Macon GA. article
 

Out & About - Music
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Lightfoot's lyrics last a lifetime
By Rachel Sullivan - Special to The Telegraph Sign up for daily e-mail news

When he was 8 years old, Gordon Lightfoot decided that he was going to be a musician. In a recent phone interview, he recalls his mother, who idolized Bing Crosby, telling him that it was possible to be a professional singer. “And that was that,” Lightfoot said, satisfaction clear in his voice.

It turns out being a professional singer wasn’t quite as easy as he imagined, but 62 years later, Lightfoot can look back over a long and distinguished career and see his 8-year-old self giving him a knowing grin.

You can see Gordon Lightfoot in concert Tuesday night at the Macon City Auditorium. Now, Lightfoot has a collection of Juno Awards, ASCAP awards and Grammy Award nominations, and memberships in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and Canadian Walk of Fame. But Lightfoot only insists, “I don’t take awards seriously. All they ever did was make me work harder.”

“I love to play,” he said. “Long before I made any records, I loved to sing my songs to audiences. That’s what I still love.”

Lightfoot recalls the many concerts he’s played in his life with satisfaction: “Concerts are very intimate. It’s the best way to hear music.”

“People will love the band,” he said of his performance Tuesday at the City Auditorium. “All we want is to be great for people.”

He promised that even though he tends toward acoustic music, there will be “plenty of toe-tappers” on the list, too.

Lightfoot wrote his first song by the age of 17. He encourages aspiring songwriters to look at the world around them for inspiration.

“I wrote ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ based off of newspaper clippings from the six weeks after the accident. (If you want to be a musician), try and see if you can write a song. Prove to yourself that you can do it.”

And then play your heart out. It’s what Lightfoot has done for his entire career. In 2001, one of Lightfoot’s arteries burst just hours before a concert. It nearly killed him, but 28 months later, after multiple surgeries and months in a hospital, Lightfoot returned to the stage with the simple plan of “let’s get going.”

He put out an album only a few months later, most of which had been crafted from his hospital bed, where he gave doctors and nurses sneak previews of what was to come. He gave them more than that, too — the profits from his first two concerts went back to the hospital where they’d taken such good care of him.

“I want to put something back. I need to show more responsibility than just lip service,” Lightfoot explained about both his donation to the hospital and the scholarship he set up for the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwestern Michigan College after “Edmund Fitzgerald” became a hit.

Now, Lightfoot says that he has only one goal: “I want to last a lifetime.”

Tuesday

What: Gordon Lightfoot in concert

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Macon City Auditorium, 355 First St.

Phone: 752-1600

Cost: $39.50-$49.

Re: Macon GA. article
 

Charlene there is an error in this news article. The article says Gordon was disabled for 28 months. I think she meant 28 days? Our Gord is not like the Johnny character of Stephen King's The Dead Zone.I understood his coma lasted 3 weeks.

Re: Macon GA. article
 

He was disabled in the sense that he was recuperating, having subsequent surgeries etc. over a period of several months and not able to tour. He was in a coma for 6 weeks if I recall. His recovery was a long one - he fell ill in early sept.2002 and wasn't back out touring until April 2005. He performed two concerts in Hamilton in late November 2004.