Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Gordon Lightfoot's music has always been about more than just the man and his songs. Beginning in 1965, all of Lighfoot's performances and recordings included regular band members. The first two musicians to join him were guitarist Red Shea and bassist John Stockfish. Throughout the rest of the '60s and into the '70s, Shea and Stockfish each provided key elements to the Lightfoot sound. But who were they, and where did they come from? Red Shea was born Laurice Milton Pouliot in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Red had a checkered past, having hopped freight trains and worked in a traveling carnival. He'd even done a stint in prison. Looking to break into show business, he ventured east with his ...

Gordon Lightfoot got his start on Yonge Street, not in Yorkville. Although the bard of Canadian song is often associated with Yorkville’s Riverboat coffeehouse, where he first became a star while performing weeklong stints in the mid-1960s, his first real home as a solo artist was Steele’s Tavern, at 349 Yonge. A two-storey operation run by Greek restaurateur Steele Basil, Steele’s was sandwiched between Yonge Street’s famously competitive record stores: Sam’s and A&A’s. There, in the upstairs Venetian Lounge, Lightfoot performed his songs for anyone who would listen, often competing with the clink of beer glasses and televised hockey games for people’s attention. Lightfoot had traveled ...

Details: Author: Nicholas Jennings; Hardciover/Paperback: 327 pages; Publisher: Penguin Random House; 2017/2018; Language: English; ISBN: 978-0-14-319920-5 Book Description from Amazon The definitive, full-access story of the life and songs of Canada's legendary troubadour Gordon Lightfoot’s name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness. His music defined the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and ‘70s, topped charts and sold millions. He is unquestionably Canada’s greatest songwriter, and an international star who has performed on the world’s biggest stages.While Lightfoot’s songs are well known, the man behind them is elusive. He’s ...

Few artists have seen their songs covered more than Gordon Lightfoot. But usually, it's the legendary singer-songwriter's tales of love and loss, of broken hearts and promises, that get reinterpreted. Rarely are his story songs offered a new spin by other performers. Now Canada's veteran punk-hard rock band Headstones have served up a feisty take on Lightfoot's famous shipwreck song. Over a driving beat and slashing guitars, Headstones frontman Hugh Dillon delivers an edgy account of the harrowing night that the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank on "the big lake they call Gitchie Gumee." The video of the song shows Dillon alone on a frozen lake and later the band performing on a barren windswept l...

Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot have long been mutual admirers. The legendary singer-songwriters began moving in the same circles in 1964, after Lightfoot was signed to Groscourt Productions by Dylan's manager Albert Grossman. It wasn't long before Lightfoot, at Grossman's suggestion, recorded Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." Although it would be several years before Dylan returned the favour and cut his own version of "Early Morning Rain," the "Blowin' in the Wind" singer had already expressed his fondness for Lightfoot's "I'm Not Sayin'" and several of his other tunes.  In the summer of '65, Lightfoot and Dylan crossed paths at Grossman's house in Woodstock, New York (Lightfoot e...