Six years after an abdominal aneurysm nearly ended his life, Gordon Lightfoot is back on the good foot. The legendary Canadian singer-songwriter, 69, was interviewed last week at home in Toronto as he prepared to hit the road for a six-week tour.
INTERVIEW OF GORDON LIGHTFOOT
Q: What allure does performing still hold for you?
A: There are quite a few people I could name right now who are a bit older than me who are still doing it. It's the passion, I guess. It's the love of the work and the communication with the audience and the ongoing quest for the perfect intonation.
Q: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is heard in a new Imax movie, "Mysteries of the Great Lakes." Why did you let the filmmakers use the song?
A: I did it at the request of two of the members of the ladies committee [representing families of crew members who died in the 1975 shipwreck].
We've always conferred whenever one of these things would come up.
I said, "I'll do it, but give $15,000 to the Northwestern Michigan [College] scholarship." [Lightfoot established a scholarship at the college's Great Lakes Maritime Academy in 1976, the same year "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" became a Top 5 hit.]
Q: Your last album, "Harmony," came out in 2004. Are you writing new material?
A: I don't get seriously involved in that. I've completed all of my recording obligations.
My last [album] for Warner Bros. was in 1998. . . . I decided a couple years later I might try for one more ["Harmony"], as an afterthought. I got it down to the point where I had some rough vocal-and-guitar tracks . . . and all of a sudden, I was down with an aneurysm and I was out for two years.
The main reason why I'm glad I came back is because I can sing again and I can play again and I can get out in front of a crowd again. For about a year or so there, I didn't think that was gonna happen. I figured I was done.
Q: On any given night, when you sing "If You Could Read My Mind," what goes through your mind?
A: I always think about my first wife, Brita, the Swedish lady that I was married to. We have two children, my two eldest children.
I always think of her when I do that song, because it was written right around the time that our marriage came apart. So she's there. She's with me.
Q: If I went back and listened to every album you've made, how good a picture would I have of your life?
A: Well, I hope you never have to do that. But I'll tell you: Yes . . . it would be a very good life story, a story of my life -- that roller-coaster ride through life.
No comments:
Post a Comment