Gordon Lightfoot Forums

http://m.columbiatribune.com/arts_li...04b9f6eda.html

By AMY WILDER
Sunday, March 16, 2014 at 2:00 am
If you haven't had "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" or "If You Could Read My Mind" stuck in your head at some point in the past four decades, you've probably never encountered a radio.

Gordon Lightfoot's catchy but non-repetitive ballads have impressed listeners and musicians alike — his songs have been covered by artists from Bob Dylan to Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Lightfoot will perform Tuesday at Missouri Theatre.

In fact, it was a cover that first launched the Canadian's career in the United States — after years of study and work. Lightfoot grew up in a small town, Orillia, in Ontario and had an interest in jazz from a young age. He played in a jazz band in high school, he said, and subscribed to Downbeat magazine as a teenager, where an ad for Hollywood's Westlake College of Music caught his eye. It didn't take much to convince his parents to allow their 18-year-old son to make the trip to California.

"At that point, my parents already knew what I wanted to do because I had been doing it since I was 10 years old. … I had already written a song in Grade 12," he said, "and the simple piano theory that I had learned and the piano lessons I took as a child were not sufficient, and I wanted to learn how to do notation. … I needed to know how to write music. I knew that I had to learn that, … so they said, 'Let's work it out.' "

"The people in the little town I grew up in — some of them thought I had gone a little bit wacky!" he said with a laugh. "But I went and did it. I did two semesters and learned quite a bit but came home and drove a truck for that summer again and decided in the fall … I'm going to move to Toronto, get a day job and go for it at night."

Lightfoot started using a studio in Toronto, composing on the piano, when the guy who ran the rehearsal studio approached Lightfoot and asked if he could transcribe lead sheets, "and I said, 'Sure.' The first thing he did was he bought me a tape recorder, and he gave me a tape with 18 songs on it that had come into his publishing business that he needed to have lead sheets written for. And I really pulled together everything I had learned at that school that I'd just gone to, and I put it immediately to work."

For some time, Lightfoot held down day jobs, notated at night, took gigs with a band and performed in a duo until leaving "because the other guy wasn't writing." Lightfoot got married and continued writing his own songs.

One morning, a young Lightfoot woke up in the basement apartment he shared with his wife and two children to a life-changing experience. "I was very young. I'd been in the business for four or five years. … I woke up one morning and with a baby in one arm walked out of the bedroom. … All the sudden, I heard my song on the radio being sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. On the Top 40 station. It was one of the most thrilling moments I ever had."

Lightfoot's songs have been covered throughout his career, and his attitude toward others' renditions is generous.

"I never heard a cover recording which I didn't like," he said. "I never criticized one cover recording that I ever had. Just the very fact that I would get that certain interest. … Barbra Streisand's version of 'If You Could Read My Mind' " is one of his favorites.

"That was just fabulous," he said. "And I loved Peter, Paul and Mary doing 'Early Morning Rain.' And Elvis Presley. And there were many other recordings by brilliant artists."

His favorite song to perform? His 1970 hit, which captured his feelings about the unraveling of his first marriage, "If You Could Read My Mind."

Describing himself as very lucky to still be pursuing his passion at age 75, Lightfoot said he and his orchestra tour in short but concentrated engagements throughout the year. They average approximately six short tours a year, with 12 to 15 shows each tour, then return home to normal family life. Lightfoot even recorded an album while confined to bed several years ago because of a sudden illness. "It was not too bad. It was just a burst artery," he said with a laugh.

This article was published in the Sunday, March 16, 2014 edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune with the headline "If you could read his mind: Gordon Lightfoot discusses the road to success, others' versions of his songs."