Gordon Lightfoot kept me out of trouble

Kathy was the type of girl a guy like me could fall in love within a heartbeat. She was a much older woman: she was in grade 11, and I sadly was in grade 10.  The rule back then was the girls didn’t date the guys a grade lower. No. They had their eyes on the seniors. The grade 12 guys. Hell, some of these guys even had cars.

I had a TTC bus pass.

Kathy lived in my apartment building, and we’d walk home from school once in awhile. She was a nice girl. We talked about teachers, lunchroom food and music.

   Once while walking home with her, I noticed she was carrying a record album.

 “Whatchya got there?” I asked.

She pulled it out from under her arm. “You got to hear this. Come up to my place we’ll play it.”

Kathy stopped and just about shoved the album in my face. Once I focused on it and read it, my response was lackluster. 

 “Never heard of him.”

“Are you kidding? Kathy exclaimed.

” You’re going to love this”.

 Maybe …I thought.

Back then it was ABBA this. ABBA that. AC/DC The Stones, Supertramp, KC and the Sunshine Band and Cat Stevens.

None of that really grabbed me. My only mild interest was AL Stewart and of course Elvis, who I’d discovered two years earlier while watching his “Aloha” satellite broadcast. 

The album Kathy held up was entitled “Sundown” by a guy named Gordon Lightfoot.

 Well, he was poised in denim sitting cross legged, with a Gibson B12 string acoustic guitar standing upright beside him. A cigarette in one hand and a hard looking bearded face staring back at you.

I liked him so far simply because I assumed he played the guitar and judging by the way he was dressed; this guy wasn’t doing Disco music.

We settled in at Kathy’s Mom’s apartment. She put the album on the turntable and out poured the sound of one 12 string guitar that sounded like nothing I’ve heard before. Razor sharp and clear. It wasn’t being beaten on or played loud. No, it was sending out a voice. A voice that said, “listen up.”

Purposely, and in all the right places, in came the bass. Next, the subtle percussion followed by the seductive mellow tone of an electric guitar.

I never heard any sound like this before or since. Then came the voice. By no means a voice to make your jaw drop.  But the voice of what could be the guy across the road, just singing to himself.

“I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress/ In a room where you do what you don’t confess/ Sundown you better take care/ If I find you’ve been creeping ’round my backstair.”

We get these moments of epiphany: a light goes on in the brain. Something reaches down into your very soul and pulls out a handful of those things you don’t know how to express and shoves them in your face and says, “This is what you’re needing.”

 I may have been sitting on the couch at Kathy’s Mom’s place but my mind, my heart and my soul were somewhere else.

“I can see her lying back in her faded jeans/ She’s a hard lovin’ woman got me feelin’ mean.”

Boy, what words can do when their put in the right order. Hell, this guy was talking my language. And I wanted more. And more I got.

I went on a binge after hearing that album. Having very little money, managed to scrounge enough to buy a copy of Sundown a few weeks later.

Then came, Old Dan’s Records, Summer Side of Life, and the album that hit me the most: ‘” Cold On the Shoulder.”

All those lyrics that were wrapped up in well tuned layers of acoustic guitars, tight bass lines. The songs seem to be more paintings than anything.  Illustrations of love that is, love that might be and love gone to hell. People down on their luck and the magnificence of a land that allowed its landscapes and season to be wrapped in a voice that sank into the very being of those who lived, worked, played and died within its boundaries.

Yah! From then on, the fire inside was lit. Next came the cheap guitar. A Gordon Lightfoot songbook. Blistered fingers and hours in my room learning chords, rhythm strums, finger picking. Finally trying my hand at song writing.

In 1973 the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission) ruled that there wasn’t enough Canadian content on the airwaves and television. So, they set up a ruling that 30 per cent of all programming had to be of Canadian content.

Well, that opened the floodgates for Lightfoot and another singer from Springhill Nova Scotia named Anne Murray to be heard on damn near every radio station from coast to coast. 

So, when I was introduced to Lightfoot’s music by my friend Kathy, it wasn’t hard to find Lightfoot on the radio. I loved it. Just loved it.

I was growing up in a rough neighborhood at the time, Jane and Steeles. It got a lot rougher after I eventually moved out. But when I lived there with my Mom and brother, either you could find trouble easily…. or it could find you.

Lightfoot kept me off the streets at night on the weekends. I’d stay home a lot. Practice the guitar, build the calluses, work on writing songs. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be famous. I just wanted to be able to write and sing and have people experience what I experienced when I first heard him through Kathy’s Mom’s stereo.

I was blessed to see him at Massey Hall, that iconic landmark building built in 1894 on Schuler Street several times during the mid-70s; he was in his prime.

There he was. That big 12 string guitar strapped on. His band consisting of Terry Clements, Peewee Charles, Barry Keane and Rick Hines on bass.

These guys were tight. Sounded just like the albums.

Lightfoot never did much talking. Just one song to the next. Filling the room with those layers of sound topped of by lyrics that sent the listener on a journey.  A journey to the mountains, railyards, airports, barrooms and even to the intimate corners of struggling relationships.

There are somethings that are constant. They need not change. They keep us grounded and remind us of who we are, where we’ve been and maybe where we are going.

 Lightfoot and his music were constant. Always there. Sometimes up front. Sometimes in the background of our lives. But always there.

 I stood on an abandoned dock one cold October day in Superior Wisconsin quite a few years back.  I was looking out at that big inland ocean. Lake Superior.

  She was in a ‘mood’ throwing her waves at least 20 ft high. Her wind howling from the north. Rain coming down. I was there for a reason. I stopped on purpose. I wanted to get a sense of what kind of hell the crew of that big ship went through when they went down in Nov of ’75.

 I got a small idea that paled in comparison to the gut-wrenching lyrics of the song Lightfoot crafted about the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

 Yah! He could write a song and arrange it, so it transported you somewhere.

And you eagerly went along for the journey.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Gordon Lightfoot. He lit fire that kept a young kid off the streets, and through the lyrics of the song ‘The House You Live In ‘ gave me a roadmap to follow in time when life seemed upside down.

“When you’re caught by the gale and your full under sail/ beware of the dangers below.

And the song that you sing should not be too sad/ and be sure not to sing it too slow.

Be calm in the face of all common disgraces and know what their doing it for

And the house you live in will never fall down/ if you pity the stranger who stands at your door….”