Is This True?
 

I was watching the video for The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald and a YouTube commenter claimed he heard that when the song was released some accused Gordon of writing it just to profit off the incident.



Not like he did.

Re: Is This True?
 

not true

Re: Is This True?
 

Yeah, it was an ALBUM TRACK, one of those rare examples of songs that "got noticed" (as had IYCRMM several years before) and received unpromoted radio play that the record company responded to, by pushing it out as a single. Heck, I wasn't aware of the full backstory until the last year or so, where it was revealed that Gord was on one of his outdoor excursions when the record company wanted to put it out as a single, but at a shorter running time, and Gordie had to "phone in" instructions of how to edit it down. I think that alone shows that the song was not initially intended as a single.

Re: Is This True?
 

Richard Harrison (Lightfoot's previous Live sound engineer) says:
"There have been some cynical people that have said that Gordon had exploited the tragedy for his own gain. Obviously they don’t know him at all. Right from the obvious concern I saw on his face on that flight between New York and Toronto, to the dedication he put into writing the song proves —in the true troubadour tradition —that he was a chronicler of the event, creating a memorial for those men who had lost their lives in the tragedy. This is proved by the testimony of the loved ones who survived them and who have embraced the song as a fitting tribute —publicly stating that approval.

Some years later, however, the mothers of two lost crewmen did object to the line that suggested a hatch cover had failed.
“At seven PM a main hatchway caved in....”
The job to which their sons had been assigned was to make certain those hatches were secured. When the wreck was found —snapped in two —it was proved that hatch failure could not have been the cause, and Gordon,— very sensitive to their concerns —immediately changed the line, which pleased the two mothers because their sons had now been exonerated.
The line was changed to: “At seven PM it grew dark, —it was then.

(he also set up a scholarship fund)

Re: Is This True?
 

It's amazing anyone would of passed judgement on him.

It was not the first time anyone wrote a song about stuff like that.

You wonder what they were thinking.

Re: Is This True?
 

Don't you just hate when cynical people take such a cheap shot @ someone like Gordon?



Gail

Re: Is This True?
 

Further proof the internet has enabled the Mob. Not organized crime, but the mass of stupid, me-too-ish, followers who live to be part of a controversy.

The kind of folks who need to be banished to an agrarian society, so they can spend their time hunting and gathering, instead of accusing and bashing.

Re: Is This True?
 

What's all that supposed to mean?