Best Of - Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind

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Academy of Achievement

Film, Politics, Arts, Self-help, Sports, Society & Culture, Success, Literature, Humanitarian, Military, Social Justice, Technology, Podcast, Achievement, Music, Science

4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gordon Lightfoot has died, at the age of 84. He spoke with the Academy of Achievement last year, and we featured that interview in an episode. To honor the legendary singer and songwriter, we are re-posting the episode today. Gordon Lightfoot had a slew of international hits in the 1960's and 70's, including "If You Could Read My Mind," "Sundown" and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." His songs were also performed by some of the biggest stars of that time, including Jerry Lee Lewis, The Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand. Lightfoot was still writing and performing into his 80's. In this interview you will find him as charming a raconteur as you might expect, given the nature of the songs he writes. He talks about his childhood in a small town in Ontario, and about his path to the top of the music industry. He describes the quirks of his songwriting process, and explains why he changed the words of "Edmund Fitzgerald" after he recorded it. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2022-2023

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi it's Alice and here's Mary Jordan posing a terrific question to today's guest.
0:06.0	If you had to guess, how many times would you say you sang if you could read my mind.
0:14.0	How many times I played it?
0:15.3	Yeah.
0:16.5	4,500 times.
0:18.7	50.
0:21.0	4800 times. Does it get boring? No, no,800 times. 4,800 times. Does it get boring?
0:24.0	No, no, of course it doesn't get boring.
0:27.0	It's a different song every time I do it.
0:30.0	I don't know what it is.
0:31.0	I just enjoy singing that tune.
0:34.4	If you could read my, my love, what a tale my thoughts could tell.
0:41.2	Just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing well in a
0:50.5	castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet.
0:58.0	You know that ghost is me.
1:02.0	And I will never be set free.
1:06.0	As long as I'm a ghost you can't see.
1:11.0	That's Gordon Lightfoot if you haven't figured it out by now. He'll talk more about this song a little later in the episode.
1:19.0	The Canadian singer, guitarist, and songwriter was a huge figure in the folk revival movement of the 1960s and 70s.
1:27.0	He turned 84 years old last week, and despite some serious medical setbacks over the years, he's still touring and drawing crowds.
1:37.0	And he's still writing timeless songs, as his biographer put it, about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness.
1:48.3	Mary Jordan, who by day is a correspondent for the Washington Post, had the pleasure of talking to Gordon Lightfoot
	...

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