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| TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
Monday, October 31, 2022
I got an email from the ticket sellers and venue for last week’s concert – wanting feedback on whether we liked the venue, the service and the show. How do you respond effectively to that? Its questions were so disengaged from the reality of our experience, one none of us can brag about and one that none of us would have missed. Parts were difficult to hear, which had nothing to do with the sound system, and parts were painful to watch. I didn’t reply to that survey – I’d been working on this piece, which, as you can see, is too lengthy to plug into their form …
There are two ways to be moved by a concert.
The most likely and obvious would be the impact of a song’s lyrics and/or performance.
The other is a profound shift in emotions from our experience, not by what we saw, but by the emotional transition – we experienced that, the second kind.
As we left, everyone was talking – low, muffled, not about some superb rendering of a particular tune, but marvelling at the experience we had. By reading expressions on faces, you could tell that evening left a powerful imprint on everyone, perhaps with a wide variance.
Nobody asked for their money back or wished they’d been somewhere else.
We don’t always get what we pay for when we attend an event, see a movie, eat at restaurants, or watch a sports contest, and we go away disappointed, feeling we didn’t get our money’s worth. And we don’t hesitate to complain, explain, whine and bellyache.
Now, imagine the other extreme, where the music quality was poor, sometimes barely audible, and at moments embarrassing to watch. We got a different than usual experience – not unexpected for many of us, and one we wouldn’t trade at any price.
We were lucky to see him one more time, and for many like me, it was part ‘that night,’ part recalling his tunes I’d heard on radio and TV and ones I listened to at home on records and tapes. And in my first concert, at the Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary – my first concert, I was 17, and he was larger than life.
His audience sported signs of aging too. The tops of heads, looking across that audience from the stage, must have resembled looking out to sea, with waves and whitecaps – of grey hair, white hair, bald heads, wrinkly faces, and poor fashion choices. And a few curious under-50s. Most, our age-ish, many considerably older, or better stated: mostly with baby boomers. Some leading-edge, very old ones, but primarily later-stage boomers like us, everyone fondly recalling our misspent youth.
Many are, no doubt, amazed they survived so much societal change, sex, drugs, rock & roll, protest movements, Viet Nam era protests and atrocities, assassinations, riots and all kinds of troubles we nostalgically see as far less severe than recent threats to stability in the world.
Lightfoot’s rise to widespread fame came during a peak, a folk music revival-meets-top-40 world time, and he rode that popularity well but kept his head, made his life and living one of songwriting at home in Canada.
We were there last Wednesday to pay homage to arguably Canada’s finest poet, singer/songwriter, and recording artist from the same town that gave us writer Stephen Leacock and Group of Seven painter Franklin Carmichael. With his many awards and accolades, an Order of Canada among them, he’s like a weary old wild horse, ridden hard and put away wet too many times …
Gordon Lightfoot started performing professionally and stunning audiences and record producers in the 1950s with his music, as relevant and patriotic in its time as it rings true through to now.
But the shadow of that man on the stage, older than most of his audience – frail of frame and stamina, struggled at the beginning, in the middle and much more toward the end.
His ability to perform at all, let alone last 1:45 without intermission, appeared highly doubtful from the start when an oxygen tank and chair were swiftly brought to the aid of a man who clearly could not stand through his first song. He sat – sang, told stories, and sang more. Others moved microphones and swapped guitars for him – then he rose carefully from that chair to leave at the end – songs, his playing list was crafted to build toward his best, ovation, then two more, then a good night wave as a skeleton-esque frame wearing a baggy sweater and long wisps of hair very gingerly walked off stage shadowed by his watchful aids at his side.
Old hockey players hang up their skates, as most athletes do at a time when a younger generation overtakes them in speed, strength and skills. Singer-songwriters, on the other hand, and I mean the really good ones, the ones we revere and show up for, buy tickets to hear, and pay homage to, don’t seem to know the word quit when everyone in the room knows they should have quit – should have hunger up their skates – a long time ago. And, we could stay home and listen to their ‘recorded in their prime’ tunes on YouTube.
But there we were.
A tame crowd – rock-concert audience days long behind us, rebellious characters we once-we-were as hippie-ish Pepsi-generation, we’re the old folks now …
But the man on the stage, considerably older than many of us and a worn-out shadow of his former self, was there for us as we were there for him.
If this reads more like a eulogy than a concert review, it’s not a surprise because it felt like attending a funeral or wake, except the subject was still alive. But oh my, it bore little resemblance to how we’ve experienced most live concerts, Lightfoot’s in particular, in decades past.
It was sad. It was sweet, it was songs we’d never heard, songs he wrote that others had hits with and his big winners – he could barely sing some of the lyrics, and some of those he needed help with to be heard, or perhaps to remember the words.
His fingers still work; his lungs have paid the price for a lot of smoking in his younger days. He can still play the tunes he wrote on his assortment of guitars. His value to everyone in the audience is different, I suppose, but the look on faces seemed ubiquitous – we were there to say goodbye.
This icon, this marvellous Canadian treasure, is still alive, and that’s something worth buying tickets for any day.
He is someone near and dear, revered by Canadians who lived through those times he wrote and sang about, songs he and many others recorded, has been non-flamboyant, unwavering patriot and definer of Canadian-ism, someone who never sold out, never moved south, the toast of Toronto, the legend of Massey Hall, and the pride of Orillia.
He’s nearing his 84th birthday on November 17th.
I doubt anyone in the audience would bet on him performing, let alone living much longer. I don’t want to sound macabre, but it felt like I was attending a memorial service with the subject still alive and centre stage, with all of us as witnesses more than concertgoers.
Legends, the living kind, are rare. This man has done only one thing with his life, with his talent. One activity – writing and singing his songs.
I’m suggesting he couldn’t do anything else, but I’m entirely grateful he didn’t change careers.
He’s been singing for audiences since the 4th grade and performing professionally since 1958, and like old bald tires on a dodgy old car, he’s worn through the treads and chords – barely there, but heartwarming to see him one last time. His Wikipedia page reinforced and expanded my knowledge of his career and repertoire.
Gordon Lightfoot, sadly, is long past his ability to perform as he once did. We were there, as fans with no expectation of his legendary musicality, but to pay tribute to say goodbye to someone we’ll likely never see again. His days appear numbered, which is sad.
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