Global Courant 2023-05-02 14:37:16
TORONTO –
Gordon Lightfoot left a lasting impression on music fans and some Canadian musicians say his influence on the nation’s collective identity is immeasurable.
Rock singer Tom Cochrane described Lightfoot, who died Monday at age 84, as a personal friend and inspiration who proved himself to be one of Canada’s “pioneering cultural artists” while being “a great nice guy” all along.
Cochrane twice honored the singer-songwriter “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown” for his musical contributions – the first being when he inducted Lightfoot into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.
At that ceremony, he compared Lightfoot to one of the Group of Seven performers, a compliment that Cochrane said resonated with the folk musician who “sincerely saw himself as the cultural embodiment of who we are as a nation.”
A representative of Lightfoot’s family says he died of natural causes at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He has struggled with numerous health problems in recent decades.
Many musicians and politicians took to social media to express their grief, including Bryan Adams who tweeted that he was “disheartened to know he was gone”, adding that “the world is a lesser place without him”.
Jann Arden said that Lightfoot’s songs are “woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. We all know the words, even if we don’t think so.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that Lightfoot “has helped shape the Canadian soundscape”, while Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said his “poetry and melodies are an eternal source of inspiration”.
Artists outside Canada also took notice. Author Stephen King described Lightfoot as “a wonderful performer”, while actor and director Ben Stiller called him a “genius” whose “music is such a big part of my life”.
Former Barenaked Ladies member Steven Page called Lightfoot “the Canadian singer-songwriter archetype”, aided by its breakthrough success in the United States, where his album “Sundown” went to No. 1.
Page said in a telephone interview that Lightfoot sculpted a model of success in the United States that would be “broken, crushed and reshaped” by future generations of Canadians.
Despite finding fame outside the country, Lightfoot rarely uprooted himself from his homeland for long.
“Even though he spent time in the United States and made records there,” added Page, “he was still deeply connected to Canada’s land, landscape and personality.”
Cochrane says Lightfoot’s steadfast ties to Canada came up once in a conversation with the singer.
“He said to me, ‘You know, trees grow on certain soils, and this soil has been a very powerful soil for me to grow,'” he recalls.
“Why should I leave this country? Here I bear fruit.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on May 2, 2023
