This is AMAZING news and the album "At Royal Albert Hall" will be treasured. What I appreciate most is that Gord could have released it any time from 2016 onwards (and enjoyed the feedback), but he chose to have it held back until his passing as a posthumous heartwarmer/spiritlifter for his countless grieving fans. He did it for us!
This takes me back to some Corfid General Discussion threads in 2012 upon the release of his previous concert album "All Live".
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On19Apr2012 Charlene started the thread titled "CTV interview"
https://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthrea...+decided+death
which included the following.
Whether victimized by an aortic aneurysm or careless newspaper editors, Gordon Lightfoot has danced with death plenty of times before. So it's more disarming than surprising to hear the 73-year-old Canadian songwriting legend speak so casually about his own mortality on a sunny spring afternoon at his home in north Toronto. So thoroughly have such concerns permeated Lightfoot's life that even something as simple as his new live disc "All Live" seems inextricably bound to some grim concerns. Initially, the album was intended for post-humous release -- in Lightfoot's own words, it was to come out "after (he was) pushing up daisies." But it's coming out on Tuesday instead, only because his longtime guitarist Terry Clements died last year and Lightfoot didn't want any confusion over who was behind the recording's ethereal lead guitar.
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On 13Apr2012 Charlene started the thread titled "Toronto Sun with Gord @ home April 2012"
https://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=26191
which included a reply from me.
My reply quoted the following statement from a media article which had appeared on Corfid:
"... he was only going to release it after his death, but after Terry died, he decided to release it before his own death."
The rest of my reply was as follows:
I think it's great (and so true of his character) that Gord wanted to leave us with a new recording after he departs this world. Now that this album has been brought forward, I wonder if he will want to leave us something else for that future time.
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Now it's May2023 and we have lost our beloved Gordon Lightfoot and I suggest that what I wondered back then in my last 15 words has been answered.
Heartfelt thanks, Gord.