http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/201...h-a-vengeance/
Canadian folk music legend Gordon Lightfoot famously got his start in 1964 when Ian Tyson introduced him to rock’s first great manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Bob Dylan, The Band, Richie Havens and Janis Joplin.
“I’d see Bob Dylan in the office,” Lightfoot once told me . “And Janis was in a corner reading a book.”
This week Lightfoot returns to the city where it all began, New York, where he will be keeping good company on Thursday night when he is inducted in the American Songwriters Hall of Fame, during a star-studded event at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
Other inductees at the $1000-per-person benefit are Bob Seger, Don Schlitz, Harvey Schmidt & Tom Jones and Jim Steinman; presenters include Stevie Nicks, Dave Grohl and Meatloaf; and Bette Midler will receive the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award. Lightfoot will perform his best-known hit song If You Could Read My Mind at the ceremony and Lyle Lovett perform Sundown.
Then Lightfoot jets to Ottawa for two concerts June 15 and 16 at the National Arts Centre, then boots up to Montreal for yet another gig, June 17 at Salle Wilfred Pelletier.
But it was just two years ago – on February 18, 2010, to be precise – that Canwest reported that Lightfoot had died.
I actually spoke with the Canadian music icon on the phone two days later and Lightfoot was still stunned by the reaction around the world to news of his “death”– and especially here at home.
“I was in my car driving from the dentist with the radio on when the DJ said I was dead!” Lightfoot told me. “It became an obituary. Then they played a strain of If You Could Read My Mind. It gave me a bit of a shock. I put my foot on the gas and got to [my] office and the phone was lit up like a Christmas tree! It was also weird for my kids – my eldest daughter got very emotional that night.”
Lightfoot has since worked the concert circuit with a vengeance, as if to remind the world that he’s still kicking. Lightfoot is healthy, works out everyday, there’s an exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology based around the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, and Lightfoot has a new album, a compilation disc called All Live.
Not bad for a “dead” man, eh?
Click here to read Bill Brownstein’s new interview with Mr Lightfoot this week in The Gazette.
Meanwhile, when I saw Mr .Lightfoot in concert two years ago, his singing voice had lost some of its luster. But he didn’t phone it in. As Lightfoot – who has not had a drop of alcohol in 30 years – told me himself beforehand, “I am happy – today I have control of my own destiny.”
Gordon Lightfoot headlines Salle Wilfrid Pelletier at Place des Arts on June 17. Showtime is 8 pm. Click here for more info and tickets.
Montreal Gazette article
