110 Quotes by Gordon Lightfoot

I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it.

I try to write songs. At our concerts, we take the cream of the crop from my back catalogue and I don't know if I could write something now that would replace any of that. We don't lose any of the standards. We have lots of songs in rotation.

I once performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to about 15 sea captains. The song was about a ship that broke in half and sank.

I liked the American folk style of Woody Guthrie.

I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it.

Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said.

I was happy to be in England, because my mother had always loved the royals, and so do I.

When I was 16, I used to drive huge loads of laundry in a three ton truck. I would turn round at night to drive back and see the band in a place north of Toronto called Dunn's Pavilion. I would drive that truck all day and they drive back and all the way until one day I wrecked the truck. I fell asleep and wrecked it. I was OK and so was my helper. I called my dad and the first words out of his mouth were, "are you OK?" I was really lucky I had a kind father.

It was very interesting time to be in England. Even at that point [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney influenced my writing. I thought, "maybe there is a huck or two in here I haven't thought of".