Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot died on Monday night (May 1st) at age 84, according to CBC. No cause of death was announced, but Lightfoot had been in poor health in recent years after suffering an abdominal aneurysm. He is best remembered for writing “Early Mornin Rain” for Peter, Paul, & Mary — along with his string of early '70s hits such as “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Carefree Highway,” “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” and the 1974 chart-topper, “Sundown.”
In 2019 a new documentary on Lightfoot, titled If You Could Read My Mind — after Lightfoot's 1971 Top Five classic — was directed by Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni. If You Could Read My Mind featured new interviews with Rush's Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, Steve Earle, Sarah McLachlan, and Alec Baldwin, among others.
During the pandemic, we caught up with Gordon Lightfoot, who was self-quarantining in his native Canada, and asked him how it felt to be held in such high esteem by legends like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and the late, great Elvis Presley: “Sometimes, they're being kind. They are. They know that there's, like, a great big totem pole there, y'know? The top and the rest of us and the rest of us have our positions on the totem pole and we're close enough up there that they give us the respect of having nice things to say about us, y'know?