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
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 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.
Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said.
I got to sing solo in the junior choir when I was 10 or 11 and won a competition, and my sister's piano playing improved to a certain level. One time my sister and I worked together. The first song we ever sang in High School was Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett.
All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
My first song was Hula Hoop Song, in 1955. It was a novelty song. I had to find someway to reach out and it was with a novelty song. Now, all of my recording obligations have been taken care of. I made 14 albums for Warner Brothers. Five for United Artist before that.
Don Quixote was a song for a 1969 Michael Douglas movie called Hail Hero! I wrote the title song for the film and they also used the Don Quixote one I had submitted.
'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.
There is always something wrong with a song, you can't be perfect.
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.