Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.                                                              So spoketh Sweet Baby James Taylor. Gordon Lightfoot was never bald and, therefore, not much inclined to collect hats. But he did once own a distinctive Homburg. Not the formal, stately kind made famous by Winston Churchill. Lightfoot's was more flamboyant: a wide-brimmed fur one, with an array of feathers tucked jauntily into the hatband. And that Homburg traveled widely, although not nearly as far or over as long a period of ...

Peter Yarrow, of bestselling folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, passed away on January 7, 2025. Yarrow spoke to me in 2016 for the Gordon Lightfoot biography, explaining his interest in Lightfoot’s songwriting and particularly his songs “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me,” both of which Peter, Paul & Mary covered. His was one of the most thoughtful interviews given to me for the book. I first asked Yarrow about “For Lovin’ Me,” which beccame a huge hit for the trio in 1965. Here’s what he said: I was singing lead on that song and I know what was in my heart when I was singing. I was feeling and identifying with what I felt were Gordon’s intentions… there’s a sadness there. There was ...

The legacy of Gordon Lightfoot's music is in good hands, thanks to his longtime backing group of Rick Haynes, Barry Keane, Mike Heffernan and Carter Lancaster. Those veteran musicians are committed to keeping the master's songs alive. Last Saturday (Jan. 27), the Lightfoot Band made its debut at Toronto's El Mocambo with its newest member Andy Mauck on vocals and rhythm guitar. Anyone worried about how the American-born singer might sound delivering those classic songs can rest assured: Mauck, vocally, is a dead ringer for 1970s and '80s-era Lightfoot. Plus, he's humble as hell, repeatedly saying what an honour it was to be asked to join the band and sing the songs of his hero. "Gord was a s...

More than any other singer-songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot personified Canada. His robust songs about winter nights, morning rain, being bound for Alberta and sailing on Ontario’s Georgian Bay came closest to expressing for many Canadians the essence of life in the Great White North. Historical epics stood alongside romantic ballads. Author Pierre Berton once said that Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” conveyed as much about the building of the national railway as his own best-selling book on the subject. When Lightfoot died Monday evening at the age of 84, leaving a vast legacy of more than 500 songs, Canada lost a masterful composer, a distinctive vocalist and one of its ...

Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away May 1, would have turned 85 today. His legacy includes songs that will live on for decades to come. Success didn’t come easy for him. In the beginning, Lightfoot worked hard at learning everything there was to know about music. Long before his first hit records, Lightfoot tried choir singing, barbershopping, pop crooning, jazz drumming and square dancing. While in a folk duo called the Two Tones, he even jumped on the Belafonte craze and belted out a calypso. When he was 19 and studying jazz composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Hollywood, Lightfoot and three fellow students moonlighted as the Four Winds, recor...