Gordon Lightfoot CTV News May, 2019

I was sitting behind you the night you saw the documentary for the very first time so I was sort of distracted watching the screen and watching your reaction what was it like for you to see sort of your life pass before your eyes I thought that I've ever liked your tennis tennis all over again why I you mean the life you wanted to live again or you wanted to redo the dock yeah I do the whole thing over all over again I wonder this whole thing how would it have looked different well I probably I probably would have put put more music into it and less jawboning I thought the jawboning was pretty interesting now did it make I don't know were chosen for the more recent catalog because we had stuff available there's some great stuff available that we just did such as seven years ago it was hardly looked at at all so I would like to have seen some of that so what they do it they usually do they go right back to the beginning and and get the very first thing that ever happened and there it was a song which I lost faith in after about singing it for about 23 24 years on stage I finally said I'm not gonna sing this anymore that's what you get for what it says yeah because of what it says tell me why that turned you off so much after so many years oh there was it's an insult to two women some people say you could turn that around and it could be the woman doing this song I say oh that's right sweet just think about the woman could be talking to the demand but yeah you know but you know end of that story it is you were that guy though you were that guy yeah I you know I was and I was married and a couple of really young young children you know I was married to a woman who was very philosophical she was from Stockholm Sweden and she took the thing she it didn't bother her but it bothered you later did you did you ever sort of like the 12-step program go back and say I'm sorry or it was too late then for that it folded your years before that things that folded years before that and their relationship with the kids that bring that remained that remained that's some good news then yeah yeah it was fascinating to me to hear you say and I'm quoting you I hate that song Oh in the dog well yeah it's against it it's a very I didn't know it what what chauvinism was that's as close as I can get to it as a description it's you just aren't supposed to it's to put it into a song you know that earlier on in my career I would I wouldn't think about it much I wouldn't also think about what's going through my subconscious at the time ferret very much I would just say hey there's a song going and and the next thing you know somebody has a hit record with it and there it is here's myself but but you know number one it wasn't it I think they made it up Peter Paul and Mary made it up to number five and but before that Pia and Sylvia had a very nice recording of it as well there were another group who do at Ian and Sylvia were there at the be at the dawn of the folk revival and they had already done they were the first ever to record any of my material it was amazing to see Sylvia Tyson at the your documentary absolutely over time though doesn't that say something to you over over history these people are still dip into your life yeah she's done very well written the novel I don't know I I learned so much about ear music not just that song but your inspiration for other songs that that became global hits you know sundown for example what was happening in your life at that time but that time I had moved on to a singular the life again meaning flesh being a I go through my for my first separation and divorce and I was a I actually was a bachelor for 19 years but during that time there were some relationships and I remember i my first thing was with a a really good old friend of mine of Kathy Smith if they were sort of there they were sort of downtown I was out in the country we were living at that time in a house Oden King and I was writing and I was getting ready to make an album you know and getting ready to go on a canoe trip all all that at once writing the tunes and getting ready to go on a canoe trip and Kathy was in town with her friends there and they were there hop in the bars they were bar hopping and you know down here in the in the city down on the downtown you know the girls all were downtown and I I started thinking about feeling a little a little paying of well you know I wonder what they're up to and that is how that song sundown came to be and it was just purely just imagining following and following in a favor with someone else other than myself while they were you know not that I would have any right to do so but you do feel a bit of possessiveness or everything that creeps into the picture because of course her whole story took such a dark turn in their relationship with John Belushi did that come as a shock to you that happened several months after we broke up actually had you fallen out of love with her I had to I spent three years together and we we had to we had to break it off but when she became front-page news this woman you'd been in love with for all those years now connected to this high-profile drug overdose of this famous Canadian Canadian I got a call from the Washington Post they asked me if Kathy and Kathy Smith and I did drugs together said nobody sure drank a lot and he said thank you very much mister like that was the end of the conversation so drugs were never priming you don't make a secret in the documentary of the fact that you had to go on the wagon oh the drug whenever drugs were never part of the history well I've said many times I said around there on the stage none of us is it's totally free of sin of some kind of one or the other but I I did give up alcohol okay that's fair so you know that was the best I could do why did you I mean let's see it seems like it was part of the lifestyle well I was using it as a tool for years and years as a writing tool and it it got to the point where it was starting to put me to sleep and I was beginning to do irrational irrational things like I could feel it happening in my one time I I tried to it was New Year's I tried to there was an office and there was an apartment that right this next to one another in an apartment building downtown here and I tried to jump from the across from the one balcony to the other I made it I made it but if some of the 10th floor things like that that was alcohol yeah the alcohol that things like that but that but then the record company I was saying to her to a big company you know reprieves records in in Los Angeles I made 14 albums there for that company and they wanted me to stop drinking and they badly they did they were getting reports that I had left the stage at a concert over in Britain and they was it true yeah it was the dominion theatre and Piccadilly Circus we were doing anything a fill-in theater at the end of a tour because we couldn't get all the people in for the place we were playing in a Royal Albert Hall we had sold out Royal Albert Hall and we were doing an extra show at the end of the tour in the dominion theatre but this time I was I'd been up there book 18 days and a fair amount of I was still drinking at that point is he in it he caught up to me in that very last Navy that extra showing I got into an argument with a patron from the stage and they're gonna cut back the whole thing it back to the the office of the head honcho back in Los Angeles and The Hollywood Reporter or something like that and he talked to me about it you don't want to be making headlines that way and a couple of the producers talked to me about it and so finally I one of the promotion guys very green here in Toronto directed me to a doctor and right here at Toronto but is it okay to - no no yes they have dr. Jack Birnbaum who's written books on the topic got me to stop drinking so what like a rehab program no I don't know it's not real and it took three months and but I bet I was able to follow the rules and what off they went off the the rails once after six weeks I went off the rails when when I drank a half bottle half a bottle of wine well I was at Vancouver doing a show there the arena I bet was others it was a wet night in Victoria and I was playing in the hockey arena you know Victoria lighted a lot of myself to have a glass of wine so when I had to report in to my doctor the next week he said how did you do this week Gordon is reported every week I said well like well this week said Gordie he said you know what I'm gonna do with you and I said what he said I'm putting you on antabuse he said I'm going to put you in antabuse and he he started writing a prescription and I went into such a panic I said oh my god please please oh I promise I will never and I and he tore up the prescription come and see me next week he said wow that's amazing credible discipline so he got me to stop drinking but you did I mean in a way it speaks to your whole work ethic you are such a disciplined professional artist so there was a doctor recommended by my record company so I was really lucky in a lot of ways like that how did your writing change when you were sober when it you didn't have that tool the the coffee and the cigarettes cigarette smoking increased coffee drinking increased but I kept writing the album it's a no vote and you just quit for more no you just recently quit smoking have you not or how long well I stopped smoking cigarettes in October how's that going yeah I have any cigarettes cold turkey well I mean like I saved no none of us is without sin and these days none of us without seen at all in Canada ok so let me just do the math here on October 17th cannabis became legal in Canada so was there handing over the cigarettes but in starting on or continuing with cannabis does it change that not much doesn't change it much do you increase it do you increase the cannabis maybe a little bit but not much the pack of cigarettes it is or more as when there's a serious problem and because it was affecting your voice yeah yeah yes I'm sure I think I'm still getting over it you always said you didn't like the sound of your own voice when you were younger that was yeah that's right I had to to cultivate it around to the point where I found it acceptable why didn't you like it I mean the entire world is celebrating you all these legends from Elvis to you name it are recording your stuff and you you didn't like your voice there's too much a Jim Irsay yeah yeah there a what what like a Canadian Twain the Orillia we are really at wearing yeah yeah I worked on it a little bit I did enter I worked on a lot of stuff I because you wanted to be perfect or what drove you I want to be really professional I wanted to sound just get out a good sound with my band and everything I wanted I wanted great great shows I when they first signed me as a songwriter way back in the beginning of my career they didn't know even though I sang you were just a songwriter songwriter yeah when they for the boys picked up I mean in New York down in New York they thought it was just a songwriter they they they did fully expected a First Nations person to walk into your office or in Times Square the first time I walked in why because of the name Lightfoot I thought I was First Nation yeah and you do you remember what you wrote you were writing jingles for them or what no I had written a couple of jingles what did you write do you remember come on a couple of things that I I did go away back with with Don Franks wait wait wait I don't know if you know of some of these I know the name for sure I forget what they where the the one I remember most is when my new management company heard about that too so they sent me over to Madison Avenue one day and I met a person there who was one of the executives that one of the big advertising agencies and they put me in an office and they left me in there for the afternoon to write a beer commercial a beer commercial and I get paid so and bucks us then did the beer commercial become a no but I remember when they wrote what you write it was it went like I know a place where you can go when the work is done and the whistle blows a place for people don't pretend when they shake your hand you call your friend I know I said I can't go over the work now the whistle blows the players people don't pretend your hand didn't call your friend that's great why didn't they buy it I don't know whoever knows with my manager he knew the guy he knew the guy at the ad agency they knew everybody down there I got in with a management company that was just absolutely just the best management that they managed Bob Dylan and they managed in and Sylvia and they managed to Peter Paul and Mary its Janis Joplin the band who was one of your greatest influences at that time then that you think you learned from it became this professional that you so wanted to be well it would it would go the Kingston Trio to Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan from from there the Kingston Trio Pete Seeger Bob Dylan you learned from them that's right at the dawn of the of the folk revival in 1959 just come back to music school at that time too from California and I've gotten a job as a copyist in here in Toronto I can't believe you were publisher but you're also working in a bank right yes that came later I was lifting tunes off tape for a publisher lifting tunes and writing them on manuscript so it was always going to be your future music oh yeah in grade 12 before I went to music school I was a bit like a very nice I was in grade 12 their books anything you remember yeah I was called the hula hoop so I'm intrigued yeah do you remember it sure I remember seventeen-year-old gordon like that goes to hoop upon the floor it must be the hundredth time or more my hips are on my back you saw the hula hoop is got my wrist got me and I'm slowly going nuts kids in the street are getting the best of me I'm really beat he used to be a hero to my kids but no nothing but a square because I can't hold a hoop at all I used to be the king of the block the king of the vote came the the king of the knot king of the road since the hoop has made me a drupe I think I'll retire to the shower I'm getting tired of bending down I can't seem to make the hoop go round I guess I'm just a slob and I'm going to loose my job because I'm hula hula hooping all the time I'm a guy that I was playing that for said Gord he said there's some songs words that you shouldn't let me give you don't use the word slob yes law is not very lyrical there's certainty I can't believe the words what year was that I was still going to high school I just learned to drive it my father lent him his car so I could drive down to Toronto from earlier to play this song for this guy BMI Canada so you wanted to be famous well I had a song but did you did you want to be famous I mean who was it was crazy to have an F the curbs in the Korean half at the Korean War right after the Korean War but in 1950 they got there to hula-hoop phrase covers of magazines you know so it fascinates me first of all that you remember every line in that song is very interesting but here you are now on a tour called 80 years strong a lot of people at 80 are comfortable sitting in their armchair reflecting on a great life and you are still building this great life well I've got a great band we have it we have a great band and we love playing these tunes and we play them and we play 80 times a year and we go what we're doing 80 shows that you every time I play if you could read my mind which is near the end of every show of course where it should be it's not right at the end of the show but it's about the first encore no I just do one okay sign on it it's in the show but it's for shows in the end because I've got stuff after that that I could throw in there so do you still love being out on that stuff oh yeah it's getting the shows together as Pryor's thinking about it in between times you know thinking about it here at home thinking about it you don't tire the road the road doesn't exhaust you know and everybody all the guys all my band members 14 people traveling so family 14 people traveling does anything make this tour different with the name with the number in it your age in it 80 years strong except that the standing ovations are probably a lot longer oh well you know I feel good going is it in the eighties I mean if I had one thing of it actually I got knocked out like for two and a half years one time that's the aortic rupture yeah I want to ask you about your health because do you ever feel that you almost cheated death so many times these things these frightening medical crises happened and you bounce back after a time at that time had been off alcohol for a long time and I was in the conditioning meaning exercising a lot of people you thought what exercising and they say that's okay for you to say that buddy but we don't have time to do that and that that's true most people don't have time to do it but if I got time to do it which oh yeah I'm gonna do it but you're suggesting to me that you need to do it for your own to keep going this is your glue that's part of it the show is showing like that I want to do great shows I wanted you every every show is like it I can another game what do you judge your shows against now do you judge it against your last show or ten years ago or mentally I think about the one that we had maybe five or six shows earlier one that wouldn't but everything was in perfect tune all the instruments of guitars are in perfect tune with the keyboards and the bass was in perfect tune with everything and the intonation was you know it can't be a hundred percent because that but 99.9% that's pretty good you are a perfectionist halves but once a week the rest of the time it's great the rest I was screwed but do you know how rare that is that once a week you have 99.9% perfection but they only happen once out of every five or six shows can't you can't do it and the strengths where the strengths we're out of the guitars and I have to twelve strengths each artisan and I maintain my own instruments your tuning your own guitars before every gig and at plus a maintenance as well you know now I'm not a fret job because these are your children or what are they these they have to be in they have to be an absolute pinch they it has to be an absolute pitch that's how I get my sound that's why we get to crowd well you get the crowd also because you're an icon your religion you know they've heard about you for sixty years now people love what you people love the message you've always written about him and I know that you're you've got new songs coming out a new album and I want to understand was there something nagging at your brain that you had to write more songs something you hadn't said yet or tell me about the new album I found I found some material that one day while I was cleaning out my office here in Toronto I found something I found six tunes that I had totally forgotten about what have written lyrics know there were there were more than two than just six and we were actually probably maybe eight or nine of them eight or ten but that's a newer stuff and I said I'll take orchestrate the best that I can get out of this lock which I found out of nowhere and I don't know if it had something to do with their written just before I got ill 2001 they're written just a few months before I had the the heart aneurysm and I didn't I didn't know they existed until one day I very providentially found them or cleaning out of a massive old gifts you can your college I've talked about the stuff that people we got we had a pile of stuff in my office and you find a treasure trove I was there I found an item with with with six years ago basic tracks to begin with and I already had stuff that I've been working on so there was enough for an album and I said there's going to be an album for sure and I know it's oh I know it's right off the bat last October I'm going to make another album have you recorded it but it's all recorded most of it is because I was ready to go the basic tracks are already recording now as well longtime fans hear the sound of Gordon Lightfoot of old is new put me in the picture on who Gordon Lightfoot is on is what is it gonna be your 21st album or something like that I'm your one more to write right now I have to go into the recording studio that in two days from Delhi I have one tune that I want to do over why because it's not it because it doesn't stand up when I did that stuff I was at full strength full health full vocal no vocal problems and playing guitar a lot better they can play now because in the meantime apart from everything else there's been a stroke and it's damaged my right hand and so I can't play the guitar as well as I did then it's incredible stuff I found it I found this stuff I mean I could I've got the unit cities my master copy City where's my office I would show it to you we're gonna go look but tell me this so you told me earlier that your inspiration to you for your song sundown you could read my mind all of these the inspiration for your songs came from your life what did you write about in your new album that's going to be a look at the love that life is there wise words in there on aging I mean kind of funny and kind of philosophical okay that's good combo okay funny and philosophic really good song is there is there a gem like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald hiding in there that kind of stuff is there anything in there that you cuz I think I read somewhere you said the minute you played the riff on Edmund Fitzgerald you knew oh that was sundown our Sun down yeah you knew this is gonna be a hit well whether we started working on it I mean it became obvious that it was going to it had a good beat in it a good chorus the Harmony lines you say you said to me earlier the documentary focused on all that older music and not the newer stuff that comes if they came up to midstream they take it they can't think I gotta give them credit they came up to midstream okay did you disagree on things that I know there worked in the past I was ready they did I had faith in their ability to carry this out and they did a very good job on it is it part of your your you know those lyrics those songs came out of you out of your experiences what is the legacy you want Canadians people not just Canadians but what do you see as your legacy God maybe but I will be a positive influence you know whatever they call it I don't know I would like to leave a you know I want to be like like stop and Tom Connors and leave a great impression well my friend you have certainly done that you have certainly done that and and are you proud of your your work you're proud of your contribution not yet not yet seriously you know as long as every we keep this thing rolling I mean if we were doing these shows and everything well you know it's it's so much fun and the states ain't prepared as is part of the fun like we're here then we're there and they were back here again and they were out there again word or just like a team or like a sports team you know and always trying to improve it and all my people are very seriously into playing the music you know on you absolutely love it yeah it's fine material I've got like the the cream of the crop if my material etiquette four different shows of that we alternate night after night so we don't get bored we don't lose the standards we rotate in them the great album material and people a lot of here do you think that boy in who was 17 years old who drove from Orillia to Toronto could have ever imagined that all these years later at age 80 he would still be doing a new album a new documentary and a tour I had something in mind the song that I ever saw was a topical song and kind of funny and I said maybe I can write topical songs I was thinking about a little Nash Rambler you know that's not a little Nash for Ambler stuff like that you know it's a topical song and maybe they might be interested in maybe they've heard too much of us eirick waited love stuff and they'd like to hear a topical song a night what do you think of my dad's car the way I went but what do you think of today's music today it's really well produced and everything everything the intonation is perfect the beat the the way the the way it's done the whole thing it's it's it's really well done I'm a particular favorites not necessarily about your neighbor fine I've had both their albums appear on my desk in my office to listen to where they first started no well I haven't done Justin both who Drake and Bieber's appeared one other elements appeared on my desk at my office before they were anyway yeah would you please listen to this mr. I give them feedback well the first time elicits a Beaver's outlet I said that this is a way to the races ain't no problem here you know wow so you are the Justin Bieber Whisperer is that what you're telling me well I mean I guess I was the first to hear his album but with Drake I after he sat on the top of the charts for for five weeks with I went there I finally I said okay that's it and I went got the album and why were you sitting on the top of the CN tower he's sitting up on top of the CN Tower that was a pretty dangerous thing that he did there listen this from a guy who just admitted to me that you've jumped balconies from the 10th floor but Toronto high-rise come on oh good but anybody listen I do I do why I mean I really knew why and he talks about a little bit of with the girls who sucks was growing up years Cox was his home life and it's all got this fantastic beat and then these great arrangements the song the arrangement the vocal it's all it's all there anything else you want to share on just a life in this country you intentionally stayed in Canada to create and tell our story well I could have I kind of moved off down down to the States I suppose but I didn't have to and so I didn't have to make that choice I was of moving of leaving the country and eliminating all the problems with work permits and all that business you know getting petitioning for to go to work down there and all that business which is really why most of them go there because to get rid of the hassle but you intentionally stayed in Canada but my contacts got established him in in New York so I was able to do it through the New York office they were able to do that for me so I never had to go through any of that later there usually there's no misty patriotic reason why you stayed in Canada they arranged by my work permits for me I mean there I was already in as a songwriter but now they're finding out that I sing you see all of a sudden they find this guy this guy's saying - and so they say they started getting me into in concerts down in the states and they started by tucking me into like the army to open open for them the Paul Butterfield Blues Band the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the place I just played in last week and bitter answer but the fourth and then eventually the bitter end they're in the places in Cleveland Chicago but why my questions why was it with you to stay in Canada well I've really I have no problem with Allstate staying in Canada I really like being here at Canada's you know you know I'm really happy that I was born in Canada why because it's a great place to be and I've learned I've canoed all over the whole North Country here - you know you've written about it yeah I love this place I love Canada you know it's there's no need for me to die I don't knock the people who did you know it did you do what you got to do that it has supposed to do with the the working situation they're coming and going across the border and I was able to handle that without having to leave the country it's interesting also we've been talking earlier about how a lot of your songs the legends perform that I wonder do you have a favorite version of one of your songs sung by one of the one of the greats Elvis or name it they all did them I got to see Elvis I gotta say Elvis which saw early morning rain but but Peter Paul and Mary did a really great job and for loving me and although I might say that's the tune then I don't like they did a very very interesting tiny cheek kind of in version of that song which I've made it up to number five in the Billboard Charlie but believe it was at the time but can you believe it at the time Elvis Presley who was the King yes was performing one of your from Orillia Ontario one of your songs I was jumped out of the car I said I was going 70 miles per hour striving for my mother's house somewhere really at one time to Toronto and I heard it on the car radio that's the first time you know the first time I even knew about it did you cry no I said I almost jumped out of the car I was I got really excited that that's an important thing yeah no kidding did you say okay I'm saying I got to meet him I just missed him by about two minutes when they played concert did he ever reach out to you seventy-two we went to the show did he ever reach out though when he wrote the song or when he performed the song did he ever reach out on any level to say hey great work but they had to go they had to they had to leave there was 14,000 people in the place Oh later on I got to meet the people from concert West West who did all of his shows all those people and I got with Warner Brothers I was still with the United Artists at that time too in the documentary Anne Murray goes backstage oh yeah as a young girl I remember that okay so she says you didn't remember anything I was probably having a bad day any message to Anne no I thought that was great I I love that people were so so I mean the flattery of this thing is that absolutely the compliments

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Length: 38min 47sec (2327 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2019