It was the summer of 1974. My family went on a camping trip all the way to the West coast. If you haven’t done it, know it is a very long drive.
Gordon Lightfoot was our audio companion in our car through those many hours pulling the tent trailer through prairie and mountains. “Sundown” hit number one in Canada that summer. We took the trans-Canada out and came back through the States. “Sundown” also hit number one on the US Hot 100 and Easily Listening charts. So, Gordon was with us all the way back as well.
Two years later came “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. This was around the time I started playing guitar. I bought the Gord’s Gold song book and learned pretty much every song in it. (The Gord’s Gold album is a hits compellation of everything before 1975, including “Sundown”.) “If you could read my mind”, “Beautiful”, and “Circle of Steel” are particular favorites.
In 1980 we went to a Lightfoot concert at the CNE. I was disappointed when they turned the concert into a televised tribute to the Canadian Olympic team. With a number of guest performers, we only saw Lightfoot for three or four songs before we had to take the train home. (The train used to stop at the CNE back then). But we got to see a set by Harry Chapin. He died less than a year later.
In 2002, Marg and I saw a poster for an upcoming Lightfoot concert. Surprised he was still performing at such an “advanced age” we talked about going. But that was not to be as in January 2003 Lightfoot’s guts exploded. I’m sure we weren’t alone in thinking the abdominal aortic aneurysm was in part due to the hard living, and hard drinking, of his youth.
It took two years of surgeries and recovery, but Lightfoot battled back and went on to tour and record through his seventies and into his eighties. His victory lap was performing at Massey Hall at both ends of a three-year renovation. Take that “advanced age”.
I think I will hit the six-string hard tonight. Maybe with a sip or two of the whisky of the highlands. I still have the Gord’s Gold songs, though the book’s binding dissolved years ago. For many Canadians, remembering Gordon Lightfoot is remembering our life.