Gordon Lightfoot Update
David Rintoul
Lightfoot won't be going back to work this spring as he had hoped. He's
still just not well enough.
The plan now is for him to take off the rest of this year and see how things
look for 2004. He is in better spirits now that this long Canadian winter
is over. He has every intention of performing again when his health permits
but there's no word on when that will be.
He's not in the hospital, and if you'd like to send him some fan mail, you
could send it to his business address.
Early Morning Productions
1365 Yonge Street
Suite 207
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4T 2P7
Let's all think good thoughts.
---
David Rintoul
david....@sympatico.ca
http://www3.sympatico.ca/david.rintoul
"In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends."
J. Churton Collins
Nigel Stapley
"David Rintoul" <david....@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:MPBma.933$KH1.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> I'm afraid I have some disappointing news. I've just heard that Gordon
> Lightfoot won't be going back to work this spring as he had hoped. He's
> still just not well enough.
>
> The plan now is for him to take off the rest of this year and see how
things
> look for 2004. He is in better spirits now that this long Canadian winter
> is over. He has every intention of performing again when his health
permits
> but there's no word on when that will be.
Slightly disappointing, but better Gordon Lightfoot late than the late
Gordon Lightfoot...
--
Nigel Stapley
(remove <gwrthsbam.> to reply)
All sigs suspended until further notice as a
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Auburn Annie
Star (www.torontostar.com). Text below:
****************************************************************************
Lightfoot's comeback from death's door
Singer was in a coma for six weeks
BERNARD HEYDORN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
A frail but determined Gordon Lightfoot is working on a new album and
hopes to begin touring again in 18 months, the legendary singer told
the Star this week in his first interview since falling seriously ill
last September.
"I plan to fight my way back," said Lightfoot, 64, who now faces two
more operations in the wake of the abdominal hemorrhage that nearly
killed him.
"I probably won't get to play again until the fall of 2004," he added.
"My goal is to get out there and do it again, whatever that takes.
"The most important things to me now are: Don't spin your wheels! Keep
trying! Don't give up! There's always hope," he said.
Lightfoot, the Orillia-born folksinger whose international hits
include "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind," shocked the
Canadian music world when he collapsed in pain in his dressing room
before a charity show in his hometown on Sept. 7 last year.
He was airlifted to hospital in Hamilton, where he remained for three
months. His family and friends kept a tight lid on information about
his condition, revealing only that he had suffered internal bleeding
from a blood vessel in his abdomen and that he was not fully conscious
for at least two months. He walked out of the hospital in
mid-December.
Lightfoot, who was candid, humble and engaging throughout the
75-minute interview, now says an artery ruptured near his liver as a
result of a rare disorder, and that he was in a coma-like state for 6
1/2 weeks.
"On the second morning of my two-night stand (in Orillia), I felt a
little off," the singer recounted in his Yonge St. office. "It got
worse, with pain in my lower abdomen. By sound-check time at 4 p.m.,
my band was waiting for me on stage and I was on the floor of the
dressing room.
"We didn't know what was happening. We went to emergency in Orillia,
and there I became unconscious. I did not wake up for 6 1/2 weeks. I
was out cold. It was around Halloween by the time I came to."
While he was unconscious, Lightfoot was operated on several times to
stop the bleeding, and he doesn't remember any of it.
"It was peaceful in my sleep," Lightfoot said. "It was fine. If there
was any post-operative pain, I didn't feel it."
When he was released from hospital, his doctors credited his excellent
physical conditioning for saving his life. The singer had stopped
drinking in 1982 and had started exercising.
While Lightfoot was in hospital, his band mates revealed that the
singer ran 16 kilometres a week and worked out four times a week. The
black T-shirt he wore to the interview this week revealed his wiry and
muscular frame.
But the rare ailment has taken its toll, Lightfoot said frankly. "It
has affected my voice and hearing, as well as my legs and feet. I also
had to have a tracheotomy (an operation to create an air passage by
cutting open the patient's throat and inserting a tube into the
windpipe). I had a strong heart and good lungs, and that's why I'm
sitting here.
"I'm on the road to recovery. I have two more operations scheduled —
one in three weeks and the other in five months.
"Most people die from what happened to me."
Lightfoot admitted that he briefly contemplated retiring after waking
up from his ordeal, "but that only lasted a minute or two. I thought,
`No spinning wheels allowed! I never allowed spinning wheels in my
life!'"
The singer, who has won 17 Juno awards and the Governor General's
Performing Arts Award, as well as the Order of Canada in 1970, said he
decided to talk candidly about what happened to him as a way of
thanking fans for their support. The hospital in Hamilton received a
deluge of best wishes and sympathy cards that, according to one nurse,
was more than it had ever received before for any other patient.
Lightfoot also wanted to acknowledge the support of Elizabeth, his
wife of 14 years, and his five children.
During the interview, he not only revealed that he was continuing to
work on an album — the 20th of his career — that he had begun early in
2000 and for which he has written 23 songs, he also played recordings
of a few of them during this interview.
He admitted any songs he writes from here on might have a new
perspective. "In the past I had a fear of death," Lightfoot said.
"I've lost that fear. I feel much better about accepting death now."
He was also sanguine about his place in history as a folksinger who
helped define the music of the 1960s and '70s, and whose songs have
been covered by Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley.
"It's not really important to me. It's even less important after
you've been out for 6 1/2 weeks. You actually know how it feels not to
be here. I learned that."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bernard Heydorn is an author, freelance writer and a former member of
the Star's community editorial board. He can be e-mailed at
bheyd...@rogers.com