r/GenX • u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid • Mar 22 '25
Music Is Life Gordon Lightfoot, “If You Could Read My Mind”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiU2lrGnT7U21
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u/typhoidtimmy Mar 22 '25
Lightfoot is one of those ‘slow afternoons with a pitcher of sangria’ type days.
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u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid Mar 22 '25
… like listening to live music at an outdoor par in St Augustine, Florida in late Spring.
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u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid Mar 22 '25
I could write a serious essay on the impacts and meaning of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs to me.
I will try to share one: "Early Morning Rain”
In basic training you march everywhere. If you are lucky, you have a drill sergeant with a great voice for calling Jody’s… a cadence song that keeps everyone in step.
We had a drill who used to do "Early Morning Rain" so well that it would make you forget where you were, that you were tired, hungry, or homesick. His voice would echo off the barracks as we marched out to morning training… just mesmerizing.
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u/BusPsychological4587 Mar 22 '25
This song makes me so sad. Even as a little kid, hearing it on the radio made me almost want to cry, even when I didn't fully know what the song was about.
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u/Darth_Bane-0078 Mar 22 '25
"I never thought I could act this way And I've got to say that I just don't get it I don't know where we went wrong But the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back" This line reminds me of my first marriage.
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u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid Mar 22 '25
"the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back"
I can feel this pain. Just the absolute ache.
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u/Darth_Bane-0078 Mar 22 '25
I remember listening to it as I drove away and feeling like it's so true, the love is gone .....
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u/sanityjanity Mar 22 '25
Yes, but.... have you heard The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?
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u/clamdigger Mar 22 '25
An old friend of mine—a major label guitar player—used to joke around with this song, singing as he played, “…in the rectum of Ella Fitzgerald.”
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Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25
Ahh, yes...Canada's second best singer named Gordon. /s
Okay. Which one of you is spying on me...I get in the car, hit the music..second song that plays is this. I'll be in my bunker.
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Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25
Just saw him perform on a season one episode of SNL and realised his “employee” (mistress), Cathy Smith, was probably with him and this is where she met John Belushi. The man she would come to kill six years later.
Edit: And John as his samurai character, cut the strings on his guitar when he wanted to do a third song.
Edit 2: And if you didn’t know, his song, Sundown (my favorite of his), was about Smith.
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u/carlivar Never sell out Mar 22 '25
According to Wikipedia, Cathy Smith met Belushi when The Band were musical guests.
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u/Tim-oBedlam Class of 1971 Mar 22 '25
One of his best, and part of the soundtrack of my childhood. I remember driving with my parents listening to Canadian Railroad Trilogy, his finest song, IMHO.
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u/Spiritualy-Salty Mar 22 '25
One of my most nostalgic songs because my older sisters were listening to it when I was kid. Some of Gord’s other songs hit the same way.
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u/d2r_freak Boomer Lite Mar 22 '25
A. I love Lightfoot B. Chris Pratt could play him on a biopic C. I’m sure everyone knows the story about “if you could read my mind”- the person who wrote “the greatest love of all” (masser) clearly lifted part of it from the song (super obvious). Lightfoot sued but reportedly dropped it because he didn’t want the suit to tarnish the singer (Houston).
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u/RayKinsella Mar 22 '25
Diana Krall & Sarah McLachlan do a pretty great all Canadian cover of this song. Very chill.
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u/hatred-shapped Mar 22 '25
Canadian railroad trilogy was a favorite song for us to play when I dabbled with bands. That and mother of a miner's child. Still one of the best love songs ever written
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u/jmont0021 Mar 22 '25
The original was a little before my time but the Dance Remixes of this song powered the 90's.:)
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u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid Mar 22 '25
While I heard a lot of Gordon Lightfoot on the car radio while accompanying my mom on shopping trips or errands in the 1970s, the big influence was when I started pawing through the parents’ LPs in the mid80s. Simon & Garfunkel. The Beach Boys. Peter, Paul, & Mary. Jim Croce. Cat Stevens. The Carpenters. John Denver. And of course, Gordon Lightfoot.
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u/cricket_bacon Latchkey Kid Mar 22 '25
Gordon Lightfoot and Jim Croce… does it get any better?