May 9, 2023 • 39 mins
Last week, we lost the great singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. In honor of his passing, Alec is sharing his 2016 conversation with the musician, one of his favorites in the history of the podcast: Over the course of a career that has lasted more than half a century, Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot 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.
You can listen to all of the music from this episode and other selections from Gordon Lightfoot in a curated playlist here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. Last week we lost one of
the greats singer songwriter, folk rock legend, and hands down
one of the kindest people I've ever met. In the
making of this podcast, musician Gordon Lightfoot, I wanted to
(00:20):
take a moment to remember Lightfoot and his influence on
all who were lucky enough to hear his music. Lightfoot
was on a short list of music legends I was
anxious to interview. The opportunity finally presented itself while I
was attending the Toronto Film Festival. He was one of
my favorite artists and he will be deeply missed. Here's
(00:42):
my twenty sixteen conversation with the late Gordon Lightfoot.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
At times, I just don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
How you could be anything but beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Over the course of a career that has lasted more
than fifty years, Canadian singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has achieved
global stardom and exceptional influence. Bob Dylan's a fan. About
Lightfoot's songs, Dylan said, I can't think of any I
don't like these songs, which include Beautiful, The Wreck of
(01:38):
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, but north of the border
there was an equivalent explosion of talent at that time,
(02:00):
and Lightfoot, who got his start singing in boys choirs,
found himself heading to Canada's cultural capital to try his luck.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Beautiful Well, I was down in Toronto here looking for work,
and I got a job as a cooral performer in
a television series that was on every week. And at
the same time I branched out and began working in
the folk oriented places. Because the folk revival had occurred
(02:29):
around about nineteen sixty and I would have been maybe
twenty years old there about twenty one, and so I'd
be working on the TV show in the daytime and
going out and working at the coffeehouses at night.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, you had a period where you wrote jingles for commercials. Correct.
I tried to make a living.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
They locked me in a room one time, a manager
in a place on Madison Avenue and just left me
there all afternoon.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
How'd that go?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Well? I wrote the commercial, but they they didn't like it.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
They didn't play your version of the commercial. But you didn't.
You didn't. You went in New York for a long time?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Correct, Well, I would go back and forth in New
York all the time because 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 he was a great manager. He
recognized my songwriting ability immediately, and I got a couple
(03:29):
of tunes recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, and one
of them went up to number five on the Board
chart for loving me.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That's what you get, full loving me. That's what you get,
full loving me.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Everything it was gone, as.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
You can see, that's what you get for love.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you think you would have been Do you think
you would have been happy to just stay in that
place and just produce records and write music and was
performing the goal all along? Did you want? Were you
itching to do that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, yeah, I wanted to even as a child, you know,
I didn't mind singing in my grandmother's house on the
Sunday get togethers. You know, they would single me out
and I would solo. I enjoyed the feel of the
communication that and I could feel it then. That's what
(04:46):
I feel now. I feel a communication when I have
a wonderful band and we have a great repertoire and
we just lay the stuff right out there.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
For them, just pure joy.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, I enjoy doing that. But when you were take
care if it pays the bills, that's.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
A that's a desirable silver lining there. Yeah, all that
hard work, well, but when you were writing, when you
turn that corner and singing takes over. You know.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I was doing like like small time stuff, and all
of a sudden I was asked to come to New
York and open for Paul Butterfield concert nineteen sixty six thereabouts.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I suppose sixty So you won the radio then recording.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
No, we didn't actually get on the radio until about
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
What was the first song that I mean? I have
a list here. But what was the if you could
read my mind.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
If you could read my mind, if you knew that ghost.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Is me and I won't be sad as long as
time I'm a ghost. You can't see.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The record was that it was my first album on
Warner Brothers, and it was out for eight months and
there was no single, and all of a sudden other 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.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Mind, where the hard he is gone, the hero would
be me.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Hero of.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You won't read that book because the endangers.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
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 have to sit there
and say, oh, people are telling you to do things
differently and now you're going to be a success and
they want you to We.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Get so busy we got to hire an aircraft. Literally,
that's what happened. We had to hire an aircraft. Everyone
wants to book, say, get the same place two different
places in one day.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So when you reached that point, that and then that
turning point is the is the next imperative. You've got
to start coming up with more songs and writing more songs.
Oh yeah, yeah, you record. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
We made three more albums and nothing happened. But I
kept doing one a year and something had to give eventually,
And then one summer I wrote that song Sundown, and
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.
(07:35):
Then it was almost seven two albums later that we
had the record the Abne Fitzgerald, and that happened all
by itself too. That became a responsibility. It did a
very large responsibil.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The song became a responsible But tell me in your
own words. Many people go on about that, about the
tragedy and the history, and it's a very, you know,
important song to people, you know history. People talk about
it very reverentially. Why was it important to you?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Because it was only one verse contained any conjecture of
any kind of 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 after it happened,
(08:30):
I said, people are all around the Great Lakes area
are going to wonder if the song is appropriate. And
some did wonder about it, whether it was appropriate for
me to have written a song of that kind. But
I had gone pretty much with the newspaper articles that
I scraped up. We had no CPS in those days,
(08:51):
and you went back that you went to the publisher
and got the back copies of the newspapers. And it's accurate.
It's accurate in the way the story on folds. I
remember the night I wrote it. I was working in
a deserted house and there was a heck of a
(09:11):
windstorm going on right in Toronto that night, and I
remember myself wondering, Gee, I wonder what it's like up
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 hearing about what
things happening up in the Great Lakes. And eleven o'clock
(09:34):
in the evening there was a report of a ship
sinking three hours earlier in the Lake Superior, and they're
out looking for the people, and they never found any
of them, and twenty nine people gone. And I had
a melody, and I had some cords that I was
(09:55):
knocking around in this deserted house with the wind howling outside.
Really it was kind of kind of a classic setting
to write a song like that. So I began writing
the song and finished writing it like two or three
weeks later. We were right in the middle of a
recording a series of recording sessions at the time, so
(10:17):
we put it in and didn't work the first day.
We put it in the second day and did you
ever stomp and Tom Connors?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
No, I will. Now I'm gonna run down and get
all of stomp and Tom Connery he was recording.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
He was one of our very famous Canadian folk artists.
Stomping Tom Connors poke his hit and said that sounds
like a hit. He just heard the melody going like
he didn't heard the lyrics or anything. So the appeal
of the song is definitely in the melody and the
chord changes, and then the story of the actually made itself.
(10:54):
I got as accurately as I could by pursuing old
news articles.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound,
and the wave rope over the railing, and every man
you as the captain did to twis the Witch and
love and stealing.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
The dawn came leading, and.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
The breakfast had the week when the girls in Lovember
and slashing what afternoon came into screeeze and rad in
the base of a hurricane west wind.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
We'll have more with Gordon Lightfoot after the break I'm ALC.
Baldwin and this is here's the thing. I spoke with
musician Gordon Lightfoot twenty sixteen. I was curious how his
musicianship had changed over time and what it was like
(12:06):
for him recording and performing in the early days.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
The first time I started doing it, I felt under like,
I'm not confident in what I was doing, what I
was hearing, I didn't I didn't like what I.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Was hearing of your own stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I don't like the sound. The sound of my
voice bothered me. And you know, I started working on
that stuff and I've been working on it ever since.
On my vocal and I've worked on my intonation, on
my instruments.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Someone told me that when you land because you perform
in so many different areas. You really dwell on tuning
your instruments alot. Correct.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, sometimes I chase it around too, but I've learned
through the years that there is a method that you
can get me into into Scarborough fair Country, you know,
like the like the sound that Simon and Garfuncle used
to get on their acoustic orchestral arrangements that they put
together for their songs. And it actually came it became
(13:13):
real for me maybe six 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 zeroing in on it.
And it all comes down to the fifths and the octaves,
and I'll just leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I'm just a handmaiden here for all you guitar people
out there. That's Gordon Lightfoot's gift to you and his
present to you. That's the fifths and the octaves. And
I don't have one damn idea the fifths and the eye.
I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but
there it is. There's his message to you today. McCartney
told me when I spoke to him, once Paul told
(13:52):
me that he said, in the beginning they would go
into a recording studio of 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 like, you know, we want two songs
in the morning, and then you go have a lunch
break and you go down to the pub and you
have a cigarette, you have a fission chips where you
come back. They want two songs after they really moved
(14:13):
along at a clip when they were doing the first
albums for Parlophone or whoever it was, or em I,
and then when they became, you know, the success they
obviously became, then they would take a year. You know,
all musicians are the same. Then they would take a
year to do their next album. You know, they would
do Sergeant Pepper's or what everyone really really luxuriate and
getting every They gave them more time because it was
(14:35):
worth it was worth that investment for them. Was the
same true with you. Do you find that the more
successful you became, the more time you wanted to make music.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Perhaps later on, but I pretty much stuck to the
to the schedule as much as I could. We made
like eight or nine albums in ten years there, so.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
You didn't feel rushed by them.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
No, we were getting more time. But I was also
improving because what I didn't like hearing I was I
was changing all the time. I was always an improvement venture,
like a guy building himself up and for to play
on an important sports team. You know they got it.
It's just not just the game, it's the preparation. Say
(15:19):
you haven't played for for a month and all of
a sudden you got to get back up on stage.
You should be able to crank it out just like
it was just you did the show last night, right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
But you like rehearsing, Yeah, well you believe rehearsing.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, you're learning new material or you're going back into
the old catalog with which we do. Because I have
a rotational situation going on, the biggest problem in my
whole life's been too many tunes, too many women.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
For my listeners. Right now, Gordon Lightfoot is turning sheepishly
toward his wife with a sheepish grin on his face,
and she just patted his shoulder to say it's okay.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Gordon, Well I can't step on your toes.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, you can't do that. But I remember reading I
remember listening to an article. 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 Ridgard were very, very married to rehearsal. And
for you to say that that is a great meaning
to me. For you, someone as great an artist as
you are, that the preparation and the preparation beforehand so
(16:21):
that when you when the audience is there, bloom, you
strum that guitar and you're you're ready. You're ready.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, And we we have the the artistra itself. I
have four really talented guys.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And very loyal people. I read about that your band
is very loyal to.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Well, I mean it's there's no reason why they should
not be. You know, we're all the same path. I mean,
we just want to do a great job and you
got to like make almost make a science out of it.
I don't know. My guys are all professionals. I mean
there's they're serious musicians. Yeah yeah, and they do other things.
(17:04):
I just got to let them know what's coming up.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You know, what were you listening to back then? In
the sixties when you were coming up, Who did you
listen to?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Well, I was listening to the country music, you know,
Hank Snow and then folks. It was Pete Seeger, and
it was Bob Gibson. It was Bob Dylan and Simon
and Garfunkel, and you know Peter Paul and Mary and
Ian and Sylvia. They were a duet and it was
a beautiful act that they had.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Eventually you met these people, well I met, but you
became one of them.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
My management company because they were the first ever to
do one of do any of my songs was Ian
and Sophia, which one for Loving Me and Early Morning Rain.
I found an opening with the Folk Revival, you know.
So I was lucky to be a part of that,
to write that one through and survive. Uh, there's there's
(18:04):
nothing much out there these days. Uh, you know, they're
they're they're busking. We've got a look a whole bunch
of people here in Toronto who who are hovering around
all the time that the folk oriented artists who are
songwriters and you know, trying to get somewhere, and some
(18:24):
of some of them are succeeding in some or not.
I get to hear a lot of the stuff because
it comes across my desk and I get to hear it,
and you wish, you know that something grand could happen
for these people, but you don't know what to do.
All you can do is respond.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Right, encourage.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Where do you think people learn to hone their craft
as a musician in in in clubs and performing live?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, I was as well as I was working in
bars too, you know, like bars and lounges as well
as the coffeehouses. And so I had the kind of
a repertoire that was acceptable to plant bars. So I
got him following in a couple of these bars. Then
(19:14):
I've sort of moved uptown into the village area, you
or Yorkville, which was just coming into bloom here in town,
and get into places 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
(19:36):
that place. You could fosply image and play there, from
James Taylor to Joni Mitchell to to Kneel Young right
on down the line.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Is he is he a friend of yours? Yes?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
He is?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
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?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I'll tell you that a lot of times you don't
know you're doing it. You're drawing the material from your
subconscious you know, 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
can sign it back to the actual event that brought
(20:26):
it on. I mean, that's like, if you could read
my mind is about actually the crumbling.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Of a Really was that painful for you to write? No?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Because I didn't know what I was doing right I
wrote it. It's just I didn't really.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
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. Let me let me pick one
song now, one of my favorite songs of yours. I mean,
a song that I just kills me is beautiful, describe
to me recording the song beautiful. I mean, do you
go out with your friends and your get ship faced
(21:03):
drunk and you come in with a hangover and just
lay this thing down and you play poker ro all night?
Or do you enter a state?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
First I get a card progression, Then I get a melody.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's fifth syn octaves, people, it's fifth syn octaves.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Then I get the lyric. You got the melody, you
got the chords, but you don't know, so you draw.
You find an idea that that fits the fits the melody.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
That's Gordon Light for the songwriter, Gordon Light for the singer,
the performer. Do you enter a state? Do you take
yourself to a place when you perform your recorded music
or you don't?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Well, I can, I can use my imagination. I actually
saw it as a sincere love turn to a guy
for his wife or his girlfriend. It it reminds me
of when I was I learned how to sing with
emotion when I was about twelve, when I was doing
(22:08):
handling material from Handles Messiah, the Voice of Him who
Cries in the Wilderness and all that sort of thing,
And I learned what emotion meant when when I were
saying handles Messiah. At age twelve, I sang in a
(22:28):
competition so I could apply. It was easy 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 at
the beginning that I wanted to have it. And that's
why I've been working on all my life is getting
(22:52):
controlling that emotional approach to it, making it work for me.
You don't overdo it, and.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
You don't know what I'm saying. That's what's beautiful about
your music is you go right up to a point,
but you don't do a lot of handholding. You let
the audience do the crying for you. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You're your We balance it off with a lot of
toe chappers. You got lots of to.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
For a prime example of the delivery Gordon Lightfoot does
so well. You don't have to look beyond this song sundown.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I can see you land back seven.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Room where you do what you don't confess.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Some better dickas.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Around coming up. Lightfoot talks about some of his musical
inspirations that explains why he and Bob Dylan didn't get
along right away explore the Here's the Thing archives. I
talk with a very different kind of songwriter, Tom York
from the British rock band Radiohead. He tells me how
(24:05):
his producer gave him the confidence to explore wild new
electronic sounds.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
I mean, I was like a kid being given a hammer.
I was just hamm and reliance stuff. I didn't really
know what I was doing, but he was kind of
fascinated by that, you know, and he'd come and literally
tidy up the mess on the computer.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Take a listen at Here's Thething, dot Org. I'm telling you.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
That you beautiful.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
This is Alec Baldwin and 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 Junior,
and Glenn Campbell as well. They all covered his songs.
And there's good reason that's what Lightfoot was listening to
(24:58):
when he started thinking about what kind of musician he
wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
It was probably a country music I made the crossover
into adult contemporary music, you know, fairly soon and there
was a lot of good writing going on in the
folk revival too, and I got I was influenced by that.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So you didn't come into the music business and say
I want to be Sinatra, I want to be Elvis,
I want to be Dylan. Well, I think you wanted
to find your own voice.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, I didn't. I certainly did not take lightly the
fact that I was really influenced by Bob Dylan because
of the not only the quality of the work, but
the output that they achieved. He was prolific. Yeah, that
was the amazing Particut and said, well, it can be
(25:53):
that easy for him, it must surely be be easier
for me. I mean, if he can do this much work,
surely I can do this much work. While appreciating the
music that he was producing at the time. When did
you first meet him nineteen sixty five, What was that
like for you in Woodstock? Well, it was a it
(26:17):
was an interesting time. We actually didn't didn't get along
when we first met. He criticized my my rules at
playing Manhattan on his pool table in Woodstock, and I
got a little he got a little sarcastic about it,
(26:38):
and we were all He was very sarcastic, and I
started seeing this coming on to me and I left.
I left their house wow, and went back down the
hill to Albert's house. Alberts, Albert Grossman. He was the
manager I had before, part of that stable, that fam
(26:59):
that's stable yet, so natives 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 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
(27:20):
was good to have known Bob.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Is it safe to say, because I've read this in
different articles and so forth when I was reading up
about you. Then when you say you got together and
had a good time, was there a period of your
life where you had too much of a good time?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, I mean there was lots of drinking went on there.
There was a little bit of everything. It just depended
upon how severely you were affected by it and what
kind of a constitution that you possessed. Did. I drank
heavily right up until nineteen eighty two, and then all
of a sudden I stopped last I stopped it for
(27:58):
twenty three years because it was good. I was going
to ruin my career and I was making unrational, irrational decisions.
And one night I tried to climb from from one
balcony to the next in an apartment building on the
tenth floor.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Sure there was a party going on.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And you wanted to one party. I love that. What
was a better party in that other wing over there?
There was too to meet folks.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
There was room for me to jump from the one
balcony to the next.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Did you make it?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yes, Well I've said it. I here talking.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
You might have fallen and broken your leg or something.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Who knows, I was on the tenth floor. I wouldn't
be here.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
You wouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Things like that, you know. But other things that I
did there 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 that's what I felt when
I wrote to Fitzgerald, I said, I hope I'm not
going to offend any of the relatives of these men.
(29:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Was it never communicated to you that you had Did
anybody suggest that.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
No, No, it never appreciated what you've been honored. We just
went to the fortieth anniversary ourselves, just this last novembery week.
Where was it helped Lake Superior? I've been fifteen miles
thirty miles of northwest of Sussaint Marie at the Whitefish Point.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Wow. 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're a guitar player.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Well, ask me what it was like when I had
the aordal aneurysm.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Okay, what was it like when you had the a
ordal aneurysm.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well it put me out of business for two years?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Did it really? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Put me out of business for two What a year
was that? Two thousand and two?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
What were the symptoms of that?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
If you pass out and you don't wake up.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh, I mean the aneurysm bursts for six weeks? Yeah,
what were you feeling in the weeks prior?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
I would have bouts of stomach ache and I'd have
to lay out of my belly on the bed for
a while.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Then I would subside. And that went on over a
period of several years, and it started about ten years
before the actually vent occurred. So there is a warning.
There is this third warning signals it's a paint. You
get a pretty bad stomach ache. And yeah, that was
(30:31):
years ago. That was nineteen you were young, Yeah, seventy two,
I think thereabouts.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I had to stop performing for three months and then
I got enough of wou'd stop puffing enough? Then I
was able to go back to work again. Really, so
I just I just boulder through, so to speak, and
then you had a stroke actually came back. That was
a mini stroke. That the fact of my right hand,
(30:58):
which was very disturbing. That in 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
in tune at the same time. So I derived a
benefit from from that.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
How do American radio interview hosts differ from Canadian radio
interview hosts.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
No difference that I can see, no difference. People folks
are folks. So the boys appreciated the cousins. We're all
cousins here in North America. That's why you're not political now,
that's probably I never moved down there. I've follow I'm
I'm a I'm a political fan. I'm a fan of
(31:43):
watching the political process observer.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Well, you you had the situation with the song in
Detroit Black Day in July. Yeah, from the Detroit riots,
that's right, and you wrote a song about that and
then cause you a little bit of a.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Grief in the record we released a single.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Did you and did you feel that that was something
that you resented or like, how did you feel when
you got pulled.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was
almost like like the wreck well, well like like it
was a well I should have I was working in
the city a lot, in the trucky I circt there.
There was something 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 of the Fitzgerald was written as a folk song
(32:23):
for an album.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And the political purposes assigned by other people. You didn't
have a political purpose when you wrote the song. Interesting,
just a story Black.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Dan and the soul of Motor City is there across
the line.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That's the book of the.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Law and order is taken in the hands of the time,
So the fathers who came into this lane.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Bug Dan, July Black Dan. And when the record company
took the song off the air, so it didn't piss
you off. The 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.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well we started, We always worked that out together.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
You did. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Interesting with the exceptions necess very early in the career too,
before I had at the level of authority that I
that I needed to establish. I was in how was
produced and I I used to be able to discuss
and cust and discuss things with them there and very
(33:36):
fortunately fortunately to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
What song that when you sing it, you could sit
there and go, man, I really really nailed that. That's
a good song. Oh, there's a lot of them, But
what's the one that just comes out of you?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
East of midnight, East of midnight, East of Midnight. That's
that's one of my my very best ones. But some
wills the midnight West anywhere as I I don't do that.
(34:14):
I used to do it. No do you know why
I don't do it?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Though? These were such a funny cat East Midnight's my
best song man. You got to hear that I don't
do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
If I did it for years. This is my last
four or five albums are probably the five best albums
I made, But unfortunately my momentum had run out with
the record company at that point. But I still kept producing.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Because but isn't that interesting You just said my last
four or five albums were of the best albums I've
ever Do believe that?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Sure you do.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, you begin one of those albums between what period of.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Time, nineteen nineteen eighty two and in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So you recorded in an album in two thousand and six,
right before you got sixty.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Five nineteen eighty five, nineteen years, I made five of
the best albums. I finished an album while I was well,
while I was down with the aneurysm. I finished an
album there. I took my mind off my condition entirely.
So it was very fortuitous that I had a whole
bunch of stuff city in the in the can at
(35:28):
the time, as they used to say. And the best
one of the whole lot is Easter Midnight.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Do you write songs now?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I could? I always have four or five tunes on
the back burner.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Your wife is practically groaning behind your nodding herd like.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yes, of course, there's always tunes in the back burner.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
What a beautiful songs?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
What do you when you write songs?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What do you write about? I just write right about
jumping from one balcony to the other way to kill you.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I just write write about women. I try to sound
sound intelligent.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You know what's on your mind? Now?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
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 a turtle into
this song. Is that the part that you like about it? Tartly,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's amazing, It's amazing. Your wife is this gorgeous young woman.
And I realized the glue of this marriage is you
write songs about turtles for your wife. That's amazing. I
don't have that advantage.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
That's just what one scene.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
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 turtle.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I know, I know. It's it's like, come if you will. Well,
the earth is still fertile, Lady, I see society through
the eyes of a turtle. Turtles are soft and they've
got feelings too. Maybe they think too quickly for me
or for you, and it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
We got to end there, well maybe not, maybe.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Not, just to show you the kind of stuff and okay,
into the microphone.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
We well.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Back to the table, lady, I see Marilyn Monroe and
there Stans Clark Gable. He'll melt the cow, she'll stop
the show. There's many a good hand felt, a chili
wind blow, and it doesn't really matter. Don't ask her.
You don't why I write that.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Stuff, ask about for loving me?
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Nothing? Oh yeah, well, we'll see. I sang for twenty
five years. But it's really a vicious it's it's just
a very vicious song of unrecinded. Quite a love song,
and it was it was read during the time when
I was I was, I was still married, and I wondered,
my goodness, what does my It was like almost like
(37:59):
a Will Chamberlain. I've had a hundred more like you.
I'll have a thousand and forum Through 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 nineteen eighty two. But even that only
lasted for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Didn't you sing it again? No, you don't sing the song.
You won't sing going to a lot of people do,
but other people record it.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
You won't sing it. Elvis, Elvis Presley for loving me.
That's what you get for loving me.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I gotta say, I look at these album covers.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You are.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
You're one of the best of guys I've ever seen
in my life. I mean, was that tough for you?
That's a tough part of your career.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, I think it helped you probably, I'm sure. I'm
sure it did, But I'm sure sure.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Best have what's next when you're going on the road again.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Friday morning, I'll be a little blue. I can soon.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
There's still a lot of things, and I should.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Know anyone can gain. I don't know how to friend
my Saturday.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
I feel at saying to watch them leave, I'll be cool,
become because I don't know, really the happy times.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Ago I can still put on
Speaker 4 (39:46):
My Saturday
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. Last week we lost one of
the greats singer songwriter, folk rock legend, and hands down
one of the kindest people I've ever met. In the
making of this podcast, musician Gordon Lightfoot, I wanted to
(00:20):
take a moment to remember Lightfoot and his influence on
all who were lucky enough to hear his music. Lightfoot
was on a short list of music legends I was
anxious to interview. The opportunity finally presented itself while I
was attending the Toronto Film Festival. He was one of
my favorite artists and he will be deeply missed. Here's
(00:42):
my twenty sixteen conversation with the late Gordon Lightfoot.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
At times, I just don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
How you could be anything but beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Over the course of a career that has lasted more
than fifty years, Canadian singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has achieved
global stardom and exceptional influence. Bob Dylan's a fan. About
Lightfoot's songs, Dylan said, I can't think of any I
don't like these songs, which include Beautiful, The Wreck of
(01:38):
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, but north of the border
there was an equivalent explosion of talent at that time,
(02:00):
and Lightfoot, who got his start singing in boys choirs,
found himself heading to Canada's cultural capital to try his luck.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Beautiful Well, I was down in Toronto here looking for work,
and I got a job as a cooral performer in
a television series that was on every week. And at
the same time I branched out and began working in
the folk oriented places. Because the folk revival had occurred
(02:29):
around about nineteen sixty and I would have been maybe
twenty years old there about twenty one, and so I'd
be working on the TV show in the daytime and
going out and working at the coffeehouses at night.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, you had a period where you wrote jingles for commercials. Correct.
I tried to make a living.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
They locked me in a room one time, a manager
in a place on Madison Avenue and just left me
there all afternoon.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
How'd that go?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Well? I wrote the commercial, but they they didn't like it.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
They didn't play your version of the commercial. But you didn't.
You didn't. You went in New York for a long time?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Correct, Well, I would go back and forth in New
York all the time because 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 he was a great manager. He
recognized my songwriting ability immediately, and I got a couple
(03:29):
of tunes recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, and one
of them went up to number five on the Board
chart for loving me.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That's what you get, full loving me. That's what you get,
full loving me.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Everything it was gone, as.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
You can see, that's what you get for love.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you think you would have been Do you think
you would have been happy to just stay in that
place and just produce records and write music and was
performing the goal all along? Did you want? Were you
itching to do that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, yeah, I wanted to even as a child, you know,
I didn't mind singing in my grandmother's house on the
Sunday get togethers. You know, they would single me out
and I would solo. I enjoyed the feel of the
communication that and I could feel it then. That's what
(04:46):
I feel now. I feel a communication when I have
a wonderful band and we have a great repertoire and
we just lay the stuff right out there.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
For them, just pure joy.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, I enjoy doing that. But when you were take
care if it pays the bills, that's.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
A that's a desirable silver lining there. Yeah, all that
hard work, well, but when you were writing, when you
turn that corner and singing takes over. You know.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I was doing like like small time stuff, and all
of a sudden I was asked to come to New
York and open for Paul Butterfield concert nineteen sixty six thereabouts.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I suppose sixty So you won the radio then recording.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
No, we didn't actually get on the radio until about
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
What was the first song that I mean? I have
a list here. But what was the if you could
read my mind.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
If you could read my mind, if you knew that ghost.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Is me and I won't be sad as long as
time I'm a ghost. You can't see.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The record was that it was my first album on
Warner Brothers, and it was out for eight months and
there was no single, and all of a sudden other 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.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Mind, where the hard he is gone, the hero would
be me.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Hero of.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You won't read that book because the endangers.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
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 have to sit there
and say, oh, people are telling you to do things
differently and now you're going to be a success and
they want you to We.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Get so busy we got to hire an aircraft. Literally,
that's what happened. We had to hire an aircraft. Everyone
wants to book, say, get the same place two different
places in one day.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So when you reached that point, that and then that
turning point is the is the next imperative. You've got
to start coming up with more songs and writing more songs.
Oh yeah, yeah, you record. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
We made three more albums and nothing happened. But I
kept doing one a year and something had to give eventually,
And then one summer I wrote that song Sundown, and
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.
(07:35):
Then it was almost seven two albums later that we
had the record the Abne Fitzgerald, and that happened all
by itself too. That became a responsibility. It did a
very large responsibil.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The song became a responsible But tell me in your
own words. Many people go on about that, about the
tragedy and the history, and it's a very, you know,
important song to people, you know history. People talk about
it very reverentially. Why was it important to you?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Because it was only one verse contained any conjecture of
any kind of 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 after it happened,
(08:30):
I said, people are all around the Great Lakes area
are going to wonder if the song is appropriate. And
some did wonder about it, whether it was appropriate for
me to have written a song of that kind. But
I had gone pretty much with the newspaper articles that
I scraped up. We had no CPS in those days,
(08:51):
and you went back that you went to the publisher
and got the back copies of the newspapers. And it's accurate.
It's accurate in the way the story on folds. I
remember the night I wrote it. I was working in
a deserted house and there was a heck of a
(09:11):
windstorm going on right in Toronto that night, and I
remember myself wondering, Gee, I wonder what it's like up
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 hearing about what
things happening up in the Great Lakes. And eleven o'clock
(09:34):
in the evening there was a report of a ship
sinking three hours earlier in the Lake Superior, and they're
out looking for the people, and they never found any
of them, and twenty nine people gone. And I had
a melody, and I had some cords that I was
(09:55):
knocking around in this deserted house with the wind howling outside.
Really it was kind of kind of a classic setting
to write a song like that. So I began writing
the song and finished writing it like two or three
weeks later. We were right in the middle of a
recording a series of recording sessions at the time, so
(10:17):
we put it in and didn't work the first day.
We put it in the second day and did you
ever stomp and Tom Connors?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
No, I will. Now I'm gonna run down and get
all of stomp and Tom Connery he was recording.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
He was one of our very famous Canadian folk artists.
Stomping Tom Connors poke his hit and said that sounds
like a hit. He just heard the melody going like
he didn't heard the lyrics or anything. So the appeal
of the song is definitely in the melody and the
chord changes, and then the story of the actually made itself.
(10:54):
I got as accurately as I could by pursuing old
news articles.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
The wind and the wires made the tattle tale sound,
and the wave rope over the railing, and every man
you as the captain did to twis the Witch and
love and stealing.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
The dawn came leading, and.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
The breakfast had the week when the girls in Lovember
and slashing what afternoon came into screeeze and rad in
the base of a hurricane west wind.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
We'll have more with Gordon Lightfoot after the break I'm ALC.
Baldwin and this is here's the thing. I spoke with
musician Gordon Lightfoot twenty sixteen. I was curious how his
musicianship had changed over time and what it was like
(12:06):
for him recording and performing in the early days.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
The first time I started doing it, I felt under like,
I'm not confident in what I was doing, what I
was hearing, I didn't I didn't like what I.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Was hearing of your own stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I don't like the sound. The sound of my
voice bothered me. And you know, I started working on
that stuff and I've been working on it ever since.
On my vocal and I've worked on my intonation, on
my instruments.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Someone told me that when you land because you perform
in so many different areas. You really dwell on tuning
your instruments alot. Correct.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, sometimes I chase it around too, but I've learned
through the years that there is a method that you
can get me into into Scarborough fair Country, you know,
like the like the sound that Simon and Garfuncle used
to get on their acoustic orchestral arrangements that they put
together for their songs. And it actually came it became
(13:13):
real for me maybe six 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 zeroing in on it.
And it all comes down to the fifths and the octaves,
and I'll just leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I'm just a handmaiden here for all you guitar people
out there. That's Gordon Lightfoot's gift to you and his
present to you. That's the fifths and the octaves. And
I don't have one damn idea the fifths and the eye.
I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but
there it is. There's his message to you today. McCartney
told me when I spoke to him, once Paul told
(13:52):
me that he said, in the beginning they would go
into a recording studio of 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 like, you know, we want two songs
in the morning, and then you go have a lunch
break and you go down to the pub and you
have a cigarette, you have a fission chips where you
come back. They want two songs after they really moved
(14:13):
along at a clip when they were doing the first
albums for Parlophone or whoever it was, or em I,
and then when they became, you know, the success they
obviously became, then they would take a year. You know,
all musicians are the same. Then they would take a
year to do their next album. You know, they would
do Sergeant Pepper's or what everyone really really luxuriate and
getting every They gave them more time because it was
(14:35):
worth it was worth that investment for them. Was the
same true with you. Do you find that the more
successful you became, the more time you wanted to make music.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Perhaps later on, but I pretty much stuck to the
to the schedule as much as I could. We made
like eight or nine albums in ten years there, so.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
You didn't feel rushed by them.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
No, we were getting more time. But I was also
improving because what I didn't like hearing I was I
was changing all the time. I was always an improvement venture,
like a guy building himself up and for to play
on an important sports team. You know they got it.
It's just not just the game, it's the preparation. Say
(15:19):
you haven't played for for a month and all of
a sudden you got to get back up on stage.
You should be able to crank it out just like
it was just you did the show last night, right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
But you like rehearsing, Yeah, well you believe rehearsing.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, you're learning new material or you're going back into
the old catalog with which we do. Because I have
a rotational situation going on, the biggest problem in my
whole life's been too many tunes, too many women.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
For my listeners. Right now, Gordon Lightfoot is turning sheepishly
toward his wife with a sheepish grin on his face,
and she just patted his shoulder to say it's okay.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Gordon, Well I can't step on your toes.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, you can't do that. But I remember reading I
remember listening to an article. 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 Ridgard were very, very married to rehearsal. And
for you to say that that is a great meaning
to me. For you, someone as great an artist as
you are, that the preparation and the preparation beforehand so
(16:21):
that when you when the audience is there, bloom, you
strum that guitar and you're you're ready. You're ready.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, And we we have the the artistra itself. I
have four really talented guys.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And very loyal people. I read about that your band
is very loyal to.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Well, I mean it's there's no reason why they should
not be. You know, we're all the same path. I mean,
we just want to do a great job and you
got to like make almost make a science out of it.
I don't know. My guys are all professionals. I mean
there's they're serious musicians. Yeah yeah, and they do other things.
(17:04):
I just got to let them know what's coming up.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You know, what were you listening to back then? In
the sixties when you were coming up, Who did you
listen to?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Well, I was listening to the country music, you know,
Hank Snow and then folks. It was Pete Seeger, and
it was Bob Gibson. It was Bob Dylan and Simon
and Garfunkel, and you know Peter Paul and Mary and
Ian and Sylvia. They were a duet and it was
a beautiful act that they had.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Eventually you met these people, well I met, but you
became one of them.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
My management company because they were the first ever to
do one of do any of my songs was Ian
and Sophia, which one for Loving Me and Early Morning Rain.
I found an opening with the Folk Revival, you know.
So I was lucky to be a part of that,
to write that one through and survive. Uh, there's there's
(18:04):
nothing much out there these days. Uh, you know, they're
they're they're busking. We've got a look a whole bunch
of people here in Toronto who who are hovering around
all the time that the folk oriented artists who are
songwriters and you know, trying to get somewhere, and some
(18:24):
of some of them are succeeding in some or not.
I get to hear a lot of the stuff because
it comes across my desk and I get to hear it,
and you wish, you know that something grand could happen
for these people, but you don't know what to do.
All you can do is respond.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Right, encourage.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Where do you think people learn to hone their craft
as a musician in in in clubs and performing live?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, I was as well as I was working in
bars too, you know, like bars and lounges as well
as the coffeehouses. And so I had the kind of
a repertoire that was acceptable to plant bars. So I
got him following in a couple of these bars. Then
(19:14):
I've sort of moved uptown into the village area, you
or Yorkville, which was just coming into bloom here in town,
and get into places 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
(19:36):
that place. You could fosply image and play there, from
James Taylor to Joni Mitchell to to Kneel Young right
on down the line.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Is he is he a friend of yours? Yes?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
He is?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
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?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I'll tell you that a lot of times you don't
know you're doing it. You're drawing the material from your
subconscious you know, 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
can sign it back to the actual event that brought
(20:26):
it on. I mean, that's like, if you could read
my mind is about actually the crumbling.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Of a Really was that painful for you to write? No?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Because I didn't know what I was doing right I
wrote it. It's just I didn't really.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
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. Let me let me pick one
song now, one of my favorite songs of yours. I mean,
a song that I just kills me is beautiful, describe
to me recording the song beautiful. I mean, do you
go out with your friends and your get ship faced
(21:03):
drunk and you come in with a hangover and just
lay this thing down and you play poker ro all night?
Or do you enter a state?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
First I get a card progression, Then I get a melody.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's fifth syn octaves, people, it's fifth syn octaves.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Then I get the lyric. You got the melody, you
got the chords, but you don't know, so you draw.
You find an idea that that fits the fits the melody.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
That's Gordon Light for the songwriter, Gordon Light for the singer,
the performer. Do you enter a state? Do you take
yourself to a place when you perform your recorded music
or you don't?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Well, I can, I can use my imagination. I actually
saw it as a sincere love turn to a guy
for his wife or his girlfriend. It it reminds me
of when I was I learned how to sing with
emotion when I was about twelve, when I was doing
(22:08):
handling material from Handles Messiah, the Voice of Him who
Cries in the Wilderness and all that sort of thing,
And I learned what emotion meant when when I were
saying handles Messiah. At age twelve, I sang in a
(22:28):
competition so I could apply. It was easy 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 at
the beginning that I wanted to have it. And that's
why I've been working on all my life is getting
(22:52):
controlling that emotional approach to it, making it work for me.
You don't overdo it, and.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
You don't know what I'm saying. That's what's beautiful about
your music is you go right up to a point,
but you don't do a lot of handholding. You let
the audience do the crying for you. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You're your We balance it off with a lot of
toe chappers. You got lots of to.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
For a prime example of the delivery Gordon Lightfoot does
so well. You don't have to look beyond this song sundown.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I can see you land back seven.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Room where you do what you don't confess.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Some better dickas.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Around coming up. Lightfoot talks about some of his musical
inspirations that explains why he and Bob Dylan didn't get
along right away explore the Here's the Thing archives. I
talk with a very different kind of songwriter, Tom York
from the British rock band Radiohead. He tells me how
(24:05):
his producer gave him the confidence to explore wild new
electronic sounds.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
I mean, I was like a kid being given a hammer.
I was just hamm and reliance stuff. I didn't really
know what I was doing, but he was kind of
fascinated by that, you know, and he'd come and literally
tidy up the mess on the computer.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Take a listen at Here's Thething, dot Org. I'm telling you.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
That you beautiful.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
This is Alec Baldwin and 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 Junior,
and Glenn Campbell as well. They all covered his songs.
And there's good reason that's what Lightfoot was listening to
(24:58):
when he started thinking about what kind of musician he
wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
It was probably a country music I made the crossover
into adult contemporary music, you know, fairly soon and there
was a lot of good writing going on in the
folk revival too, and I got I was influenced by that.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So you didn't come into the music business and say
I want to be Sinatra, I want to be Elvis,
I want to be Dylan. Well, I think you wanted
to find your own voice.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, I didn't. I certainly did not take lightly the
fact that I was really influenced by Bob Dylan because
of the not only the quality of the work, but
the output that they achieved. He was prolific. Yeah, that
was the amazing Particut and said, well, it can be
(25:53):
that easy for him, it must surely be be easier
for me. I mean, if he can do this much work,
surely I can do this much work. While appreciating the
music that he was producing at the time. When did
you first meet him nineteen sixty five, What was that
like for you in Woodstock? Well, it was a it
(26:17):
was an interesting time. We actually didn't didn't get along
when we first met. He criticized my my rules at
playing Manhattan on his pool table in Woodstock, and I
got a little he got a little sarcastic about it,
(26:38):
and we were all He was very sarcastic, and I
started seeing this coming on to me and I left.
I left their house wow, and went back down the
hill to Albert's house. Alberts, Albert Grossman. He was the
manager I had before, part of that stable, that fam
(26:59):
that's stable yet, so natives 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 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
(27:20):
was good to have known Bob.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Is it safe to say, because I've read this in
different articles and so forth when I was reading up
about you. Then when you say you got together and
had a good time, was there a period of your
life where you had too much of a good time?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, I mean there was lots of drinking went on there.
There was a little bit of everything. It just depended
upon how severely you were affected by it and what
kind of a constitution that you possessed. Did. I drank
heavily right up until nineteen eighty two, and then all
of a sudden I stopped last I stopped it for
(27:58):
twenty three years because it was good. I was going
to ruin my career and I was making unrational, irrational decisions.
And one night I tried to climb from from one
balcony to the next in an apartment building on the
tenth floor.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Sure there was a party going on.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And you wanted to one party. I love that. What
was a better party in that other wing over there?
There was too to meet folks.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
There was room for me to jump from the one
balcony to the next.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Did you make it?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yes, Well I've said it. I here talking.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
You might have fallen and broken your leg or something.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Who knows, I was on the tenth floor. I wouldn't
be here.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
You wouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Things like that, you know. But other things that I
did there 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 that's what I felt when
I wrote to Fitzgerald, I said, I hope I'm not
going to offend any of the relatives of these men.
(29:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Was it never communicated to you that you had Did
anybody suggest that.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
No, No, it never appreciated what you've been honored. We just
went to the fortieth anniversary ourselves, just this last novembery week.
Where was it helped Lake Superior? I've been fifteen miles
thirty miles of northwest of Sussaint Marie at the Whitefish Point.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Wow. 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're a guitar player.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Well, ask me what it was like when I had
the aordal aneurysm.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Okay, what was it like when you had the a
ordal aneurysm.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well it put me out of business for two years?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Did it really? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Put me out of business for two What a year
was that? Two thousand and two?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
What were the symptoms of that?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
If you pass out and you don't wake up.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh, I mean the aneurysm bursts for six weeks? Yeah,
what were you feeling in the weeks prior?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
I would have bouts of stomach ache and I'd have
to lay out of my belly on the bed for
a while.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Then I would subside. And that went on over a
period of several years, and it started about ten years
before the actually vent occurred. So there is a warning.
There is this third warning signals it's a paint. You
get a pretty bad stomach ache. And yeah, that was
(30:31):
years ago. That was nineteen you were young, Yeah, seventy two,
I think thereabouts.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I had to stop performing for three months and then
I got enough of wou'd stop puffing enough? Then I
was able to go back to work again. Really, so
I just I just boulder through, so to speak, and
then you had a stroke actually came back. That was
a mini stroke. That the fact of my right hand,
(30:58):
which was very disturbing. That in 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
in tune at the same time. So I derived a
benefit from from that.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
How do American radio interview hosts differ from Canadian radio
interview hosts.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
No difference that I can see, no difference. People folks
are folks. So the boys appreciated the cousins. We're all
cousins here in North America. That's why you're not political now,
that's probably I never moved down there. I've follow I'm
I'm a I'm a political fan. I'm a fan of
(31:43):
watching the political process observer.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Well, you you had the situation with the song in
Detroit Black Day in July. Yeah, from the Detroit riots,
that's right, and you wrote a song about that and
then cause you a little bit of a.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Grief in the record we released a single.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Did you and did you feel that that was something
that you resented or like, how did you feel when
you got pulled.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That I kind of shouldn't have done that. It was
almost like like the wreck well, well like like it
was a well I should have I was working in
the city a lot, in the trucky I circt there.
There was something 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 of the Fitzgerald was written as a folk song
(32:23):
for an album.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And the political purposes assigned by other people. You didn't
have a political purpose when you wrote the song. Interesting,
just a story Black.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Dan and the soul of Motor City is there across
the line.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That's the book of the.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Law and order is taken in the hands of the time,
So the fathers who came into this lane.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Bug Dan, July Black Dan. And when the record company
took the song off the air, so it didn't piss
you off. The 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.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well we started, We always worked that out together.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
You did. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Interesting with the exceptions necess very early in the career too,
before I had at the level of authority that I
that I needed to establish. I was in how was
produced and I I used to be able to discuss
and cust and discuss things with them there and very
(33:36):
fortunately fortunately to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
What song that when you sing it, you could sit
there and go, man, I really really nailed that. That's
a good song. Oh, there's a lot of them, But
what's the one that just comes out of you?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
East of midnight, East of midnight, East of Midnight. That's
that's one of my my very best ones. But some
wills the midnight West anywhere as I I don't do that.
(34:14):
I used to do it. No do you know why
I don't do it?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Though? These were such a funny cat East Midnight's my
best song man. You got to hear that I don't
do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
If I did it for years. This is my last
four or five albums are probably the five best albums
I made, But unfortunately my momentum had run out with
the record company at that point. But I still kept producing.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Because but isn't that interesting You just said my last
four or five albums were of the best albums I've
ever Do believe that?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Sure you do.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, you begin one of those albums between what period of.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Time, nineteen nineteen eighty two and in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So you recorded in an album in two thousand and six,
right before you got sixty.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Five nineteen eighty five, nineteen years, I made five of
the best albums. I finished an album while I was well,
while I was down with the aneurysm. I finished an
album there. I took my mind off my condition entirely.
So it was very fortuitous that I had a whole
bunch of stuff city in the in the can at
(35:28):
the time, as they used to say. And the best
one of the whole lot is Easter Midnight.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Do you write songs now?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I could? I always have four or five tunes on
the back burner.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Your wife is practically groaning behind your nodding herd like.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yes, of course, there's always tunes in the back burner.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
What a beautiful songs?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
What do you when you write songs?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What do you write about? I just write right about
jumping from one balcony to the other way to kill you.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I just write write about women. I try to sound
sound intelligent.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You know what's on your mind? Now?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
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 a turtle into
this song. Is that the part that you like about it? Tartly,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's amazing, It's amazing. Your wife is this gorgeous young woman.
And I realized the glue of this marriage is you
write songs about turtles for your wife. That's amazing. I
don't have that advantage.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
That's just what one scene.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
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 turtle.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I know, I know. It's it's like, come if you will. Well,
the earth is still fertile, Lady, I see society through
the eyes of a turtle. Turtles are soft and they've
got feelings too. Maybe they think too quickly for me
or for you, and it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
We got to end there, well maybe not, maybe.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Not, just to show you the kind of stuff and okay,
into the microphone.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
We well.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Back to the table, lady, I see Marilyn Monroe and
there Stans Clark Gable. He'll melt the cow, she'll stop
the show. There's many a good hand felt, a chili
wind blow, and it doesn't really matter. Don't ask her.
You don't why I write that.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Stuff, ask about for loving me?
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Nothing? Oh yeah, well, we'll see. I sang for twenty
five years. But it's really a vicious it's it's just
a very vicious song of unrecinded. Quite a love song,
and it was it was read during the time when
I was I was, I was still married, and I wondered,
my goodness, what does my It was like almost like
(37:59):
a Will Chamberlain. I've had a hundred more like you.
I'll have a thousand and forum Through 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 nineteen eighty two. But even that only
lasted for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Didn't you sing it again? No, you don't sing the song.
You won't sing going to a lot of people do,
but other people record it.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
You won't sing it. Elvis, Elvis Presley for loving me.
That's what you get for loving me.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I gotta say, I look at these album covers.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You are.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
You're one of the best of guys I've ever seen
in my life. I mean, was that tough for you?
That's a tough part of your career.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, I think it helped you probably, I'm sure. I'm
sure it did, But I'm sure sure.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Best have what's next when you're going on the road again.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Friday morning, I'll be a little blue. I can soon.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
There's still a lot of things, and I should.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Know anyone can gain. I don't know how to friend
my Saturday.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
I feel at saying to watch them leave, I'll be cool,
become because I don't know, really the happy times.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Ago I can still put on
Speaker 4 (39:46):
My Saturday
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.