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Old 01-21-2016, 10:43 PM   #2
charlene
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Join Date: May 2000
Posts: 15,877
Default Re: LONDON Telegraph interview- part 1-jan.2016

PART 2 - I read in a high school yearbook that your ambition was to be a drummer.

I was a drummer in the bugle band in cadets. I marched. It's probably quite funny to look back on it. I enjoyed my time at Orillia District Collegiate & Vocational Institute. There was nothing you couldn't do: there was music, hockey, everything – in this little tiny town. I never got really good at hockey. I did track and field, and I joined a football team.

And you said you might end up a "diaper washer at Waggs". What was that?

I worked in a plant when I was 14 for two years. I always wanted to do the summer jobs. Honest to God, I always had to be doing something. The plant was the laundry and dry cleaning plant. It was quite a large concern, not like a corner store. It was a business employing a hundred or so people. There were two or three plants and my father ran one and that's why I always had a job in the summer time. We did all the linen supply for the hotels in the resort areas. When I was 16, I used to drive huge loads of laundry in a three ton truck. I would turn round at night to drive back and see the band in a place north of Toronto called Dunn's Pavilion. I would drive that truck all day and they drive back and all the way until one day I wrecked the truck. I fell asleep and wrecked it. I was OK and so was my helper. I called my dad and the first words out of his mouth were, "are you OK?" I was really lucky I had a kind father.

What was the music you rushed to see?

Dunn's had everyone from Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington and we went to see every one of them. I was amazed by Louis Armstrong. I remember when I first rocked in it was a great big dance hall and Tommy Young was blowing trombone and Louis was singing a tune and it was just Satchmo and you could hear it resounding through the dance hall and people were dancing. It was a highlight. One of the Dorsey Brothers. Harry James played there. Les Brown and his great vocalists.

Did you always love jazz?

I love jazz. I still do. Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz are so good. I took a notification course in Jazz Orchestration. It wasn't a grandiose as you'd think but I did have to to go to Los Angeles to do it and get an understanding of the keyboard because the keyboard became my tool and I used it a lot in transposing and composing. All the flats and time values. I spent a year doing that because in those days you had to be able to write your own music and read sheets. So I got paid to write them for other people and copying scores and individual parts for orchestras. I could do that with a picture of the keyboard in my mind. I play piano, but not well enough to play professionally.

And did you enjoy performing?

I never really had stage nerves but I did have had trouble getting up to the right energy level. For a long time I drank. I drank up until 1982 and then I gave up alcohol. I got into exercising and once I started going to the gym on a regular basis, which I still do to the current day, that helped sustain my career. I stayed dry until 2005 for 23 years.

One time in England I had a confrontation with a fan at the Dominion Theatre. I had been working for 15 days and I was pretty inebriated at the time. I need not say more. But I will do a lot better this time with the shows, including one at the Royal Albert Hall. I had a glass of wine in 2005 after recovering from a serious operation for an aneurysm. I had another one which nearly killed me and had I not been training I probably would have died. I often asked, "was it the training that brought it on?" but the trainers would say, "Oh, no, no... it couldn't be that."

And are you still enthused by music?

Totally. The other night, I heard Andy Kim, who had the hit with Sugar Sugar. He's hale and hearty. And I went to see Tom Cochrane. I recently saw a couple of young bands that blew my mind they were so good. We have a melting pot in Canada and they were so good and no one really knows who these young musicians are.

What has changed for me is that I now have a huge family [Lightfoot has four children, from his first two marriages] – the result of my living. It's very extended. I don't mind at all. They were all here with me at Christmas. A couple are in music. My daughter Meredith Moon from my second wife has a band that does Appalachian music, with five-strong banjo, clawhammer style. I may have to direct her somewhere. Meredith was my middle name. I would have to direct her because I am always directing something. She's in the musician's union and she is only 21. Your kids surprise you. And I just got married for the third time. I would never have ever dreamed that I would get married again and then all of a sudden you meet somebody. That's the thing about life. It can be so unexpected."

Gordon Lightfoot tours the UK in May, including a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
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