Remembering Gordon Lightfoot

The death of Gordon Lightfoot last Monday prompted many Canadians to reflect on the singer-songwriter’s meaning and importance to their country. As Lightfoot’s biographer Nicholas Jennings wrote in the Globe and Mail on Tuesday, “more than any other singer-songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot personified Canada.”

That is perhaps unarguably true. One cannot deny that there is a purely Canadian feeling, both lyrically and musically, in his earlier recordings. Songs such as Early Morning Rain and Ribbon of Darkness from his debut 1966 album, Home from the Forest and Song for a Winter’s Night from 1967’s The Way I Feel, Pussywillows, Cat-Tails from 1968’s Did She Mention My Name, and If You Could Read My Mind from the 1970 album that was originally called Sit Down Young Stranger until the aforementioned song became a massive hit. 

There were bigger hits to come, such as Sundown, Carefree Highway and Rainy Day People. And is there anyone of a certain generation who wasn’t introduced to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Canadian Railroad Trilogy through a history or music class?

So no, it is impossible to deny the Canadian bonafides of the Orillia-born bard. 

My introduction to Gordon Lightfoot’s music came  from my sister Joanne, 10 years my senior, when I was about eight or nine years old. She was a gifted singer and guitarist, with a voice that could stop you in your tracks. Blind since birth, she attended the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford. I never quite fully understood at that age why my big sister didn’t live with us for 10 months out of the year. But I looked so forward to her visits back to St. Catharines on weekends whenever that was possible. 

Invariably, she would arrive with a case full of cassette tapes, with music from Elton John, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as comedy that perhaps I was too young to understand from Cheech & Chong and George Carlin. 

And along with the cassettes she always brought along her 12-string guitar. Man, could Joanne ever play that guitar! She loved the Beatles, and would play and sing some of their early songs for me. But the one song I always remember her playing for me was Lightfoot’s Bitter Green.

I’m sure I was too young to understand the song’s meaning, but I know that I loved singing along with her to the chorus. Though it is undoubtedly a sad lament, as Lightfoot sings of a woman on the hill “waiting for her master to kiss away her tears”, the chorus seemed joyous, anthemic. Since those days I have always equated his music to my big sister. 

Like many, I turned to more rebellious sounds during my teens. I had little use at the time for Lightfoot’s more genteel sounds, and mostly ignored his mid-1970s run of hit albums in favour of heavier music from Rush, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

Then, years later, I was working the evening and overnight shifts as a producer (really just a fancy name for a knob-twiddler) at CHRE radio in downtown St. Catharines, now Move 105.7. Back then it might have been referred to as an easy listening, or soft rock station. 

I wasn’t allowed to talk, or to choose the music that was played. Gordon Lightfoot’s songs were a staple at CHRE. At first, I enjoyed spinning his songs, reacquainting myself with his genius and remembering those moments with my sister. But after a while it became monotonous. Maybe too much of a good thing.

One song in particular stands out from this time. Beautiful is indeed a very beautiful song. But the number of times I played it on that station, added to the many weddings I DJ’d around that time where that tune was requested, turned me off his entire catalogue completely. I couldn’t listen to Gordon Lightfoot for years.

Since he passed, though, I’ve had Gordon Lightfoot playing on repeat via Spotify and regaining my appreciation for him. There's a good reason why the likes of Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson sang his praises and covered his songs back in the day. He was an amazing songwriter.

And not all of his songs stand out as Canadiana, either. Some of his music reveals a darker side that I never before realized was there. Have you ever listened to For Lovin’ Me?

“So don't you shed a tear for me, 'cause I ain't the love you thought I'd be, I've got a hundred more like you, so don't be blue, I'll have a thousand 'fore I'm through.”

That’s not what most people think of when they think of Canadian, is it? 

He often sang of drinking, too. In Baby Step Back, whiskey and wine help him pass the time. The liquor tasted good and the women all were fast in Early Morning Rain. And the bar he sings of in Somewhere U.S.A. is so cool he’d like to stay there. 

Then there’s Sundown, his biggest hit, written about his girlfriend at the time, Cathy Smith. She was his former back-up singer who became his mistress. The song documents a tumultuous and complicated relationship. And if the name Cathy Smith rings a bell it’s because she is the same Cathy Smith who later served 15 months in prison for injecting John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982.

It had been more than 30 years since Gordon Lightfoot had released any music that approached the quality or importance of his work through the 1960s and 1970s, though his last two records, 2004’s Harmony and 2020’s Solo both had their enjoyable moments. 

But he didn’t need to. He had long ago earned his position as, if not the most Canadian of all singer-songwriters, certainly on a par with the likes of Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Joni Mitchell and Murray MacLachlan, whose Farmer’s Song from 1972 is pure Canadiana. There’s also Stompin’ Tom Connors, Bruce Cockburn, Gordon Downie of the Tragically Hip and Neil Young, who sometimes gets a bad rap for being less Canadian because of his move to California so many years ago. 

A big regret for me is that I never had a chance to see one of Lightfoot’s many shows at Massey Hall. He played the venerable music hall every year since 1967, often for multi-week runs. He was the last to play there in 2018 before its doors closed for renovations, and the first to perform when it reopened three years later. It seemed there would always be a chance to see him there.

Lightfoot’s passing is indeed a huge loss to the country. 

sAnd though my sister no longer sings and plays the guitar, we still talk about music, and her love for Gordon Lightfoot continues to this day. We mourned together last week, as I am sure many did.