September 6, 2022 • 39 mins
It’s Alec’s turn to pick one of his most beloved episodes in the summer archive series. This week, we feature one of his favorite musicians, Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, from their 2013 conversation. Over the course of a career that has lasted more than half a century, Lightfoot has achieved global stardom and exceptional influence. Bob Dylan’s a fan—he's said, “I can’t think of any [Lightfoot songs] I don’t like.” These songs—“Beautiful,” “Sundown,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” and many others—have been treasured by generations of popular musicians and listeners around the world. But Gordon Lightfoot was just one of many aspirants who moved to Toronto in the early 1960s to try their hand in the burgeoning folk music scene there. Lightfoot tells Alec about fitting a feeling to a melody, why he owes his first hit record to an exec's girlfriend, and how he wrote "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by pulling lines straight from the newspaper.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. We're nearing the end of
our summer Staff Picks series. Over the last few weeks,
you've heard from the staff as they showcase their favorite
episodes from our archives. Now it's time to hear mine.
I wanted to share with you an episode from one
(00:21):
of the kindest people I've met in the making of
this podcast, musician Gordon Lightfoot. My conversation with the Canadian
singer songwriter of the nineteen seventies hits If You Could
Read My Mind, Beautiful Sundown, and The Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald covers his beginnings in the industry, what changed
(00:43):
in importance to him over time, and his battle with
some serious health issues. Here's my two thousand sixteen conversation
with Gordon Lightfoot. At times, I just don't know how
(01:17):
you could feel anything but beautiful. Over the course of
a career that has lasted more than fifty years, Canadian
singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has achieved a global stardom and
exceptional influence. Bob Dylan's a fan. About Lightfoot's songs, Dylan said,
(01:39):
I can't think of any I don't like. These songs,
which include Beautiful, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, If
You Could Read My Mind, and many others, have been
treasured by generations of popular musicians and listeners around the world.
Many people know about the folk music revival that brought
Bob Dylan to New York in the early nineteen sixties,
(02:01):
but north of the border there was an equivalent explosion
of talent at that time, and Lightfoot, who got his
start singing in boys choirs, found himself heading to Canada's
cultural capital to try his luck. Beautiful Well, I was
down in the in Toronto here looking for work, and
I got a job as a coral performer and in
(02:21):
a television series that was on every week. And at
the same time I branched out and began working in
the folk uh oriented places, because the the folk revival
had occurred around about nineteen sixty and I would have
been maybe twenty twenty years old there about one and
(02:43):
uh so I'd be working on the TV show in
the daytime and going and working at the coffee houses
at night. You know, you had a period we wrote
jingles for commercials. Correct I tried, they locked me in
a room. One time, a manager in a place on
Madison Avenue just left me there all afternoon. That go well,
I wrote the commercial, but they didn't like it. They
(03:07):
didn't play your version of the commercial. But you didn't,
didn't You weren't in New York for a long time? Correct? Well,
I would go back and forth in New York all
the time. My management company was in New York. I
was one of the fortunate ones who was able to
acquire a management situation south of the border, so to speak,
down in the States, and that was in New York,
and it was a great manager. He recognized my songwriting
(03:33):
ability immediately, and uh, I got a couple of tunes
recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary and one of them
went up to number five on the Which on Board
chart for for loving me. That's what you get full
loving me, that's what you get everything as you see,
(04:04):
that's well you get me. And so I was introduced
to the industry in the States really as a songwriter
before they even knew that I sang, you know it was.
It sort of happened on its own. Do you think
it would have been Do you think you would have
been happy to just stay in that place and just
(04:25):
produce records and write music and was performing the goal
all along? Did you want were you aching to do that? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
I wanted to even as a child, you know, I
didn't mind singing in my grandmother's house and the Sunday
get together, you know that they would single me out
and I would solo. I enjoyed the feel of the
(04:47):
communication that I and I can feel it then, and uh,
that's what I feel now. I feel I feel a
communication when I haven't wonder if a band and we
have a great repertoire and we we just lay the
stuff right out there for them, just pure joy. Yeah,
joy doing that. But when when you were take care
(05:07):
of if it pays the bills, that's a that's a
desirable silver lining there benefit. Yeah, all that hard work, well,
but when you were writing, when you turn that corner
and singing takes over. You know, I was doing that
like like small time stuff, and all of a sudden
I was asked to come to New York and open
(05:30):
for Paul Butterfield concert sixty six thereabouts. I suppose you
won the radio then recording. No, we didn't actually get
on the radio until about seventy one and what was
the first song that? I mean, I have a list here,
but what was it? If you could read my mind?
If you could read my mind, you know that Google
(05:51):
was just beating I be as long as you can't see.
The record was out. It was my first album on
Warner Brothers. And uh it was out for eight months
and there was no single, and all of a sudden,
(06:13):
rather promotion, guys said to his girlfriend, we listen to
this and come back and give me an opinion. On
Monday morning, his girlfriend she likes, if you could read
my mind, where are the heart? He's gone? The hero
would be baby hero. Often you won't read that book
(06:38):
because the just if you could read my mind hits
the charts, so to speak, It becomes a big hit
for you. What changes for you? Like did you just
have to sit there and say, oh, I people are
telling you to do things differently and now you're gonna
be a success and they want you to we get
so basically we got to hire an aircraft. Literally, that's
(07:00):
what happened. We had to hire an aircraft. Everyone wants
to book the same give in the same place, two
different places in one day. So and when you reached
that point of the and then that turning point is
the is the next imperative. You've gotta start coming up
with more songs and writing more songs. Oh yeah, record, Yeah.
We made three more albums and nothing happened, but we
(07:24):
but I kept doing one a year and and something
had to give eventually, and then, Uh, one summer I
wrote that song Sundown. I knew that it was it
was going to happen, that it was, it was the
right thing, and it did. When we're up to number one.
That was our second one. Then it was almost seven
two albums later that we had the wreck of the
(07:44):
Evan and Fitzgerald. And that happened all by itself too
that that became a responsibility. It did very large responsibility.
The song became a responsible Fitzgerald. But but tell me
in your own words. Many bowl go on about that,
about the tragedy and the history, and it's a very
important song to people, you know, Canadian history. People talk
(08:07):
about it very reverentially. Why was it important to you?
Because it was only one verse, uh, contained any conjecture
of any kind, and the rest of it was taken
from directly from newspaper articles and the aftermath, which only
lasted for about three days. If I had not wrote
that song, everybody would have forgotten about it a week
(08:31):
after it happened. Uh, I said, people are all around
the Great Lakes area are going to wonder if this
song is appropriate. And some did wonder about it, whether
it was appropriate for me to have written a song
that kind. But I had gone, uh, pretty much with
(08:53):
the newspaper articles that I scraped up. We had no
CPS in those days, and you went back that, you
went to the publisher and got the back copies of
the newspapers. And uh, so it's it's accurate. It's it's
it's accurate in the way the story unfolds. I remember
the night I wrote it. I was working in a
(09:14):
deserted house and there was there was a heck of
a windstorm going on right in Toronto that night, and
I remember myself wondering, G, I wonder what it's like
up on the on the Great Lakes right now, because
I sailed up there myself. I had a couple of
two different sailboats up there, and wondered always, I wonder
what the Great Lakes are like tonight? Because you're always
(09:35):
hearing but what things happening up in the Great Lakes,
And eleven o'clock in the evening, there was a report
of a ship sinking three hours earlier in Lake Superior.
And they're out looking for the people and they never
found any of them, and uh, twenty nine people gone.
(09:56):
And I had a melody and I had some cords
that I was knocking around in this deserted house with
the wind howling outside my Really, it was kind of
kind of a classic sitting to to write a song
like that. So I began writing the song and finished
writing like two or three weeks later. We were right
(10:19):
in the middle of a recording, a series of recording
sessions at the times that we put it in and
didn't work the first day, we put it in the
second day, and uh, did you ever stomp? And Tom Connors? No,
I will. Now I'm gonna run down and get all
of stomping Tom Connor he was recording. He was one
of very, very famous Canadian folk artists. Stomping Tom Connor's
(10:44):
Poaches hit and so that sounds like a hit. He
just heard the the melody going like, he didn't heard
the lyrics or anything. So that the appeal of the
song is definitely in the melody and the chord changes,
and then the story of the actually vent itself. I
got as accurately as I could by pursuing old news articles.
(11:07):
The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound,
and the wave rope over the really and every man you,
as the captain did to was the witch should love
and stealing the don came late in the breakfast, had
(11:30):
the week when the girls in November, came slashing in afternoon,
came at the squeezing rain in the face of a
hurricane west wind. We'll have more with Gordon Lightfoot after
(11:51):
the break I'm a mic Baldwin and this is here's
the thing. I spoke with musician Gordon Lightfoot in two
thousand sixteen. I was curious how his musicianship had changed
over time and what it was like for him recording
(12:14):
and performing in the early days. The first time I
started doing it, I felt and like, not confident in
what I was doing. What I was hearing, I didn't.
I didn't like what I was hearing of your own stuff. Yeah,
I like the sound of the sound of my voice
bothered me. And and you know I I started working
(12:37):
on that stuff and I and I've been working on
it ever since on my vocal and I have worked
on my my antonation on my instruments. Someone told me
that that when you land, because you perform in so
many different areas, you really dwell on tuning your instruments
a lot. Correct. Yeah, sometimes I changed it around too,
but but but I've learned through the years that there
(12:59):
is a method that you can get me into into
Scarborough fair Country, you know, like the like the sound
that Simon and Garfunkel used to get on there acoustic
orchestral ranges that they put together for their songs, and
actually only came it came real for me maybe six
(13:21):
or seven years ago after I was recovering from a
mini stroke that I had and I had to practice
a lot more all of a sudden. So it really
got me zero in on it. And it it all
comes down to the fifth and the octaves. You know,
just leave it at that. I'm just a handmaid in
here for all you guitar people out there. That's Gordon
(13:42):
Lightfoot's gift to you and his present to you. That's
the fifth and the octaves. And I don't have one, damn.
The fifth and the I don't know what the hell
he's talking about, but there it is. There's his message
to you today. Open McCartney told me when I spoke
to him once. Paul told me that he said, in
the beginning they would go into a recording studio of
(14:03):
the Beatles, and he said, you know, it was really
these weren't his words, but the message was kind of
like time is money. He said, these guys were luck.
You know, we want two songs in the morning, and
then you go have a lunch break and get down
to the pub and you have a cigarette, you have
a pufficient chips or wherever you come back. They want
two songs. And later they really moved along at a
clip when they were doing the first albums for Parlophone
(14:25):
or whoever it was, or E. M. I. And then
when they became, you know, the success they obviously became,
then they would take a year, you know, all musicians,
and then they would take a year to do their
next album. You know, they would do Sergeant Pepper's or whatever.
One really really luxuriate and getting every time. They gave
them more time because it was worth it was worth
that investment for them. Was the same true with you
(14:45):
do you find that the more successful you became, the
more time you wanted to make music. Perhaps later on,
but I I pretty much stuck to the to the
schedule as much as I could. We made like eight
or nine albums and ten years there, so you didn't
feel rushed by them. No, we were getting more time.
(15:05):
But but I was also also improving because what I
didn't like hearing I was I was changing all the time,
and it was always an improvement venture. Like a guy
building himself up and for play on an important sports team,
you know they got it. This just not just the game,
it's the preparation. Say you haven't played for for a
(15:27):
month and all of a sudden you've got to get
back up on stage. You should be able to crank
it or just like it was just you did a
show last night. But you liked rehearsing. Yeah, well you
believe in rehearsing. Are you're learning new material or you're
going back into the the old catalog, which we do
because I have a rotational situation going on, the biggest
(15:48):
problem my whole life been too many tunes, too many
women for my listeners. Right now, Gordon Lightfoot is turning
sheepishly towards his wife with a sheepish quin on his face,
and she just patted his shoulder to say, it's okay, Gordon, Well,
I can't step under your toes. Yeah, you can't do that.
But but I remember reading I remember listening to an article.
(16:08):
I remember reading an article that the Rolling Stones did
years ago, and I was taken by how, you know,
in terms of musicianship, Jagger and Keith, for two, were very,
very married to rehearsal. And for you to say that
as a great meaning to me. For you, someone who
as great an artist as you are, that the preparation
and the preparation beforehand so that when you when the
audience is there, bloom, you strum that guitar and you're
(16:31):
you're ready. You're ready. Yeah. And we we have the
the orchestra itself. I have four really challenged guys and
very loyal people. I read about that your band is
very loyal to you. Well, I mean it's there's no
reason why they should be. You know, we're all we're
(16:53):
all the same path. I mean, we we just want
to do a great job and you gotta like make
almost make a science out of it. I don't know
my guys are all professionals. I mean they're they're serious musicians.
Yeah yeah, and they do other things. I just got
to let them know what's coming up. You know, what
(17:16):
were you listening to back then in the sixties when
you were coming up, Who did you listen to? Well,
I was sing country music, you know, hack snow and
then folks. It was Pete Seeger and it was Bob Gibson.
It was Bob Dylan and and Simon and Garfuncle and
you know, Peter Paula Mary and and Ian and Sylvia.
They were a duet and they were it was a
(17:38):
beautiful act that they had. Eventually met these people, well
I met, but you became one of them my management
company because they were the first ever to do one
do any of my songs. It was Ian and Sylphia,
which one for Loving Me and Early Morning Rain. I
(18:00):
found an opening with the Folk Revival, you know, so
I was lucky to be a part of that, to
ride that one through and survive. Uh, there's there's nothing
much out there these days, you know, they're they're they're busking.
We We've got a whole bunch of people here in
Toronto who are harvering around all the time that the
(18:22):
folk oriented artists who are songwriters and you know, trying
to get somewhere, and some of some of them are
succeeding in summer or not. I get to hear a
lot of this stuff because it comes across my desk
and I get to hear it, and you wish, you
(18:43):
know that something grand could happen for these people, but
you don't know what to do. All you're gonna do
is respond encourage. Yeah, where do you think people learn
to hone their craft as a musician in in in
clubs and performing live? Well, I was as well as
I was working in bars to you know, like bars
(19:04):
and lounges as well as the coffeehouses, and so I
had a the kind of a repertoire that was acceptable
to play bars. So I got him following in a
couple of these bars. Then then I've sort of moved
uptown into the the village area Yorkville which was just
(19:27):
coming into bloom here in town, and get into places
like like the Purple Onion and then the Riverboat, which
was really the plumb of the whole lot was the
Riverboat because Bernie Feeder brought every person into that place
you could fastly imagine played there from James Taylor to
Joni Mitchell to to Neil Young right on down the line.
(19:52):
Is he is he a friend of yours? Yes? He is? Yeah.
Your songs and you're singing of your song, you're performing
of your songs is so vulnerable and so emotional. What
was the most difficult song for you to write or
among the most difficult songs for you to write? I'll
tell you that a lot of times you don't know
what you're doing it. If you you you're drawing the
(20:14):
material from your subconscious you don't you don't actually know
what you're doing. You're you know, you're drawing it from somewhere,
and then later down the line, three or four weeks later,
you're gonna sign it back to uh, the actual event
that product on. I mean, that's like if you could
(20:37):
read my mind. Just it's about actually that the crumbling
of a relation was that painful for you to write. No,
because I didn't know what I was doing when I
wrote it. It just I didn't tell me that all
these beautiful folks songs that people weep when they listen to,
you're just like tossing it off, like I don't really
know what this is. Let's take a song for example.
(20:57):
Let me let me pick one song and one of
my favorite songs of yours. I mean a song that
I just kills me. It is beautiful. Describe to me
recording the song beautiful? I mean, do you go out
with your friends and you get ship faced drunk and
you come in with a hangover and just lay this
thing down and you play poke ro all night? Or
do you enter a state? First? I get a card progression,
(21:21):
then I get a melody. It's fifth syn octaves. People,
it's fifth syn octaves that I get the lyric, You
got the melody, You got the cards, but you don't know.
So you you draw. You find an idea that that
that fits the fits the melody. That's Gordon Lightfoot, this songwriter,
Gordon Lightfoot, the singer, the performer. Do you enter a state?
(21:46):
Do you take yourself to a place when you perform
your recorded music? Or you don't? Well, I can, I
can use my imagination. I actually saw it as as
a seer love turned to a guy for his wife
or his his girlfriend. It reminds me when when I
(22:08):
was I learned how to sing with the emotion when
I was about twelve, when I was doing handling material
from Handles Messiah over the voice of Him who Criss
and the wilderness and all that sort of thing. And
I learned what emotion meant when when I were saying
(22:30):
handle Handles Messiah at age twelve, I sent in a competition,
uh so so I could apply. It was easier for
me to apply to summon up that emotional uh something
or whatever it is when it came time to put
that song down. But I didn't have to the point
(22:52):
at the beginning that I wanted to have it. And
that's how I've been working on all my life is
getting controlling that Inhal approached her man, make any it
work for me. You don't want to overdo it, you know,
you don't. You know that's what's beautiful about your music
as you go right up to a point. But you
(23:12):
don't do a lot of handholding. You let the audience
do the crying for you. You know what I mean,
you're your We we balance it off with a lot
of toech happers got lots of For a prime example
of the delivery, Gordon Lightfoot does so well. You don't
have to look beyond this song sundown, I can see
(23:34):
you learned back seven Christ where you do what you
don't confess your better ticket coming up. Lightfoot talks about
(23:55):
some of his musical inspirations that explains why he and
Bob Dylan can't get along right away. Explore the Here's
the Thing Archives. I talked with a very different kind
of songwriter, Tom York from the British rock band Radiohead.
He tells me how his producer gave him the confidence
to explore wild new electronics sounds. I mean I was like, um,
(24:19):
a kid being given a hammer. I was just hamming
rely on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing,
but he was kind of fascinated about that, you know,
and he'd come and literally tidy up the mess on
the computer. Take a listen at Here's the Thing, dot Org.
I you that you beautiful. This is Alec Baldwin and
(24:45):
you were listening to Here's the Thing. Gordon Lightfoot has
straddled the worlds of pop and folk music for decades,
but his confessional songwriting appealed to country music performers like
Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr. And Glen Campbell as well.
They all covered his songs, and there's a good reason.
That's what Lightfoot was listening to when he started thinking
(25:05):
about what kind of musician he wanted to be. It
was probably a country music I made the crossover in
adult contemporary music, you know, uh, fairly soon. And and
there was a lot of good writing going on in
the folk revival too, and I got I was influenced
by that. So you didn't come into the music business
(25:27):
and say I want to be Sinatra, I want to
be Elvis, I want to be Dylan. I think you
want to find your own voice. Yeah, I didn't. I
certainly did not take ide of the fact that I
was really influenced by Bob Dylan because of the not
(25:48):
only the quality of the work, but the the output
that they achieved. He was prolific. Yeah, that was the
amazing part. But it said, well it can be that
easy for him, I must surely be be easier for me.
I mean, if he can do this much work, surely
I can can do this much work. While appreciating the
(26:09):
music that he was producing at the time. When did
you first meet him, uh, nineteen in Woodstock, Well, it
was a it was an interesting time. I we actually
didn't didn't get along when we when we first now
(26:31):
he criticized my my my rules at playing Manhattan on
his pool table in Woodstock, and I got a little
got a little sarcastic about it, and we were all
he was very sarcastic, and I started seeing this coming
on to me and I left. I left their their house,
(26:55):
I went back down the hill to Albert's house. Albert's
Albert Grossman, who he was the manager. I had sure
part of that stable, that stable, yea. So it was
to say, since I knew him for so many years
after that, because we're all working in the same place,
I became sort of party party central for them when
(27:16):
they when they came to Toronto, which was often, and
with the band and everybody, and we had a great time,
and I, you know, it was good to have known
have known Bob. Um. Is it safe to say, because
I've read this in different articles and so forth, when
I was reading up about you. Um, then when you
say you got together and had a good time, was
(27:38):
there a period of your life where you had too
much of a good time? Well, I mean there was
lots of drinking went on, you know, there was a
little bit of everything. It just depended upon how severely
were affected by it and what kind of a constitution
that you possessed I did. I drank heavily right up
(27:59):
until and then all of a sudden I stopped. And
I asked how I stopped for twenty three years because
it was gonna was gonna ruin my career, and I
was making rrational, irrational decisions. And one night I tried
to climb from from one balcony to the next in
an apartment building on the tenth floor. Ye, sure, as
(28:20):
a party going on? What you want from I love that?
What was a better party in that other wing over there?
Saying there was two folks, there was room for me
to jump from the one balcony to the next. Did
you make it? Yes? Well I've said it. I've just
here talking. Do you want the phone and broken new
leg or something? Who I was on the tenth floor,
(28:42):
I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. Things like that,
you know. The other things that I did, they were
bad judgments, you know, and you know, with people, and
I felt that I was offending people sometimes, and I
did the last thing I wanted to offend anyone, you know,
And uh, That's what I felt. When I wrote to Fitzgerald,
(29:03):
I said, I hope I'm not going to offend any
of the relatives of these men. You know, was it
never communicated to you that you had Did anybody suggest that? No? No,
it never appreciated what you did, honored we We just
went to the fortieth anniversary ourselves, just this last novembery week.
Where was it? Health Lake Superior. I've been fifteen miles
(29:24):
thirty miles northwest of sou Sain Marie at the white
Fish Point. Wow. Um, you know you have had some
very impactful health issues. You had a stroke and then
you had Bell's palsy and you couldn't have What's it
like to lose feeling in your fingers and you were
a guitar player? Well asked me what it was like
(29:45):
when I had the ortal aneurysm okay, what was it
like when you had the a ortal any ofism? Well,
putting me out out of business for two years didn't really?
Ye put me out of business for two What do
you was that two thousand and two? What were the
symptoms of that? You pass out and you don't wake up.
The annuals and burst for six weeks. Yeah, what were
(30:06):
you feeling in the weeks prior? I would have bouts
of stomach ache and I'd have to lay out of
my belly on the bed for a while. Yeah, then
I would subside. And that went on over a period
of several years, and it started about ten years before
the actually event occurred. So there is a warning, there
(30:29):
is there's third warning signals it's a paint pretty bad
stomach ache. And yeah, that was years ago. That was young, Yeah,
seventy two, I think they're about. Yeah. I had to
stop performing for three months and then I got enough
of a where stopped puffing enough that I was able
(30:51):
to go back to work again. So I just I
just bolted boulder through so so to speak. And then
you had a stroke at so he came back that
that was a mini strokes that affected my right hand,
which was very disturbing. That wasn't two two thousand and six.
That was when I really started practicing, and that's when
I really improved learned how to really get my instruments
(31:14):
in tune at the same time, So I derived a
benefit from from that. How do American radio interview hosts
differ from Canadian radio interview hosts. No difference that I
can see people. Folks are folks. I the cousins all
(31:37):
cousins here in North America political. That's why I never
moved down there. I've I've got, I've I've follow I'm
I'm I'm a political fan. I'm a fan of of
watching the political process. Observer. Well, you you had the
situation with the song in Detroit Black Day in July. Yeah,
been from the Detroit Riots, and you wrote a song
(31:59):
about that and and cause you a little bit of
a grief in the record we released a single. Did
you and did you feel that that was something that
you resented or like, how did you feel when you
got I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was
almost like like the reck well like like it was, uh, well,
I should have. I was working in the city a
lot in the truck always circuit there. There was something
(32:20):
about it. I kept saying, maybe I shouldn't have written
a song like this. You know, it was written as
a folk song for an album. The record the Fitzgerald
was written as a folk song for an album and
to political purposes, as signed by other people. You didn't
have a political purpose when you wrote the song interesting,
just a story and the soul of motor City. It's
(32:43):
fared across the land, is taken in the heads of
the son of the fathers who came into this did
b and when when the record company took the song
off the air? So it didn't piss you off. The
(33:06):
record companies never pissed you off. No, never, when they
told you what songs to put on the album, what
songs not to put on the album, never bothered you. Well,
we sat we always worked that out together. You did. Yeah, uh.
With with the exceptions that's necessary. Early in the career too,
before I had the level of authority that I that
(33:27):
I needed to establish, I was in, I was produced
and and I uh, I used to be able to
discuss the custom discuss things with them there and very
fortunately fortunately to be able to do that. What song
that when you sing it, you could sit there and go, man,
(33:48):
I really really nailed that. That's a good song. There's
a lot of them, But what's one that just comes
out of east of midnight, East of midnight, East of midnight.
That's that's one of my very best ones. But somewhere
is the midnight west of anywhere us around I don't
(34:19):
do that. I usually do it. No, don't you know
why I don't do it? Though you're such an East
at midnight's my best song, man, I don't do that
if I did it for years. This is my last
four or five albums are probably the five best polbums
(34:41):
I made. But unfortunately my my momentum had run out
with the record company at that point. But I still
kept producing because it isn't that interesting. You just said
my last four or five albums with the best albums
I've ever do really believe that? Sure you do? Yeah,
you've been one of those albums between what period of
(35:03):
time nineteen nine two and in two thousand and six?
Do you recorded in an album in two thousand six?
Right before you got sick? Nineteen years I made five
of the best albums I've finished an album while I
was when I was down with the aneurism, I finished
(35:24):
an album there. I took my mind off my condition entirely.
So it was very fortutors that I had a whole
bunch of stuff City and the UH in the can
at the time, as they used to say. And the
best one of the whole lot is is Easter Midnight?
Do you write songs, now, I could. I always have
(35:46):
four or five tunes on the on the back. Your
wife is practically groaning behind your nodding head, like, yes,
of course, there's always tunes in the back burner. What
beautiful songs? What do you when you write songs? Now?
What do you write about? I just ming from one
to the other. I want to kill you. I just
right about whimsy. I try. I try to sound sound intelligent. Yeah,
(36:10):
what's on your mind? Though? Well? I was thinking about
the but the one that has the turtle in it,
I like that. I think she likes the fact that
I introduced the turtle into this song. Is that the
part you like about it? Darling? You know you know
what I'm saying here. It's amazing. It's it's amazing. Your
wife is this gorgeous young woman. And I realized the
(36:32):
glue of this marriage is you write songs about turtles
for your wife's that I don't. That's just what one scene.
I've got a bullshit my wife every day and convinced
her into staying with me, and you just sit there
and go, I wrote this song for your baby, a
song about a turtle. I know, I know it's it's like,
(36:54):
come if you will. Well, the earth is still fertile. Lady,
I see so Edi through the eyes of a turtle.
Turtles are soft and they they've got feelings too. Maybe
they think too quicktly for me or for you, And
it really doesn't matter. We gotta end there, maybe well
(37:16):
maybe not, maybe not, just to show you the kind
of a stuff and okay, into the microphonety well, back
to the stable, Lady, I see Marilyn Monroe and their stands.
Clark Gable held me off the cow. She'll stop the show.
There's many a good hand felt a chilly wind blow,
and it doesn't really matter. Don't ask you. You don't
(37:39):
why I write that stuff, asking about oh yeah, well,
we'll see I I sang it for twenty five years.
But it's really vicious. It's very it's just a very vicious.
The song of un quite a love song, and it
was it was written during the time when I was
I was, I was still married, and I wondered, my goodness,
(38:02):
what what does my It was like almost like a
world Chamberlain. I've had a hundred more like you. I'll
have a thousand four him through. It was one of
the lines in it, and I was married to someone
and I've you know, I hated singing the song, and
finally I stopped singing it the same way as I
stopped drinking in But even that only lasted for twenty
(38:25):
three years. Been saying it again. No, you don't sing
the song. You won't think a lot of people do.
But other people recorded singing Elvis Elvis press for me.
That's what you get for loving me. I gotta say,
I look at these album covers you are. You're one
of the best using guys I've ever seen in my life.
I mean, was that tough for you? Let tough part
(38:47):
of your career? Well, I think it helped you. Probably,
I'm sure. I'm sure it did, but I'm sure sure
best have what's next? When are you going on the
road again? Friday morning? I feel a little blue. I
can't there's still a lot of things and I should
(39:13):
know anyone could get I don't know how to brand
my Saturday. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought
to you by my Heart Radio. I feel a little
(39:34):
saying to watch them leave the cool because I don't
feel the happy times. Agoe. I can still
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. We're nearing the end of
our summer Staff Picks series. Over the last few weeks,
you've heard from the staff as they showcase their favorite
episodes from our archives. Now it's time to hear mine.
I wanted to share with you an episode from one
(00:21):
of the kindest people I've met in the making of
this podcast, musician Gordon Lightfoot. My conversation with the Canadian
singer songwriter of the nineteen seventies hits If You Could
Read My Mind, Beautiful Sundown, and The Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald covers his beginnings in the industry, what changed
(00:43):
in importance to him over time, and his battle with
some serious health issues. Here's my two thousand sixteen conversation
with Gordon Lightfoot. At times, I just don't know how
(01:17):
you could feel anything but beautiful. Over the course of
a career that has lasted more than fifty years, Canadian
singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has achieved a global stardom and
exceptional influence. Bob Dylan's a fan. About Lightfoot's songs, Dylan said,
(01:39):
I can't think of any I don't like. These songs,
which include Beautiful, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, If
You Could Read My Mind, and many others, have been
treasured by generations of popular musicians and listeners around the world.
Many people know about the folk music revival that brought
Bob Dylan to New York in the early nineteen sixties,
(02:01):
but north of the border there was an equivalent explosion
of talent at that time, and Lightfoot, who got his
start singing in boys choirs, found himself heading to Canada's
cultural capital to try his luck. Beautiful Well, I was
down in the in Toronto here looking for work, and
I got a job as a coral performer and in
(02:21):
a television series that was on every week. And at
the same time I branched out and began working in
the folk uh oriented places, because the the folk revival
had occurred around about nineteen sixty and I would have
been maybe twenty twenty years old there about one and
(02:43):
uh so I'd be working on the TV show in
the daytime and going and working at the coffee houses
at night. You know, you had a period we wrote
jingles for commercials. Correct I tried, they locked me in
a room. One time, a manager in a place on
Madison Avenue just left me there all afternoon. That go well,
I wrote the commercial, but they didn't like it. They
(03:07):
didn't play your version of the commercial. But you didn't,
didn't You weren't in New York for a long time? Correct? Well,
I would go back and forth in New York all
the time. My management company was in New York. I
was one of the fortunate ones who was able to
acquire a management situation south of the border, so to speak,
down in the States, and that was in New York,
and it was a great manager. He recognized my songwriting
(03:33):
ability immediately, and uh, I got a couple of tunes
recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary and one of them
went up to number five on the Which on Board
chart for for loving me. That's what you get full
loving me, that's what you get everything as you see,
(04:04):
that's well you get me. And so I was introduced
to the industry in the States really as a songwriter
before they even knew that I sang, you know it was.
It sort of happened on its own. Do you think
it would have been Do you think you would have
been happy to just stay in that place and just
(04:25):
produce records and write music and was performing the goal
all along? Did you want were you aching to do that? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
I wanted to even as a child, you know, I
didn't mind singing in my grandmother's house and the Sunday
get together, you know that they would single me out
and I would solo. I enjoyed the feel of the
(04:47):
communication that I and I can feel it then, and uh,
that's what I feel now. I feel I feel a
communication when I haven't wonder if a band and we
have a great repertoire and we we just lay the
stuff right out there for them, just pure joy. Yeah,
joy doing that. But when when you were take care
(05:07):
of if it pays the bills, that's a that's a
desirable silver lining there benefit. Yeah, all that hard work, well,
but when you were writing, when you turn that corner
and singing takes over. You know, I was doing that
like like small time stuff, and all of a sudden
I was asked to come to New York and open
(05:30):
for Paul Butterfield concert sixty six thereabouts. I suppose you
won the radio then recording. No, we didn't actually get
on the radio until about seventy one and what was
the first song that? I mean, I have a list here,
but what was it? If you could read my mind?
If you could read my mind, you know that Google
(05:51):
was just beating I be as long as you can't see.
The record was out. It was my first album on
Warner Brothers. And uh it was out for eight months
and there was no single, and all of a sudden,
(06:13):
rather promotion, guys said to his girlfriend, we listen to
this and come back and give me an opinion. On
Monday morning, his girlfriend she likes, if you could read
my mind, where are the heart? He's gone? The hero
would be baby hero. Often you won't read that book
(06:38):
because the just if you could read my mind hits
the charts, so to speak, It becomes a big hit
for you. What changes for you? Like did you just
have to sit there and say, oh, I people are
telling you to do things differently and now you're gonna
be a success and they want you to we get
so basically we got to hire an aircraft. Literally, that's
(07:00):
what happened. We had to hire an aircraft. Everyone wants
to book the same give in the same place, two
different places in one day. So and when you reached
that point of the and then that turning point is
the is the next imperative. You've gotta start coming up
with more songs and writing more songs. Oh yeah, record, Yeah.
We made three more albums and nothing happened, but we
(07:24):
but I kept doing one a year and and something
had to give eventually, and then, Uh, one summer I
wrote that song Sundown. I knew that it was it
was going to happen, that it was, it was the
right thing, and it did. When we're up to number one.
That was our second one. Then it was almost seven
two albums later that we had the wreck of the
(07:44):
Evan and Fitzgerald. And that happened all by itself too
that that became a responsibility. It did very large responsibility.
The song became a responsible Fitzgerald. But but tell me
in your own words. Many bowl go on about that,
about the tragedy and the history, and it's a very
important song to people, you know, Canadian history. People talk
(08:07):
about it very reverentially. Why was it important to you?
Because it was only one verse, uh, contained any conjecture
of any kind, and the rest of it was taken
from directly from newspaper articles and the aftermath, which only
lasted for about three days. If I had not wrote
that song, everybody would have forgotten about it a week
(08:31):
after it happened. Uh, I said, people are all around
the Great Lakes area are going to wonder if this
song is appropriate. And some did wonder about it, whether
it was appropriate for me to have written a song
that kind. But I had gone, uh, pretty much with
(08:53):
the newspaper articles that I scraped up. We had no
CPS in those days, and you went back that, you
went to the publisher and got the back copies of
the newspapers. And uh, so it's it's accurate. It's it's
it's accurate in the way the story unfolds. I remember
the night I wrote it. I was working in a
(09:14):
deserted house and there was there was a heck of
a windstorm going on right in Toronto that night, and
I remember myself wondering, G, I wonder what it's like
up on the on the Great Lakes right now, because
I sailed up there myself. I had a couple of
two different sailboats up there, and wondered always, I wonder
what the Great Lakes are like tonight? Because you're always
(09:35):
hearing but what things happening up in the Great Lakes,
And eleven o'clock in the evening, there was a report
of a ship sinking three hours earlier in Lake Superior.
And they're out looking for the people and they never
found any of them, and uh, twenty nine people gone.
(09:56):
And I had a melody and I had some cords
that I was knocking around in this deserted house with
the wind howling outside my Really, it was kind of
kind of a classic sitting to to write a song
like that. So I began writing the song and finished
writing like two or three weeks later. We were right
(10:19):
in the middle of a recording, a series of recording
sessions at the times that we put it in and
didn't work the first day, we put it in the
second day, and uh, did you ever stomp? And Tom Connors? No,
I will. Now I'm gonna run down and get all
of stomping Tom Connor he was recording. He was one
of very, very famous Canadian folk artists. Stomping Tom Connor's
(10:44):
Poaches hit and so that sounds like a hit. He
just heard the the melody going like, he didn't heard
the lyrics or anything. So that the appeal of the
song is definitely in the melody and the chord changes,
and then the story of the actually vent itself. I
got as accurately as I could by pursuing old news articles.
(11:07):
The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound,
and the wave rope over the really and every man you,
as the captain did to was the witch should love
and stealing the don came late in the breakfast, had
(11:30):
the week when the girls in November, came slashing in afternoon,
came at the squeezing rain in the face of a
hurricane west wind. We'll have more with Gordon Lightfoot after
(11:51):
the break I'm a mic Baldwin and this is here's
the thing. I spoke with musician Gordon Lightfoot in two
thousand sixteen. I was curious how his musicianship had changed
over time and what it was like for him recording
(12:14):
and performing in the early days. The first time I
started doing it, I felt and like, not confident in
what I was doing. What I was hearing, I didn't.
I didn't like what I was hearing of your own stuff. Yeah,
I like the sound of the sound of my voice
bothered me. And and you know I I started working
(12:37):
on that stuff and I and I've been working on
it ever since on my vocal and I have worked
on my my antonation on my instruments. Someone told me
that that when you land, because you perform in so
many different areas, you really dwell on tuning your instruments
a lot. Correct. Yeah, sometimes I changed it around too,
but but but I've learned through the years that there
(12:59):
is a method that you can get me into into
Scarborough fair Country, you know, like the like the sound
that Simon and Garfunkel used to get on there acoustic
orchestral ranges that they put together for their songs, and
actually only came it came real for me maybe six
(13:21):
or seven years ago after I was recovering from a
mini stroke that I had and I had to practice
a lot more all of a sudden. So it really
got me zero in on it. And it it all
comes down to the fifth and the octaves. You know,
just leave it at that. I'm just a handmaid in
here for all you guitar people out there. That's Gordon
(13:42):
Lightfoot's gift to you and his present to you. That's
the fifth and the octaves. And I don't have one, damn.
The fifth and the I don't know what the hell
he's talking about, but there it is. There's his message
to you today. Open McCartney told me when I spoke
to him once. Paul told me that he said, in
the beginning they would go into a recording studio of
(14:03):
the Beatles, and he said, you know, it was really
these weren't his words, but the message was kind of
like time is money. He said, these guys were luck.
You know, we want two songs in the morning, and
then you go have a lunch break and get down
to the pub and you have a cigarette, you have
a pufficient chips or wherever you come back. They want
two songs. And later they really moved along at a
clip when they were doing the first albums for Parlophone
(14:25):
or whoever it was, or E. M. I. And then
when they became, you know, the success they obviously became,
then they would take a year, you know, all musicians,
and then they would take a year to do their
next album. You know, they would do Sergeant Pepper's or whatever.
One really really luxuriate and getting every time. They gave
them more time because it was worth it was worth
that investment for them. Was the same true with you
(14:45):
do you find that the more successful you became, the
more time you wanted to make music. Perhaps later on,
but I I pretty much stuck to the to the
schedule as much as I could. We made like eight
or nine albums and ten years there, so you didn't
feel rushed by them. No, we were getting more time.
(15:05):
But but I was also also improving because what I
didn't like hearing I was I was changing all the time,
and it was always an improvement venture. Like a guy
building himself up and for play on an important sports team,
you know they got it. This just not just the game,
it's the preparation. Say you haven't played for for a
(15:27):
month and all of a sudden you've got to get
back up on stage. You should be able to crank
it or just like it was just you did a
show last night. But you liked rehearsing. Yeah, well you
believe in rehearsing. Are you're learning new material or you're
going back into the the old catalog, which we do
because I have a rotational situation going on, the biggest
(15:48):
problem my whole life been too many tunes, too many
women for my listeners. Right now, Gordon Lightfoot is turning
sheepishly towards his wife with a sheepish quin on his face,
and she just patted his shoulder to say, it's okay, Gordon, Well,
I can't step under your toes. Yeah, you can't do that.
But but I remember reading I remember listening to an article.
(16:08):
I remember reading an article that the Rolling Stones did
years ago, and I was taken by how, you know,
in terms of musicianship, Jagger and Keith, for two, were very,
very married to rehearsal. And for you to say that
as a great meaning to me. For you, someone who
as great an artist as you are, that the preparation
and the preparation beforehand so that when you when the
audience is there, bloom, you strum that guitar and you're
(16:31):
you're ready. You're ready. Yeah. And we we have the
the orchestra itself. I have four really challenged guys and
very loyal people. I read about that your band is
very loyal to you. Well, I mean it's there's no
reason why they should be. You know, we're all we're
(16:53):
all the same path. I mean, we we just want
to do a great job and you gotta like make
almost make a science out of it. I don't know
my guys are all professionals. I mean they're they're serious musicians.
Yeah yeah, and they do other things. I just got
to let them know what's coming up. You know, what
(17:16):
were you listening to back then in the sixties when
you were coming up, Who did you listen to? Well,
I was sing country music, you know, hack snow and
then folks. It was Pete Seeger and it was Bob Gibson.
It was Bob Dylan and and Simon and Garfuncle and
you know, Peter Paula Mary and and Ian and Sylvia.
They were a duet and they were it was a
(17:38):
beautiful act that they had. Eventually met these people, well
I met, but you became one of them my management
company because they were the first ever to do one
do any of my songs. It was Ian and Sylphia,
which one for Loving Me and Early Morning Rain. I
(18:00):
found an opening with the Folk Revival, you know, so
I was lucky to be a part of that, to
ride that one through and survive. Uh, there's there's nothing
much out there these days, you know, they're they're they're busking.
We We've got a whole bunch of people here in
Toronto who are harvering around all the time that the
(18:22):
folk oriented artists who are songwriters and you know, trying
to get somewhere, and some of some of them are
succeeding in summer or not. I get to hear a
lot of this stuff because it comes across my desk
and I get to hear it, and you wish, you
(18:43):
know that something grand could happen for these people, but
you don't know what to do. All you're gonna do
is respond encourage. Yeah, where do you think people learn
to hone their craft as a musician in in in
clubs and performing live? Well, I was as well as
I was working in bars to you know, like bars
(19:04):
and lounges as well as the coffeehouses, and so I
had a the kind of a repertoire that was acceptable
to play bars. So I got him following in a
couple of these bars. Then then I've sort of moved
uptown into the the village area Yorkville which was just
(19:27):
coming into bloom here in town, and get into places
like like the Purple Onion and then the Riverboat, which
was really the plumb of the whole lot was the
Riverboat because Bernie Feeder brought every person into that place
you could fastly imagine played there from James Taylor to
Joni Mitchell to to Neil Young right on down the line.
(19:52):
Is he is he a friend of yours? Yes? He is? Yeah.
Your songs and you're singing of your song, you're performing
of your songs is so vulnerable and so emotional. What
was the most difficult song for you to write or
among the most difficult songs for you to write? I'll
tell you that a lot of times you don't know
what you're doing it. If you you you're drawing the
(20:14):
material from your subconscious you don't you don't actually know
what you're doing. You're you know, you're drawing it from somewhere,
and then later down the line, three or four weeks later,
you're gonna sign it back to uh, the actual event
that product on. I mean, that's like if you could
(20:37):
read my mind. Just it's about actually that the crumbling
of a relation was that painful for you to write. No,
because I didn't know what I was doing when I
wrote it. It just I didn't tell me that all
these beautiful folks songs that people weep when they listen to,
you're just like tossing it off, like I don't really
know what this is. Let's take a song for example.
(20:57):
Let me let me pick one song and one of
my favorite songs of yours. I mean a song that
I just kills me. It is beautiful. Describe to me
recording the song beautiful? I mean, do you go out
with your friends and you get ship faced drunk and
you come in with a hangover and just lay this
thing down and you play poke ro all night? Or
do you enter a state? First? I get a card progression,
(21:21):
then I get a melody. It's fifth syn octaves. People,
it's fifth syn octaves that I get the lyric, You
got the melody, You got the cards, but you don't know.
So you you draw. You find an idea that that
that fits the fits the melody. That's Gordon Lightfoot, this songwriter,
Gordon Lightfoot, the singer, the performer. Do you enter a state?
(21:46):
Do you take yourself to a place when you perform
your recorded music? Or you don't? Well, I can, I
can use my imagination. I actually saw it as as
a seer love turned to a guy for his wife
or his his girlfriend. It reminds me when when I
(22:08):
was I learned how to sing with the emotion when
I was about twelve, when I was doing handling material
from Handles Messiah over the voice of Him who Criss
and the wilderness and all that sort of thing. And
I learned what emotion meant when when I were saying
(22:30):
handle Handles Messiah at age twelve, I sent in a competition,
uh so so I could apply. It was easier for
me to apply to summon up that emotional uh something
or whatever it is when it came time to put
that song down. But I didn't have to the point
(22:52):
at the beginning that I wanted to have it. And
that's how I've been working on all my life is
getting controlling that Inhal approached her man, make any it
work for me. You don't want to overdo it, you know,
you don't. You know that's what's beautiful about your music
as you go right up to a point. But you
(23:12):
don't do a lot of handholding. You let the audience
do the crying for you. You know what I mean,
you're your We we balance it off with a lot
of toech happers got lots of For a prime example
of the delivery, Gordon Lightfoot does so well. You don't
have to look beyond this song sundown, I can see
(23:34):
you learned back seven Christ where you do what you
don't confess your better ticket coming up. Lightfoot talks about
(23:55):
some of his musical inspirations that explains why he and
Bob Dylan can't get along right away. Explore the Here's
the Thing Archives. I talked with a very different kind
of songwriter, Tom York from the British rock band Radiohead.
He tells me how his producer gave him the confidence
to explore wild new electronics sounds. I mean I was like, um,
(24:19):
a kid being given a hammer. I was just hamming
rely on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing,
but he was kind of fascinated about that, you know,
and he'd come and literally tidy up the mess on
the computer. Take a listen at Here's the Thing, dot Org.
I you that you beautiful. This is Alec Baldwin and
(24:45):
you were listening to Here's the Thing. Gordon Lightfoot has
straddled the worlds of pop and folk music for decades,
but his confessional songwriting appealed to country music performers like
Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr. And Glen Campbell as well.
They all covered his songs, and there's a good reason.
That's what Lightfoot was listening to when he started thinking
(25:05):
about what kind of musician he wanted to be. It
was probably a country music I made the crossover in
adult contemporary music, you know, uh, fairly soon. And and
there was a lot of good writing going on in
the folk revival too, and I got I was influenced
by that. So you didn't come into the music business
(25:27):
and say I want to be Sinatra, I want to
be Elvis, I want to be Dylan. I think you
want to find your own voice. Yeah, I didn't. I
certainly did not take ide of the fact that I
was really influenced by Bob Dylan because of the not
(25:48):
only the quality of the work, but the the output
that they achieved. He was prolific. Yeah, that was the
amazing part. But it said, well it can be that
easy for him, I must surely be be easier for me.
I mean, if he can do this much work, surely
I can can do this much work. While appreciating the
(26:09):
music that he was producing at the time. When did
you first meet him, uh, nineteen in Woodstock, Well, it
was a it was an interesting time. I we actually
didn't didn't get along when we when we first now
(26:31):
he criticized my my my rules at playing Manhattan on
his pool table in Woodstock, and I got a little
got a little sarcastic about it, and we were all
he was very sarcastic, and I started seeing this coming
on to me and I left. I left their their house,
(26:55):
I went back down the hill to Albert's house. Albert's
Albert Grossman, who he was the manager. I had sure
part of that stable, that stable, yea. So it was
to say, since I knew him for so many years
after that, because we're all working in the same place,
I became sort of party party central for them when
(27:16):
they when they came to Toronto, which was often, and
with the band and everybody, and we had a great time,
and I, you know, it was good to have known
have known Bob. Um. Is it safe to say, because
I've read this in different articles and so forth, when
I was reading up about you. Um, then when you
say you got together and had a good time, was
(27:38):
there a period of your life where you had too
much of a good time? Well, I mean there was
lots of drinking went on, you know, there was a
little bit of everything. It just depended upon how severely
were affected by it and what kind of a constitution
that you possessed I did. I drank heavily right up
(27:59):
until and then all of a sudden I stopped. And
I asked how I stopped for twenty three years because
it was gonna was gonna ruin my career, and I
was making rrational, irrational decisions. And one night I tried
to climb from from one balcony to the next in
an apartment building on the tenth floor. Ye, sure, as
(28:20):
a party going on? What you want from I love that?
What was a better party in that other wing over there?
Saying there was two folks, there was room for me
to jump from the one balcony to the next. Did
you make it? Yes? Well I've said it. I've just
here talking. Do you want the phone and broken new
leg or something? Who I was on the tenth floor,
(28:42):
I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. Things like that,
you know. The other things that I did, they were
bad judgments, you know, and you know, with people, and
I felt that I was offending people sometimes, and I
did the last thing I wanted to offend anyone, you know,
And uh, That's what I felt. When I wrote to Fitzgerald,
(29:03):
I said, I hope I'm not going to offend any
of the relatives of these men. You know, was it
never communicated to you that you had Did anybody suggest that? No? No,
it never appreciated what you did, honored we We just
went to the fortieth anniversary ourselves, just this last novembery week.
Where was it? Health Lake Superior. I've been fifteen miles
(29:24):
thirty miles northwest of sou Sain Marie at the white
Fish Point. Wow. Um, you know you have had some
very impactful health issues. You had a stroke and then
you had Bell's palsy and you couldn't have What's it
like to lose feeling in your fingers and you were
a guitar player? Well asked me what it was like
(29:45):
when I had the ortal aneurysm okay, what was it
like when you had the a ortal any ofism? Well,
putting me out out of business for two years didn't really?
Ye put me out of business for two What do
you was that two thousand and two? What were the
symptoms of that? You pass out and you don't wake up.
The annuals and burst for six weeks. Yeah, what were
(30:06):
you feeling in the weeks prior? I would have bouts
of stomach ache and I'd have to lay out of
my belly on the bed for a while. Yeah, then
I would subside. And that went on over a period
of several years, and it started about ten years before
the actually event occurred. So there is a warning, there
(30:29):
is there's third warning signals it's a paint pretty bad
stomach ache. And yeah, that was years ago. That was young, Yeah,
seventy two, I think they're about. Yeah. I had to
stop performing for three months and then I got enough
of a where stopped puffing enough that I was able
(30:51):
to go back to work again. So I just I
just bolted boulder through so so to speak. And then
you had a stroke at so he came back that
that was a mini strokes that affected my right hand,
which was very disturbing. That wasn't two two thousand and six.
That was when I really started practicing, and that's when
I really improved learned how to really get my instruments
(31:14):
in tune at the same time, So I derived a
benefit from from that. How do American radio interview hosts
differ from Canadian radio interview hosts. No difference that I
can see people. Folks are folks. I the cousins all
(31:37):
cousins here in North America political. That's why I never
moved down there. I've I've got, I've I've follow I'm
I'm I'm a political fan. I'm a fan of of
watching the political process. Observer. Well, you you had the
situation with the song in Detroit Black Day in July. Yeah,
been from the Detroit Riots, and you wrote a song
(31:59):
about that and and cause you a little bit of
a grief in the record we released a single. Did
you and did you feel that that was something that
you resented or like, how did you feel when you
got I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was
almost like like the reck well like like it was, uh, well,
I should have. I was working in the city a
lot in the truck always circuit there. There was something
(32:20):
about it. I kept saying, maybe I shouldn't have written
a song like this. You know, it was written as
a folk song for an album. The record the Fitzgerald
was written as a folk song for an album and
to political purposes, as signed by other people. You didn't
have a political purpose when you wrote the song interesting,
just a story and the soul of motor City. It's
(32:43):
fared across the land, is taken in the heads of
the son of the fathers who came into this did
b and when when the record company took the song
off the air? So it didn't piss you off. The
(33:06):
record companies never pissed you off. No, never, when they
told you what songs to put on the album, what
songs not to put on the album, never bothered you. Well,
we sat we always worked that out together. You did. Yeah, uh.
With with the exceptions that's necessary. Early in the career too,
before I had the level of authority that I that
(33:27):
I needed to establish, I was in, I was produced
and and I uh, I used to be able to
discuss the custom discuss things with them there and very
fortunately fortunately to be able to do that. What song
that when you sing it, you could sit there and go, man,
(33:48):
I really really nailed that. That's a good song. There's
a lot of them, But what's one that just comes
out of east of midnight, East of midnight, East of midnight.
That's that's one of my very best ones. But somewhere
is the midnight west of anywhere us around I don't
(34:19):
do that. I usually do it. No, don't you know
why I don't do it? Though you're such an East
at midnight's my best song, man, I don't do that
if I did it for years. This is my last
four or five albums are probably the five best polbums
(34:41):
I made. But unfortunately my my momentum had run out
with the record company at that point. But I still
kept producing because it isn't that interesting. You just said
my last four or five albums with the best albums
I've ever do really believe that? Sure you do? Yeah,
you've been one of those albums between what period of
(35:03):
time nineteen nine two and in two thousand and six?
Do you recorded in an album in two thousand six?
Right before you got sick? Nineteen years I made five
of the best albums I've finished an album while I
was when I was down with the aneurism, I finished
(35:24):
an album there. I took my mind off my condition entirely.
So it was very fortutors that I had a whole
bunch of stuff City and the UH in the can
at the time, as they used to say. And the
best one of the whole lot is is Easter Midnight?
Do you write songs, now, I could. I always have
(35:46):
four or five tunes on the on the back. Your
wife is practically groaning behind your nodding head, like, yes,
of course, there's always tunes in the back burner. What
beautiful songs? What do you when you write songs? Now?
What do you write about? I just ming from one
to the other. I want to kill you. I just
right about whimsy. I try. I try to sound sound intelligent. Yeah,
(36:10):
what's on your mind? Though? Well? I was thinking about
the but the one that has the turtle in it,
I like that. I think she likes the fact that
I introduced the turtle into this song. Is that the
part you like about it? Darling? You know you know
what I'm saying here. It's amazing. It's it's amazing. Your
wife is this gorgeous young woman. And I realized the
(36:32):
glue of this marriage is you write songs about turtles
for your wife's that I don't. That's just what one scene.
I've got a bullshit my wife every day and convinced
her into staying with me, and you just sit there
and go, I wrote this song for your baby, a
song about a turtle. I know, I know it's it's like,
(36:54):
come if you will. Well, the earth is still fertile. Lady,
I see so Edi through the eyes of a turtle.
Turtles are soft and they they've got feelings too. Maybe
they think too quicktly for me or for you, And
it really doesn't matter. We gotta end there, maybe well
(37:16):
maybe not, maybe not, just to show you the kind
of a stuff and okay, into the microphonety well, back
to the stable, Lady, I see Marilyn Monroe and their stands.
Clark Gable held me off the cow. She'll stop the show.
There's many a good hand felt a chilly wind blow,
and it doesn't really matter. Don't ask you. You don't
(37:39):
why I write that stuff, asking about oh yeah, well,
we'll see I I sang it for twenty five years.
But it's really vicious. It's very it's just a very vicious.
The song of un quite a love song, and it
was it was written during the time when I was
I was, I was still married, and I wondered, my goodness,
(38:02):
what what does my It was like almost like a
world Chamberlain. I've had a hundred more like you. I'll
have a thousand four him through. It was one of
the lines in it, and I was married to someone
and I've you know, I hated singing the song, and
finally I stopped singing it the same way as I
stopped drinking in But even that only lasted for twenty
(38:25):
three years. Been saying it again. No, you don't sing
the song. You won't think a lot of people do.
But other people recorded singing Elvis Elvis press for me.
That's what you get for loving me. I gotta say,
I look at these album covers you are. You're one
of the best using guys I've ever seen in my life.
I mean, was that tough for you? Let tough part
(38:47):
of your career? Well, I think it helped you. Probably,
I'm sure. I'm sure it did, but I'm sure sure
best have what's next? When are you going on the
road again? Friday morning? I feel a little blue. I
can't there's still a lot of things and I should
(39:13):
know anyone could get I don't know how to brand
my Saturday. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought
to you by my Heart Radio. I feel a little
(39:34):
saying to watch them leave the cool because I don't
feel the happy times. Agoe. I can still
Host
Alec Baldwin
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