I walked out into the early evening air, with an achin’ in my heart, after seeing “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind.” No pockets full of sand; just a rising melancholy over the injustice of age. He had the voice, the look, the musicianship, the poetry and the obsessive work ethic. Why don’t rare talents like that get a pass on aging?
Today, Lightfoot seems to be a spry, genial, intellectually nimble and musically au courant 80-year-old. He’s about as good as you can be at 80, lovingly tending his guitars and still performing, albeit with a wispy voice that’s just an echo of what we remember. Gord, we love you, Gord we miss you.
The tight, 88-minute documentary is playing through mid-June at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and elsewhere across Canada. If my American family and friends are lucky, it will soon get some dates in the U.S.
The age-thing is, of course, just a selfish tantrum. Everyone ages, and the years take their toll on us all. Maybe we feel it more achingly when it was one so beautiful.
Writer/producer/directors Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe have packed so much into their film. Rare archival clips interspersed with interviews of Gord past and present, and an A-list of musical peers.
They barely have time to sample a few of the hundreds of artists who have covered Lightfoot’s songs. (The audience laughs hard when sparkly-jumpsuit Elvis, the complete antithesis of low-key country boy Gordon, is shown performing If You Could Read My Mind.
Another thing that stands out is the intensity of his work ethic. He was/is a perfectionist. He knew what he wanted from a young age and put himself in a position to achieve it, certainly because of his talent but no less because of the effort he put into making it seem effortless, organic. Every chord progression, every melody, every lyric had to be just right. He was demanding, as much on himself as anyone; as purposeful and active as a colony of ants, perpetually rearranging all the little pieces in pursuit of something bigger.
As it turns out, thoughtful, smart, insightful, poetic music rarely happens in a flash of inspiration. Except maybe in the case of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. All of Lightfoot’s preparation, talent and expertise came together over a few days to create that heart-wrenching ballad from the news headlines. Chord progressions, to melody, to lyrics. The details of that anecdote alone are worth the price of admission.Then there’s the Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnnie Cash and countless other stories.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was twice as long as the prescribed three-minute pop tunes of the day, but it was too good to be ignored and is still haunting today.
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours … ”
Like Joni Mitchell, Lightfoot has filled notebooks with lyrics that are magic poetry. Most mortals could die content if they had written any one of those lines. To have been able to marry them with exactly the right music is beyond understanding. Even Lightfoot doesn’t seem to understand how he did it.
I leave the theatre both revering and mourning Gordon Lightfoot – missing the man who is still very much here, and wanting more. The filmmakers should feel proud. The audience doesn’t want their film to end, probably because we don’t want Gordon Lightfoot to end.
