sixteen conversation with Gordon Lightfoot. At times, I just don't know how

you could feel anything but beautiful. Over the course of a career that has lasted more than fifty years, Canadian singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has achieved a global stardom and exceptional influence. Bob Dylan's a fan. About Lightfoot's songs, Dylan said,

I can't think of any I don't like. These songs, which include Beautiful, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, If You Could Read My Mind, and many others, have been treasured by generations of popular musicians and listeners around the world.

Many people know about the folk music revival that brought Bob Dylan to New York in the early nineteen sixties, but north of the border there was an equivalent explosion of talent at that time, and Lightfoot, who got his start singing in boys choirs, found himself heading to Canada's cultural capital to try his luck. Beautiful Well, I was down in the in Toronto here looking for work, and I got a job as a coral performer and in

a television series that was on every week. And at the same time I branched out and began working in the folk uh oriented places, because the the folk revival had occurred around about nineteen sixty and I would have been maybe twenty twenty years old there about one and uh so I'd be working on the TV show in the daytime and going and working at the coffee houses at night. You know, you had a period we wrote jingles for commercials. Correct I tried, they locked me in

a room. One time, a manager in a place on Madison Avenue just left me there all afternoon. That go well, I wrote the commercial, but they didn't like it. They didn't play your version of the commercial. But you didn't, didn't You weren't in New York for a long time? Correct? Well, I would go back and forth in New York all

the time. My management company was in New York. I was one of the fortunate ones who was able to acquire a management situation south of the border, so to speak, down in the States, and that was in New York, and it was a great manager. He recognized my songwriting ability immediately, and uh, I got a couple of tunes recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary and one of them went up to number five on the Which on Board

chart for for loving me. That's what you get full loving me, that's what you get everything as you see, that's well you get me. And so I was introduced to the industry in the States really as a songwriter before they even knew that I sang, you know it was. It sort of happened on its own. Do you think it would have been Do you think you would have been happy to just stay in that place and just produce records and write music and was performing the goal

all along? Did you want were you aching to do that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to even as a child, you know, I didn't mind singing in my grandmother's house and the Sunday get together, you know that they would single me out and I would solo. I enjoyed the feel of the communication that I and I can feel it then, and uh, that's what I feel now. I feel I feel a communication when I haven't wonder if a band and we have a great repertoire and we we just lay the

stuff right out there for them, just pure joy. Yeah, joy doing that. But when when you were take care of if it pays the bills, that's a that's a desirable silver lining there benefit. Yeah, all that hard work, well, but when you were writing, when you turn that corner and singing takes over. You know, I was doing that like like small time stuff, and all of a sudden I was asked to come to New York and open for Paul Butterfield concert sixty six thereabouts. I suppose you

won the radio then recording. No, we didn't actually get on the radio until about seventy one and what was the first song that? I mean, I have a list here, but what was it? If you could read my mind? If you could read my mind, you know that Google was just beating I be as long as you can't see. The record was out. It was my first album on Warner Brothers. And uh it was out for eight months and there was no single, and all of a sudden, rather promotion, guys said to his girlfriend, we listen to

this and come back and give me an opinion. On Monday morning, his girlfriend she likes, if you could read my mind, where are the heart? He's gone? The hero would be baby hero. Often you won't read that book because the just if you could read my mind hits the charts, so to speak, It becomes a big hit for you. What changes for you? Like did you just have to sit there and say, oh, I people are telling you to do things differently and now you're gonna be a success and they want you to we get

so basically we got to hire an aircraft. Literally, that's what happened. We had to hire an aircraft. Everyone wants to book the same give in the same place, two different places in one day. So and when you reached that point of the and then that turning point is the is the next imperative. You've gotta start coming up with more songs and writing more songs. Oh yeah, record, Yeah.

We made three more albums and nothing happened, but we but I kept doing one a year and and something had to give eventually, and then, Uh, one summer I wrote that song Sundown. I knew that it was it was going to happen, that it was, it was the right thing, and it did. When we're up to number one. That was our second one. Then it was almost seven two albums later that we had the wreck of the Evan and Fitzgerald. And that happened all by itself too

that that became a responsibility. It did very large responsibility. The song became a responsible Fitzgerald. But but tell me in your own words. Many bowl go on about that, about the tragedy and the history, and it's a very important song to people, you know, Canadian history. People talk about it very reverentially. Why was it important to you?

Because it was only one verse, uh, contained any conjecture of any kind, and the rest of it was taken from directly from newspaper articles and the aftermath, which only lasted for about three days. If I had not wrote that song, everybody would have forgotten about it a week after it happened. Uh, I said, people are all around the Great Lakes area are going to wonder if this song is appropriate. And some did wonder about it, whether it was appropriate for me to have written a song

that kind. But I had gone, uh, pretty much with the newspaper articles that I scraped up. We had no CPS in those days, and you went back that, you went to the publisher and got the back copies of the newspapers. And uh, so it's it's accurate. It's it's it's accurate in the way the story unfolds. I remember

the night I wrote it. I was working in a deserted house and there was there was a heck of a windstorm going on right in Toronto that night, and I remember myself wondering, G, I wonder what it's like up on the on the Great Lakes right now, because I sailed up there myself. I had a couple of two different sailboats up there, and wondered always, I wonder

what the Great Lakes are like tonight? Because you're always hearing but what things happening up in the Great Lakes, And eleven o'clock in the evening, there was a report of a ship sinking three hours earlier in Lake Superior. And they're out looking for the people and they never found any of them, and uh, twenty nine people gone.

And I had a melody and I had some cords that I was knocking around in this deserted house with the wind howling outside my Really, it was kind of kind of a classic sitting to to write a song like that. So I began writing the song and finished writing like two or three weeks later. We were right in the middle of a recording, a series of recording sessions at the times that we put it in and didn't work the first day, we put it in the second day, and uh, did you ever stomp? And Tom Connors? No,

I will. Now I'm gonna run down and get all of stomping Tom Connor he was recording. He was one of very, very famous Canadian folk artists. Stomping Tom Connor's Poaches hit and so that sounds like a hit. He just heard the the melody going like, he didn't heard the lyrics or anything. So that the appeal of the song is definitely in the melody and the chord changes, and then the story of the actually vent itself. I got as accurately as I could by pursuing old news articles.

The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound, and the wave rope over the really and every man you, as the captain did to was the witch should love and stealing the don came late in the breakfast, had the week when the girls in November, came slashing in afternoon, came at the squeezing rain in the face of a hurricane west wind. We'll have more with Gordon Lightfoot after the break I'm a mic Baldwin and this is here's the thing. I spoke with musician Gordon Lightfoot in two

thousand sixteen. I was curious how his musicianship had changed over time and what it was like for him recording and performing in the early days. The first time I started doing it, I felt and like, not confident in what I was doing. What I was hearing, I didn't. I didn't like what I was hearing of your own stuff. Yeah, I like the sound of the sound of my voice

bothered me. And and you know I I started working on that stuff and I and I've been working on it ever since on my vocal and I have worked on my my antonation on my instruments. Someone told me that that when you land, because you perform in so many different areas, you really dwell on tuning your instruments

a lot. Correct. Yeah, sometimes I changed it around too, but but but I've learned through the years that there is a method that you can get me into into Scarborough fair Country, you know, like the like the sound that Simon and Garfunkel used to get on there acoustic orchestral ranges that they put together for their songs, and actually only came it came real for me maybe six or seven years ago after I was recovering from a mini stroke that I had and I had to practice

a lot more all of a sudden. So it really got me zero in on it. And it it all comes down to the fifth and the octaves. You know, just leave it at that. I'm just a handmaid in here for all you guitar people out there. That's Gordon Lightfoot's gift to you and his present to you. That's the fifth and the octaves. And I don't have one, damn. The fifth and the I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but there it is. There's his message to you today. Open McCartney told me when I spoke

to him once. Paul told me that he said, in the beginning they would go into a recording studio of the Beatles, and he said, you know, it was really these weren't his words, but the message was kind of like time is money. He said, these guys were luck. You know, we want two songs in the morning, and then you go have a lunch break and get down to the pub and you have a cigarette, you have a pufficient chips or wherever you come back. They want

two songs. And later they really moved along at a clip when they were doing the first albums for Parlophone or whoever it was, or E. M. I. And then when they became, you know, the success they obviously became, then they would take a year, you know, all musicians, and then they would take a year to do their next album. You know, they would do Sergeant Pepper's or whatever. One really really luxuriate and getting every time. They gave them more time because it was worth it was worth

that investment for them. Was the same true with you do you find that the more successful you became, the more time you wanted to make music. Perhaps later on, but I I pretty much stuck to the to the schedule as much as I could. We made like eight or nine albums and ten years there, so you didn't feel rushed by them. No, we were getting more time. But but I was also also improving because what I didn't like hearing I was I was changing all the time,

and it was always an improvement venture. Like a guy building himself up and for play on an important sports team, you know they got it. This just not just the game, it's the preparation. Say you haven't played for for a month and all of a sudden you've got to get back up on stage. You should be able to crank it or just like it was just you did a show last night. But you liked rehearsing. Yeah, well you

believe in rehearsing. Are you're learning new material or you're going back into the the old catalog, which we do because I have a rotational situation going on, the biggest problem my whole life been too many tunes, too many women for my listeners. Right now, Gordon Lightfoot is turning sheepishly towards his wife with a sheepish quin on his face, and she just patted his shoulder to say, it's okay, Gordon, Well, I can't step under your toes. Yeah, you can't do that.

But but I remember reading I remember listening to an article. I remember reading an article that the Rolling Stones did years ago, and I was taken by how, you know, in terms of musicianship, Jagger and Keith, for two, were very, very married to rehearsal. And for you to say that as a great meaning to me. For you, someone who as great an artist as you are, that the preparation and the preparation beforehand so that when you when the audience is there, bloom, you strum that guitar and you're

you're ready. You're ready. Yeah. And we we have the the orchestra itself. I have four really challenged guys and very loyal people. I read about that your band is very loyal to you. Well, I mean it's there's no reason why they should be. You know, we're all we're all the same path. I mean, we we just want to do a great job and you gotta like make almost make a science out of it. I don't know my guys are all professionals. I mean they're they're serious musicians.

Yeah yeah, and they do other things. I just got to let them know what's coming up. You know, what were you listening to back then in the sixties when you were coming up, Who did you listen to? Well, I was sing country music, you know, hack snow and then folks. It was Pete Seeger and it was Bob Gibson. It was Bob Dylan and and Simon and Garfuncle and you know, Peter Paula Mary and and Ian and Sylvia. They were a duet and they were it was a

beautiful act that they had. Eventually met these people, well I met, but you became one of them my management company because they were the first ever to do one do any of my songs. It was Ian and Sylphia, which one for Loving Me and Early Morning Rain. I found an opening with the Folk Revival, you know, so I was lucky to be a part of that, to ride that one through and survive. Uh, there's there's nothing much out there these days, you know, they're they're they're busking.

We We've got a whole bunch of people here in Toronto who are harvering around all the time that the folk oriented artists who are songwriters and you know, trying to get somewhere, and some of some of them are succeeding in summer or not. I get to hear a lot of this stuff because it comes across my desk and I get to hear it, and you wish, you know that something grand could happen for these people, but you don't know what to do. All you're gonna do

is respond encourage. Yeah, where do you think people learn to hone their craft as a musician in in in clubs and performing live? Well, I was as well as I was working in bars to you know, like bars and lounges as well as the coffeehouses, and so I had a the kind of a repertoire that was acceptable to play bars. So I got him following in a

couple of these bars. Then then I've sort of moved uptown into the the village area Yorkville which was just coming into bloom here in town, and get into places like like the Purple Onion and then the Riverboat, which was really the plumb of the whole lot was the Riverboat because Bernie Feeder brought every person into that place you could fastly imagine played there from James Taylor to Joni Mitchell to to Neil Young right on down the line. Is he is he a friend of yours? Yes? He is? Yeah.

Your songs and you're singing of your song, you're performing of your songs is so vulnerable and so emotional. What was the most difficult song for you to write or among the most difficult songs for you to write? I'll tell you that a lot of times you don't know what you're doing it. If you you you're drawing the material from your subconscious you don't you don't actually know

what you're doing. You're you know, you're drawing it from somewhere, and then later down the line, three or four weeks later, you're gonna sign it back to uh, the actual event that product on. I mean, that's like if you could read my mind. Just it's about actually that the crumbling of a relation was that painful for you to write. No, because I didn't know what I was doing when I

wrote it. It just I didn't tell me that all these beautiful folks songs that people weep when they listen to, you're just like tossing it off, like I don't really know what this is. Let's take a song for example. Let me let me pick one song and one of my favorite songs of yours. I mean a song that I just kills me. It is beautiful. Describe to me recording the song beautiful? I mean, do you go out with your friends and you get ship faced drunk and you come in with a hangover and just lay this

thing down and you play poke ro all night? Or do you enter a state? First? I get a card progression, then I get a melody. It's fifth syn octaves. People, it's fifth syn octaves that I get the lyric, You got the melody, You got the cards, but you don't know. So you you draw. You find an idea that that that fits the fits the melody. That's Gordon Lightfoot, this songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot, the singer, the performer. Do you enter a state? Do you take yourself to a place when you perform

your recorded music? Or you don't? Well, I can, I can use my imagination. I actually saw it as as a seer love turned to a guy for his wife or his his girlfriend. It reminds me when when I was I learned how to sing with the emotion when I was about twelve, when I was doing handling material from Handles Messiah over the voice of Him who Criss

and the wilderness and all that sort of thing. And I learned what emotion meant when when I were saying handle Handles Messiah at age twelve, I sent in a competition, uh so so I could apply. It was easier for me to apply to summon up that emotional uh something or whatever it is when it came time to put that song down. But I didn't have to the point

at the beginning that I wanted to have it. And that's how I've been working on all my life is getting controlling that Inhal approached her man, make any it work for me. You don't want to overdo it, you know, you don't. You know that's what's beautiful about your music as you go right up to a point. But you don't do a lot of handholding. You let the audience do the crying for you. You know what I mean, you're your We we balance it off with a lot of toech happers got lots of For a prime example

of the delivery, Gordon Lightfoot does so well. You don't have to look beyond this song sundown, I can see you learned back seven Christ where you do what you don't confess your better ticket coming up. Lightfoot talks about some of his musical inspirations that explains why he and Bob Dylan can't get along right away. Explore the Here's the Thing Archives. I talked with a very different kind of songwriter, Tom York from the British rock band Radiohead.

He tells me how his producer gave him the confidence to explore wild new electronics sounds. I mean I was like, um, a kid being given a hammer. I was just hamming rely on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing, but he was kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd come and literally tidy up the mess on the computer. Take a listen at Here's the Thing, dot Org. I you that you beautiful. This is Alec Baldwin and

you were listening to Here's the Thing. Gordon Lightfoot has straddled the worlds of pop and folk music for decades, but his confessional songwriting appealed to country music performers like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr. And Glen Campbell as well. They all covered his songs, and there's a good reason. That's what Lightfoot was listening to when he started thinking about what kind of musician he wanted to be. It was probably a country music I made the crossover in

adult contemporary music, you know, uh, fairly soon. And and there was a lot of good writing going on in the folk revival too, and I got I was influenced by that. So you didn't come into the music business and say I want to be Sinatra, I want to be Elvis, I want to be Dylan. I think you want to find your own voice. Yeah, I didn't. I certainly did not take ide of the fact that I was really influenced by Bob Dylan because of the not only the quality of the work, but the the output

that they achieved. He was prolific. Yeah, that was the amazing part. But it said, well it can be that easy for him, I must surely be be easier for me. I mean, if he can do this much work, surely I can can do this much work. While appreciating the music that he was producing at the time. When did you first meet him, uh, nineteen in Woodstock, Well, it

was a it was an interesting time. I we actually didn't didn't get along when we when we first now he criticized my my my rules at playing Manhattan on his pool table in Woodstock, and I got a little got a little sarcastic about it, and we were all he was very sarcastic, and I started seeing this coming on to me and I left. I left their their house, I went back down the hill to Albert's house. Albert's Albert Grossman, who he was the manager. I had sure

part of that stable, that stable, yea. So it was to say, since I knew him for so many years after that, because we're all working in the same place, I became sort of party party central for them when they when they came to Toronto, which was often, and with the band and everybody, and we had a great time, and I, you know, it was good to have known have known Bob. Um. Is it safe to say, because I've read this in different articles and so forth, when

I was reading up about you. Um, then when you say you got together and had a good time, was there a period of your life where you had too much of a good time? Well, I mean there was lots of drinking went on, you know, there was a little bit of everything. It just depended upon how severely were affected by it and what kind of a constitution that you possessed I did. I drank heavily right up

until and then all of a sudden I stopped. And I asked how I stopped for twenty three years because it was gonna was gonna ruin my career, and I was making rrational, irrational decisions. And one night I tried to climb from from one balcony to the next in an apartment building on the tenth floor. Ye, sure, as a party going on? What you want from I love that? What was a better party in that other wing over there? Saying there was two folks, there was room for me

to jump from the one balcony to the next. Did you make it? Yes? Well I've said it. I've just here talking. Do you want the phone and broken new leg or something? Who I was on the tenth floor, I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. Things like that, you know. The other things that I did, they were bad judgments, you know, and you know, with people, and I felt that I was offending people sometimes, and I did the last thing I wanted to offend anyone, you know,

And uh, That's what I felt. When I wrote to Fitzgerald, I said, I hope I'm not going to offend any of the relatives of these men. You know, was it never communicated to you that you had Did anybody suggest that? No? No, it never appreciated what you did, honored we We just went to the fortieth anniversary ourselves, just this last novembery week. Where was it? Health Lake Superior. I've been fifteen miles thirty miles northwest of sou Sain Marie at the white

Fish Point. Wow. Um, you know you have had some very impactful health issues. You had a stroke and then you had Bell's palsy and you couldn't have What's it like to lose feeling in your fingers and you were a guitar player? Well asked me what it was like when I had the ortal aneurysm okay, what was it like when you had the a ortal any ofism? Well, putting me out out of business for two years didn't really? Ye put me out of business for two What do you was that two thousand and two? What were the

symptoms of that? You pass out and you don't wake up. The annuals and burst for six weeks. Yeah, what were you feeling in the weeks prior? I would have bouts of stomach ache and I'd have to lay out of my belly on the bed for a while. Yeah, then I would subside. And that went on over a period of several years, and it started about ten years before the actually event occurred. So there is a warning, there is there's third warning signals it's a paint pretty bad

stomach ache. And yeah, that was years ago. That was young, Yeah, seventy two, I think they're about. Yeah. I had to stop performing for three months and then I got enough of a where stopped puffing enough that I was able to go back to work again. So I just I just bolted boulder through so so to speak. And then you had a stroke at so he came back that that was a mini strokes that affected my right hand, which was very disturbing. That wasn't two two thousand and six.

That was when I really started practicing, and that's when I really improved learned how to really get my instruments in tune at the same time, So I derived a benefit from from that. How do American radio interview hosts differ from Canadian radio interview hosts. No difference that I can see people. Folks are folks. I the cousins all cousins here in North America political. That's why I never moved down there. I've I've got, I've I've follow I'm I'm I'm a political fan. I'm a fan of of

watching the political process. Observer. Well, you you had the situation with the song in Detroit Black Day in July. Yeah, been from the Detroit Riots, and you wrote a song about that and and cause you a little bit of a grief in the record we released a single. Did you and did you feel that that was something that you resented or like, how did you feel when you got I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was almost like like the reck well like like it was, uh, well,

I should have. I was working in the city a lot in the truck always circuit there. There was something about it. I kept saying, maybe I shouldn't have written a song like this. You know, it was written as a folk song for an album. The record the Fitzgerald was written as a folk song for an album and to political purposes, as signed by other people. You didn't have a political purpose when you wrote the song interesting,

just a story and the soul of motor City. It's fared across the land, is taken in the heads of the son of the fathers who came into this did b and when when the record company took the song off the air? So it didn't piss you off. The record companies never pissed you off. No, never, when they told you what songs to put on the album, what songs not to put on the album, never bothered you. Well, we sat we always worked that out together. You did. Yeah, uh.

With with the exceptions that's necessary. Early in the career too, before I had the level of authority that I that I needed to establish, I was in, I was produced and and I uh, I used to be able to discuss the custom discuss things with them there and very fortunately fortunately to be able to do that. What song that when you sing it, you could sit there and go, man,

I really really nailed that. That's a good song. There's a lot of them, But what's one that just comes out of east of midnight, East of midnight, East of midnight. That's that's one of my very best ones. But somewhere is the midnight west of anywhere us around I don't do that. I usually do it. No, don't you know why I don't do it? Though you're such an East at midnight's my best song, man, I don't do that

if I did it for years. This is my last four or five albums are probably the five best polbums I made. But unfortunately my my momentum had run out with the record company at that point. But I still kept producing because it isn't that interesting. You just said my last four or five albums with the best albums I've ever do really believe that? Sure you do? Yeah, you've been one of those albums between what period of time nineteen nine two and in two thousand and six?

Do you recorded in an album in two thousand six? Right before you got sick? Nineteen years I made five of the best albums I've finished an album while I was when I was down with the aneurism, I finished an album there. I took my mind off my condition entirely. So it was very fortutors that I had a whole bunch of stuff City and the UH in the can at the time, as they used to say. And the best one of the whole lot is is Easter Midnight? Do you write songs, now, I could. I always have

four or five tunes on the on the back. Your wife is practically groaning behind your nodding head, like, yes, of course, there's always tunes in the back burner. What beautiful songs? What do you when you write songs? Now? What do you write about? I just ming from one to the other. I want to kill you. I just right about whimsy. I try. I try to sound sound intelligent. Yeah, what's on your mind? Though? Well? I was thinking about the but the one that has the turtle in it,

I like that. I think she likes the fact that I introduced the turtle into this song. Is that the part you like about it? Darling? You know you know what I'm saying here. It's amazing. It's it's amazing. Your wife is this gorgeous young woman. And I realized the glue of this marriage is you write songs about turtles for your wife's that I don't. That's just what one scene.

I've got a bullshit my wife every day and convinced her into staying with me, and you just sit there and go, I wrote this song for your baby, a song about a turtle. I know, I know it's it's like, come if you will. Well, the earth is still fertile. Lady, I see so Edi through the eyes of a turtle. Turtles are soft and they they've got feelings too. Maybe they think too quicktly for me or for you, And

it really doesn't matter. We gotta end there, maybe well maybe not, maybe not, just to show you the kind of a stuff and okay, into the microphonety well, back to the stable, Lady, I see Marilyn Monroe and their stands. Clark Gable held me off the cow. She'll stop the show. There's many a good hand felt a chilly wind blow, and it doesn't really matter. Don't ask you. You don't why I write that stuff, asking about oh yeah, well, we'll see I I sang it for twenty five years.

But it's really vicious. It's very it's just a very vicious. The song of un quite a love song, and it was it was written during the time when I was I was, I was still married, and I wondered, my goodness, what what does my It was like almost like a world Chamberlain. I've had a hundred more like you. I'll

have a thousand four him through. It was one of the lines in it, and I was married to someone and I've you know, I hated singing the song, and finally I stopped singing it the same way as I stopped drinking in But even that only lasted for twenty three years. Been saying it again. No, you don't sing the song. You won't think a lot of people do. But other people recorded singing Elvis Elvis press for me. That's what you get for loving me. I gotta say,

I look at these album covers you are. You're one of the best using guys I've ever seen in my life. I mean, was that tough for you? Let tough part of your career? Well, I think it helped you. Probably, I'm sure. I'm sure it did, but I'm sure sure best have what's next? When are you going on the road again? Friday morning? I feel a little blue. I can't there's still a lot of things and I should know anyone could get I don't know how to brand

my Saturday. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by my Heart Radio. I feel a little saying to watch them leave the cool because I don't feel the happy times. Agoe. I can still