Gordon Lightfoot has been theme music for much of my adult life.

He came to town on October 24^th and gave us two hours of those themes. Of love lost and found, of traveling on the road, of his observations of life and his experience as a survivor. This was to be his first show in Phoenix since his surgery to repair an abdominal aneurysm that almost killed him in 2002. He remembered that his last concert before he collapsed in Orillia, his hometown, was here in Phoenix. He mentioned it proudly and gratefully I think. This homecoming (not for him, but for us) was marked with trepidation. Again maybe not for him, but for us. The voice would be the problem. Not his chops. What further declines would be unavoidable? What would his concert be like?

My first memory of Gord (I refer to him here as his Canadian friends do, though I freely admit, I have never met him) was listening to the radio late at night while I was in high school, with my headphones on so as not to wake the house.   “If You Could Read My Mind” was the song that he sang and I was struck by the perfect story told in words and melody of a love lost.  This became his trademark. The weaving of his instrumental and lyrical magic would be repeated time and again in the ensuing years. His favorite folk group was The Weavers whom he would mention in interviews and concert appearances. (A reference appears in his song from Gord’s Gold Vol 2, called “If it Should Please You” which was a show opener for him years before he ever recorded it.)

I was a prisoner of top 40 radio in 1969, so didn’t hear Lightfoot again for a while.   In fact, the next time I heard Lightfoot was on my way to work on an autumn afternoon when I was about 16. A local radio legend named Bill Compton was enamored by the release of this new album called Don Quixote and he played cuts regularly on what was then KDKB AM radio (my 71 Cutlass only had the AM Band).   Compton played “Alberta Bound”, ”Ordinary Man”, “Second Cup of Coffee”, “Patriot’s Dream” and the title cut, and I was then hooked and reeled in.   I bought every album I could lay my hands on and discovered to my surprise that he had a sizable catalog of material.   “I didn’t know he wrote that!” became an often repeated exclamation of mine as I discovered that song after song covered by other artists were indeed Lightfoot songs.   “I’m Not Sayin’”, “Lovin’ Me”, “Softly”, “The Last Time I Saw Her”, ”Early Morning Rain”* and ”Ribbon of Darkness”.

I became an aficionado overnight and working in the Camera and Electronics department at Smitty’s gave me the opportunity to be his personal DJ. I regaled all the passing shoppers between the grocery department and the front checkstands. I played albums and put up Lightfoot displays on end caps. (In fairness, he was not the only artist to be suffered upon the unsuspecting clientele.  There were others, but he was definitely the favorite.) When Sundown was released in 1973, I sold 38 copies in one week.

I was introducing my friends to Gordon Lightfoot and buying tickets to his shows at the Celebrity Theater. They ran $7.50 a piece back then and you could still get front row seats at face value. The internet was still a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye. I can’t honestly remember how many times I saw him in concert. But I admit that whenever there were 2 shows (usually 7pm and 11pm) I would attend them both.

I had long worn out my Don Quixote album and replaced it. (There are a few albums that I have worn out in my collection and replaced with a duplicate, contemporaneous with their release, not a decade later: Tom Rush’s Wrong End of the Rainbow, John Stewart’s California Bloodlines and Gordon Lightfoot’s Don Quixote.) Over the years, I eagerly awaited his concert appearances and his new albums. When “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” broke as a hit in 1976, from the Summertime Dream album, I was performing every Friday and Saturday night at the “Jolly Roger” restaurant in Tempe and discovered to my surprise, that I could do that song twice a night and it was the high point of the evening either time. By then, I had fancied myself an up and coming local folk-country-rock phenomenon and was writing and performing … and dreaming.

Well, life goes on and marriage and children and job responsibilities replaced my dedication to performing and writing, but every album that followed, Dream Street Rose, Endless Wire, Shadows, Salute, was still anticipated like a child anticipates Christmas. The concerts continued. He had long hated the revolving stage at the Celebrity Theater and by then was performing at Grady Gammage Auditorium, or the Civic Center and I faithfully continued the pilgrimage to whichever venue he would appear.

Somehow, life got bigger than Lightfoot, and as the albums dwindled, the concert appearances did too.  My attachment became more nostalgic. Over time, his voice began to lose its timbre and its depth. He got a bit reedy, but the songs remained, and his unique sound and phrasing and the sheer volume of material he had created became their own ballast. “Waiting for You” was a nice piece of work and “Painter Passing Through” was my least favorite. The best was clearly behind him. At this latest show, he didn’t perform a single song from “Harmony” his most recent album.

The occasional concert was a frame of reference, a n endurance of mind over matter. I didn’t mind that much, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t sing “The Last Time I Saw Her” anymore and that “Rainy Day People” no longer had the high note at the end of the last chorus. More than a passing nod has to be given to the fact that Rick Haynes on Bass and Terry Clements on lead guitar, remain his posse along with Mike Heffernan and Barry Keane on Keyboards and Drums. Those arrangements evoke much the same feelings they did 30 years ago.

Gordon Lightfoot, like Frank Sinatra, continues to perform long after his prime as a singer. He has that very rare capacity to maintain the loyalty and the love of his fans as well as their understanding. I don’t know that there is another corollary among entertainers. His fans now freely acknowledge that he doesn’t have what he used to in the vocal department, but like Sinatra, the song is still the thing. As is the singer himself.

He personifies the songs and not just what they mean to us from our filtered memories, but the miracle of their having been written at all. It is hard to imagine life without those songs. What would replace them I wonder. If “Beautiful” were never written, what would I sing to my wife in the morning while she is putting on her makeup. How would my children remember their childhood without me singing “Pony Man” to them. What would I sing to my dad without “Alberta Bound” around? Or to my brother without “Long Way Back Home”.

What would fill the gap the absence of these songs would leave. I can’t answer that and that is probably why Lightfoot gets a pass when he comes to town now at nearly 70 years of age and can’t hit those notes anymore.

I missed Sinatra years ago when he came to Desert Sky Pavilion on his only Phoenix appearance, when he was about the same age. I wasn’t about to miss Gord.   And if he comes back again, I will be there for the next one.  Even if he has to whisper the lyrics.

You get bonus points for theme music.