Gordon Lightfoot, usually referred to as Canada’s best songwriter and identified worldwide as one of many founding fathers of folk-rock, has died at age 84, a consultant for his household mentioned.
Lightfoot died at a Toronto hospital on Monday night, mentioned Victoria Lord, the musician’s longtime publicist. A reason behind dying was not instantly accessible.
The musician not too long ago cancelled all of his 2023 tour dates, citing “health-related issues.” His representatives didn’t elaborate additional on the time.
An iconic determine within the ‘60s and ‘70s, Lightfoot wrote many songs that transcended borders and music tastes, together with The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, Ribbon of Darkness and If You Could Read My Mind, amongst many, many others.
Legendary musicians like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr., Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand — to call only a few — have recorded Lightfoot’s songs to nice success, and he was broadly revered within the music trade.
Robbie Robertson of The Band referred to as Lightfoot a “national treasure,” and Dylan himself mentioned he wished Lightfoot songs may “last forever.”
“We have lost one of our greatest singer-songwriters,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter after the information of Lightfoot’s dying emerged. He supplied condolences to the musician’s household, associates, and followers all over the world.
“Gordon Lightfoot captured our country’s spirit in his music – and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape. May his music continue to inspire future generations, and may his legacy live on forever.”
Born Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr. in Orillia, Ont., on Nov. 17, 1938, he was a pure musical expertise at the same time as a baby. His mom recognized his reward as early as Grade 4, when Lightfoot sang an Irish lullaby to his complete college over the PA system.
Once he entered highschool, Lightfoot was capable of hone his expertise, and he taught himself the best way to play people guitar. Opting to not attend college in Canada, Lightfoot moved to California in 1958 and studied jazz composition and orchestration at Hollywood’s Westlake College of Music.
After making ends meet by writing and producing business jingles, Lightfoot, a real Canadian boy, determined he missed his residence nation an excessive amount of and moved again north of the border in 1960. He by no means left after that, persevering with to do work within the U.S. and Europe, travelling there when mandatory — however Canada was all the time his residence.
Settling down in Toronto, Lightfoot shortly discovered himself getting seen. He carried out with group The Swinging Eight on CBC’s Country Hoedown and recorded his first regional hit, (Remember Me) I’m the One, in 1962. After a short stint within the U.Okay. internet hosting BBC’s Country and Western Show, he returned to Canada and made an look on the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1964.
Developing a fame within the trade, Lightfoot signed on with United Artists in 1965 and launched I’m Not Saying as a single. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and confirmed up on the Newport Folk Festival, additional establishing his title on the music scene. Not lengthy afterwards, he recorded his first album, Lightfoot!, which featured hit songs Early Mornin’ Rain and For Lovin’ Me.
Gordon Lightfoot performs through the first live performance on the newly re-opened Massey Hall in Toronto, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston.
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Unknowingly, Lightfoot had set a bar: he grew to become well-known as a Canadian artist with out capitulating and transferring to the U.S., a feat not generally seen. CBC commissioned him to put in writing The Canadian Railroad Trilogy in 1967 to have a good time Canada’s centennial — one other huge deal cementing his standing in Canadian musical historical past.
He didn’t shrink back from controversy, both. He recorded a tune referred to as Black Day in July, referring to the 1967 Detroit racial riots, and lots of U.S. states pulled it from their radio rotations. In response, Lightfoot declared that radio station managers cared extra about enjoying songs “that make people happy” as an alternative of songs “that make people think.” When United Artists didn’t help his point-of-view, he defected to Warner Bros. music.
Once at Warner Bros. in 1970, Lightfoot had a gold-record hit in If You Could Read My Mind. The tune’s success propelled Lightfoot into the heights of stardom, and over the subsequent decade he recorded a sequence of albums that additional elevated his notoriety.
Lightfoot continued to provide hit songs all through the ‘80s and ‘90s, though obviously with aging (and a diagnosis of Bell’s palsy within the ‘70s) he cut down on concert appearances as the years went on. Amazingly, even in the ‘90s, he was still putting on an average of 50 shows a year.
Throughout his life, Lightfoot was a heavy drinker and smoker, though he gave up alcohol in 1982 cold-turkey after a doctor told him he’d develop cirrhosis until he stopped then and there.
“It was going to kill me, actually,” mentioned Lightfoot in an interview with Larry Wayne Clark. “I was on the verge of having cirrhosis. So I heard about a doctor and I went to him and, the very first session, he made me promise that I would not drink anymore.”
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In 2002, Lightfoot suffered intense abdomen ache, and after being rushed to hospital it was found that he had a ruptured stomach aortic aneurysm. Afterwards, he was in a coma for six weeks and needed to endure a tracheotomy, together with 4 different surgical procedures. Despite all of it, after his recuperation, he continued to put in writing and carry out music.
In 2006, he suffered a small stroke in the midst of a efficiency, which impacted the usage of his proper hand. But as with most issues in Lightfoot’s life, he persevered and ultimately regained full utilization of the appendage, returning to the stage lower than a yr later.
Lightfoot was the sufferer of an web dying hoax in 2010, when a CTV journalist posted on social media that the musician had died. He heard the information of his personal dying on the radio when he was driving residence. He laughed it off and mentioned in an interview that he was “doing fine.”
“Everything is good,” he mentioned to information outlet CP24 on the time. “I don’t know where it came from, it seems like a bit of a hoax. I was quite surprised to hear it myself… I feel fine.”
In a profession that spanned greater than 5 a long time, Lightfoot has left a legacy that’ll be almost inconceivable to surpass. In 2015, his hometown of Orillia honoured him with a four-metre tall bronze sculpture of a cross-legged Lightfoot enjoying a guitar, and lots of Canadians make a pilgrimage to the location to say because of considered one of this nation’s most interesting singer/songwriters.
In March 2020, Lightfoot launched Solo — an album that didn’t characteristic some other musicians — and it will find yourself being his last one. It was his twenty first studio album, launched greater than 54 years after his debut.
Lightfoot leaves behind two daughters, Meredith and Ingrid, and three sons Eric, Fred and Miles.
Several notable figures — not simply in Canada however all over the world — took to social media to pay tribute to Lightfoot and his legacy.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre referred to as him “Canada’s Bard.”
—With information from Global News’ Chris Jancelewicz