Gordon Lightfoot on Dylan, Neil Young, and Stompin' Tom Connors

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 generation

is 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 place, just 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 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 and just left me there all afternoon. That well, I 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. Before 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 I was in New York and it was a great manager. He recognized my songwriting ability immediately, and uh I got a couple of tunes to recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, and one of them went up to number five on the Board chart for for loving Me. That's what you get.

Full of me, that's what you get. Everything head as you can see, that's what you give 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 you would have been Do you think you would have been happy to just stay in that place and just produce records and and write music and was performing the goal all along? Did you want were you aching to do that? Oh? Yeah, 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 could fail it then, and uh, that's what I feel now ifel I feel a communication. I have a wonderful band and we have a great repertoire, and we just lay the stuff right out there for them, just pure joy. Yeah, joy doing that when when you

were take care of off it pays the bills. That's a that's a desirable silver lining. There benefit 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 oh that goost is bea and I won't never be said free as long as I'm I'm a ghost, 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, well 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 the heart he's gone, the hero would be me. Hero often feel you won't read that book because they just do. 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 same give in the same place, two different places in one day. So and when you reach 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 something had to give eventually, and then, uh, one summer I wrote that song Sundown, and I knew that it was it was going to happen, that it was it was the right thing, and it did. When we were up to number one. That was our second one. That it was almost seven two albums later that we had the wreck of the Avan Fitzgerald. And that happened all by itself too.

That became a responsibility. It did very large responsibility, became a responsible Fitzgerald. But but tell me in your own words. Many people go on about that, about the tragedy and the history, and it's a very important song to people, you know, doing 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 of 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 I 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 chords 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 it 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 get all of stomping. Tom Connor. He was recording. He was one of our very famous Canadian folk artists. Stomping Tom Connor's poaches hit and so that sounds like

a hit. He just heard the the elogy going like he didn't heard the lyrics or anything, so that the appeal of the song is definitely in the melody and the card changes, and then the story of the actual event itself. I got as accurately as I could by pursuing old news articles. The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound in the wave roble. The really every man who asked the captain did was the witch

should love? And stealing the dunk came late in the breakfast had to wait when the girls in November came slashing afternoon came at the squeeze and rain in the pace of herdricay in west wind? What was recording and performing music like back then? Did it seems im blur to you? Is it? Is it? What was it like for you to be you and do what you do in the early days as compared to later on into

now for that matter. The first time I started doing it, I felt 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 you know, I I started working on that stuff and I and I have 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 Garth Uncle used to get on there acoustic orchestral ranges that they

put together for their songs. And uh 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 handmaiden 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 day 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. 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. So these guys

were luck. You know, we want two songs in the morning, and then you go have a lunch break and go down to the pub and you have a cigarette, you have a pufficient chips or where you come back. They want two songs. And after 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 name, and 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. It was always an improvement venture like a guy building himself up and for playing 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 the 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 on your toes. You know 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 that as a great meaning to me. For you, someone who as great an artist as you are, that the preparation and the preparation aforehand 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 artistra 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 that there's no reason why they should not 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 make it 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 as the 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 Paulamary and and Ian and Sylvia. They were a duet and they were it was a beautiful act that they had. Eventually you met these people, well, I met when 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 Syphia 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 write 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 to a whole bunch of people here in Toronto who are horvering 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 the stuff because it comes across my desk and I get to hear it, and you wish, you know that something grant could happen for these people, but you don't know what to do.

Alegandrews 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 too, you know, like bars and lounges as well as the coffee houses. And so I had a the kind of a repertoire that was acceptable to play a bar. So I got him following

in a couple of these bars. Then then I've started moved uptown into the the village area of Yorkville, which was just coming into bloom here in town, and get into places like like the Purple Onion, and then the river Boat, 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 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? Right, I'll tell you that a lot of times you don't know what you're doing it. You've 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 brought it on. I mean, that's like if you could read my mind, just it's about actually the the crumbling of a relation with that painful for you to write No, because I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote it. 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 is beautiful described to me recording the song beautiful, I mean 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 poker roll 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 se octaves. Then I get the lyric. You got the melody, you got the cards, but you don't know, so 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 a sincere 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 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 it 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 emotional approach to it and making it work for me. You don't want to overdo it, you know,

you don't to get do you know? I think that's what's beautiful about your music is 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 toe chappers. 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 back in setting this where you do what

you don't confess you better ticket coming up. Lightfoot talks about some of his musical inspirations. It explains why he and Bob Dylan didn't get along right away. Explore the Here's the Thing archives. I talk with a very different kind of song writer, 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. Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org. I'm telling 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 Glenn Campbell as well. They all covered his songs. And there's 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

into adult contemporary music, you know, fairly soon. 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. Think you want to find your own voice. Yeah I didn't. I certainly did not take light 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 and it said, oh, 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. Will appreciating the music that he was producing at the time. When did you first meet him? Uh, nineteen? Was that like 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 there, he criticized my my my rules at playing Manhattan on his pool table in Woodstock, and I got a little he 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 to be sure part of that stable stable sons to say, said to 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 there. 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 good. I was going to ruin my career and I was making unrrational, irrational decisions. And one night I tried to climb from from one balcony to the next in an apartment building on the tenth floor. Sure, as a party going on, and what you want to go from one? I love that? What was a better party in that other wing over there? Say 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 your leg or something? Who knows 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 the Fitzgerald I said, I hope I'm not going to offend any of the relatives of these men. You know. Was he never communicated to you that you had Did anybody suggest that? No? No, it never appreciated what you've been honored. We we just went to the fort anniversary ourselves just this last novembery week. Where was it? Health Lake Superior, up fifteen miles thirty miles northwest of South Say 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 aneurism. Okay, what was it like when you had the a ortal anyism. Well, putting me out of business for two years didn't really? Yeah, business for two What do here? Was that two thousand

and two? What were the symptoms of that? You pass out and you don't wake up, I mean the annualism bursts for six weeks. What were you feeling in the weeks prior? I would have bouts of stomach ache and I'd have to lay out on 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 pain, pretty bad stomach ache and lights. Yeah that was years ago. That 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. Gradually came back that that was a mini stroke that

effected my right hand, which was very disturbing. That wasn't two thousand 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, No difference. Folks are folks. I always appreciated the cousins cousins here in North America.

You're not political, that's probably 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 then cause you a little bit of a Grief and the record we released a single. Did you and you do feel that that was something that you resented or like, how

did you feel when you got pulled? I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was almost like like the wreck, well like like it was, uh, well, I should have. I was working in the city a lot, in the always circuit. There there was something but 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 of the Fitzgerald was written as a folk song for an album. And the 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 Motive City is spared across the land, is taken in the heads of the son of the fathers who came into this lack And when when the record company took the song off the air, so it didn't piss you off. The record company's 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, I never

bothered you. Well, we saw 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 and the level of authority that I that I needed to establish, I was in, I was produced and I 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. So 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 my very best ones. But midnight, west of anywhere around. I don't do that. I usual to do it. No, don't you know why I don't do it, though you're such a funny 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 albums 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'd become one of those albums between what period of time nineteen

Nino and in two thousand and six? Do you recorded in an album in two thousand six, right before you got sick? Five five 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 h and the can at the time, as they used to say, And the best one of the whole lot is East 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, beautiful songs. What do you when you write songs? Now? What do you write about? I just very read jumping from one to the other, want to kill you? I just write about whims there. 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 to think that I introduced a turtle into this song. Is that the further you're liking about it? Darling? You know you know what I'm seeing. 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. It's that don't have that advantage, that 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 the song for your baby, 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 society through the eyes of a turtle. Turtles are soft and they they've got feelings too. Maybe they think too correctly 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 microphone. Many 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 know why I write that stuff? Asked him about for loving me? Oh yeah, well, we'll see. I I sang for twenty

five years. But it's really vicious. It's it's it's just a very vicious. The song of a 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 wild 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, 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 sang 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 loving me. That's what you get for loving me.

I gotta say, I look at these album covers. You're You're one of the best loping guys I've ever seen in my life. I mean, was that tough for you? To 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 what's next? When are you going on the road again? Friday Morning, A little Blue. There's still a lot of things and I should know anyone can get I don't know how to friend my Saturday Lo.

This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to here's the Thing I feel, saying to watch them leave go because I don't believe the happy times. Agoe, I can still boot mysel