My Lightfoot Story

[highplainsdem]

13. I'd love to hear that story.

My only Lightfoot story (which isn't nearly as interesting as the story about Tony Visconti that your story had reminded me of) is about seeing him in concert in the mid-1970s. He sounded great, and I was sitting only about 30 feet from him, but my main memory of that concert was that my boyfriend was singing along, quite loudly. Don could sing well. He'd been a folk singer in the early 1960s, when he lived in NYC and played at some of the same clubs Dylan had appeared at. He sang much better than Dylan, and he was much better looking, but he didn't ever get a recording contract and hadn't done any professional singing for years, though he'd entertain friends.

But I wanted to hear Gordon Lightfoot, and I assumed the other people there did, too. I didn't hear anyone else singing along. So I tried shushing Don, who just told me Gordon was smiling at him so he must like it, and he kept singing, at least on some songs.

I broke up with Don not long after that, though of course it had nothing to do with that; he was several years older than me and wanted more commitment. He married someone else a couple of years later, and they were still happily married when he passed away several years ago.

Even with all my other memories of him, the one really burned into my mind was that concert. Probably because those early Gordon Lightfoot songs always remind me of it. If Gordon's giving any concerts in heaven, I suspect Don's singing along happily.