[Auburn Annie]

Lightfoot says any melancholy heard in his new CD pre-dated his health crisis

JOHN MCKAY
Canadian Press

Tuesday, May 04, 2004


TORONTO (CP) - Gordon Lightfoot hopes his fans like his new album, Harmony, set for release May 11, but he cautions against reading too much into the inherent melancholy and a sense of mortality in some of the lyrics.

The Canadian music legend nearly died in 2002 after an artery ruptured in his abdomen and he spent three months in hospital, five weeks of it in a coma. Medical complications and a series of operations - the last major one in mid-February - left him frail and gaunt and facing a lengthy recovery period.

"I'm doing fine, I'm actually quite mobile, I've not missed a beat," he said in a recent interview. "I've not had much time to think about my condition, as a matter of fact."

Lightfoot, 65, even oversaw the mixing of the album tracks - made prior to his illness - by having audio equipment brought right to his hospital bed from a nearby recording studio where his band was doing post-dubbing for the Linus Entertainment release.

He's still determined to get back to performing and is optimistic that Harmony will not be his last CD, insisting that it should not be thought of as some kind of legacy album.

Nor are the lyrics indicative of any thoughts about his near-death experience or his mortality, he said, since they were written back in 2000. As usual, they have more to do with his Canadian experiences and love.

Take the lilting title track, Harmony: ("Oh harmony, sweet harmony, where have you gone?") It's not a musing on his own endangered output nor on today's music in general.

"It's the human reference, there," Lightfoot said. "He's speaking about a girl."

Then there's River of Light. ("Won't be looking up old friends, ever again.")

"You're looking at a diehard canoeist. I've done many trips up in the sub-Arctic in my life."

Sometimes I Wish also makes a reference to "dreaming of a love I lost." Lightfoot would say only that the song is not one of his favourites.

But he does like Clouds of Loneliness and Inspiration Lady, the song chosen to be made into a music video.

"The melancholy ones are very well-written and very powerful songs," he says. "There are three or four really good ones in there that I really love."

And there are lighter moments, too.

The No Hotel was based on a 1989 visit to Manaus, a resort set deep in Brazil's Amazon jungle, where some letters were blacked out on the Novotel Hotel's lighted sign and it spelled No Hotel.

And, of course, Couchiching, all about his hometown of Orillia, Ont., and surroundings, where he returns at least every three years to perform for local benefits.

"The song only got played once up there on a Friday night, and the next day I fell ill," he said.

"And they absolutely loved it. It even mentions Casino Rama (in Orillia) and they just went crazy when they heard that. And I did it for the townsfolk up there so they would get a kick out of it."

Lightfoot said his personal life has always surfaced in his music, and Harmony is no different.

"My family did come apart at one point in all of this," he noted. "There were things leading up to it which are manifested quite seriously in the songs.

"It's been quite a rough road, actually. But then, I'm used to roller-coasters and my whole life has been like that."

He said the problem is that music invariably tends to win as the main influence in a musician's life.

"And I think that the people around you feel offended because the music seems to come first and they seem to come second."

Asked to name some of his favourites among today's bumper crop of Canadian music talents, Lightfoot agreed there are many, but declined to single anyone out.

"I can only issue the whole lot '10 stars' and leave it alone at that, you know?"

But he stressed that the song is still everything, and points to Shania Twain as a really good songwriter, a talent not usually considered her main show business attribute.

"If she couldn't write those songs, man, there'd be nothing happening!"

© The Canadian Press 2004