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Loss of freighter and crew inspired Gordon Lightfoot to pen a modern classic
Posted: Friday, November 1, 2013 6:00 am
David A. Maurer
The evening of Nov. 10, 1975, Gordon Lightfoot was working on a song when he was distracted by strong winds buffeting his Toronto home. The singer-songwriter looked out a window toward nearby Georgian Bay, where he had a sailboat bundled up for the winter. He imagined how rough the wind-whipped waters on Lake Huron would be — and was glad he wasn't sailing.
"It came to me to go downstairs and have a cup of coffee at 11 o'clock that evening," Lightfoot recently said during a telephone interview. "The news was on the television, and they were talking about this huge freighter that had just gone down in Lake Superior — the Edmund Fitzgerald."
From that evening forward, Lightfoot and the doomed ship would be linked via a song he would write in the following days, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The internationally acclaimed balladeer will be performing this song and many of his other hits at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Paramount Theater.
The prolific songwriter has enough material to fill several evenings with memorable music. But his song about the huge ore carrier that was affectionately called "Mighty Fitz," and the 29 men who went down with her during a fierce storm, has a special place in his heart.
"The first article I saw in the newspaper about the sinking spelled the name of the ship wrong," Lightfoot said from the office-studio in his Toronto home. "Then I saw this very small item in Newsweek magazine, and I had the feeling it was going to be totally forgotten.
"So I started working on the song, and only had to work on it off and on for two or three weeks until I had it. We were going in to do some recording early in the new year, and we did that song totally live, right off the floor of the studio.
"By the time July rolled around, all of a sudden from nowhere, we had a best seller in Billboard. I was as surprised as anyone about it, but ever since that time, it has been my flagship in my career. Without it, I would probably be nowhere today."
Legions of Lightfoot fans likely would argue his "nowhere today" assessment. For evidence, they can point to other huge hits he penned, such as "Early Morning Rain," "For Lovin' Me," "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind."
If that isn't enough to ensure Lightfoot's indelible place on the roster of fame, there's the list of artists who have covered his songs. These include Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Glen Campbell, Anne Murray, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand and Peter, Paul and Mary.
When asked what it means to him to have some of the biggest names in entertainment record his songs, Lightfoot was modest, thankful and quick to direct credit elsewhere.
"It means, first and foremost, that I was involved with a pretty good music publishing company while I was with United Artists," Lightfoot said. "I was deeply surprised when I realized how many cover recordings we were getting, and who they were coming from.
"I heard a wonderful one by Glen Campbell of a song I wrote called 'The Last Time I Saw Her.' I got to congratulate him on it, but I didn't get a chance to thank Elvis. But whenever I got a chance, I would thank these people.
"I'm humbled that they thought so much about the material. It's hard to describe. It helps my career, it helps my royalty stream — it helps everything. I owe them so much."
The Canadian singled out Peter, Paul and Mary for special praise. He credits them for introducing him and his music to the American public and getting him career-boosting gigs like his performance at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival.
The first time Lightfoot heard one of his songs on the radio, it was being performed by the popular folk trio.
"I was walking out of my bedroom in my basement apartment in Toronto with my three-month old son in my arms," Lightfoot recalled. "I was living in this below-level apartment with my new wife, and I was optimistic as all get out, I'll tell you.
"I was working, doing a lot of local clubs and coffeehouses. And all of a sudden, on the top 40 radio station, I hear Peter, Paul and Mary singing my song, 'That's What You Get For Loving Me.'
"The song went all the way up to number five on the Billboard chart."
Lightfoot said he knew right then that his life was about to change in a big way. He already had garnered fame in Canada, having won the Juno Award for top folk singer in 1965 and 1966.
And Marty Robbins had topped the country music charts in 1965 with Lightfoot's song "Ribbon of Darkness." But Peter, Paul and Mary invited him south and let the American public know about the talented young man from Canada.
Lightfoot was born in Orillia, Ontario, on Nov. 17, 1938. He was in the fourth grade when he sang for the first time in public during a Parents' Day event.
The song the youngster sang was "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral (an Irish Lullaby)." It wasn't until he was a senior in high school that he penned, "for no apparent reason," his first song.
"The first song I wrote was of a topical nature, but I moved on, getting into romantic songs about age 21," said Lightfoot, who last year was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York City. "Then I started getting into the topical stuff again when the folk revival came in.
"I was being strongly influenced by people like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Bob Gibson, one of the unsung heroes of the folk era. I've always tried to make every song different than the one before, and somehow, I've been able to do that.
"I suppose that's the secret. They’ve all got to be different, but I always start with the chords, then the melody and finally the lyrics."
Lightfoot said people constantly are asking him for advice pertaining to songwriting. Recently, a member of the club where he works out asked him to talk to one of his kids about songwriting.
"I say, 'Look inside yourself,' " Lightfoot said. "The night I wrote the song 'Sundown,' my girfriend was out with the girls bar hopping. I didn't have to worry about her too much, but I was wondering what was going on.
"I was on a roll writing songs, and I was getting ready to do an album. I was leaving to go on a canoe trip, and I wanted to get the writing done before I left.
"I had three or four songs going, and that one popped into the order very quickly. As a matter of fact, it only took a couple of hours to write that song."
They don't all come that quickly. At the insistence of his girlfriend, Lightfoot recently finished a song he had been thinking about for 15 years.
The ballad that immortalized the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald didn't take long to write, but it has become a timeless classic. Because of the song, Lightfoot has gotten to know some of the parents, relatives and friends of the ship's crew. The entire crew perished.
"We've been able to stay in touch with a lot of the relatives, mothers and children of the men who died on that terrible night," said Lightfoot, who started a scholarship in 1977 that benefits cadets attending the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Mich. The academy trains people for work on ships that ply the waters of the Great Lakes.
"There have been many memorial events I've been part of through the years, like the ceremony they had at the Mariner's Church [of Detroit] after they raised the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. That day, I sang in front of 18 Great Lakes skippers.
"This tragedy became personal for me when I heard some of the interviews they did with relatives immediately following the sinking. That was one of the things that made me do the song, and my feeling that the ship and the crew needed to be remembered.
"We sing that song all over the world."
Charlottesville,VA-Paramount Theatre-Nov.5-2013
