Gordon Lightfoot Talks Sadness, Regret, and Maritime Disasters
In this rare interview conducted before a sold-out show at New York’s B.B. King Blues Club, Lightfoot talked openly with VF.com about a wide range of subjects related to his long career, including just what role alcohol and drugs played in his songwriting, the work ethic evident in Bob Dylan, and the sadness that even he finds inherent in his songs.
Vanity Fair: Did you have a sense with [“Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”], or any of the other songs, that it would be this one that’s going to connect in a special way with the audience?
Gordon Lightfoot: Yes, I did. I had it with the [1973] song “Sundown.” I knew. I had a feeling, almost the night that I wrote the song. One of my exes was out with her girlfriends; they were out bar hopping. I was left at home to write songs. I was on a roll.
I was under contract to a record company [Warner Reprise] and I wanted to produce, and that’s what I did. I just kept working at it. I made sacrifices. The isolation of it all managed to destroy a couple of my [marriages].
See that’s the irony. These songs that I remember from my youth that bring back such good memories are songs that you never heard for the first time, [songs that] you had to produce at the expense of other things in your life. You paid the price.
I made sacrifices of all sorts. I had to handle a drinking problem as well at that point, which I did.
Do you think that drinking can be conducive, a positive thing, for creativity?
Oh sure, that was my deal.
You’ve mentioned that you find the process of songwriting a bit nebulous. If you find it murky and nebulous, how can we understand it as non-songwriters?
There was a time when it used to fall almost like water. That was when it was nebulous. But then you go year after year, year after year, and you resort to stimulants of some kind. I would take bennies [speed].
I was under contract . . . I’m not using it as an excuse.
That’s one of the things that you mentioned about Dylan. Just how hard the guy works, his work ethic.
You know, some people are like superhuman beings. They’re almost leaders, in a way. He was a leader, this guy.
But he also worked incredibly hard.
He was very, very productive. You hear about people who write 15 to 20 novels. How do they do it? You just gotta do it. A lot of times it’s because you have obligations with a record company. And I was carrying an orchestra, always had a band . . . had a great expense.
I’ve always been able to come out on top, right up until this very point in time. I would have never dreamed that it would have gone that way when I was back starting out in this business, when I was 21 years old. I gave up my day job.
I found your songs, even as a kid, to have an undertone of loneliness—an undercurrent of sadness. Did you ever see any of your songs that way?
Yeah, it was that way. I was kind of a sad guy, too. I was so very happy and grateful to be able to overcome that. And I had no idea that this was where I was going to be at this point. I’m very grateful. I’m not very educational; I’m not even well educated.
But then, I guess in a way, I am. I went to music school when I was 18 to study notation because back in those days we had to write our own lead sheets and do everything. I started writing songs in high school, so you had to write this stuff out and register it with the Library of Congress. You had to learn how to do that stuff.
You’ve said, “I’m a fairly normal sort of person. I’m not particularly smart and I’m not particularly stupid. Maybe it’s the general normality of it, with a touch of art.” And that sort of surprised me. How can someone who has achieved as much as you not consider yourself smart?
I think it was what I got on the streets that got me into the most trouble. I created emotional trauma for myself and for other people. I’m deeply appreciative of the fact that I’ve done that, but I guess living with me has not been a cakewalk either, you know.
One of my favorite songs of yours is a song that you’ve since said is misogynistic, “For Lovin’ Me.” [Sample lyric: “That’s what you get for lovin’ me. I ain’t the kind to hang around, with any new love that I found, ’cause movin’ is my stock in trade, I’m movin’ on. I won’t think of you when I’m gone.”]
Oh my goodness, yeah. That’s a bad one.
Johnny Cash sang it, Dylan sang it. To me, it was sort of like a country song about a gunslinger walking through town and [boasting], “Look at me!” Why do you discount that song now?
I was married at the time, and it was a damn poor song to write when you’re married to somebody.
I learned a lesson from that, because after I sang that song for a while, I asked myself, What am I saying?! Even long after I was divorced and separated and she’d gone her way and I’d gone mine, I would sing this song and think, Geez. How did you she ever put up with this?! I stopped singing it.
[“For Lovin’ Me”] was in the first person, but just because it’s in the first person doesn’t mean that you’re writing about yourself—unless in this case you were writing it about yourself.
Well, it’s not just the first person. You’re telling these people how mean you’re gonna be. Just when they’ve gotten over you, you’re gonna show up at their front doorstep again, which really is what the song says.
You don’t sing this song anymore?
No, I don’t need to sing that. [Laughs] I’ve got the best, the cream of the crop right now, thank you. That’s not cream of the crop. I just do the cream-of-the-crop songs in my show. We just bowl them over; they love us. It just keeps getting better.
It’s just like old wine in a bottle. It just feels better; it looks better. Everyone just prays for one thing, please.
No. Health. Issues.
Please.
With thanks to Vanity Fair
