[charlene]

Despite where your music would end up, I read it was jazz got you out there?

I was interested in jazz all through high school and it was a jazz orientated school that taught that notation, sight reading, ear training, transposition, time values, all things you need to know to write music by hand. In those days you had to write your own lead sheets to get them registered and copyrighted. You had to write them right out and mail them in but before you did that you had to send one to yourself. So you had to do it twice! I was up burning the midnight oil at lot of times writing music. It was like Johann Sebastian Bach, you know, where his wife stands over him with the candelabra and says: “Johann, the garbage?”

That’s a fair compassion.

And I was married and had two very young children born thirteen months apart. I was living in a very small apartment and I was 25 at that point. You know, I just kept writing and all of a sudden I got some stuff recorded by Ian and Sylvia Tyson, one of the most esteemed folk duos of all time. From there they were under contract with a very high-level management firm in New York. Ian then did a very unselfish thing when he moved those songs on to Peter, Paul and Mary. They were doing really well at the time. They recorded a couple of songs and mine got released as a single and made it up to number five in the Billboard charts.

Kind of reminds me of the Byrds covering Dylan back then, having hits with Bob’s tunes.

Peter, Paul and Mary also did a lot Dylan’s tunes.

Speaking of covers of your songs, I look at, well we just mentioned Dylan, Belafonte, the Grateful Dead and Barbra Streisand and even actor Mike Myers come to mind. Do you have any particular favourites?

I like the one that Diana Krall and Sarah McLachlan just did on “If You Could Read My Mind” . It’s different. That’s why I like it so much.

You’ve mentioned looking at Dylan with such a respect for his music that you wanted to do your tunes the way he does his own. Subsequently, Bob has said you’re one of his favourite musicians. There is certainly a mutual respect there.

Remember I mentioned Ian and Sylvia being with that high level management? Well, the office that they were with also included Bob Dylan. So, I got to meet Bob because we were both managed by the same company. They had their homes in Woodstock prior to the Woodstock event and we would meet up in Woodstock. I would be at Bob’s house and then the Band came along and they got property up there and started backing Bob up on his shows. I watched that whole process.

Wow, front row seat to music history!

Then Janis Joplin came into the picture. It was really this high level…the guy’s name was Albert Grossman, that was his name, and he was the number one agent in New York for the folk/rock scene at the time. At lot of these agents must have thought it was D-Day, for goodness sake. One guy managed Simon and Garfunkel, another managed Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie and Woody Guthrie and Albert had Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, myself and Odetta.

You’re just going through a who’s who of my favourite musicians. It’s fantastic! When it comes to Dylan, why do you feel there’s this mutual draw to one another’s songs?

It’s an amazing thing. I was always amazed by how prolific Bob was. That was the part of his example that interested me most. You know, I saw him sitting a typewriter one day, just typing poetry idly. There he was typing away on this old machine going right at it. There’s Bob Dylan, you just can’t imagine it. I was amazed because I didn’t know he could do that. It was one of these really old typewriters too. He says: “Hey, didn’t you take typing in high school?” and I say: “You know, Bob, instead of typing I took Latin class”.

We were just talking about one of your most iconic songs. “If You Could Read My Mind” is four years away from turning 50.

I always save that one for near the end of the show. Even I never get tired of playing that song.

Skipping ahead five decades, “Plans of My Own” is your first new song since 2004. Why do you think it’s taken so long for that one to see the light of day?

Well, that one got lost in the shuffle. I put it down one night when I was doing some demos. I admit, it sounds like a record. The trouble is the lyric. I had not had a chance to redo the lyric so it could become memorisable so I omitted it from the Painter Passing Through. Instead it got left in the vault until the engineer from the studio called me a couple of months ago and told me they were cleaning up their files and they were going to delete it. “What do you want me to do with this one?” he said. I thought I remembered that one, it was about being on the road. I was on the road still 15 years later so I told him to send it over. First my wife Kim liked it. Then my secretary Anne liked it. Then we sent it out to Rhino and they really liked it. So it had been gathering dust all these years.

It’s always fascinating to me when I learn that musicians that I am fans of, like yourself, have all these unreleased songs gathering dust, as you say. Springsteen is a guy who probably has about 15 albums of unreleased material. I was listening to “Plans of My Own” again this morning and I see how a lot of your songs are personal ones. This one, though, seems very reflective, about moving forward.

Always forward. Mostly I’m looking after my kids, now. I have six kids and a swatch of grandchildren so I like to pay attention. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t get deeply involved in making another album. It’s a matter of time, I guess, but I really love doing these shows. You know, I must have been about three and ever since they stood me up on my grandmother’s kitchen table to sing and they gave me a round of applause…well, I guess I never forgot it.



In part two of our chat with Gordon Lightfoot, the musician talks about his near death experiences, recovering from illness and how he maintains his energy on stage. He also reveals what he feel is his greatest accolade.

Gordon Lightfoot returns to the National Arts Centre
on Saturday, November 19. Tickets are available
online or at the NAC Box Office.

Written by: Andre Gagne on November 16, 2016.