So I don’t just listen to The Moody Blues, though I think I could.
Near a week ago we lost a legend in this crazy world. His name was Gordon Lightfoot. He was a Canadian Icon. If you have spent time in a dentists’ office, you have surely heard his classic songs If You Could Read My Mind and Carefree Highway. If that is all you remember, consider yourself fortunate. If you can tell of more, consider yourself blessed.
Justin Hayward in Variety Magazine (August 23, 2019)
For years I have talked about how I discovered The Moody Blues by chance as I was looking at a heap of cassette tapes on an endcap display at a department store I would one day work for nearly a decade. Three years later, when I was a senior in high school, The Moody Blues were all over the radio and MTV with a new album titled The Other Side of Life. Your Wildest Dreams, the first single released from the album, was a Top Ten Hit. I knew something after all.
The summer after high school graduation I was in Shreveport, Louisiana living with my grandparents before I was to be off to college. On July 1, 1986, Gordon Lightfoot’s album East of Midnight came out. I was smitten. There is one song on the album that saw Gordon removed from his normal comfort zone of producer. He turned the board over to David Foster. Foster is the guy who diverted the sound of the band Chicago in the early 1980s. He was also the musician behind many movie soundtracks. One of those was St. Elmo’s Fire.
The Foster produced tune on Gord’s new album was co-written by the producer and the artist. I really enjoyed the song; it was called Anything for Love. I was drawn to it. The sound. That is all I can tell you. As a musician by hobby and heart, that is all I can tell you. There is a sound and sensibility about music. I can enjoy a work. Better yet, I can “get” a work. I got the entire album. In fairness, Anything for Love is really removed from the rest of this album. It has a David Foster feel, as where the rest of the album is all Lightfoot.
Anything for Love was released as a single and charted well on the Adult Contemporary Chart. The song’s highest position was #13 on the AC poll. Fortunately for me, KVKI 96.5 in Shreveport had the good sense to have the tune in rotation along with Your Wildest Dreams. I am left to believe it was not a favorite of the artist, as it was not a song Gordon played in concert.
Like most of us, at the time, I knew Carefree Highway, Sundown, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Beautiful, and the much covered Early Morning Rain.
I kept digging. What I found was one gem after another. In 1993 while seeing Gordon Lightfoot singing in person the first time, I heard him and his long-time band play the tune Song For A Winter’s Night; the sound of those sleigh bells caressing the chorus made me look up to see if the snow really was softly falling. Listen to this song, if nothing else. But be careful. You’ll be looking for time to listen to more. Thank me later.
The last time Gordon was in Louisville in 2018, he was playing at The Brown Theatre on Broadway. Just down from Broadway and around the corner on 4th Street, my dear wife, Carrie, and I were at The Palace Theatre listening to Boz Scaggs. I saw Lightfoot’s bus and the truck for his gear parked down the street and I got a bit wistful. It all worked out.
Justin Hayward is a pretty good endorsement, if you don’t trust me. His 1965 solo single London is Behind Me on PYE Records, before The Moody Blues, has a folky troubadour essence about it. There is a reason he too gravitates toward the music of Gordon Lightfoot. Me, I can just appreciate it. His chord structure and multiple tunings are beyond my guitar acumen.
Gordon Lightfoot’s songs demand your attention without you even knowing it. Is there a better musical compliment than that?
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson