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charlene 03-02-2019 11:58 AM

CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
PLEASE READ: CLOSER magazine interview/photos. They've used a nice photo I took of Gordon with Kim and Meredith in 2015 at HUGH'S Room Live and keeping the great grandbaby news a secret has been tough!! I was told by the grandmother to be, Ingrid and mum to-be, Amber on Nov.17 after the 80th birthday party in Orillia when I was talking with them and Gordon. Ingrid and I will be first time grandmothers this year and Gordon will get his first great grandchild in a few months.!
The interview starts on page 47 so scroll across the pages by dragging your mouse from right to left. I sure hope this works! click on BLUE link: IT IS POSSIBLE YOU WON"T BE ABLE TO OPEN THE PAGES - I am not sure how this Press Reader website works... I have posted the text and a couple of photos from the article in case this whole experiment doesn't work...
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/closer-weekly/20190311

TEXT: HEART TO HEART
The legendary singer-songwriter opens up to Closer about his amazing career and life

Closer Weekly11 Mar 2019

Gordon on his breakthrough 1970 LP, Sit Down Young Stranger (retitled If You Could Read My Mind), and in 2002, near his spot on Canada’s Walk of Fame

It’s not “Sundown” time for Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
If you could read Gordon Lightfoot’s mind, you’d discover an 80-yearold tale of singing and writing hits like “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” neardeath experiences, lost loves and the lasting romance he found with his wife of four years, Kim Hasse.

His gentle voice and powerful music has earned him four Grammy noms, 13 Juno [Canadian Grammy] awards and a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Bob Dylan, who inducted Gordon into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, said, “Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.” And at the rate Gordon is going, it just might: He’s now embarking on a North American tour and writing a new album.
What else does he hope to accomplish?

“The biggest thing is looking after my six kids, five grandkids and a great grandchild that’s on the way — he’s in the hangar!” Gordon laughs to Closer. “My motto is: Don’t stop now.”

Your tour starts March 4 in Sacramento, Calif. What keeps you going?

When I’m getting the kind of response that I get from my crowd. I had no idea that I’d still be performing at the age of 80. I actually didn’t know I had it in me!

If we could read your mind now, what tale would your thoughts tell?

OK…right now I’m thinking about the arrangements I’m writing for my orchestra. The one I’m working on now is “Easy Flo.”
What’s the song about?

It’s about my new wife. Florence is not her name, but it’s still about her. You can think of it as “easy flow.” She’s like that.

Did anything inspire this new album? It’ll be your first one since 2004.

You come to a realization that there’s enough material inside of you that you know you’re going to be able to do it. I’ve got a full tank here! I hope to make it by the end of the year. It’s like writing a novel.

Especially your songs — they’re very literary and filled with imagery.

I try to make them that way. My gift, for whatever it’s worth, is to make all the songs different — different topics, keys, tempos.

Your 1976 hit “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was based on a real-life shipwreck from the year before. Why did you write about that?

Around that time, there was a five-year period where I had two different sailboats, and I sailed into Lake Huron, which was part of that whole [passageway for] freighters in the Great Lakes. One evening when I heard about it in the news, I had a melody and some chords, and all of a sudden I had a story. Then I got newspapers that were misspelling it as Edmond. It’s Edmund. That’s probably what got me going.

How did writing it affect your life?

I became involved with the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, where Reverend Ingalls rang the bell 29 times [for each lost person]. I got to meet hundreds of people there. Every few years I go to the church, and I’ve even played the song there.

I read that your 1970 song “If You Could Read My Mind” was inspired by your first marriage to Brita Olaisson from 1963–’73.

It was kind of an unrequited love tune, partly to do with life’s roller coaster. Marriages that don’t succeed, unfortunately — I guess it relates to that.

How did your relationship change after you became famous with that song?

We married shortly after I turned 24. By
1970, we had two babies. My wife came here from Sweden to work for a business machine corporation, and she was very hip, very helpful and a great mother. But I had to leave after seven years, had to separate and divorce.

So it was due to the fame and touring?

[Quietly] Yeah, just, you know, one too many women I guess. Just one too many women.

You overcame a drinking problem?

That ended in 1982 and I was totally dry until 2005, when I had a glass of wine. Apparently what was acting as fuel for all those years began putting me to sleep! So I did not become an alcoholic again.

How did you quit?

Every week I’d have to report to a doctor, and he’d ask me if I had a drink. I fell off the wagon after six weeks. When I told him, he wrote me a prescription for Antabuse, which makes you vomit. I said, “Please don’t! I promise I won’t do it again.”

What made you have that glass of wine in 2005?

I went through about two-and-a-half years where I couldn’t work at all [starting] in 2002, due to an aortic aneurism that very nearly killed me. It took me about 19 months to recover and then another nine months before I made it back onstage. So in 2005, I had the glass of wine. At this point I will occasionally have a beer or wine. Never the bottle of alcohol a day like I used to do.

You also got emphysema. How are you?

I gave up smoking. I started when I was 15 years old. It was ruining my voice and I knew it…. I will occasionally indulge in some of the other stuff — it’s legal in Canada. I’m not without sin. [Laughs]

In December you celebrated your fourth anniversary with your third wife, Kim. How did you find love so late in life?

When I was 69, I had been separated from my [second] wife. I was playing in Tampa [Fla.] and a group of people came from LA. We were
introduced — she has a wonderful personality and works in the film industry. I fell for her.

How’s everything with your kids, Fred, Ingrid, Galen, Eric, Miles and Meredith?

Oh, it’s great! My oldest boy, Fred, is 56, and my youngest girl, Meredith Moon, is 23 — she’s an entertainer, too. My youngest grandkid is around 4 and the oldest is around 30.

“Always be prepared. Getting prepared is half the fun!”
— Gordon

Anything you wish you’d done but didn’t?

In 1978, they wanted me to do a movie of “Edmund Fitzgerald”; they’d gotten a wellknown actor to play the captain and wanted me to play a deckhand. But I had come from a canoe trip and was already back into booze.

In 2012 you said, “I feel I’m on borrowed time.” Do you still feel that way?

It sounds like something a guy would say if he were 73, but here I am, still walking around, so I must withdraw that thought! Now that I’m making another album, my 21st, I feel like a different person. I got the old push back! [Laughs]

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7802/...0844329f_b.jpgCLOSER pic by char Westbrook, on Flickr


https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1958/...b3e19ede_c.jpgIMG_3580-labelled by char Westbrook, on Flickr

lighthead2toe 03-02-2019 11:04 PM

Re: CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
What an amazing guy!
For someone like me who came through the Steele's Tavern, Riverboat era it's hard not to consider Gordon Lightfoot as a mentoring force in life especially when it comes to family dedication. He's truly a wonderful man and his wife, Kim is a sweetheart. It's all there in his writing. He's done it as the song says: "In My Fashion."

T.G. 03-03-2019 04:05 PM

Re: CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
There we have it one of the songs coming up, "Easy Flo," about Kim ... should be interesting!

Andy T. 03-03-2019 07:22 PM

Re: CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
What I take from that, is that it's nice to hear Gordie talk about what the ciggies have done to him over the years. I'm sure I've said this before here, but I was, rather apalled to learn that he started lighting up again, after his "passive withdrawal" that was the induced coma during the AA shenanigans. Myself, I thought, that would have been the ideal time to "kick the habit"

imported_Next_Saturday 03-04-2019 04:47 PM

Re: CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-cont...?fit=800%2C533
https://www.closerweekly.com/posts/g...-80-exclusive/

Gordon Lightfoot Is Working on a New Album at Age 80: ‘I Got a Full Tank Here!’ (Exclusive)

lighthead2toe 03-05-2019 03:50 PM

Re: CLOSER magazine interview-March 2019
 
I'm thinking the song Gord mentions he's working on here, "Easy Flo" revolves around "Florence Nightingale," the founder of modern nursing.


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