Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

In the summer of 1998, I got a call from Deane Cameron, president of EMI Music Canada. He said he was a big fan of my book Before the Gold Rush and asked if I’d be interested in writing the Canadian history of EMI to celebrate his label’s upcoming 50 th anniversary. Deane had a vision for a book about the company where he’d started in the warehouse and worked his way up to become president. He didn’t want it to be about him—lord no—but about how the evolution of the label mirrored the growth of Canadian music itself. I loved a lot of the artists on Capitol and EMI, past and present. How could I say no? After negotiating what I felt was a very agreeable fee, I ventured out to the EMI offices ...

Artistic genius, or howling, lost-on-the-moor madwoman? Kate Bush has always defied description—and divided audiences along the way. As British author John Mendelssohn put it, when Bush “came out of of nowhere in 1978 with her jaw-droppingly eccentric debut single ‘Wuthering Heights,’ screeching like a banshee, flapping her arms as though trying to take wing, pulling alarming faces, people either adored or loathed her.” But absence has benefitted Bush. Since dropping out of the music world to raise a family, a massive cult has grown up around the reclusive, publicity-shy singer. There are now Kate Bush fashions and fan conventions, while the truly obsessive celebrate her birthday as “Katemas...

Mild-mannered and moderate, Canadians are generally wary about wrapping themselves in the flag. But Stompin' Tom Connors is unabashed about his patriotism. When the country singer hit the stage last week in Owen Sound, Ont. - his first concert in 13 years - the backdrop was a giant Maple Leaf. As the flag unfolded across the back of a high-school auditorium in the Georgian Bay community, 190 km northwest of Toronto, Connors walked onstage, and the packed audience of 700 greeted him with a standing ovation. Gaunt-faced, wiry and dressed from Stetson to boots in black, the 54-year-old musician from Skinner's Pond, P.E.I., looked more like a villain from a western than a defender of Canadian cu...