Lightfoot then and now through video

[Bill]

Thanks to all of you who have uploaded or otherwise pointed us to video of Gord through the years. They are especially a treasure stateside/in the south US where we got little to none through the years. So now we play catch up through the internet.

The perception I'd had was that the maturing Gord had a weaker voice, and fell into repetition too much...kind of an aging thing. But Gord of today seems identical to the really early Gord of the 60s! There were those golden days of the 70s when he had big exposure and seemed a bit more mysterious (or maybe just reclusive due to drinking and a volitile personal life). I think that was the era in which he strayed from himself...look at Lightfoot! album and compare to now. Remarkably the same.

Never met him, and they say it's best not to meet your heroes 'cause the seldom measure up. But as I know more of his humanness -- the more real a hero he seems as opposed to some kid's dream of being like a troubador.

[geodeticman.5]

Bill - I hear ya.

And I have grown enamoured of the Stonewall Tribute team's work - thomasj157, others,
and listen to and watch the vistory's music videos of sorts ( I hear that is not the right term).... as a new form of "putting on the Lightfoot" vs. the LP's in the day, then CD's, now vistory's - I love 'em - they are incredible. And a labour of love, non-propietary in the "reasonable use" terms - what incredible work of painting the photos, or photographing the paintings.... and value-adding imho - never replacing the songs.

S far as not metting him, and not having photos of cutting up by him, all og which I have thought would be great to have over the years, I have but one thing....

All I have (all ?? !! my God I am lucky) from Gord, is a great Old Town beavertail Canoe Paddle with his big,swooping artistic signature (comically, I had sanded down the new paddle bought for the e-town radio broadcast live show in Boulder Colo., just for his signature, a gift from my dear departed wife, I still have and treasure.....

Well I sanded it down in a precise line 1.5 inches high, and one foot long line to sign in, and very faintly underlined it in carpenter's pencil,thinking " I know, he'll be able to sign easier on bare ash, and I'll then erase the line much like a temporary guide line in hand drafting....then Spar Varnish it back over, and hang it over the mantle" naively not recognizing my "analytical and precision modes of thought" - as my wife put it - I would not have the hubris to say that myself...

she said "honey, other people don't all think that way..always.. your Dad did, and engineers and mathematicians and programmers and Map-maker GIS analysts like you I guess, but he is posessed of an artist's soul, and by definition strays from lines seemingly imposed upon him... " (she'd started talking like me and I like her -sorta- after about 15 years, that year being 18 together) -my God she was so right.

- and that was very analogous to my not understanding the man quite yet, as I do only somewhat better.. or different now.... sort of as BILL put it... I only meant to make it (the paddle) easier to sign, on fresh sanded ash, becasue the spar varnish would not lend itself to pen-signing, I reasoned...LOL (how right she was...) and so.. he signed it magnificently, capriciously out of the line and box....lol, in heavy black sharpee "Happy 40th Birthday, Steve, Gordon Lightfoot, July 19, 1998".

Never having met him, and I agree, I don't think the man, however gregarious to his fans despite his seemingly quiet and introspective general demanour, could match the Legend in my mind who I've admired so at different stages of my life in differing ways as I matured...

. I fear sometimes when I hear people , almost understandably... almost deify him..... but what more to admire than the human himself as little as we know him, fans like you and I........

I've admired him through his words and song.. when young ( I started listening in '72 - a freshman in High School allready troubled by a little-too-heavy a relationship with a girl at 14 or 15). I naively, humorously, wanted to "be like him, look like him" and later, in my senior year at 17 ( from Cleveland ages 0 - 16, to rough and wooly Estes Park,Colo. for my senior year after we moved)- despite administration's protests ( my conservative parents surprisingly supported me, Dad was always looking for a cause to stand up for me in.._grin_ ) - grew my beard and hair the same, sort of I think... to the envy of other seniors...Ithink..

And took myself gravely serious and thought "I know how to try to look like him, hmmmm how do I ACT like him, girls will then fall all over me.. thats it ..thats the ticket... LOL)..

young man's naivete, thank God I grew up and learned to appreciate him as you said Bill to be...human..and even more so, more healthilly - appreciate what he had to say in his work....and not think of him as an Arthurian Knight and Troubadour ( in the Medieval sense ). I'd like to meet him, but I think you are right Bill, I too am better off not in my case meeting what formerly in my mind was....a hero-troubadour in my teens.

Then, after High School and self-consciously trying to look like him, the beard was fuller, the women were a bit older, and I was a townee for 2 years saving for college working lumber, still sophomorically envisioning myself the hearty working man in "Crossroads"... then college, introspection, philosophical humorous stages of taking one's self too seriously, more loves too heal... and indeed, while in my first year of college, otherwise trying to be immersed in first year physics, in weed-out 101 classes for majors.

In college, there was in fact...one "Sundown" woman that would call me at 3am from Estes Park, while I was asleep in my dorm room, or burning the mid-terms oil...

I'd drive up the canyons (sounds like Tattoo) high into Estes, and in turn Rocky Mtn. National Park where she lived on the outskirts of... and I would "protect" (the shining Knight lol) her from a scorned lover of hers that she wrote a dear John letter to, and he turned wildman - I *REALLY* had to protect her, and thankfully the local Sherrif's department of Larimer County believed the story....

the Municipal police of Estes Park did not... they thought it was all some love triangle problem.....yes she came on to me big time when I'd come up the canyon from college in Ft. Collins, bleary eyed wee hours of the am.... and stand tall inside her house....and man was she a Sundown.... better not come around my stairs again... she played me like a cheap fiddle (lol I sound like Sam Spade in a gumshoe novel ) .

Well, after finishing college, going back later for more paper...married by then, I had a more grown-man's appreciation for Gord's work. He was/is a legend in his own rights, in a musical and lyrical sense, a historian, a painter, a maker of aural-imparted visions of what we assume to be in many cases - his life... in snapshots, other songs we more maturely assume to be poetry for poetry's sake, fiction for feeling's sake, perhaps all analagous of something in his life I would guess.

yes in this sense I feel he is a living legend, but still, just a man like you and I, (or to women, I leave that to them to elabourate on LOL) a hero ? in many ways, maybe so....I can't begin to say how many times I have heard a fan write "I don't think I could have gotten through that (event or relationship) without listening to his music, its like he KNOWS what I am going through, as if he has himself gone through this too..its uncanny, how does he know ?"

Maybe what he knows, besides his own life , personal trevails and lessons, and learning of man's inhumanity to man, and man's compassion for others as well, and classically written accounts of others' loves, trials, historial works, fiction, people he has met and shared with, have created maybe a wonderfully compassionate man, given to humane thoughts, sharing what he found others to "get off on, to dig" in his "singing, ringing" early in his career, an uncanny ability to "reach" as we said in the early 70's - others as an entity of feelings..intuition.... the soul and life of the common man .,. in an uncommon man.....

he's just an un-ordinary man - best left in my mind as a hero as you said Bill. for me,a source now at 50 myself, of healthy catharsis, enjoyable background music when I want it to be, opening a photo album of memories when I want it to be, unwanted memories at times that trouble me, wound-healing ability still at losses, remembering through his musical memories, dating events in my mind, chronicling, monumenting, benchmarking, blazing trees on the border of my life's events through listening to him sing of his often similar windmills, a validation of sorts, of things I feel too, images I see....I've been fortunate ( or not at times to have seen too.,).


Yes Bill, there is a Santa Clause (lol -smile- ), you are right, and then again, there isn't. But a great artist's soul singing all of our histories, how does he know ?

I'd rather, as you, not be confronted by what is the case (which I do not doubt is a very good and kind man) versus a Knight errant(sp?) a troubadour, a painter of visions, cause I go on believing my adult version of what I see glinting in my daughter's eyes of dreams and love and wondeful things, and heartache, and crying, and remembering what was, what could be, and what still can... all seen through differing filters at differing times of life eh ?

geo steve

[TC]

With reference to early Gord and recent Gord, I've always thought that he's kinda gone full circle. Back to his roots so to speak. A bit anyway.

And Bill, if you met him you would not be disappointed. His hero status would remain intact.