Robert Markle/Old U.A. Albums
Cpacyto
Since I only use cassettes and CD's these days, my collection of old
Lightfoot albums are in mothballs. I went through the mothballs yesterday
and was reminiscing. I have a very old "Sunday Concert" album with liner
notes. They give some of the lyrics to "Yarmouth Castle" and they do list
the other ship as the "Havana Star". Whoops, Gord.
On the U.A. albums, Gord had extensive liner notes written by a Robert
Markle. Sounds as if he was a painter who lived in Toronto during the
coffeehouse heyday of the mid 60's and was Gord's buddy. He has some
interesting first-hand observations of hanging out with our beloved poet
and singer. I can't help but wonder if the new song "A Painter Passing
Through" might harken back to those days. Does anyone know what happened
to Markle?
John Wicklund/St. Paul, MN
Tycho
In the biography, "Lightfoot: If You Could Read His Mind", I believe it
tells of the two rooming together, and I believe Markle even did a
sketch or painting for an album cover (don't know if it was used or
not). As far as his whereabouts nowadays.... don't know.
Johnny Kimbell
Wayne Francis
In article <19970224130...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
I haven't heard much about him in recent years, but to my knowledge, he and
GL don't see a lot of each other these days. Besides the liner notes he did
on the two UA albums, he also wrote several magazine articles on Lightfoot,
the last being in 1977. He was at that time working on a book on Lightfoot,
but alas, it never materialized. I'll include the '77 article:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
KNOWING LIGHTFOOT: A Friend's Portrait Of The Artist At Work And Play
(Toronto Star magazine)
Trying to go back through time is always a mug's game. We tend to see the
past exactly the way we want to see it, with no loose ends to tangle up the
trip - and that time last spring (1976) with Lightfoot and Lightfoot's
party was a tangle. Misplaced enthusiasms, images with faint edges come
racing back, washing me in the energies of that time. I have to scramble
for the notes I made, like hasty sketches of lost landscapes, to bring any
sense to what I know and what I think probably happened. But oh! what a
time.
Massey Hall's paint is peeling in places. The wood that surrounds the stage
needs work. Worn plush, threadbare carpets, scuffs, yet the lady still has
class. The sound in there is first rate. And when those balcony seats are
filled and the warmth of a receptive audience reaches out almost to the
stage, that place works very well. There are plans for a new Massey Hall:
no doubt glass, concrete, wood veneer.
It's early in the day, but you'd never know by the light. Massey Hall's
light
defies time, it glows to its own clock. Gordon Lightfoot is putting his
band through a tough rehearsal, going over familiar songs, working on the
new material. Technicians, stage managers rush about, plugging things in,
setting things up, checking mikes, levels, lighting. The Edmund Fitzgerald
is done over and over again. Lightfoot sometimes stopping it in mid-phrase
to demand something of the band, working the song through, turning it over,
searching for its "rightness," all this among the chaos of wires and humming
amplifiers.
We had spent the Saturday night before talking and drinking at the
Brunswick,
a favorite tavern; two old friends with too little time to spend together.
the talk had got around the Lightfoot's long, driving, haunting song-story,
The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Lightfoot's involvement with that
tradgedy
is understandable. You see, Lightfoot himself sails, and his fraternity with
the sea is as dear to him as anything his work, or his work's future, might
have to offer. And he has sailed many times in those waters. So I'm sure, I
know, that Lightfoot saw in that water's vicious reality, in the lives of
those doomed men of the Fitzgerald, a fear so near that it could only be
fully understood if exorcized through his art.
I look around the hall, all those people readying for tonight's show, the
rehearsal winding down. Lightfoot looks around, as if noticing the room for
the first time, recognizing it as an old friend; we talk over the stage's
apron.
"Massey Hall is just a great place to perform. The sound here rings, I love
this place."
Tonight would be the first of eight concerts Lightfoot would be giving here
in seven days. And they all were sellouts. Audiences from all over, and
beyond. This is an important time in Lightfoot's yearly schedule; although
he was born in Orillia, Ontario, it's Toronto that gave him his roots,
Toronto and Massey Hall. This is his home; you leave the hall, turn right
and go north and you find his house.
"Toronto's a tough town." I had brought a friend, a photographer, and she
was snapping away. Lightfoot saw her over my shoulder and became very
aware of the glasses he was wearing. He doesn't like pictures of himself
with his glasses on; he whipped them off. "I know it's silly, but that's
the way it is. Could you tell her?" He was going back to the house, to be
alone and get ready for tonight. "We've got some new material and we're
understadably nervous. This is a tough town, we've got some problems with
the sound system, it's new, and a worry..."
That night Lightfoot's audience was there, filling every seat, filling
Massey Hall with an air of rich expectancy. Walking around, it was like
moving through space grown physical with the high charge of anticipatory
energy. The eager audience hummed, buzzing into the enriched air. Looking
for their own kind of confirmation. Outrageously beautiful girls dressed
outrageously, laughing as they snuggled into their seats. Factory-sealed
records on their flowered laps, behind their excited eyes lay the hope of
an autograph. Some carried flowers, gifts. Parcels carefully wrapped. And
instamatics. Flashbars. Boys in jeans and hand stitched shirts from Mexico
or shops up the street. Men in suits from smart downtown. Sensible looking
boys and girls out spending their precious time together.
I'm attracted to other sights, other stories. Grey suits, executives.
Boppers,
dopers. Dreamers, aspiring virgin talent. Fans. Fanatics. I talk to a girl,
a young woman really, with slim, shapely legs. She had travelled here from
her home in California, leaving a roomful of Lightfoot memorabilia: 500
photos, scrapbooks, the walls covered, to sit here in Toronto, front row
centre, to witness the content of her dreams. Old and young, hip and square,
nice and easy, neat and street chic - all waiting for Gordon Lightfoot to
take over their lives for a moment, all waiting to get lost in his... just
for a little while.
Lights dim, and all attention turns to the stage. The band settles in. A
spotlight finds Lightfoot at rear stage and guides him to stage centre. He's
bombarded by popping flashbulbs. And applause. Lightfoot's guitar sends back
light, its glistening laquered suface reflects and forms the color into
washes of blues and oranges that bathes the black space of the audience
that he knows is there. The audience's noisy appreciation of all this, of
his very existence then diminishes, leaving room for Lightfoot to strum and
sing into the dark, sparkling space of the concert hall.
It was a beautiful evening. Lightfoot moved easily through the wealth of his
material. Old favorites caught the crowd unawares; they clapped their
surprise, and mouthed the words like a litany. And they listened hard to the
new stuff, searching through the unfamiliar lyrics to find hooks to hang
their own lives on. They found them, and were readily swept into the new
worlds that Lightfoot's music gave them.
I thought of Lightfoot's critics. Most of them reside in newspapers. I stood
in the faint amber light of the hall's inner perimeter, listening, thinking,
walking along the edge of the audience, watching their rapture. Lightfoot's
critics are constantly telling me about his lack of stage presence, his
flat,
uninspired delivery, his inability to get the smooth subtlety of his record
albums into the immediacy of the concert hall. Why doesn't he sound like his
records? They are missing very important points. Because it dawned on me
that
what was happening here tonight (and would happen throughout the week) was
that Lightfoot was making this time unique, that in stretching his own music
and finding new twists and shapes to his lyrics he was inviting everyone
there to share in the making of experience. This was obviously more than a
simple live pantomime of a staged presentation of his hit records, this was
an event, complete with the dangers and the demands of the creative process
itself. Lightfoot led them through the nuances, forcing them into the
music's
subtle departures from the albums so that they might sense the night's
complexities. Massey Hall filled with people sharing, people willing to
bring much of themselves to the time.
I've given my share of critiscism to Lightfoot over the years, as friends
must if they're to sustain any kind of honest relationship, but while
watching
my friend up there on that stage and seeing that audience, I couldn't for
the life of me remember just what those critical thoughts were. I knew they
would come back, forcing me into more searching, more suspicions, but for
now
they were gone and I felt myself drawn into the same space as all those
starstruck faces, participating in the moment's making.
Lightfoot and the band worked harder, each song seemed better. The air
thickened, saturated with activity. All the energies of anticipation,
fulfilment, the fear that it will all end, all hung in that hall, looking
for
solution. And Lightfoot sang to solve, searching for the end, looking for
the ending's time. Finding it: seeing the time perfectly. He left his
audience in the glowing glare of the houselights wanting more.
Encores only partially mollify an insatiable crowd, yet they seem to know,
or sense, that the night was properly over, they slowly filed out as the
diminishing waves of applause drifted down from the far reaches of the dying
hall, gone to sputter.
I headed backstage, bypassing the inevitable crowd of autograph seekers,
gift-givers and star-grabbers who pressed into the small stairwell at the
side of the stage. They were waiting for Lightfoot to come back, as he
would, to talk and sign, and to top off their evening. Backstage were the
invited few, who invariablt turn into the invited many. Friends and fans.
The music industry. The record industry. Family. Friends of family. Other
musicians. Honored media snapping for saleable group portraits. Hype run
amok.
Famous people. And people who just look famous. This happens during every
concert during this Massey Hall stand. Lightfoot demands absolute privacy
before working, but when the work is done, he likes to entertain, and unwind
in the chaotic hustle of this backstage revelry. And these people are for
the most part friends, this is the one chance Lightfoot has to spend any
time at all with many of them. It's a fairly free-feeling affair, there's
beer, and as many of them say, "lots of good vibes." They're here to be near
the star, of course, but also to honestly wish him well, they treasure this
one time when they can tell him that they still feel a part of whatever it
was in their shared past that made them friends.
Lightfoot is told how good his concert was, how good it is to see him, how
good it is to be there. Other stars, other musicians come by. Mired in their
own unrelenting sense of professionalism they offer polite congratulations,
covering all bets, revealing nothing. Cameras flash as they meet across the
weakening space of the room. People speculate. The beer is running out.
"I love this place." Lightfoot catches my attention with a whisper that
strangely enough carries under the noise. "Playing Massey Hall is like
Christmas to me." looking around, smiling. "I'm home, I get to see my
family,
all my friends. I can entertain them in my home..."
The beer has run out. Everything has been said, or seems to have been. And
maybe nothing has been said. But it doesn't matter, because the night is not
over, merely shifting gears.
At least once during this week of concerts the evening does not end here in
the green rooms of Massey Hall's backstage but will move on: Lightfoot is
having a party tonight, and taxis, cars, borrowed rides, hustle us north
into the window-lit brick streets of Rosedale.
Lightfoot throws an excellent party. He cares. Plenty of food, drink and
the warmth of sharing. He has a huge house now, but he's always liked to
entertain, sharing whatever he has with his friends. Even way back when in
those cramped basement-apartment days when he had little, what little he
had was shared. Images spring to mind: tumblers of spilling red wine, and
knees-to-knees conversations over the tinny sound of an overworked
Seabreeze. And now, with prosperity, fatter wallets, bigger rooms, it
only means that Lightfoot has more to share with the people who mean
something to him.
Friends and their friends fill the mansion. The heavy front door opens and
in come more, many close to being strangers, they pile in from the night.
Coats piled on chairs, couches. Sandwiches piled on plates. Women in soft
cloth that fingered their figures, their eyes shaped by the room light's
shadow and all the colors of the rainbow. Ennui slouch and rouge, busy
with the business of being there. Friends of family with joyful, unassuming
handshakes, eager to meet Lightfoot's guests, they seem to me like true
fans, honestly thrilled by the night's promise. People in the business,
striding through the rooms looking for people to profitably talk to.
Lightfoot walks through his party, listening, smiling, shaking hands,
exchanging pleasantries, accepting compliments, acknowledging the debts of
friendship.
From mouth level on down, the rooms are all talk and wet glasses. Above
that,
the space is easily filled with the murmur of a machine in one of the room's
corners, a tape deck putting out a mush of block chords and words, music
that
was never meant to background anything, yet here it is not ill-used, and it
nicely compliments the buzz of conversation. Everyone seems to know that
Gord
and I are working on a book or something. I get a lot of "Don't quote me,"
and "Are you getting all this down, Markle?" as I move through the crowd. I
make notes. Looks like a good place for gossip. One scribbled line says,
"Great looking blonde with freak." Must be an earlier observation. I'm
studying that when somebody who should know better comes up and nudges me
into attention. He talks to me as if on a dare "...the Juno awards are pure
bullshit ... can you imagine Murray McLauchlan as the best country and
western singer? I suppose they had to give the guy something..." His voice
fades as he walks away, tilting drink, shaking head, disappearing into the
swarming rooms. Oh boy, I couldn't wait to write that down: Juno...bullshit.
I move off to the relative safety of an unused corner and make more notes.
People ask me, "How's the book coming?" as I furiously write "How's the
book coming?...I try for depth and feeling, for local color, status detail.
I make more notes on the brands of beer and the furniture in the rooms.
Then I put the notebook away, find willing arms and dance into the party,
determined to act like a civilian. The rooms spin. I'm loving it, the
challenge of keeping one's drink and one's conduct on an even keel, the
swirl of the party. I'm introduced to a great looking blonde who seems
accompanied at very close quarters by a freak. She is beautiful, and more
than that, she's Liona Boyd, a classical guitarist of impeccable worth.
I'm very pleased to meet her, being a fan. I'm drunk enough to pull no
punches. "Who's the freak?" She's classy enough to answer me. "He's my
brother." We laugh as I try to explain to her my notes and then right before
her eyes make the neccesary additions. I like her, but in the mad rush of
the Lightfoot party, we can only mouth spare words.
Time sweeps the night along. Parents, their young families home in the care
of blossoming babysitters, find that it's time to leave. Their evenings out
are perfectly delineated: parenthood, something they are sure they were born
to, dictates the rules of their lives. They're quick to call a cab. Others,
in the maze of faces, frenzy and frolic, find someone to care for, someone
who cares for them, and they move off into the night that Lightfoot has
given them. But for the most part, the most part stays.
Again the night shifts gears, searching for a higher purpose. The rooms are
still filled, and into what few spaces there are, music rushes. Lightfoot
asks for quiet, and gives Liona his best guitar. She sits beside the grand
piano, perfectly defined by the nightlight of blown glass windows, touches
the strings and enlarges the room.
Later Liona and Gord sit together and talk. They seem, amid the chaos, to
see only each other. From the opposite sides of the tracks, two artists
meet,
but maybe the distance isn't all that great. Their respective, frantic lives
have somehow left enough room for just such an encounter.
In another room, under Tiffany lamps, games of pool are being played. Balls
roll effortlessly over the green nap and fall like suicides into the net and
leather pockets. Men boast, and take off their jackets. they roll cues along
the table's surface to test their pedigree, then stab at the cue ball,
looking
to find space in this night by beating somebody. The light cast up from the
felt give them a weary look, like pasty failure, and they all stink!
Later still, Murray McLauchlan, feeling expansive and no pain, grabs the
guitar Liona has left parked beside the piano and starts in on a song
written especially for Gord. This is a nice moment. I'm reminded of other
times in this house when the night was winding down, and Kris Kristofferson,
Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Joan Baez, Jerry Jeff Walker sat in these
rooms and picked and sang and shared the good times and some of their
secrets.
Murray sings on, all about Gord and his hard luck with women, and Murray's
love for him. Words like, "I'd like to raise a glass to you, I feel no pain,
I dug yours songs, since I heard Early Morning Rain." Lyrics like the inside
of a valentine. Lightfoot searches the room for someplace to put his eyes,
laughing in his embarrassment. "Murray, I'll tell ya, it's nice, and I'm
truly
touched, but promise me it will never be published, 'cause it's just not up
to your usual excellent standards."
The, uh, billiard room looks vacant and Lightfoot and McLauchlan decide to
shoot ome pool. For big bucks. Off they go, swaggering. Now's my chance to
chat up Liona. But she's gone. I get away from there. In the kitchen I bump
into Bernie, Bernie Fiedler, owner of the Riverboat coffehouse, friend of
Gord's, producer of many of his concerts, into many things. I've always
liked
Bernie. He seems to be one of the few real people caught in all this. And
he's fun to drink with. I do. He puts an arm around me, and says it all:
"Don't quote me, how's the book coming?" I persist though, looking for a
scoop. But all he says is, "Sometimes he's a jerk (aren't we all?),
sometimes
he's great, but what the hell, I love him..."
We go back to the billiard room just in time to see Lightfoot grabbing bills
out of the corner pocket and counting them on the table. Balls are all over
the place, it's obviously the middle of the game. McLauchlan watches from
the other end of the table. "...twenty, forty, forty-five, fifty-five,
SEVENTY-five," Lightfoot is counting out the money, slapping the bills down
in neat piles. "One hundred seventy-five, one hundred eighty, one ninety."
He looks around, back into the pocket, then in others. "There's only one
hundred and ninety dollars here!"
"Jeezus." Murray comes over, grabs the money and counts it out. "TWO
HUNDRED!" Triumphantly.
Lightfoot tries again. Bernie and I are laughing. Lightfoot finds the pile
again 10 short.
So Bernie counts it. All there. I count it out, trying for visual proof,
putting the bills in easily understandable lots of 50's: all there.
Lightfoot tries once more, the beginnings of bewilderment setting in. Again
he comes up short, tosses what he thinks is $100 towards Murray and pockets
the rest. "Oh man, this is impossible. I can't play like this. Let's forget
about it." By this time we're all breaking up, the cues are racked and we
all get back to what's left of the party.
Gord and I find ourselves alone in the kitchen. I reminded how I thought he
never sounded better than in those old days in my studio kitchen, and he
tells me that I'm full of crap. I remember those arguments. I insisted that,
without the fuss of show business and the demands of fame, just the face-to-
face confrontation over my kitchen table, he came closer to what he really
was. But now I'm realizing how wrong I was. True, he did sound good, and
that is mine. Yet it is only the dynamics of the audience, that
precariousness professionalism demands, that truly make the event. That's
when he really sounds like something. When he's struggling not only with
the nuances of his own material but also with the ramifications of his act,
only then is Gordon Lightfoot really alive, really performing. And for me
to come to any judgmental opinion based on an event without the audience is
to see it all wrong, to deprive Gord of his logical aspirations. It's like
robbing the arist of half his palette.
Soon the house is empty. Lightfoot and I end up sitting across from one
another at the kitchen table toying with the last of the beer, watching the
dawn fill the room.
A pause, watching the light shift. Along with Lightfoot's face. "I don't
know why you want to talk with me anyway," he says. Whenever you write
anything it's always about you. I'll probably not even be in it."
I get a brainstorm, thanks to his last little dig. "I know what. This is a
good time for you to say anything you want to the press. Go on. It'll get
printed. Say anything!"
"Yeah?"
"Sure. Go ahead. Anything you want."
Another pause. I'm ready. Pen. Notebook. Lightfoot's laughing.
"I can't think of anything...nothing, really..."
Great brainstorm. "What about bad reviews? I remember the days when a bad
word about you would drive you nuts."
"Well, that sort of thing doesn't bother me that much anymore. And there are
times when the criticism is fully justified. I've had bad nights just like
anyone else, so I don't mind when that sort of thing is talked or written
about."
"But what really does bother me is a magazine like Rolling Stone coming
along and describing my drinking, for instance. Like, uh...totally
unfounded: Lightfoot standing with a glass of Canadian Club filled to the
brim, which is pure poppycock, just pure crap, with his belly hanging over
his belt and uh, looking completely plastered, you know, like almost a Joe
Cocker image..." He started to laugh at that, watching me make notes. "I
guess I shouldn't bring poor old Joe into this. Anyway, I got so pissed off
at Rolling Stone about that article that I don't even talk with them. About
anything! If they want my picture on the front page, I'll say no!...I
haven't been approached by them, of course, but it could happen, and if it
does, I'll say the hell with you." He looked off, past me, out into the room
as if seeing vague images of Rolling Stone writers. "A bunch of smart-asses
anyway..."
Now we are tired. But I want one last thought from him before I leave. I
ask him about the business, his fears, writing blocks, drying up, the next
10 years.
"The next 10 years is going to be music, and sailing. I'm just now getting
interested in this business. I get tired of it sometimes, sometimes it
really gets to you. If I dry up, that's the time I'll start thinking about
other things. Right now, it's no problem. I don't find writing to be a
frightening experience. I mean, I've actually made enough money at it that
I can at least get along if I don't write. But I don't know. I guess there's
going to come a time when the valve's gonna shut off, like anything else.
You know, I feel fortunate that I've got this far. I've got 12 original
albums, that's a lot of work. I feel secure with my audience. Writers never
lose their appeal because the audience is always getting a fresh supply of
material; that's one thing I've got going for me. And if I didn't write my
own stuff, I'm sure I'd pick material that was interesting enough. Of
course,
if I ever got to the point where I couldn't get it together to write, I also
wouldn't be able to get it together to find suitable material..."
"So it's a matter of discipline. Sometimes I drink too much and I...waste a
lot of time. You know, drinking...If I didn't drink I'd probably get a lot
more done, but I wouldn't have any fun. And I wouldn't have anything to
write about. You've got to do something. You've got to have relaxation. And
drinking is my relaxation. If I have people around the house, shooting the
baloney, I like to have a drink in my hand...But nevertheless, they say it's
bad for your health and, well, I just don't know..."
"...I'm a very simple human being. Sometimes life looks a little bleak to
me,
like the only thing you have to look forward to is getting old. I don't know
if that's too groovy or not. But I'll tell you one thing, it's nicer to get
old and have something than to get old and have nothing. So I'm one up
there,
too, probably. Life's been pretty good to me, basically, up until now. The
way I've been plotting my course I don't see any end in sight...right
now..."
I think it was a good year for Gord, what with Grammy nominations, the
inevitable two Junos, a well-received album, and maybe somewhere along the
line he found some of the things he's looking for. But I do worry, and I
wonder just how the future looks now to my good friend, Gordon Lightfoot.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wayne
M Fifer
>>Does anyone know what happened
>>to Markle?
>I haven't heard much about him in recent years, but to my knowledge, he
and
>GL don't see a lot of each other these days. Besides the liner notes he
did
I thought he died a few years back. I might be wrong about that, but I'm
pretty sure I read it in a Canadian magazine of sorts.
That's why I thought A Painter Passing Through might be in part a
reference to him.
-=- matthew
Matthew Fifer
mfi...@nwu.edu
Cpacyto
Awesome article Wayne. Gives a little insight into Gord's life in the
mid-1970's. He seemed so happy. Yet, in hearing him talk about his life
now, he seems just as happy with his new wife and young children. Maybe
that's the secret to life is to have enjoy every situation and
circumstance you find yourself in.
Oksky
I posted this once already, but since it isn't showing up to me on Prodigy
or AOL, I am going to post it again. Forgive me if it shows up twice:
Anne Liebold told me Robert Markle was killed a few years ago. She didn't
give details but I assumed it was an accident.
Shirley