![]() ![]() But that created a spaciousness in the culture, a tolerance for a “cultural mosaic” that stood in contrast to an American melting pot that boiled away our differences. In 1967, Canada’s population was only 20 million, an astonishingly low number for the world’s second largest country. Having immigrated to the most powerful country in the world as it waged the war in Vietnam, my brother and I longed for our homeland’s lack of imperial ambitions. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Whispers goodbye at my window 1974: Canadian singer and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot poses for a publicity still to promote his album 'Sundown' on Reprise records. No, his love affairs ended with sorrow, regret, and sometimes self-recrimination, but always with lyricism. No chewing gum love songs or self-indulgent tunes about being sad or lonely or blue ever emerged from his pen. And Lightfoot could do romance without treacle. The man could make you feel the ruthlessly damp, unforgiving city winter in your bones, as in this poignant song about a forlorn old man stumbling “ Home From the Forest:”īut he could also paint a picture of winter’s brilliant hush with equal vividness. We were also recent ex-pats, transplanted Montrealers who had only recently moved to the American Midwest and were still homesick, not just for the friends and family we’d left behind, but for Canada itself. I bin stood up I bin shook down/I bin dragged into the sand. I haven't found a place that I could call my own We ached to abandon the insular comfort of our middle-class home even if, like the narrator of Steel Rail Blues, we didn’t have a destination. We wanted to be swingin’ the hammer, not studying for the quiz to be hopping onto a freight train, not a school bus. We were adolescents, filled with inchoate longing to be out in the big world, lost to the expectations of others. Of course, some of the emotional power of these songs derived from the circumstances under which we listened to them. The record’s spare, singable, but narratively rich tunes wore out the needle long before wearing out our imaginations. ![]() We played that record obsessively, the stylus of our mono record player deepening its grooves. My older brother brought home Lightfoot’s eponymous debut album in 1966. These were the people whose stories were all too rarely acknowledged, let alone told with both sympathy and dynamism. The drunken marooned ne’er do well from “ Early Morning Rain ” ![]() The drowned sailors of “ The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The railroad “navvies” of “ Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” His characters were the men I didn’t know but wanted to. Though best known for his 1970s pop tunes like “ Sundown” and “ If You Could Read my Mind,” the Canadian singer-songwriter who died a few days ago was rivaled only by John Prine in his ability to animate the stories of ordinary working-class men doing extraordinary things. ![]() Not romantically - I’d had crushes on boys well before I ever heard his music - but empathetically. Lyrically, the song just fit the overall theme of Innocence & Instinct by its longing for a return to something more familiar, more secure, more ordinary.Singer Gordon Lightfoot performs during the CFL's 100th Grey Cup Championship Halftime Show at the Rogers Centre on Sunday, Nov. “Technically it’s a difficult song that challenges the pop formula. “There’s just a dynamic and depth musically in ‘Ordinary World’ that is not present in most pop songs,” explains guitar player Anthony Armstrong. Words & Music by Nicholas Bates, Warren Cuccurullo, Simon Le Bon and John TaylorĪccented heavily by piano and strings, this Duran Duran cover takes a decidedly RED direction, featuring a twisted fusion of dreamy orchestration and loud six-string distortion. Passion or coincidence once prompted You to say, I turned on the lights, the TV and the radioĪnd still I can't escape the ghost of You Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |