The Fitz - Toronto Star - Nov.8 2025

[charlene]

No chorus? No problem: The improbable story behind Gordon Lightfoot’s beloved hit ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
The song, recorded 50 years ago, commemorates the sinking of the biggest ship on the Great Lakes.
Nov. 8, 2025

By Stuart Berman Special to the Star

A lot of terrible accidents happened in 1975, as they do in any year. In January, a bulk carrier struck the Tasman Bridge in Hobart, Tasmania, causing a partial collapse that killed 12. The following month, 43 people died when a London tube train overshot the Moorgate Station platform and crashed, making it the worst disaster in the Underground’s history. That May, a bus full of elderly sightseers in North Yorkshire experienced brake failure as it was barrelling down a steep hill, resulting in the deaths of 33 passengers. And on Nov. 10 of that year, the biggest, busiest freighter on the Great Lakes was swallowed up by a storm on the Superior, claiming the lives of all 29 crewmen on board.

All of these were devastating calamities that no doubt upended the lives of the affected families for generations. But it’s pretty safe to say that the average person today is only familiar with the last incident. And for that, we can thank Gordon Lightfoot.

Recorded in December 1975 — mere weeks after the ship had sunk — and released seven months later, Lightfoot’s song “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” was an astonishing feat on multiple levels. It was a direct response to a current event that exuded the gravitas of a centuries-old seafaring fable. It’s a folk-rock song that doubles as a work of investigative journalism, providing a vivid dramatization of the ship’s doomed journey while humanizing the sailors whom the public only knew as a grim statistic, and voicing the grief of their loved ones. It’s a six-minute slow-motion shanty comprising seven novelistic verses and no chorus that still managed to be a chart-topping hit.

A half-century later, as horrible headlines clog up our newsfeeds every minute only to be swiped away and instantly forgotten, “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” stands as a crucial work of historical preservation for an incident that might have otherwise faded from collective memory.

For evidence of the song’s lingering impact, look no further than the New York Times’s non-fiction bestsellers’ list, where Ann Arbor, Mich., journalist John U. Bacon’s “Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” debuted last month. A thorough accounting of the events of Nov. 10, 1975, and an intimate portrait of the crewmen’s families still trying to make sense of the tragedy, Bacon’s book also devotes considerable real estate to the creation and legacy of Lightfoot’s song.

“Let’s be honest: without the song, there is no book,” Bacon told the Star in a recent interview. “There were 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes between 1875 and 1975 and everybody can name one of them — and we all know why.

“But whenever somebody would say to me, ‘Oh, I already know this story,’ trust me, you don’t. I didn’t know 95 per cent of what’s in this book four years ago when I started working on it — and I grew up on the Great Lakes. I was amazed by how little I knew about this story, including the song. I just assumed this guy was inspired to write a song and that was it. I had no idea that the creation of the song was very unlikely, the recording of it was very unlikely, and the success might have been the most unlikely part.”

The recording of a classic
It’s well documented that Lightfoot started writing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” after reading Newsweek’s coverage of the disaster, but the story of its completion is a tale less told. Lightfoot’s song may centre on a meticulously researched, intricately constructed narrative, but from a musical standpoint, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is actually a triumph of on-the-spot improvisation.

“That was the first time we ever heard the song,” drummer Barry Keane said of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, “it was the first time we ever played the song, and that is what’s on the record.”

After five days of rehearsals at Lightfoot’s Rosedale home in December 1975, the singer and his band booked a five-day session at Yorkville’s Eastern Sound Studio to record the songs that would form the “Summertime Dream” album. But “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” wasn’t on the to-do list; at that point, the song was just a skeletal sketch that Lightfoot would start fleshing out after the day’s work was done.

“He’d start strumming this thing in 6/8 time,” drummer Barry Keane recalled, adding that lead guitarist Terry Clements and pedal-steel guitarist Pee Wee Charles would start working out parts to go along with it. “But as soon as Gord heard them play, he’d throw his hands up and say, ‘No, no, no — don’t worry about it. The song’s not finished, it won’t be on the album. We need to focus on the ones that will be on the album.’”

But when the “Summertime Dream” sessions wrapped up a day early, recording engineer Ken Friesen suggested that Lightfoot use the extra time (which was already paid for) to lay down the half-finished song he was so hesitant to share, if only to provide a rough outline.

[charlene]

Rick Haynes, who played bass with Gordon Lightfoot since 1968, said of the initial take of the song, “Oftentimes, that first rush of blood proves to be the best thing possible.”

“Very reluctantly, Gord said, ‘All right,’” Keane remembered. “Then he said, ‘Terry, Pee Wee — play those parts that you guys worked out.’”

But he never said a word to bassist Rick Haynes or Keane. “Just as Gord was about to count it in, I asked, ‘Gord, when do you want me to come in?’ And he said, ‘I’ll give you a nod.’

“So we got about a minute and a half into the song and I’m thinking, ‘We’ve got to be getting toward the end of the song — I think he forgot to cue me.’ But then we hit the break coming into the third verse and Gord gave me the nod. I did that big drum fill, and all of us played to the end of the song. That was the first time we ever heard the song, it was the first time we ever played the song, and that is what’s on the record.”

The band attempted a few more recordings of the track, but none matched the mercurial majesty of that initial, instinctual take.

As Haynes explained: “There was that first rush of blood — the instant response of musicians who are good enough to get through something without messing it up, but who were under pressure to come up with something.
And oftentimes, that first rush of blood proves to be the best thing possible, and when you go back and try to improve on it, it just waters it down. Afterward, I just remember thinking, this song is a big deal — it’s way too long to be a single, but it’s going to be an awesome album cut.”

The Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest vessel ever built on the Great Lakes, slid into the launching basin on June 7, 1958, in Detroit.

“Summertime Dream” was released in June 1976, with its typically folksy title track selected as the lead single. However, Warner Bros. Records CEO Mo Ostin noticed that “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was getting played on more progressive FM radio stations and, at a Los Angeles meeting with Lightfoot and Keane, suggested it be promoted as the second single.

Keane recalled: “Gord and I are looking at each other like, ‘You know, Mo, you’re a very smart man, but are you really going to make a single out of a six-and-half-minute song about a shipwreck that has no chorus?’”

Ostin’s gut feeling proved correct: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” went to No. 1 on the Canadian charts and No. 2 in the U.S. (where it was ultimately denied the top spot by Rod Stewart’s boudoir ballad “Tonight’s the Night”).

“I’ll never forget a concert we did in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at Wings Stadium, at the height of the record,” Keane said. “If that arena held 5,000 people, then there were 6,000 people in there. There were wire fences around the stage, and I will never forget seeing faces pressed up against those wire fences, trying to get close to the stage, and people just screaming. This was a big hit record, but it really hit home in a place like Kalamazoo, where we’re playing the song and meeting some members of the (sailors’) families. We weren’t just playing a hit song — there was a lot more emotionally to it, and that’s a feeling I never had before or since.”

Fifty years later
True to the song’s improvised origins and surprise success, the story of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has continued to evolve in unexpected ways: it’s hard to think of another 50-year-old golden oldie that’s proven to be such an evergreen source of Instagram memes.

And Lightfoot himself didn’t treat the song as some sacred, carved-in-stone text, but more like an online newspaper article that required periodic updating: as new information about the shipwreck came to light over the years, Lightfoot would modify some of the song’s more speculative lyrics in concert to ensure its authenticity. From those tentative first attempts in 1975 right up to his final performances before his 2023 death at 84, Lightfoot was committed to getting the story right, reaffirming that ”The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was never intended to be some grand, self-edifying artistic statement for its writer, but a public memorial shrine for those directly impacted.

“The song mentions ‘the wives and the sons and the daughters,’ and they were always in the front of Gord’s mind,” Haynes said. “And he did it with the utmost respect, and did as much as possible to honour them.

“You know, Gord’s namesake in merry old England, the Lightfoots, were actually couriers that went from town to town to spread the news,” Haynes added. “And he was that kind of a guy. He told stories and he was very good at it.


“He was a very good journalist in the truest sense of the word.”

Stuart Berman is a Hamilton-based producer for the CBC Radio One show “Commotion,” writer for Pitchfork and publisher of the stübermania newsletter.