Millions grew up listening to Gordon Lightfoot's music — but the man behind "Sundown" was deeply
complicated. From his distaste for speaking openly despite being a public figure to his
claim that he never wrote a Canadian song, Lightfoot's life was full of contradictions.
While growing up in the Canadian town of Orillia,
Gordon Lightfoot had a childhood that countless people can only dream of. His
life as a young boy included numerous adventures in the Canadian wilderness.
"There was a lot to be gained, really, by growing up outside of the city."
However, it wasn't all fun and games. According to Nicholas Jennings' biography,
"Lightfoot," the singer-songwriter's childhood included at least two near-death experiences.
When Lightfoot was just ten years old, he and his father were driving home from a curling event when
they arrived at a railroad crossing. The crossing had no signal lights and they just happened to
arrive at the same time as a train. Thankfully, Gordon's father managed to avoid a collision.
However, the near-miss had a massive impact on Lightfoot, who later told Nicholas Jennings,
"I came face to face with my mortality at age 10. [...] I've been depressed ever since."
Another near-death experience happened four years later. Lightfoot and his cousin were
planning on spending some time ice fishing on Lake Simcoe. They got turned around in the dark,
though, and instead of heading to shore, they found themselves on thin ice. In
Jennings' biography, Lightfoot recalled falling into the near-freezing water:
"Every time we tried to climb out, the ice, which was only about an inch thick,
kept breaking. I was really panicking. [...] The water was so cold, it actually felt hot.
And we were getting really tired. Finally, something held, and I managed to climb out."
According to Nicholas Jennings's book, the first money Lightfoot earned as a
singer was from family members, who'd make song requests during holiday get-togethers.
More surprisingly, Lightfoot's early public appearances were on a Canadian
show called "Country Hoedown." And yes, he was absolutely dancing his way onto the small
screens of homes across Canada. Lightfoot was one of an eight-member square-dancing
troupe called the Singin' Swingin' Eight. He talked about his history as a singer-dancer
on a CBC show called "Luncheon Date" back in 1975. Lightfoot told the host:
"Every night they used to make us get out there and clog for a minute."
"So here I am, all of a sudden, I'm a famous country dancer."
As Nicholas Jennings recounted in his biography, Gordon Lightfoot wasn't in
a good place when he penned his hit song, "Sundown." At the time, he was just on the
other side of a high-profile divorce and seeing a woman named Cathy Smith. Still,
he suddenly found himself contemplating what it was like to be cheated on — instead of being the
one doing the cheating. So, Lightfoot wrote the song one night when she was away with friends.
He was also struggling more and more with alcohol addiction. At that point in his career,
Lightfoot's live shows usually dissolved into the kind of anger and cursing that
had people complaining in a very public way.
At the same time Lightfoot was in the studio recording the song,
his father was in the hospital. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. However,
Gordon Lightfoot Sr. did hear a recording of "Sundown" before he
passed. His son played it for him while he lay, bedridden, after treatment.
In a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, Lightfoot told the magazine that he was once approached
to star in a film based on his hit song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He
coldly passed on the production – and the film never happened. He told the magazine:
"I was not going to offer myself to them
as an alcoholic. My conscience would not allow me to do that."
When he spoke with Nicholas Jennings for the book "Lightfoot," he shared
the fact that he remembered that night precisely. He recalled:
"The wind was howling even in Toronto that night, and I went back up to the attic thinking,
'I wonder what it's like up on Lake Superior.' It must've been awful."
After that, the song pretty much wrote itself in an eerie way. Lightfoot and
his group got together to head into the studio, and they wanted to hear
what he'd gotten down so far. What ended up being recorded was done in one take,
and it was the first time anyone else had heard the lyrics. "The Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald" went on to become a massive hit, and arguably Lightfoot's defining song.
When Gordon Lightfoot was inducted into The Canadian Music Hall of Fame back in 1986,
it was a big occasion. Bob Dylan inducted him, and introducing Dylan was singer Anne Murray,
a Canadian national treasure. In other words, Gordon Lightfoot's a pretty big deal in Canada.
That said, it puts one of his interviews from 1969 into an interesting perspective.
Lightfoot was featured on a program called "Down Centre" and was asked about when he
started to write songs about Canada. His reply was simply — he never did. In fact,
none of his songs were specifically about his home country. Lightfoot explained:
"I never contrived a Canadian song. It's the atmosphere of Canada that are in the songs.
The fact that I'm a Canadian, and that I dig Canada, the landscape of Canada and the geography
of it just comes out in these songs. There's no specific attempt to write a Canadian song."
Lightfoot's foray into the world of Scientology was a brief one, and he's
said that it was less about the mystical side of it all and more about the therapeutic side.
Lightfoot was married at the time and some of his songs from this period were about
his marriage falling apart. After claiming in his biography that he achieved a "Clear" state pretty
quickly from being so honest, he also said that it wasn't what he was going for. Lightfoot added:
"It was good to have someone to talk to, a bit like seeing a psychiatrist."
Gordon Lightfoot may have been a very private person, but he did sit down for a post-party chat
in 1977 with a friend named Robert Markle. At the time, Markle was planning on writing a biography
about Lightfoot. That didn't happen, but he did publish his notes from the party which included
some of Lightfoot's rarely-shared thoughts. Markle's piece appeared in the Toronto Star.
Lightfoot first explained what had been an apparently long-running feud with Rolling
Stone magazine. He said that he'd taken great offense to an article
the magazine had written about him, so he refused to let them put his picture
on the cover. The problem? Rolling Stone published their thoughts on his drinking.
Markle also asked him about the future, and what he'd like to see of his career. Lightfoot said he
was happy singing and performing for his audience, but it wasn't all good times. He told Markle:
"Sometimes life looks a little bleak to me, like the only thing you have to look forward to is
getting old. I don't know if that's too groovy or not. ... Life's been pretty good to me, basically,
up until now. The way I've been plotting my course, I don't see any end in sight."
"No matter what happens I'm going to stay happy."
Nicholas Jennings wrote in "Lightfoot" that the wilderness was Gordon Lightfoot's retreat. So
between writing, recording, and performing, the singer-songwriter would fit in month-long canoe
trips that meandered through the Canadian wilderness. He explained in "Lightfoot":
"They helped get me in shape and looking human again, because when you drink,
you certainly aren't fit. It became a form of therapy."
Those who went with him on his trips recalled that he'd often push them for days without
stopping for a rest. He'd even go ahead of the group to get some alone time in the wilderness.
In between, they'd stop at small towns along the river,
where Lightfoot would stage some seriously low-key performances.
While some of the bonds forged on those trips lasted a lifetime,
they weren't without incident. On one such trip, Lightfoot and his companions were only
four days in when they hit rough waters. As a result, Lightfoot's canoe wrapped itself
around a few boulders. Shockingly, they were able to rescue the canoe and continue
on. The incident was later immortalized in Lightfoot's song, "Canary Yellow Canoe."
When the singer sat down with biographer Nicholas Jennings in 2021, he revealed that
he was anemic. This meant that injuries didn't heal as fast as they usually would have for the
singer. At the time, he was also dealing with a hematoma that required surgery. Furthermore,
Lightfoot shared that he was living with emphysema that was the result of a lifetime of smoking.
A few years earlier, Lightfoot did an interview with the Cape Cod Times,
revealing that he had suffered a mini-stroke and a potentially
deadly aortic aneurysm. And it was bad. Lightfoot told Rolling Stone:
"I was ashamed at the amount of blood they went
through. It would have been better off if I had died."
And that was just the start of what he'd gone through. In 2002, he was late going on stage for
a performance when his sister found him collapsed in his dressing room. According to the Nicholas
Jennings biography "Lightfoot," the singer technically died on the table after suffering
massive internal bleeding. Emergency surgery stabilized him, but he spent six weeks in a coma,
and another three months in the hospital. Lightfoot also underwent a series of other
surgeries that removed tissues from his leg and used them to rebuild parts of his stomach.
By the time biographer Nicholas Jennings caught up with him again in 2021, Lightfoot had six
children by four women, as well as a handful of grandchildren and a great-grandson. Still, when
he was asked about some of the women for whom he'd written his songs, he declined to answer specific
questions. Not only was he hesitant to offend his current wife, Kim, but he also didn't want to rock
the boat. Many members of his immediate family lived nearby, and he saw them on a regular basis.
"I have two priorities. Number one, the family. Number two, tune the guitar."
In his biography, though, he did talk about the moment he knew he needed to get
his life back on track. After the breakup of his relationship with former girlfriend Cathy Smith,
he invited a fan backstage at one of his concerts. They were soon living together,
but it wasn't long before she got sick of both his drinking and womanizing. Just nine months
after she gave birth to their son, Eric, she left. Lightfoot recalled in his biography:
"Seeing them disappear down the driveway in a taxicab at 5 o'clock in the afternoon ... it
damn near tore the heart right out of me. I knew then that I just had to quit [drinking]."
Gordon Lightfoot was playing music right up until the end. His death on May 1,
2023 came just about three weeks after he had canceled a series of concerts that
were scheduled for both the U.S. and Canada. He was 84 years old.
Lightfoot even kept at it through the worst of COVID,
doing live streams in lieu of live concerts. When he spoke with American Songwriter in 2021,
he said that he was proud to bring his hits into countless homes. A respectable 82 years old at
the time of the interview, Lightfoot added that he had no intentions of stopping. He told the outlet:
"I've been in this business for a long time. [...] This feels important to me.
If health permits, I'm happy just to be able to continue to perform in one way or another."