End of a Summertime Dream
Gordon Lightfoot still from a documentary program on the CBC. All Rights Reserved
Hey gang. I’ve been around long enough to know that the musicians that I admire, or who inspired me are getting on and may have passed or that the future is shorter than the past. I still don’t like it, and I was very saddened by the new of the passing of Gordon Lightfoot on May 1, 2023.
I never met the man, only owned his records, only saw him once, and at a time where I was not smart enough to realize the simple poetic genius of the man.
Canada has had many musical poets of great contribution. Neil Peart, Gordon Downie and now joining them is Gordon Lightfoot.
This is MY Gordon Lightfoot record, the one that means the most to me
It was the summer of 1976. On June 15th of that summer, Gordon Lightfoot released an album called Summertime Dream that has stayed with me since I first heard it. I was well aware of Mr. Lightfoot. In the family car, my father controlled the radio and it was always on Toronto’s CFRB and I think that they only had a dozen records because I had heard Mr. Lightfoot’s song Sundown so much, I had come to hate it. My musician friend, guitarist and banjoist Mike Krisa had for a long time been trying to encourage me to accept more that what we now call classic rock. He turned my on to bluegrass and the magical playing of Earl Scruggs and that summer when we both were working on 12 string guitar, he convinced me to listen to Summertime Dream.
Of course, most people who have heard of the record at all, know it for its hit song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, the story song of the loss of an iron ore carrier in Lake Superior during a November gale on November 15, 1975. You know how it’s going to end, but Mr. Lightfoot brought those 29 unnamed maritime sailors and their deaths into incredible reality. The song posits many potential events in the sinking and it is quite likely that the song’s popularity and relevance encouraged those brave people who do wreck discovery in the deep, dark and cold waters of Lake Superior to discover the wreckage and continue to probe it. The wreck was discovered and the first photo was made in 1976. The wreck was surveyed by an underwater unmanned submersible in late August of 1989. It was determined that the hull split in two during the sinking. If by some chance you have not heard the song, and you tend to feel empathy, be prepared as it is emotionally wrenching.
However, it’s not the song I think about when I think about the first Gordon Lightfoot record that I bought for myself. I do remember paying $4.99 for it at Records on Wheels on Yonge St in downtown Toronto and I still own it. For me, two other songs have more personal meaning and emotional entanglement, the first track called “Race Among The Ruins” and from side two, the track called “Protocol”. They mean a great deal to me personally.
We all encounter oddities in our lives. I had heard that Mr. Lightfoot was ill and has postponed a summer tour some months ago. Last Friday, I was sitting in my playing area and picked up my now nearly 40 year old Gibson Hummingbird and thought about Summertime Dream and made a note to myself that it was time to play it again. Prescient? I don’t believe in that sort of thing, more odd coincidence. I thought of the record because I remembered photographs of Mr. Lightfoot playing a sunburst Hummingbird. I was rather stunned this morning (May 2, 2023) to learn in my news feeds that Mr. Lightfoot had passed away.
He attained fame when others recorded his songs, notably the sixties Canadian folk duo, Ian and Sylvia. That was nearly 60 years ago. Prior to my induction into the rock and blues only silliness, I had enjoyed folk music including Mr. Lightfoot and Glen Campbell. When we moved to Ontario, I started learning to play guitar and went down the rock route, despite Mr. Krisa’s regular admonishments that I was missing “good” music. It took me a while to accept that it was ok that I liked all kinds of music even though wearing anything but a black rock band T-shirt could get one hassled at school. Listen to Rush’ Subdivisions, it is an accurate painting of high school for me.
Today, I listened to all of Summertime Dream all the way through. And then, I listened again. I have a much better hifi system today than I did back then, and fortunately the album has held up well, as I felt that albums were expensive and needed to be stored carefully and so they remain today. I’m not ashamed in any way to note the tears that came to my eyes hearing those old tunes, and surprised myself to note that I knew most all of the words to the songs on the record. I have other Gordon Lightfoot records, but Summertime Dream is MY Gordon Lightfoot record. It came out at a time in my growth where it locked into what I was thinking and feeling in my ever slow progression in this life.
I will miss Gordon Lightfoot, because his voice will not engage his with new music in the future. We have his past, a wonderful thing, but I mourn the loss of a time when a single person could write an entire song, where the credits listed a single person, and where the recording was performed by real musicians, in full takes, recorded on tape and not manipulated sixty two ways from Sunday after the fact. When songs had more depth and more meaning than misogynistic shit and alleged music about damp genitalia. Just as there will be no new Beethoven, there will be no new Lightfoot and we are poorer for that.
If you’ve never heard Summertime Dream, or it has been a while, it is available on all the big streaming services. Some of you may even have the album, or the CD. However you do so, invest 37 minutes in yourself and listen. Whether you enjoy the record or not is entirely your business, but I submit that you owe it to yourself to listen to it.
If you are a Gordon Lightfoot fan, then grab your six or twelve string acoustic, and capo it at the second fret. That’s where you will want to start.
