Lead Sheet for Gordon Lightfoot song “Sundown,” photo by Djuradj Vujcic, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“Gordon Lightfoot has created some of the most beautiful and lasting music of our time. He is Bob Dylan’s favorite singer/songwriter—high praise from the best of us, applauded by the rest of us.” (Kris Kristoffferson)

The stateside success of “If You Could Read My Mind” and Sit Down Young Stranger (aka If You Could Read My Mind) finally put Gord on the American radar screens, but Americans can be a fickle lot, and his next three albums barely registered a blip. His popularity with the yanks eventually solidified for a while with the release of Sundown, but his fellow countrypersons never wavered in their appreciation of his artistry. Here’s a comparison of  the Canadian and American chart performance of the seven albums that followed Sit Down Young Stranger :

• Canada: #3, #1, #1, #1, #3, #1, #2.
• USA: #38, #42, #95, #1, #10, #12, #22

That undying Canadian loyalty may have taken a hit if things had worked out differently, as revealed in a segment in the documentary that mimics the bible story of the serpent tempting Eve. Around the time when “Sundown” became his biggest hit in the States, a top-tier American talent manager approached Gord with a proposition. “I was offered a deal by Jerry Weintraub. They wanted me to go and live in San Francisco. ‘We’ll manage you and you’ll come to the States.’ They thought it would be good for my writing. I was tempted, and maybe I stopped feeling Canadian for a couple of minutes, but I said no.”

Smartest damn thing he ever did.

Putting aside the fact that San Francisco was a shithole in the mid-70s (which allowed my dad to buy several houses on the cheap), Gord had already expressed concerns about American influence in a 1970 interview:

RM: Do you get your material from Canadian situations?

GL: No, I get them from life in general. I believe. I mean I consider myself to be a part of the overall music scene. I don’t have any hangups about Canadians being oppressed and talent being held down. The only problem we have here is an enormous influence from the USA on all sides. And how can you fight against that kind of strength? I mean, well let me be more explicit: you have a 4500 mile border and it goes alongside the most powerful country on earth. They’re putting out this mass of product, which also includes the music bag. So they’re beaming in across the border with their radio stations and everything, so how are you going to fight that? So it gives Canadians a complex to have that happening, not only in the music business, but all business in Canada. We’re very heavily influenced.

It’s pretty clear from the evidence that Gord helped Canadians get over their complex. Here are a few quotes from other Canadian musicians who talked about Gord’s impact in the documentary:

• Burton Cummings: “Gordon screamed Canada. Gordon’s stuff screamed Canada. Everybody knew about this guy that sang about Canada, that sounded like nobody else, that wrote all his own stuff that had that feeling in his heart. You could hear it in the songs. You know, Gordon was, he was Canadiana.”
• Tom Cochrane: “Lightfoot, you know, he defined who we were as Canadians. It wasn’t just pop music; it was deeper than that. And if there was a Mount Rushmore in Canada, Gordon would be on it.”
• Geddy Lee: “He is our poet laureate, he is our iconic singer-songwriter. He sent the message to the world that we’re not just a bunch of lumberjacks and hockey players up here. You know, we are capable of sensitivity and poetry. And that was a message that was delivered by the success of Gordon Lightfoot internationally. People were more willing to listen to someone from Canada because someone of such enormous talent had paved the way.”
• Alex Lifeson: “He was at the top of the totem pole and we were proud of it.”

In an article from The Conversation, Professor Alexander Carpenter argued that “Simply casting Lightfoot as an exemplar of Canadian-ness overshadows Lightfoot’s legacy. He was a songsmith and a musician who toiled for his entire career — spanning nearly six decades — to bring words and music together in meaningful and enduring ways.” I agree with him on that point, but when he also argued that much of Gord’s appeal was due to nostalgic yearning, I think he’s full of crap. All the musicians quoted above were in their teens or early twenties when they first heard Gordon Lightfoot, so they had nothing to be nostalgic about. While there was never a phenomenon known as “Gordmania,” his success as a Canadian musician encouraged a generation of budding Canadian musicians to pick up their guitars and play, much in the same way the Beatles encouraged American wannabes with their performances on the Ed Sullivan Show. Quite unintentionally on his part, Gordon Lightfoot gave those boys and girls confidence that they could make it in the music world.

In the end, I think Gord’s refusal to relocate comes down to this: Canada needed Gordon Lightfoot as much as he needed Canada. I am so glad he didn’t take a bite of that apple.

*****

For Gordon Lightfoot, the 70s were one of those “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” experiences. In addition to a brief encounter with Bell’s Palsy, his consumption of alcohol increased, turning him into a split personality who was sometimes as happy as a clam and other times a certifiable asshole. Fueled by booze, his relationships with women during that period were often stormy and full of drama. He was fully aware of his drinking problem and relational difficulties, but instead of seeking professional help, he took the advice of Gordon Lightfoot, M.D., as revealed in Part One in his conversation with Lydia Hutchinson, “In some cases, the songs are autobiographical; some events and traumas that have to get handled, one way or another, and go into the tunes. And it’s easier and cheaper than going to a shrink.”

And by golly, the doc was right! The songs he wrote during those wild times show no signs of a decline in his songwriting prowess, and many qualify as some of the best efforts.

Let’s go!

*****

All songs written and copyrighted by Gordon Lightfoot. Albums and year of release included.

“Summer Side of Life” (Summer Side of Life, 1971): Summer Side of Life saw Gord stretching his boundaries with the addition of drums, piano, background singers, and one song with two verses sung in French (“Nous Vivons Ensemble“). The liner notes tell us he used three different drummers, so I’m unable to give credit where credit is due, but thankfully, none of them is named Keith Moon. As for the background singers, you can’t do much better than the Jordanaires, and on the title track, the boys are joined by two female vocalists who appeared on many a Nashville production—Millie Kirkham (known as “the fifth member of the Jordanaires”) and Laverna Moore.

While the song title sounds like something the Beach Boys would have come up with during their surf-rock years, the song is anything but fun-fun-fun. On the commentary page on gordonlightfoot.com, Gord had this to say about “Summer Side of Life”: “It’s about guys going away to fight in Vietnam; that’s the whole driving thought behind it. It’s about saying goodbye to your girlfriend and your mother and not knowing if you’re coming back–going through God knows what.”

In contrast to the politically oriented anti-war songs written by fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young during the Vietnam mess, Gord approached the subject from the human perspective, emphasizing the impact of war on recruits, lovers and families. The Vietnam War was especially frightening to many because of the nightly television coverage and newspaper investigations that left little to the imagination.

The opening verse paints a tranquil scene of youthful optimism amid the glories of summer:

He came down through fields of green
On the summer side of life
His love was ripe
There were no illusions
On the summer side of life
Only tenderness

Ah! It looks like this will be one of Gord’s more pleasant numbers . . . until you listen to the chorus:

And if you saw him now
You’d wonder why he would cry
The whole day long 

Given the positivity of the opening verse, one might think, “Ah, poor kid. I guess his love didn’t ripen the way he expected.” It sounds like a minor setback in the scheme of things until the girls make their appearance:

There was young girls everywhere
On the summer side of life
They talked all night
To the young men that they knew
On the summer side of life
Going off to fight 

And if you saw them now
You’d wonder why they would cry
The whole day long 

Women were spared combat assignments during the Vietnam War, but the images on TV screens gave them little confidence that their beaus would return in one piece. When my father decided not to use the student deferment option, what he remembered most about the first draft lottery broadcast in 1970 was not the relief he felt when his number didn’t come up, but how his younger sister locked herself in her bedroom, crying out of fear that her brother might have to go to war. Songfacts summarized the song as “The summer side of life should be the best of times, when youth and opportunity collide into something wonderful. In this song, a guy is in his summer side, but it’s ruined when he gets sent off to war.” I would make one small but significant addition: the war also ruined the hopes and dreams of many young women as well, for even if Johnny came marching home, they may find that the guy they were waiting for isn’t the same guy they knew due to a bad case of PTSD.

The closing verse is a bit fuzzy, as I can’t figure out if the returnee is going to a whorehouse or visiting a girl who has found another guy. Ambiguity aside, I genuinely appreciate Gord’s emphasis on the human impact of war on the young, and the shock they experience when their innocence is crushed by the inability of their elders to resolve conflict without resorting to war.

I should note that Gord had mixed feelings about the song. “In many ways, it’s not one of my favorites, though people seem to want to hear it. It doesn’t hold together technically onstage, to my way of thinking.” I do think the arrangement is a bit busy, and there are moments when it’s a tad more difficult to hear Gord and the Gord-Red guitar interplay, but it’s still one helluva song.

“Cotton Jenny” (Summer Side of Life, 1971): You might not find “Cotton Jenny” on the list of the Greatest Love Songs of All Time, but I can’t think of another love song that so fully captures the meaning of the lines in the classic version of wedding vows: “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.” The couple depicted in the song has no chance to experience “for richer,” but they have each other “to have and to hold,” and that’s all that matters.

Gord’s comments on the song capture the essence of the song from the perspective of the narrator, a poor man with a hard job who is unusually happy about his lot in life: “Light. Loving work, going to the mill, get home to the family, have supper, and, if it happens, get lucky. If not, fine–wait till next week.” A brilliant bit of wordplay on Gord’s part imbues the man’s daily routine with a sense of continuity: by day he makes the wheels go ’round on a cotton gin and at night he makes “the wheels of love turn ’round” with the “soft Southern flame” known as Cotton Jenny.

When the new day begins
I go down to the cotton gin
And I make my time worthwhile to them
Then I climb back up again
Then she waits by the door
Oh, Cotton Jenny I’m sore
And she rubs my feet while the sun goes down
And the wheel of love goes ’round

Wheels of love go ’round
Love go ’round, love go ’round
A joyful sound
I ain’t got a penny for Cotton Jenny to spend
But then the wheels go ’round

I hope the suits at Reprise felt keen regret that they didn’t release the song as a single, as Anne Murray’s third-person version topped the charts in Canada and did pretty well in the USA. Anne’s take omitted the closing verse, and Gord would follow her lead when performing the song in concert. “When Anne Murray did it, they left out the verse about “the hot sickly South.” Who’s to say the South is sickly? I leave it out when I sing it now, too.” I think both Anne and Gord blew it, as all they had to do was replace “sickly” with “sticky.” I’ve been to the South in summertime and fuck yes, it’s hot, sticky, muggy, sweltering and steamy (but it worked wonders on my skin). To me, the verse is essential because it deepens our understanding of how this loving couple manages to make it through near-poverty and unbelievable humidity:

In the hot, STICKY South
When they say well shut my mouth
I can never be free from my cotton grind
But I know I’ve got what’s mine
With a soft southern flame
Oh, Cotton Jenny’s her name
She wakes me up when the sun goes down
And the wheel of love goes ’round

Cotton Jenny certainly has her priorities straight. She lets him take a post-work nap so he’s at his best, then likely climbs right on top of him to take advantage of a sleep-induced boner. You go, girl!

The arrangement returns to classic Lightfoot, with Gord now strumming on the left and Red plucking happily on the right. The subtle drumming works well with that set-up, and harmonica virtuoso Charlie McCoy adds to the brightness with sweet background fills.

“Don Quixote” (Don Quixote, 1972): Way back in 1969, when Gord had yet to break into the American charts but had earned some buzz for his songwriting talents, he was approached by Hollywood to provide a couple of songs for the film Hail, Hero! starring newcomer Michael Douglas. It’s too bad that Gord wouldn’t earn recognition as a performer until the following year, as his music would have been a great fit for movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Easy Rider and maybe even True Grit. Beggars can’t be choosers, and though Wikipedia classifies Hail, Hero! as one of Michael’s “little-known films,” Gord had nothing to lose by taking on the assignment. Here’s how Gord remembered the experience:

It was written for Michael Douglas’ first movie, Hail, Hero! I wrote the title song for the movie, but it was no good, even though he used it. He didn’t use “Don Quixote,” even though it was a better song. It wasn’t a very good demo . . . The movie went down in flames. But the song survived, and it seems that Mr. Douglas has thrived also.

Without going into too much detail, the film has earned 2.5 stars on IMDb and was based on a novel by John Weston that is rated 2.5 stars on Amazon. The plot is described tersely on Wikipedia: “During the Vietnam War, college student Carl Dixon quits school and joins the Army in hopes of using love, not bullets, to combat the Viet Cong.”  I watched a blurry version of the film on Google Drive’s iFilms only to find out that Carl never makes it to Vietnam, but in the end paints an anti-war mural instead— somewhat reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica without Picasso’s talent. Carl never tilts at a windmill, but in the opening passage, he pretends he’s a bullfighter, impeding a truck full of Latino farm workers, which is as close to Don Quixote as he ever gets. Gord’s “Hail, Hero!” meets the requirements of a title song, I suppose, and bits of “Why and Wherefore” appear a couple of times, but no, there is no “Don Quixote.”

I can understand why “Don Quixote” was not selected for the film. While Carl’s unrealized mission is quixotic, it deals with a 20th-century war, and Gord’s version is fairly faithful to Cervantes (with a few twists). The producer might have rightly believed that American audiences wouldn’t be able to make the connection. Don Quixote is one of those books like War and Peace—people are familiar enough with the storyline, but few actually take the time to read it.

Despite the rejection, Gord had enough confidence in the song to make it the title track of his follow-up to Sit Down Young Stranger, and I’m glad he did. His insights into the lead character and his ability to link the narrative to modern concerns make the song a keeper.

The opening verse features one attempt to link Cervantes to Hail, Hero! in that instead of presenting the hero as a man past his prime, he describes him as a “brave young horseman.” The following verse is repeated later in the song, emphasizing the paradoxical nature of Quixote’s personality:

He is wild but he is mellow
He is strong but he is weak
He is cruel but he is gentle
He is wise but he is meek

During his journey, he frequently stops to reach into his saddlebag for a book, a rusty sword and a cross, then transforms himself into a prophet, a knight and a preacher before “he shouts across the ocean to the shore.” Quixote-as-prophet bemoans what today we would call “income inequality,” or the perpetual existence of haves and have-nots:

I have searched the whole world over
Looking for a place to sleep
I have seen the strong survive
And I have seen the lean grow weak

See the children of the earth
Who wake to find the table bare
See the gentry in the country
Riding off to take the air

Ironically, the verses that feature the clearest connections to modern existence arrive after our hero becomes Quixote-as-knight:

See the wise and wicked ones
Who feed upon life’s sacred fire
See the soldier with his gun
Who must be dead to be admired . . .

See the drunkard in the tavern
Stemming gold to make ends meet
See the youth in ghetto black
Condemned to life upon the street

Quixote-as-preacher finally realizes that no one is listening, but refuses to abandon his quest to enlighten the human race:

Then standing like a preacher now
He shouts across the ocean to the shore
Then in a blaze of tangled hooves
He gallops off across the dusty plain
In vain to search again
Where no one will hear

In our time, there have been many Jeremiahs whose prophecies were ignored because they were full of truths that people did not want to hear. That’s how the Americans wound up with Trump and the Brits wound up with Brexit. After reading Stuart Jeffries’ A Short History of Stupidity, I’ve concluded that the human race may be too stupid to survive for the simple reason that millions of people refuse to accept the truth.

The music is upbeat and hopeful, marked by bright guitars and a solid string arrangement by Bob Thompson. Gord is in fine voice throughout, championing his flawed hero with obvious enthusiasm. It may not have knocked their socks off in Hollywood, but I think “Don Quixote” is one of Gord’s finest compositions.

“Beautiful” (Don Quixote, 1972): Gord veers away from classic folk chords with this piece, which is dominated by major and minor seventh chords with one brief departure to F#7sus4 in the coda. Major and minor sevenths can communicate a range of moods, usually within the category of introspection, and are often employed to heighten emotions. “Beautiful” is both introspective and emotional, and though I hate to state the obvious, it’s one exceptionally beautiful song.

Gord spends little time on his lover’s physical beauty, remarking only on her “Laughing eyes and smiling face.” His definition of beauty involves trust, closeness, friendship and commitment:

At times I just don’t know
How you could be anything but beautiful
I think that I was made for you and you were made for me

And I know that I will never change
‘Cause we’ve been friends through rain or shine
For such a long, long time

The soft arpeggiated guitar is paired with punctuating strums at the beginning of the musical lines and Nick DeCaro’s subtle string arrangement enhances the emotional impact without crossing the line into maudlin. “Beautiful” achieves what many love songs fail to do: honor the Keatsian definition of beauty: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

“Old Dan’s Records” (Old Dan’s Records, 1972): I am filled with gratitude to learn that Gordon Lightfoot held one of my cherished beliefs: it doesn’t fucking matter when the music was created, for great music never dies. Due to the dearth of great music in the 21st Century, I had hoped that fans of today’s music would eventually tire of music based on formulaic calculations, but I failed to take into account the growth of human stupidity in this century.

“Old Dan’s Records” (a pun on “old dance records”) is a bluegrass-based song celebrating the music of the Swing Era, which unfortunately happens to expose the flaw in the arrangement. Bluegrass wasn’t a thing until the mid-1940s when the Swing Era was on its last legs. I wish they had found a way to introduce Swing Era instrumentation into the song so that the lines “Back to nineteen thirty-five/The foxtrot, jitterbug and jive” would have had some meaning, but at least Gord made his point that listening and dancing to yesterday’s music can be a lot of fun.

“Sundown” (Sundown, 1974): User poisonous_flowers786 posted this helpful bit of information below her choice of “Sundown” videos on YouTube: “It is about infidelity, but Sundown is not the woman, but the other man who is pursuing her!” This syncs with Gord’s commentary on gordonlightfoot.com:

“A song about infidelity. Lenny Waronker, a producer and former Warner Bros. Records president, and all of us at the studio realized when we laid it down that it would be the single. There’s nothing like unrequited love with a touch of infidelity to capture people’s imaginations. In the whole time I’ve been recording, I’ve never had the sense that a song was going to click the way it did with this one. I lived out in the country when I was writing that album, and each night there was a beautiful, big sunset to the west of the barn, and that imagery made it into the song.”

Okay, I get it. If we can have a Sundance Kid, we can have a Sundown Kid, too. What I don’t get is the insistence that the song is only about infidelity, ignoring its constant companion: jealousy. Omitting Gord’s obvious jealousy tends to place most of the blame on the woman, when in fact the blame for the fucked-up relationship falls on both parties.

The woman at the heart of the story was Cathy Smith, an up-and-coming background singer who also had a fetish for musicians. Whether it was the drinking or the super-bursts of testosterone triggered by Cathy’s presence, Gord was very possessive of her and prone to fits of jealousy. In the documentary, Murray McLauchlan remembered that “Her relationship at the time with Gordon was extremely mercurial . . . I asked her to come in and do harmony vocals on a song I recorded called ‘Do You Dream of Being Somebody?’ Gordon was conspicuously upset, and they had a bit of a donnybrook about it.” When Gord reflected on the relationship, he said, “I really loved her . . . (but) it was one of those relationships . . . you get a feeling of danger comes into the picture.” McLauchlan confirmed that Cathy had been involved with other musicians (not with him, though) and that some of the men were Gordon’s friends. As a songwriter and genuinely nice guy, McLauchlan understood why Gord had to write “Sundown.” “Some of the best things he’s written are from when a disturbing thing happened in his personal life. He was just writing it out. As a songwriter, you try to amalgamate your experiences, however destructive or wonderful they may be. Putting them in some form so that they become universally understood by other people.”

We all understand that Gord used songs to work out his personal problems, but to write a song where he revealed he’d been an asshole and taken for a fool took a lot of guts. When I’ve watched him sing the song in live video performances, you can tell he is reliving a painful experience by the expressions on his face, but like any true artist, he had to make the truth come out.

The arrangement features a triple guitar attack with Gord on 12-string, Red on lead electric guitar, and Terry Clements on acoustic lead guitar. All three frequently fall back on blue notes, creating a mood that is both bluesy and sexy as fuck, reflecting Gord’s feeling that he’s trapped somewhere between desire and darkness. Jim Gordon provides a steady, laid-back beat, freeing John Stockfish to add his own bluesy counterpoints on the bass. I wasn’t surprised that “Sundown” became a hit in both English-speaking countries and those where English is a second language, but it also hit #2 in Yugoslavia, indicating that the blues-and-sex arrangement was not only uniquely compelling but strong enough to break language barriers.

The lyrics are exceptionally strong, and the repetition of certain couplets in seemingly random spots in the song describes a man brooding over his relational problems and going over them again and again. Images of his lover trigger anger, pain, regret, the need for action, and bouts of paralysis.

The first erotic image triggers a classic masculine response: you get anywhere near my baby and I’m going to kick your ass:

I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress
In a room where you do what you don’t confess.
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs. (repeat last two lines)

The second verse is paradoxical. He savors the image of his object of desire but admits he doesn’t believe a word she says. Well, there’s always booze around to dull the pain:

She’s been lookin’ like a queen in a sailor’s dream
And she don’t always say what she really means.
Sometimes I think it’s a shame
When I get feelin’ better when I’m feelin’ no pain. (repeat last two lines)

His visions turn dark as he imagines her in the sack with another Jack, but follows that image with the semi-comforting notion that the spider will entrap his competition. The comfort doesn’t last long as he revisits dreams of kicking some ass instead, but in the end, he admits that any pleasure he might derive from that strategy is a dead-end street. Even if he follows through with his threat and then triumphantly throws her his best fuck, he’s in a lose-lose situation:

I can picture ev’ry move that a man could make;
Gettin’ lost in her lovin’ is your first mistake.
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs.
Sometimes I think it’s a sin
When I feel like I’m winnin’ when I’m losin’ again.

The closing sets of verse-and-chorus express the complexity of his dilemma. When he calls up her image, he hints that she’s the one who could use a good beating, turns to the sauce to calm down, decides no, it’s better to go after the bastard trying to steal his girl, and finally realizes that he will wind up a loser no matter what he does.

I can see her lookin’ fast in her faded jeans;
She’s a hard lovin’ woman, got me feelin’ mean.
Sometimes I think it’s a shame
When I get feelin’ better when I’m feelin’ no pain.
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs.
Sometimes I think it’s a sin
When I feel like I’m winnin’ when I’m losin’ again.

I think the well-deserved universal appeal of “Sundown” is that it allows the listener to interpret the lyrics according to their own experience. Some will urge Gord to put the bitch in her place, some will argue that he can’t just give up his property without having a showdown with his competition, and others will empathize with his pain and pray that he gets the hell out of this relational hellhole. I hope that people take a hard look at Gord’s dilemma, then take a look at their own relational tendencies to avoid getting caught in a relationship completely lacking in trust.

“Circle of Steel” (Sundown, 1974): I consider this unusual Christmas song a worthy follow-up to Phil Ochs’ “There But for Fortune.” As Phil Ochs is my favorite folk singer of all time, that should tell you how much I admire Gordon Lightfoot.

When Gord opens the song with the refrain “Rows of lights in a circle of steel, Where you place your bets on a great big wheel,” he’s talking about the roulette wheel of life, where there are no sure bets. A few people cash in and become the elites, while the masses are lucky to break even. Gord’s concern is about the people we cruelly dismiss as losers: those who either made unwise choices or had a string of bad luck that will condemn them to the bottom of the economic ladder for the rest of their lives. Sometimes governments create losers through stupid, short-sighted policies, as indicated by the millions of homeless in the so-called “rich countries.”

Gord places the story in the time of giving, when there are “Sights and sounds of the people going ’round and “Everybody’s in step with the season.” Or so it appears. While millions celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace by heading to church or taking advantage of Christmas sales to surround the tree with presents and cram stuff into stockings, there are plenty of others who spend the holiday in misery:

A child is born to a welfare case
Where the rats run around like they own the place
The room is chilly, the building is old
That’s how it goes
A doctor’s found on his welfare rounds
And he comes and he leaves on the double

“Deck The Halls” was the song they played
In the flat next door where they shout all day
She tips her gin bottle back till it’s gone
The child is strong
A week, a day, they will take it away
For they know about all her bad habits

Christmas dawns and the snow lets up
And the sun hits the handle of her heirloom cup
She hides her face in her hands for a while
Says, “Look here child,
Your father’s pride was his means to provide
And he’s serving three years for that reason.”

Three years tells us that this is not a Les Misérables situation, but hints at the possibility of a repeat offender doing time for petty theft. We can assume that Dad was unable to hold a steady job or that the woman made a terrible choice of partners, but what really matters is that the couple likely never had the means to properly care for a child and the so-called safety net was unequipped to deal effectively with those situations. They acted without a full understanding of how the wheel of life works, as is true of many who reside at the bottom of the barrel. I don’t believe that Gord intended to ruin your Christmas, but he’s asking you to remember those who have little to celebrate and perhaps do something to help them.

The music is notable for the appearance of recorder and English horn, beautifully played by Jack Zaza, a legendary Canadian session musician who, over a long career, learned to play a stunning array of instruments. I also love the switch to choral vocals in the “Deck the Halls” verse, supplying a bit of ironic joy in the middle of a very sad tale.

“Carefree Highway” (Sundown, 1974): Despite his troubles, Gord was clearly on top of his songwriting game on Sundown. Once again exploring his rotten luck with women, he yearns for the open road to clear his mind and heal his heart.

Picking up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream
I wonder how the old folks are tonight
Her name was Ann and I’ll be damned if I recall her face
She left me not knowing what to do

Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The morning after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you

He may not have remembered her face, but he definitely remembered the experience and its impact. “There was a real Ann. It reaches way back to a time when I was about 20 or so. It’s one of those situations where you meet that one woman who knocks you out and then leaves you standing there and says she’s on her way.” Jimmy Buffett must have been listening, as Gord’s conclusion bears an eerie resemblance to Jimmy’s conclusion at the end of “Margaritaville.”

Turning back the pages to the times I love best
I wonder if she’ll ever do the same
Now the thing that I call living is just being satisfied
With knowing I got no one left to blame

Yeah, it’s your own damn fault. Forget about that “I got to see you my old flame” crap and move the hell on!

I think Gord kinda sorta took my advice after another bout with sleeplessness:

Searching through the fragments of my dream-shattered sleep
I wonder if the years have closed her mind
I guess it must be wanderlust or trying to get free
From the good old faithful feeling we once knew

The performances are damn near perfect, with Gord in excellent voice with a touch of old flame mourning, Terry Clements filling the instrumental passages with wistful licks and another superb string arrangement from Nick DeCaro. As it turns out, there was a kinda sorta happy ending a few years down the highway: “I heard from her after a Massey Hall concert many years later; she stopped by to say hello. I don’t think she knew that she is the one the song was about, and I wasn’t about to tell her.”

Good call.

“Rainy Day People” (Cold on the Shoulder, 1975): I think Gord was being flippant when he said “Rainy Day People” was “about the person waiting in the wings for a relationship to subside, so he can move in.” That comment may have arisen from the bitterness he displayed on “Sundown,” but his view is not supported in the lyrics nor by one of his admirers. From musingsfromanoldfart:

With it raining cats and dogs outside tonight, this title has greater meaning. “Rainy Day People” is not necessarily my favorite Gordon Lightfoot song, but it describes my bride of now 34 years. Why you might ask? Here is a glimpse of Lightfoot’s magical pen in this song:

Rainy day people always seem to know when it’s time to call
Rainy day people don’t talk . . . they just listen til they’ve heard it all
Rainy day lovers don’t lie when they tell you they’ve been down like you
Rainy day people don’t mind if you’re crying a tear or two.

My wife embodies rainy day people. She is a listener who people feel comfortable in being around; comfortable in confiding in. Gordon Lightfoot’s talent and the reason we both love his music is his ability to capture who we are.

There’s plenty of evidence in the song that reveals Gord’s admiration for rainy day people and zero evidence that they’re waiting in the wings to strike:

If you get lonely, all you really need is that rainy day love
Rainy day people all know there’s no sorrow they can’t rise above
Rainy day lovers don’t love any others, that would not be kind
Rainy day people all know how it hangs on a peace of mind

Gord’s description of rainy day people tells us that those beautiful people believe in unconditional love. Oh, how I wish I lived in a world full of rainy day people:

Rainy day people always seem to know when you’re feeling blue
High stepping strutters who land in the gutter sometime need one too
Take it or leave it, or try to believe it, if you’ve been down too long
Rainy day lovers don’t hide love inside they just pass it on
Rainy day lovers don’t hide love inside they just pass it on

Musically speaking, the song is a gem, thanks in large part to the heavenly combination of Gord, Red and Pee Wee and their sweet guitar work, which sometimes mimics the comforting sound of falling rain (says the girl who loved living in rainy Seattle and now loves living in rainy Cork).

“Cold on the Shoulder” (Cold on the Shoulder, 1975): This is the only song in the compilation that . . . leaves me cold. The guitar work is excellent, but the lyrics are simply not up to snuff. I’ll leave it at that and move on to the infinitely more worthy “plus one”

******************************************************************************

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (Summertime Dream, 1975, and Gold’s Gord Volume 2, 1988):

“Recorded before the ship’s wreckage could be examined, the song contains some artistic conjectures, omissions and paraphrases. In later interviews, Lightfoot recounted how he had agonized over possible inaccuracies while trying to pen the lyrics until his lead guitarist Terry Clements convinced him to do what Clements’ favourite author Mark Twain would have advised: just tell a story.” (Chicago Tribune via Wikipedia).

And one helluva story it is.

Inspired by an article on the tragedy in Newsweek, Gord went to work and recorded the song scarcely over a month later, before any investigation and a year before the Edmund Fitzgerald could be located. He had already recorded several nautical songs and had sufficient experience sailing and canoeing to lend his story a certain credibility. The power of the song is felt not in Gord’s nautical experience but in the story and the talent of the storyteller to humanize the story and express sincere empathy for the families of the twenty-nine men who lost their lives when their ship was destroyed by an overpowering storm on Lake Superior. The song certainly moved many listeners in Canada and the U.S. despite its apparent commercial limitations—this is a song that has no chorus, no bridge, a single chord pattern that repeats itself through all seven verses, and clocks in at six minutes and thirty seconds—yet it still managed to become a smash hit in both Canada and the U.S.A.

Gord obviously did not have access to the details of the sinking, but he knew enough about the history of the Great Lakes to link the story to Native American mythology. He employed that knowledge as a means of foretelling the tragedy to come:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the “Gales of November” came early.

The metallic guitars serve to add a palpable sense of coldness in sync with the weather. In the next verse, Gord notes that “the ship was the pride of the American side . . . with a crew and good captain well-seasoned.” As the ship embarks to bring the heavy ore to the steel firms in Cleveland, Gord notes the early signs of trouble in the wind: “And later that night when the ship’s bell rang/could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?” As the ship proceeds toward its destination, the budding storm takes a turn for the worse:

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too
’twas the witch of November come stealin’.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin’.
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind.

Somehow the ship manages to ride the storm for several hours before the final blow strikes. Gord’s description of the event gives me the chills and breaks my heart:

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck
Sayin’ “Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya.”
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
and the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Of course, Gord had no way to know what the cook or anyone else said during the voyage, but introducing human conversation to the story intensifies the tragedy and evokes waves of sympathy for the crew. The next verse expresses the utter unfairness of it all, the ever-present what-ifs that accompany many a tragedy, and the sad reminder that wives and children will never see their loved ones again:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

The closing verse gets my tears flowing again:

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the “Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.”
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee.”
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early.”

Gord would have been so proud to know that after his death, the church bell rang thirty times to honor the man who wrote a song that will never be forgotten. Despite his worries about historical accuracy, the families who lost their fathers felt that Gord was one of their own: while he was still alive, he attended the annual ringing of the bells whenever he could. It is said that Gord considered “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to be his finest work, and so do I.

*****

My decision to steal this song from Gord’s Gold, Volume 2 does not mean that I have no desire to further explore Gordon Lightfoot’s contributions to music. The truth is that I’m not sure I will be able to continue reviewing music at all, and I felt that if I only had one shot at a Gordon Lightfoot review, ignoring “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was simply not an option.

I’ll explain it all in next week’s post. For now, wish me luck.