I started liking Gordon Lightfoot in the mid-seventies. When I was living on Ward Street, I had an album of his called Cold on The Shoulder. I think I played that album every day and sometimes more than once a day.
It’s a comforting kind of words and singing. He wrote a song called “Rainbow Trout”
which is really about a lost girl, trying to find her way in this world. It was painful but comforting at the same time. I was that girl.
Then he had a double album called “Gord’s Gold.” Still one of my favorite albums, ever. There’s a song about building the railroad across Canada–I think he’s Canadian. “All the battles have been won, all the races have been run, on the mountain top we stand, all the world at our command.” I may have mixed up the words a little but he’s singing about how it feels to have arrived at a point in life where your own personal battles have been won. As I aged I would think about that. It’s not a rat race anymore and if you can live with the choices you’ve made and what fate has dealt you, you’re OK.
Now this may not sound like the person I am but I like Led Zeppelin. I hope I spelled that right. I’ve never heard anybody scream like Robert Plant. I have a tough side of me that wants to plunge down and find out what’s really there in the darkness. When I listened to Led Zeppelin I was on my way there. Then, years later, I heard Robert Plant being interviewed on the radio. He had a quiet speaking voice, spoke with a British accent, and talked about his family. The interviewer was expecting something very different and he said: “That’s the persona I put on to perform. The minute everything’s over I become who I really am–a nice, law-abiding, upper middle class Englishman.”
lgmwriting 