Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

The photographer was posing Ray Materick, his band and some promotion types for a casual group shot in the dressing room of Toronto's El Mocambo. They sat themselves around a table strewn with cigarette butts, guitar picks and a half-drained 40 ouncer of whiskey, waiting to be focused. Materick and his musicians had just finished a well-received first set downstairs and now, on cue, everyone began hamming it up for the benefit of the camera. “Just one more,” promised the photographer. Ironically, the walls behind them sported a colourful collage of assorted rock star faces. All the most successful performers, the Lightfoots, the McLauchlans and the Dylans were up there, staring out from the ...

The beer was flowing freely as waitresses served platters of breaded shrimp, gourmet pizza and chicken wings. But it was not the regular hockey crowd at Gardoonie’s, a popular watering hole opposite Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. Instead, more than 300 people were gathered there last week to pay tribute to a rock ‘n’ roll legend. Standing amid the hockey memorabilia on the walls, Ronnie Hawkins was beaming as he surveyed the crowd. Officially, the lavish party was being held to launch Let it Rock!, his 26th album and the accompanying video that captures his recent 60th birthday concert at Toronto’s Massey Hall, featuring such rock luminaries as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and The ...

My editor thinks Elvis Costello’s latest album, North, is a lot like Frank Sinatra’s 1954 classic In the Wee Small Hours. He’s right: both recordings are intimate explorations of emotional loss and the rush of new romance. On top of that, the string-backed piano ballads pack an immediate, visceral punch despite their spare instrumentation. When Costello calls, I mention the comparison. “That’s very flattering,” he says from the back of a limousine speeding along the Autobahn somewhere between Berlin and Hamburg. “Sinatra’s album is a masterpiece.” Then he brings up the Diana Krall factor: “People have made assumptions based on changes in my life that the appearance of quiet sounds,...