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By Randy Cordova The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:21 PM
A few years ago, Gordon Lightfoot was driving around Toronto when he heard that he had died.
His first clue that something was amiss was when his melancholy 1970 classic “If You Could Read My Mind” came on the radio.
“I couldn’t figure out why they were playing it, because I was listening to talk radio,” he says. “Then the song ended and my obituary came next.”
He drove to his office and called the radio station to quash the rumor. He considers the whole thing “a great lark,” even though his eldest daughter wound up in tears after the incident. He spoke with her on the phone to calm her down.
“It was a bit of a kerfuffle there for a while,” he says good-naturedly. “I have no idea how it happened, and we never really bothered to look into it, but we kind of nipped it in the bud.”
At 75, the singer-songwriter says he is in good health, though there have been some touch-and-go moments. In 2002, he wound up in a coma for six weeks following a ruptured artery. There was a 2006 stroke that left two fingers on his right hand momentarily disabled.
“There have been some things here and there, but when I get better, it’s back to work again,” he understates. “I love the traveling and doing the shows. That part of the business has never changed for me.”
Lightfoot has witnessed a number of changes in the business in a career that began when he was in his 20s. The Canadian troubadour was an integral part of the folk-music scene, with Peter, Paul and Mary covering his compositions “Early Mornin’ Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.”
He lived through the era depicted on-screen in the Cohen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a look at the ’60s folk world. Though fictional, the film includes real-life figures and settings, such as the Gaslight, a Greenwich Village club. Lightfoot gives the movie a thumbs-up.
“It was very much the way it was,” he says. “It was the way I saw it myself, particularly the performances. You’d see people like Jean and Jim when you’d least expect it. And I knew the famous Albert Grossman, who was depicted by F. Murray Abraham. It was all quite nice.“
Lightfoot’s greatest success came in the ’70s. His 1974 album “Sundown” reached No. 1 in the States, and such singles as “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” made his reedy voice a constant presence on radio. Along with the similarly mellow Anne Murray, he was one of the era’s most familiar Canadian imports.
As a songwriter, his work has been covered by such disparate artists as Elvis Presley, Petula Clark, Herb Alpert, Johnny Cash and Barbra Streisand, who recorded “If You Could Read My Mind” on 1971’s platinum “Stoney End” — “that one blew me away,” Lightfoot says. “It was such an honor.”
Bob Dylan even named Lightfoot one of his favorite songwriters in a 2009 interview, an example of the esteem in which he is held.
“That tells me that Bob Dylan is being very kind,” he says in typically low-key fashion. “Bob knows how much I love his work and how much of an influence he was on me. I got to meet him and hang out, and even watch him break down a couple of tunes at the Gaslight. Come to think of it, it was exactly like ‘Llewyn Davis.’ ”
Lightfoot still carries enough clout in the business that he merited a profile on CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” in December. He performs about 60 concerts a year and says he has no plans of slowing down.
“We’re not playing the great big barns anymore, but we’re going full-bore and we keep the thing afloat,” he says. “We’re not hurting for people; if we were, then I’d be worried.”
Reach the reporter at
randy.cordova@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8849. Twitter.com/randy_cordova.
AZ Central interview
