Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr. CC OOntis a Canadian singer-songwriter who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music, and has been credited for helping define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s. He has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter and internationally as a folk-rock legend...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth17 November 1938
CityOrillia, Canada
CountryCanada
Sometimes a broken dream will make you sad or make you mean. Sometimes things ain't bad as they seem.
She been looking like a queen in a sailor's dream.
You will go with me everywhere. When I'm dreaming, you still share my lonely nights.
I've outlasted just about everybody at Warner Brothers, ... one more off the new record.
I don't think they should regulate the music field. I don't see how they can regulate the arts.
I know that we're being inexorably taken over by the Americans. Without a doubt. I don't mean invaded or anything like that, just taken over. By degrees.
I try to keep it light and positive most of the time, whereas earlier on I didn't always do that.
Turning back the pages of my sweet shattered dream, I wonder if she'll ever do the same; And the thing that I call living is just being satisfied With knowing I've got no one left to blame.
I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.
I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it.
I try to write songs. At our concerts, we take the cream of the crop from my back catalogue and I don't know if I could write something now that would replace any of that. We don't lose any of the standards. We have lots of songs in rotation.
I once performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to about 15 sea captains. The song was about a ship that broke in half and sank.
I liked the American folk style of Woody Guthrie.
I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it.