I’m there, in part, to learn more about Solo, Lightfoot’s 21st studio album and his first since the 2004’s Harmony.
This is Lightfoot’s lair, a dark, wood-panelled room full of Martin and Gibson guitars, Fender and Traynor amps, vintage cassette recorders and shelves full of tapes and notebooks containing the set lists of concerts going back decades. She leads me to the music room off the large, marbled-tiled foyer.
The door opens, and Lightfoot’s wife, Kim, greets me enthusiastically. Gordon Lightfoot on the cover of Zoomer’s March/April 2020 issue. On previous visits, Lightfoot would often be sitting in that chair, smoking a cigarette, even in the dead of winter. A weathered lawn chair is folded up and set to one side. I walk across lightly fallen snow and ring his doorbell. There’s plenty of room because Lightfoot keeps his 2001 Chevy Monte Carlo in the garage around back. What will be the latest chapter in the singer-songwriter’s tale, and will the notoriously reticent artist be more forthcoming? I park out front. Think of him as Papa Lightfoot, the last of the troubadours, the grand old man of Canadian song.Īs I head up the winding driveway, I wonder what awaits. He’s already the father of six children (by four mothers) and grandfather to another five. For another, he was the subject of a major documentary, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, in which he discussed his storied career and timeless songs alongside fans like Geddy Lee, Anne Murray and Alec Baldwin. For one thing, Lightfoot has reached the age of 81. Much has transpired since my book, Lightfoot, was published in 2017. As Lightfoot’s biographer, I’ve travelled there many times, off and on, over a 12-year period. I slow down opposite rapper Drake’s monster palace, complete with indoor basketball court, and turn toward the stately home of Gordon Lightfoot. I turn into the Bridle Path neighbourhood, an ultra-posh enclave known as Millionaire’s Row. I’m driving up Toronto’s Bayview Avenue on a winter’s night in early January. To mark the occasion, we’re revisiting our March/April 2020 cover story with the beloved Canadian troubadour, which features photography by Bryan Adams. 25, he’ll step on stage to perform at Toronto’s newly-renovated Massey Hall, reopening the historic concert venue that he’s played more than 160 times. Gordon Lightfoot, 83, has dodged death, had myriad romantic entanglements and outlasted most of his contemporaries.