My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I know to ask any of you what your favorite Gordon lyrics are is probably one question none of us can answer. Some of mine are from the "Wreck". But the one set that always puts a smile on my face is from "Did She Mention My Name". I love them! And the part I absolutely love is:

"Is the landlord still a loser,
do his signs hang in the walls?
Are the young girls still as pretty,
in the city in the fall?
Does the laughter on their faces,
still put the sun to shame?"

And by the way..........did I mention this is one of my favorite songs. Although when most people ask me what my favorite is, I barely ever mention it as being. But whenever I hear it, I know it's one of my tops.Just wondering what other sets of lyrics that other Gordon fans really dig and why? My reason is being able to relate to as a youngster having some tough landlords (they had every right to be), and couldn't wait for the weekends to go out and meet some pretty girls. Heck! Did not even wait for the weekends. This song really does conjure up memories of maybe a lost love and back home times.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

My fave lyric from that tune is "Is the home team still on fire, do they still win all the games??".. Gordon and I are big Toronto Maple Leaf fans..
;)

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I love that lyric also. It's really such a great great song Char!

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I seem to have 'but as she walks she waits for him, the pavement is a shoulder for her tears' from Go Go Round playing in my head these days...

This plays in my head with all the chaos overseas:

The Lost Children:
Goodbye you lost children, God speed you on your way
Your little beds are empty now, your toys are put away
Your mother sings a lullaby as she gazes at the floor
Your father builds more weapons and marches out once more

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

'triangle triangle see my ship dangle'

'rubbing the wrong girl right'

'i've been been all around the world, washing the bullshit down'

'been around so long boys, guess i'm here to stay'

'i've been wearing.. polka-dot underwear'


(ok, i'm to the naughty corner) :)

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

One of the saddest songs I ever heard is "Looking at the Rain", such potent words. Another with great imagery is "Now and Then", "once inside we found a curious moonbeam doing dances on the floor", I got the pictures through the whole song, it was like a movie. "All The Lovely Ladies" has so many pictures also. I think the late 60's to late 70's was the time period when Gordon's lyrics had the most unique phrasing and visuals.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

This was a great idea for a never ending thread!
One of the prime questions of course is are we talking about "favorite" lyrics or as they are Canadian penned more correctly favoUrite lyrics
For my own part I don't think I can put it any better than I did in an old posting that I made on corfid in 2012 after watching a complete concert video courtesy of You Tube
see:-
http://corfid.com/vbb/showpost.php?p=179673&postcount=7

I said in part
Wild Strawberries has been constantly in my head since I heard it at B B Kings ten days ago
And wished I had filmed it myself.I meant to ask Char to do so at Tarrytown but it got pre-emted by 'her" song that evening!!!
it is yet another song that I had never really listened to or fully appreciated before and it shares some of the poetic magic that I love about Restless.
I mean to say these lyrics are pure genius
Hit the bounding main or be on a railroad train
Hit the boundless tide or be on a steamboat ride
Hit the bounding main or be on a midnight plane
Hit the pounding tide or be on a rainbow ride

compares well with
Of an old engine flying down a road that's iron cast
Of an old schooner roving 'Neath a sky that's ironclad
Of a cold diesel, rolling down a road that's built to last
Of an old schooner flying down a sky that's overcast

I remembered to ask Gord once how he avoided getting confused when singing Restless and he brushed it off as being easy I think he said something like "the words just flow"

I am so grateful to "clubdoc" for getting the complete Charleston concert.

back in 2002 there was a long Newsgroup thread subject
favoUrite Lightfoot songs and favoUrite lines?

comprising 95 posts by 40 fans at:-
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/al...YPU/discussion
which included a fine cop out by our moderator
"I haven't contributed my list because I would just have to copy and paste all of the songs and lyrics listed on Val's site and that hardly seems fair play....
LOL
Char"

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

This is a good thread, but a tough one with so many great lyrics.
I agree that the "curious moonbeam" line and all of Now and Then are among my favorites.
Too Late for Praying has many as well;
Skies of blue, have all turned brown, to the sound of sighing,
For each child with eyes that smile, they'll be ten more crying..
And for descriptive phrasing, the first line of "Too Many Clues in This Room" comes cheerily to mind.

Way too many to list. It's why Gord is so far above the rest.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

nice to have the question resurface every once in a while, and thanks for the archival links, John, because I recall the 2002 thread each time the question rises… I think there was stuff also back in mid-late 90s


Joveski, it's "I've been on the town" (i know you know that)


i love Skip raving at the start of this audio "WHO WRITE THAT!"

" if time could heal the wounds I would tear the threads away that I might bleed some more….beneath a battered marking stone, it lies forgotten "


but for me, i go much deeper:

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I had always felt that on Gord's Gold with the medley of "For Lovin' Me/Did She Mention My Name", that DSMMN lost some of it's appeal and strength with the exclusion of some of the original lyrics. I had always felt that it was one song that needed to be left as it was originally written. In fact, as a youngster listening to Gord's Gold, I never thought much of the song. It was good but not one I'd place my needle back over on a regular basis to play. Then when I heard the original version, I saw so much life painted within the lyrics. The complete song brought to me such pleasure to listen to, that I had never experienced with it previously.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

i agree…and its odd that Gord objected so strongly to the Grammy's wanting to crop an If You Could Read My Mind performance but he didn't mind the condensed medleys on GG.

The medley strategy and rerecording of the United Artist singles was a way that he could collect royalties instead of the former label so its was strategic business. But also gave Gord fans who already had all his LPs a chance to hear the songs with the latest studio polish and the added orchestrations, which many likely enjoyed if they hadn't heard the pure, original recordings

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

Favourite Lightfoot, I have said it elsewhere on the is site, it bears repeating. "Is there someone sewing seams through all my hopes through all my dreams? You know living a life of ease don't make your meals taste better, if you please."

The Skip Weshner show is a real gem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piqg...layer_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bki3hwePue4


If this is elsewhere on this site, I apologise.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX10D5lkPpA

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

yeah i did... a slip of the keyboard or i had a different song in my head!

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I was born to sing my song, I was born to try to reach someone
To penetrate the iron will, to try to make men understand
That being a human is no sin at all
That beauty lies within the wounds, of lonliness and dark despair
That heals to fall but still to rise again

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

As a not very strong swimmer, I know that those seconds between realizing I can't touch bottom and getting myself to safety seem to last forever! Gord has an absolute genius for putting into words, those basic simple 'truths' we can all relate to.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

Hi Moose, these lyrics you mentioned from "Wreck" have probably been the set of Gord's lyrics that have at touched me deepest in my lifetime. The whole song is a complete masterpiece! Hundreds of years from now, there will be three things that the world will still have knowledge of. ELVIS, The Beatles and the words and music of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". I know musically speaking, these are the three things that have touched me most. And the popularity of each just continues to grow and grow. Although I will admit that some of the most current Beatles tributes have made me want to gag.

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Favorite lyrics - the rhymes in "Sea of Tranquilty!"

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"All that you can ever do with love is reveal it"

"And she said, please, please, I've lost my way...the current is too strong..."

"Songs of love should not be sung where staying is not planned;
And foolish I would climb once more, a tree too weak to stand"

"Does your mother know, you had to go someday;
Does your mother know, that you would grow so fast"

"Mama's got something, Daddy needs more than a lot;
now we got it rolling, how're we gonna get it stopped"

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

This is a great thread, but the hardest one to answer! Here are some lyrics that have grabbed my imagination:

"It's a wicked wind and it chills me to the bone"

"As the morning stars grow dim, they will find us in the shadows fast asleep"

"May all your martinis be forever dry"

"Songs of the season, apples of the sun"

"Hear the steeple bell ring out above my lobster pots"

"And may this gale blow us to the ones we love"

"Paper matches in the afternoon, cups of tea and all of that Zen"

"Each and every bad dream will be hammered into dust"

"In the quietude of winter, you can hear the wild geese cry"

"I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam, then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home"

"She ain't the kind who would soon step aside, pay any dues at the expense of her pride"

"Wouldn't you like to be right now, out where the actors play; so much for your disguise"

"Cats and dogs and baby smiles will drive my loneliness away"

"All dressed up to be somebody, all I need is a friendly face, with my midnight crowd to glide through, clouds of empty space"

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I'd pick those, too, except swap the polka dot underwear for "I don't want to own the key to some ghostly mansion where souls are set free."

'rubbing the wrong girl right' - I need to join you in the naughty corner.

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

joveski,

Great choices! But I'd swap the pokla-dot underwear for 'I don't want to own the key to some ghostly mansion where souls are set free.'

I, too, love 'rubbing the wrong girl right' so I'm off to the naughty corner with you.

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I'm with you two in the naughty corner because I don't see my choice here anywhere
"what's left of his brains
When his crew threw his balls to the sharks"
and I have no idea what else Gord could have intended that to imply!!

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

Ahem "balls to the sharks"!! such imagery but of what?? try this:-
Lighthead Tony Meloche seems to have pretty well hit the nail on the head in his reply to an old Newsgroup thread at:-
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...ot/f6Hrohzz3LY
Scroll down to find Tony's theory posted on the second of January 1998 (which is shown US style as 1/2/98)
in which he blamed the emasculation of Tricky Dicky on Mixon's crew of Henry Kissinger.Barry Goldwater and the then Attorney General who was apparently Elliot L. Richardson

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

Some additions to my favorite lyrics -



"In My Fashion, I have been a father, I have loved & I have lost ..."


"And the seeds of the earth, that were planted long ago, still yield a better harvest than the rock was prone to grow." - The Soul is the Rock


Gail

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

I have probably posted this before, but my favourite GL lines come from ‘Something Very Special.’

‘She could be meek and mild of full of fun’ & ‘And when she wanted you she made it plain’
In fact, the second and third verses sum up the girl I met in the late Seventies.

I love the whole song, in spite of the sadness in it.

That girl I met is now my wife and I often play ‘Something Vey Special’ if she is away.

When her sister was at University, I always included a GL line at the end of every letter I wrote to her.
She once told me her favourite was ‘I wish you good spaces in the far away places you go.’

Martyn Miles
Oxford
England.

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This is a hard one. It's like going to a library and picking out a book and not knowing what you're looking for.

"Thinking of girls with their fingers in my curls, too young to understand how love begins..."
(from 'Second Cup Of Coffee')

Re: My Favorite Gordon Lyrics
 

Back in 2014 I posted a couple of my favorites. Now I look at this thread and wonder how one man could come up with so many top choice lines in his songs. The thing is that is Gordon, and he truly is a genius at his music writing and obviously a very sensitive and deep minded person. Plus putting the melody to his words is just inner magic.