http://www.toronto.com/article/686892
By Greg Quill
Entertainment Reporter .
Lightfoot keeps Massey Hall show a sweet ritual
RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
Gordon Lightfoot Wednesday at onight Massey Hall in Toronto.
26, 2011
It seems somehow pointless and unnecessary — arrogant, perhaps — to review Gordon Lightfoot’s umpteenth opening night at Massey Hall.
The man virtually owns the place, having performed there more than 150 times since the late 1970s, when his Massey presentations landed in the hands of Toronto promoter Bernie Fiedler, co-founder in the 1960s of the Yorkville coffee house The Riverboat, where Lightfoot, Canada’s most beloved folk artist, got his start.
Besides, what’s to review? Lightfoot’s a perfectionist. He wouldn’t be performing if he sensed even the possibility of weakness or flaws. He may look like a geezer — he’s gaunt and skinny, with craggy features and sunken cheeks, not really even a shadow of his former self — but he’s a proud man, a survivor of countless rigorous obsessions and, after a lifetime of solitary, single-minded dedication to the song and the spotlight, he’d never let us down.
And he rose to the occasion again Wednesday night, in the first of four consecutive shows at Massey Hall. No one in the jammed old house could have faulted a performance that remains eerily the same year after year, suspended forever in a reverie enriched by images of vast, open Canadian spaces, and sensations of winter bliss, isolation and longing.
Sure, the voice is a little weaker than we remember. Strumming and fingerpicking those famous vintage instruments, the Gibson B-45 12-string and the Martin D-28, he may be less robust, less precise than he used to be, but he covers it well, supported by musicians whose taste and gracefulness are beyond reproach — drummer Barry Keane, bassist Rick Haynes, keyboardist Mike Heffernan and guitarist Carter Lancaster, who replaced the sadly departed Terry Clements, Lightfoot’s renowned second set of hands, just three months ago.
But these Massey shows aren’t really about perfection, though Lightfoot’s persnickety devotion to propriety suggests he has never forgotten the lessons of his youth: give the folks what they paid to hear, start right on time, don’t bore them with idle chatter, and get off stage when the job is done.
Lightfoot’s springtime spree has been adopted as something of a national rite, a way against which he and his fans measure their changes, renew old friendships, gather in memories, regain the spiritual sustenance to carry on.
It’s this profound and ritualistic bond that’s now the essential reason for the annual love-in. As long as Gord prevails, so can we all. After all, there’s a sense when he plays that we were all young together. These uncomplicated melodies — built around little more than three chords and resonating with the sing-song simplicity of old Celtic bard fodder — were, after all, part of the soundtrack to burgeoning national pride, an almost elegiac testament to Canada’s sudden sense of a self that was young, golden, gentle and true.
Lightfoot may well be more myth than man. We know little — and care less — about what kind of person he is. His privacy is something over which we’ve all been complicit guardians.
We do that, and we turn up at Massey Hall every spring, because we need him. Only Lightfoot can keep that feeling alive, that awe of innocent self-discovery, when all other trappings of identity are slipping into the global vortex. We need that voice and no one else’s delivering “Did She Mention My Name,” “Carefree Highway,” “Sundown,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Christian Island,” “Sweet Guinevere,” “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy.”
As long as we can hear Lightfoot’s voice in Massey Hall, and see him in the flesh, we’re safe and well.
Toronto STAR review
