The Rumours of My Death..
...have been greatly exaggerated.
I was out driving around this afternoon, attending to various and sundry chores, and, as usual, my radio was tuned into Charles Adler. He announced that Gordon Lightfoot had died. I immediately waxed philosophical about my own pending demise, since I'm much closer to that end of the trail than I am to the beginning of it.
One of the things that went through my mind was that almost every two or three weeks there is news that yet another big icon from the days of my youth had kicked the bucket. I thought, the next thing they're gonna tell me is Ian Tyson is gone. It's depressing.
When I was much younger, I used to laugh secretly at my mother's letters and phone calls to me, since every one of them sounded like the newspaper's obits section. So and so died this week, or that week, or so and so has been diagnosed with this terminal affliction or that one. Not that these things were funny, it's just that nearly every communication she had with me contained such news. Now, it's my turn and I'm laughing again. Oh to be young and have the whole darn thing ahead of you! But time just keeps rolling along and you can't get it back.
Unless, of course, you're Gordon Lightfoot. No sooner had I dwelt on the inevitability of my own demise, than Charles Adler corrected his earlier announcement saying that Lightfoot's agent had contacted the media to quash the rumour. So, the old troubadour is still with us and so I may have a few extra days, too. Whew!!
Anyway, here's to you Mr. Lightfoot. And you too, Ian and Sylvia. You helped define my youth and more or less established and internationalized Canada's popular music industry. Thank you for that!
I was out driving around this afternoon, attending to various and sundry chores, and, as usual, my radio was tuned into Charles Adler. He announced that Gordon Lightfoot had died. I immediately waxed philosophical about my own pending demise, since I'm much closer to that end of the trail than I am to the beginning of it.
One of the things that went through my mind was that almost every two or three weeks there is news that yet another big icon from the days of my youth had kicked the bucket. I thought, the next thing they're gonna tell me is Ian Tyson is gone. It's depressing.
When I was much younger, I used to laugh secretly at my mother's letters and phone calls to me, since every one of them sounded like the newspaper's obits section. So and so died this week, or that week, or so and so has been diagnosed with this terminal affliction or that one. Not that these things were funny, it's just that nearly every communication she had with me contained such news. Now, it's my turn and I'm laughing again. Oh to be young and have the whole darn thing ahead of you! But time just keeps rolling along and you can't get it back.
Unless, of course, you're Gordon Lightfoot. No sooner had I dwelt on the inevitability of my own demise, than Charles Adler corrected his earlier announcement saying that Lightfoot's agent had contacted the media to quash the rumour. So, the old troubadour is still with us and so I may have a few extra days, too. Whew!!
Anyway, here's to you Mr. Lightfoot. And you too, Ian and Sylvia. You helped define my youth and more or less established and internationalized Canada's popular music industry. Thank you for that!
posted by Louise at 3:29 pm
6 Comments:
To quote the great Ian Tyson, during his climb-back from obscurity, just before singing Four Strong Winds at the Petroleum Club in Calgary (if memory serves)
"it bought me a house in the hills, and kept me in pills"
And you had to have pills if you expected to be anybody in those days.
Bob Dylan once said of Gordon Lightfoot that you never wanted a single song of his to end.
I saw him for the very first time in my life last year. The voice no longer had that incredible aged-in-oak timbre, and he was moving a little slowly. But he played two and a half hours of song, and every one was a masterpiece and a memory, and at the end of the night I was remembering favourites he HADN'T played. Not too many folks have that kind of repertoire.
That reminds me of the time my sisters and I went to see Paul McCartney in Winnipeg (1984 or 85, I think it was). On the way back, we were listing the songs we remembered him singing at the concert and came up with about 38 or 39 or some such number, mostly from his days with the Beatles.
The next day in the paper, it said he had sung about a half dozen less than that. But we were certain.
Now that was a repertoire! 99.9999% was their own stuff, too.
Seems to be fashionable these days to trash the lads. I guess that's what success does. I can't think of one other group that traveled such a distance and covered so much turf in just seven years; and the stuff they tossed off as filler would have made another band's career.
Sigh. I grow old, I grow old.
I don't know if it's success as much as younguns differentiating themselves from their elders, which is what they're supposed to do. I remember way back in the middle 1960s my dad declaring that in ten years nobody would hear mention about the Beatles.
I have to confess that I felt the same way about the music that came in the decades that followed, but I sorta came to appreciate the grunge era but that's only because my daughter played it non-stop. Resistance was futile.
I think once you achieve a certain level of old fartdom, you have to admit that every generation has its cutting edge. Just because it's old and out of style by the time you hear it, doesn't mean it wasn't new and innovative when it was popular, although I don't think I'll ever get to a place where I can like either disco or heavy metal.
And, you know, sometimes there are good life lessons to be learned. My daughter was devastated when Curt Cobain died. I was very disappointed when the Beatles broke up and when Bob Dylan went electric and lost what very little melodious quality his voice may have had, which wasn't much to begin.
Like most people in their teens and early 20s, I thought it would go on forever. But all things must pass and we are all mortal. It's good to learn that before you get too old.
/sap
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