BEFORE: The Summer Rock & Doc Bloc rolls on, I'm not even at the halfway point yet, there are still 25 or 26 documentaries to go, after this one, and I've only been at it for 18 films! Already I can't remember what it feels like to watch fictional films...
When I get halfway through, I should really take an attempt at closing the gap between the end of the Documentaries and the start of the Shocktober line-up - once I have that, then I'm pretty sure I can complete another Perfect Year. So far I've only programmed 16 films after the docs, which should take me to about August 21, movie 4,239. Then if there are 23 horror films in the October plan, that gets me to 262 movies for the year, just 38 slots left to allocate for September films, ideally closing that gap with October 1 - hopefully I can make the connection in less than 38 steps, to save some slots for November and December, and get to a Christmas movie or two if I can. Maybe if I can get to my first horror film in 18 steps, that leaves 10 slots for November and 10 for December? I'll see if I can make that work.
Neil Young carries over from "Neil Young: Heart of Gold"
THE PLOT: The iconic Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot reflects on his life and career.
AFTER: This is another music artist that I don't know very much about, so instead of bemoaning that fact, I'm just going to take this as as opportunity to learn more about Gordon Lightfoot, OK? Let's try to put a positive spin on my ignorance...
I know "Sundown", that's for sure. And I think I know the track mentioned in the title of the film, that's two - and I'm semi-familiar with "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", mostly through trivia questions though. Gordon Lightfoot was one of the biggest music stars in Canadian history, he was on top of the charts and on top of the world - and then, one day, it all came crashing down...
I learned several things about Neil Young last night, what did I learn about Gordon Lightfoot in this comprehensive film? First, that he's still alive, unlike many of this year's documentary subjects. He's 83, and often called Canada's greatest songwriter. He was kind of like the Bob Dylan of Canada, or he would have been if Neil Young hadn't applied for the job first. Also, Bob Dylan kind of wanted to be the Bob Dylan of Canada, so the job was taken. Still, Lightfoot did OK, his early songs "For Lovin' Me" and "Early Morning Rain" got covered by just about everybody, there's a great montage in this film off all the superstars that covered those songs on their records.
As a boy he sang soprano in church choir, and as a teenager he taught himself to play piano and drums, then folk guitar. He played football and track and got scholarships to McGill University's School of Music, then University of Toronto - but after that he moved to California in 1958 to study jazz composition at a music college in Hollywood, then moved back to Toronto to be part of the burgeoning folk rock scene. He had a job in a bank, but left that to appear on a Canadian TV show, "Country Hoedown", then played folk at coffee houses before joining up with Terry Whelan in a duo called the "Two-Tones". But the group's manager, Whelan's father, pressured him to sign a contract to split all songwriting credits and rights with the other singer, so Lightfoot quit.
In 1965 he signed with Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Band, and Peter, Paul & Mary. This, plus the fact that his songs were being covered by all those other acts, was the big breakthrough. Then he got commissioned by the CBC to write the "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" as part of Canada's Centennial celebration in 1967. Touring and a few more singles paid the bills, but then came the international hit "If You Could Read My Mind", which was helped by an influential Seattle DJ who really dug the song, and it became Lightfoot's first gold record. It was on an album called "Sit Down Young Stranger", but the record company insisted that the album be re-titled with the name of the hit single - Lightfoot flew to L.A. to argue with the record executives, however they turned out to know what they were doing, and the album became a big hit, just like the single.
Other turning points in his career came with the 1974 song "Sundown" (written, it turns out, about one of his ex-lovers, who ended up later being the woman who did drugs with John Belushi the night he died) and then a year later, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", a folk song based on a ship that sank in Lake Superior in 1975. Lightfoot just read a Newsweek article about the ship and wrote the whole song from that. If you're not familiar with the song, go have a listen or just read the lyrics online - it's very difficult to rhyme words like "Wisconsin" and "Fitzgerald", it turns out. Lightfoot made a valiant effort, but couldn't quite complete the rhymes, but in the end it didn't much matter. People could NOT get enough of this song in 1976
What's MISSING from this documentary, though? Quite a bit, it turns out. There's no mention of Lightfoot getting Bells palsy in 1972, which partially paralyzed his face. But I guess when anyone makes it to 83 years old it's probably assumed that they've had SOME kind of health problems along the way, so maybe all in all there are just too many to mention. There's also nothing about the lawsuit over the song "The Greatest Love of All", which has almost the exact same tune as "If You Could Read My Mind". The case was settled out of court, and the composer of the Whitney Houston song apologized - fair enough. Then there was a series of tribute albums, comeback tours, more health problems, and another set of comeback tours in 2017 and 2018, pre-pandemic.
He's been married three times, has six children with some of those women and various others, so I guess another thing is that if you're a musician and you make it to 83 years old there's probably a long road of failed relationships behind you. Here I'm thinking back to those documentaries about Frank Zappa and Pavarotti that I watched last year, near the end of their lives both men wished that they'd been better husbands and better fathers, which left me wondering why they didn't do that in the first place. I guess it's not easy for rock stars, with the touring and the isolation needed to write songs, and then you throw money and fame and groupies into the mix, and fidelity becomes damn near impossible. Lightfoot is still going, more power to him, but as I've said several times this month, everything has an expiration date.
Also starring Gordon Lightfoot (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story"), Randy Bachman, Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Tom Cochrane, Burton Cummings (last seen in "Jagged"), Steve Earle, Bernie Fiedler, Bernie Finkelstein, Brian Good, Bruce Good, Larry Good, Greg Graffin, Ronnie Hawkins (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Rick Haynes, Nicholas Jennings, Barry Keane, Carter Lancaster, Geddy Lee (also last seen in "Jagged"), Alex Lifeson (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Kim Lightfoot, Sarah McLachlan, Murray McLauchlan, Anne Murray, Sylvia Tyson, Lenny Waronker
with archive footage of Herb Alpert, Harry Belafonte (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Billy Bragg, Glen Campbell (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Roger McGuinn (ditto), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Willie Nelson (ditto), Paul Simon (ditto), Petula Clark, Judy Collins, Bruce Dern (last seen in "The Peanut Butter Falcon"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), Nico (ditto), Jerry Garcia (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Bette Midler (ditto), Art Garfunkel (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Albert Grossman, Richie Havens (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Waylon Jennings, Diana Krall, Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Tina"), Spike Lee (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Donovan Leitch, Don McLean, Liza Minnelli (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Joni Mitchell (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), James Taylor (ditto), Mo Ostin, Elvis Presley (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers") Kenny Rogers (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Rick Rubin (last seen in "Sound City"), Red Shea, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Peter Yarrow (ditto), Cathy Evelyn Smith, Paul Stookey (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Mary Travers (ditto), Barbra Streisand (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Alex Trebek (last seen in "Free Guy"), Paul Weller, Terry Whelan, Andy Williams, Viola Wills, Dwight Yoakam (last seen in "Logan Lucky"),
RATING: 6 out of 10 songs about trains
No comments:
Post a Comment