Lightfoot biographical info
plumbguru2
newsgroup. I did not assemble it and am taking no credit for it's content. It
was fun for me to reread it....hope you enjoy it too.
Doug
When love is true....there is no truer occupation.
Contents:
- The Ballad Of Gordon Lightfoot by Phil Ochs
- Lightfoot On Song Writing
- Lightfoot Musical Influences
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THE BALLAD OF GORDON LIGHTFOOT
==============================
Here is something Phil Ochs published in Broadside in July, 1965.
THE BALLAD OF GORDON LIGHTFOOT by Phil Ochs
There I was In Canada, stoned out of my mind at 5:00 in the morning,
swapping songs, jokes and bottles with Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas
rock 'n' roll singer who runs an out of sight bar in Toronto and Gordon
Lightfoot, who is the Canadian Hank Williams.
The best music is usually done in situations like that, where there's no
stage, no mike or lights, and no unnatural need to please a strange
audience. You're just singing to have a good time, communicate with people
who understand you, and create those mad moments that become cherished
memories when you're too old to do it anymore.
Also when you get rolling like that you can find out who has it and who
doesn't because you drunk away all your hang-ups. And as I listened to
Lightfoot sing away that intoxicated morning, I knew he had it.
Every time I see Lightfoot he ends up apoligizing to me because he's not
writing "important" protest songs. "I'm just starting to get beneath the
surface, and I know my stuff is just too trite," he told me on Wednesday
night in a coffeehouse packed with people there to hear him and a long line
waiting outside for the next show. He says, "Damn, your Mississippi song
sure knocks me out," the week that Marty Robbins has made his "Ribbon Of
Darkness" number one on the Country & Western charts. Then this paradoxial
man picks up his two guitars and walks guiltily to the stage and wipes out
another audience which could never fully realize that his stage humility was
not put on at all.
Lightfoot, aside from having the greatest last real name of anybody in folk
music, is destined to become a pivitol figure in bridging the gap between
folk music and country & western. He can sing, play, entertain, write, put
himself down with a flair that marks an original. He's the kind of guy who
can work a bar and cut through the booze with honesty; there's a strange
poetry that lives within the country bar crowd that demands to hear the
simple truth served on a platter of realism. Ingrained in the natural
Lightfoot is the same spark of human insight that carried Hank Williams,
Jimmy Rodgers and Johhny Cash out of show business and into immortality.
Now everybody has his faults, and Lightfoot is no exception. He plays golf.
But that can be rationalized if you consider that he really is an outdoor
type, hunting and fishing, skiing, and who knows but somewhere in his past
innocent years he might even have swum naked in some chilly Canadian lake.
Think about that the first time you see him.
Those of us who know Lightfoot now are of course concerned that he won't
fall into the well-traveled pitfall known in some circles as the success
syndrome, of ignoring his responsibility to us, and writing just for himself
and a few cronies, you might say. Lightfoot (notice how many times I take
advantage of that groovy sounding name) was born and copywritten on Nov. 17,
1938, in Orillia, Ontario, and rumor has it he killed himself a b'ar when
he was only three (see how easy it is to start a legend, folks). He got a
professional musical degree from Westlake College in Los Angeles, and sold
out for the first time when he became a studio singer for the CBC doing over
250 shows, mostly in choral work. Not content with selling out in one
country, he went to England and did his own hour-long country show in a
summer replacement and reached over four million people. At the end of the
summer, not having been knighted, he left in a huff to ramble in Sweden
where he married his Swedish wife, Brita (all young record buying type girls
please forget you read that). Living overseas put him through several
changes and cleared up his mind to the point of definately deciding to be a
writer and so he returned to his native Canada.
His friend Ian Tyson of Ian & Sylvia became more and more impressed with
his songs and finally asked one of his managers, John Court, to fly up to
Toronto and watch him perform. Court sat in the shadows, puffing on his
Tiparillos, and as he became convinced, the chemistry of a large management
office took effect: Peter, Paul & Mary's next release was Gordon Lightfoot's
"For Loving Me".
The first time you see Lightfoot, if he's not singing you might walk right
by him, mistaking him for a statue. He's got classic Greek features with an
Argosy magazine jawline, and long flowing blond locks of hair always neatly
combed. So you see, he doesn't have to write songs, he could become a
sculptor's model.
Lightfoot has established himself as a recording artist in his own rite,
having had a couple of records at the top of the charts in Canada. He's also
one of the top drawing cards there, and now he has to happen in the States.
He'll be at the Newport Folk Festival in July, and will make his club debut
at Mother Blue's in Chicago. I forgot to mention before, he records for
Warner Bros., publishes with Witmark, and frankly his sixteen month old son
doesn't really dig his songs.
Gordon Lightfoot may become the greatest country & western writer of all
time. But, on the other hand, he may become a forest ranger.
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LIGHTFOOT ON SONGWRITING
========================
Lightfoot sat down and talked with Peter Goddard of the Toronto Star in
early 1975, just after the release of Cold On The Shoulder and had some
interesting things to say about his songwriting technique. His remarks
about "refinement" and "willpower" can't emphasized enough, in my mind. He
never allowed himself to rest on his laurels, especially back in the heady
days of the mid-70's, when it would have been easy to kick back and enjoy
his success. But, instead, his drive continued to push him to improve upon
his past work - and with each passing album, that surely became a more
daunting task.
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"You have to have a room that's empty, just so you can hear your sound
going around the room. Everything's muted living in the lap of luxury.
I've written my best songs in empty rooms, or empty houses. For Sundown, I
rented a farm in King, Ontario for five months and just worked and worked
and worked.
"I usually start my writing in mid-June and I try to get it finished by the
latter part of August. I just sit down at my desk and get it done. Any other
time, like now, I don't think at all about songwriting, except whenever a
good idea comes along and I jot it down. In fact, some of the best ideas for
songs have come along during the tune-up session we have before each
concert. But I just store these ideas away for later.
"I always do the music first. The words are usually vague when I start out.
And I always try to make a decision as to what rhythms, tempos and style
I'll use. There are about 25 different tempos, in several styles like latin
of jazz, and sometimes country although I don't use country music much
anymore.
"Now, I have a facilty for writing melodies. But I'm not a brilliant
guitarist. I know about 25 different chords, although that's usually enough.
You have to have a certain facility in what you do, some craft. Anyone who
does anything, whether he's a poet or a sculptor, has to have a basic
facilty. So, after some 400 songs, I've developed my facility.
"The most important thing is the desire to do it. That's what happens to
many songwriters these days. They're simply too lazy. They don't get it
done. I've talked to literally hundreds of songwriters in my travels.
Everyone wants to know how to do it, and I try to tell them. It's work,
that's all, just work. Still, I've met veery few who've had the willpower to
produce any volume of music.
"I could never stop to analyze how I finally complete a song, though. There
is always the possibility I'll dry up some day, but that hasn't happened. On
the average, when I'm working well, I can finish one good and solid song in
one day. Sometimes I change it after we've played it on stage.
"I try to arrange things so that before we go into a studio to do an album
we've had a chance to play a song through several times on stage. That's one
of the reasons I can do an album cheaper than many others, with each costing
between $35,000 and $40,000 to produce.
"My main objective in all this is to be consistent and keep refining what I
do. Any change you might see in the presentation of my art will come
through this refinement of my abilities. These changes will be gradual, but
they'll be there.
"No doubt I could make some sort of radical change. I could put together a
pretty hot little rock band. But I'm set in my ways to some degree.
"Then, too, there are things like movie offers which come my way. But that
only makes things too complicated for me. I mean, if you're going for the
brass ring you have to do it right. To do movies I'd have to relocate, and
Toronto's my home.
"Also, I could travel with an entourage instead of the three other guys who
are with me. That too would get complicated. I'd worry about everyone and
that would be distracting.
"Refinement - that's the whole thing. Maybe in the next few years my output
will decrease. But the net result will be quality."
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LIGHTFOOT MUSICAL INFLUENCES
============================
Here is a list of some of the major influences on Lightfoot. While there
are certainly other artists who had a lesser impact on him, these, based on
comments from Lightfoot over the years, seem to be the people who had the
greatest and most lasting effect.
STEPHEN FOSTER
Foster of course is the famous 19th century American songwriter with
songs to his credit such as "Swanee River", "Beautiful Dreamer", "Old Folks
At Home", among others. Lightfoot and Foster share a romanticism and to quote
Marco Adria from his book "Music Of Our Times" which has a chapter devoted to
Lightfoot, "Lightfoot and Foster share a passion for taste, craftsmanship and
the animation of song and folklore."
Lightfoot claims the common bond between his songs and Foster's are the
"simplicity and individual character of each melody. We all took Foster songs
in school and some of that rubbed off on me. I was always a fan of Stephen
Foster."
There are even some direct parallels in Lightfoot's lyrics to Foster's:
Lightfoot's "banjo in my hands" in "Biscuit City" to Foster's "banjo on my
knee" from "Oh Susanna". "Biscuit City" in particular has been cited as a
very Fosteresque song in both lyric and melody.
Some other Lightfoot/Foster similarities include, quoting Adria, "Foster
wrote for the commercial market, without abandoning his innate artistic
standards, just as Lightfoot has done. John Howard's reference to Foster in
this regard applies equally to Lightfoot: 'The market never soiled Foster's
work - it merely gave him a voice that could be understood.' Second, for
Lightfoot and Foster alike, the autobiographical component is present in the
songs, although most autobiographical detail is disguised or transformed by
the exigencies of the well-made song. Third, both Lightfoot and Foster share
a poetic stance of romanticism. In Foster's songs this is made clear in the
expressions of longing (Old Folks At Home) and sensual imagery (Jeannie With
The Light Brown Hair). In Lightfoot's work, romanticism is most evident in
the contemplations of the Canadian wilderness, although the wilderness
Lightfoot celebrates is not one that remains untouched by civilisation. For
him, the romanticism of the wilderness is complete only when man has imparted
order to it, as thefamous line from the "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" states:
'The green dark forest was too silent to be real.' Thus, it is not the
Canadian prairies or Rockies that he praises, but the prairies and Rockies
transformed by the steel rails. It is not the land that is noble, but the
land sowed with the sweat and tears of the anonymous naavies. We can also see
romanticism in the imaginative names for women he has created in his songs:
Lavender, Cotton Jenny, Bitter Green, Sundown, Dream Street Rose, and Knotty
Pine."
THE WEAVERS
When Lightfoot first heard the classic "Weavers At Carnegie Hall" album in
the early 60's, he said it had an immediate impact upon him and led him to
explore the folk scene which he said was exactly the music he had been
looking for to express himself.
BOB GIBSON
Lightfoot has said that Gibson's 12-string stylings were something that he
tried to emulate and Gibson's "Civil War Trilogy" became a starting point
for Lightfoot's own "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" in terms of structure.
BOB DYLAN
Dylan certainly seems to be Lightfoot's biggest influence. Lightfoot said
that when Dylan came along it expanded the lyrical possibilities to virtual
infinity and from that point on, freed from the longheld perceptions of what
a song's subject matter should be, Lightfoot's writing really began to come
together and find it's own identity. Dylan in later years would return the
compliment, by not only recording a Lightfoot song, but also by crediting
Lightfoot with being one of the best songwriters around.
The Lightfoot/Dylan connection throughout the years has remained strong.
Dylan presented Lightfoot with his induction into the Canadian Music Hall Of
Fame in 1986, so things seemed to arrive full circle. Along the way Lightfoot
has recorded Dylan as well and played on a bill with Dylan in
Toronto in 1975 and sang Dylan's "Ballad In Plain D" in "Renaldo And Clara",
Dylan's 1977 movie. The two seem to take every opportunity to get together
whenever their respective schedules have them in the same city at the same
time.
LEONARD COHEN
Lightfoot said in a 1982 interview that of the current musical scene, only
Leonard Cohen had any influence on him as an artist.
Char
to me the following line says SO much about Lightfoot-and it holds true to
this day:
"his stage humility was not put on at all."
he really is. It's a very huge component of all things Lightfoot as far as
I'm concerned.
Char
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