Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

It is the most patriotic of all his songs, a three-part epic that recounts the construction of a nation-spanning railway, describes the stark beauty of a country’s landscape and tells of the human toil it took to build the “iron road runnin’ from the sea to the sea.” And yet Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” managed to resonate with listeners on both sides of the 49th parallel when it was released 50 years ago. Appearing on Lightfoot’s 1967 album The Way I Feel, the “Trilogy” was instantly embraced by Canadians already deep into celebrating their country’s 100th anniversary. But Americans somehow connected with the song as well. When Lightfoot launched into the robust ballad the...

Gordon Lightfoot first came to prominence during the folk boom of the 1960s. On a tip from his friends Ian & Sylvia, Lightfoot was signed by their manager Albert Grossman, the Greenwich Village impresario who also handled the careers of Odetta and Bob Dylan. Right away, Lightfoot found his songs covered and turned into hits by the likes of Peter, Paul & Mary and Marty Robbins. From then on, Lightfoot’s compositions appeared on hundreds of albums by other artists, including Dylan, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Nico, Fairport Convention, the Grateful Dead and, later, the Replacements, Paul Weller, Mary Margaret O’Hara, the Dandy Warhols, Billy Bragg and Neil Young. Travelling the folk cl...

Before he became the quintessential troubadour and one of the world’s greatest singer-songwriters, composer of such classics as “Early Morning Rain,” “If You Could Read My Mind, “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway,” Gordon Lightfoot sang in a fledgling pop duo called the Two Tones. Together with Terry Whelan, a high school classmate from Orillia, Lightfoot started out first in a 1950s barbershop quartet called the Teen Timers. When the quartet broke up, he and Whelan formed a teenage duo that they initially called the Two Timers, a roguish variation on the former group’s name. Dressed in suits with slicked-back hair, the Two Timers fancied themselves an Everly Brothers-style act. With Lightfoot ...

Today is the day. Many years in the works. Months of digging in newspaper and magazine archives. Countless hours interviewing, even more transcribing. Endless scanning of photographs and documents. And then the writing and rewriting, trying to make sense of the material and shape it into a readable story that hopefully does justice to a complicated man, his extraordinary life and rich body of work. It's been daunting, but I'm thrilled that my biography of Gordon Lightfoot is now out in the world, available wherever good books are sold as they say. Ultimately, I'm proud to be associated with a great artist whose music I've known and loved since childhood.

Gordon Lightfoot is notoriously shy. The man who wrote such classic songs as “Sundown, “Early Morning Rain” and most famously “If You Could Read My Mind” has always kept his personal life private, preferring to let his music speak for him. Now, for the first time in his long and celebrated career, the legendary artist has allowed a comprehensive biography to be published that takes readers deep inside his world, into his fascinating back story and the influences and relationships that inspired and shaped his most popular songs. Lightfoot granted Nicholas Jennings unprecedented access to him through long and extensive interviews. It was a trust earned over many years. Besides interviews, he s...