gordon lightfoot if you could read my mind

Still, him performing at this age is a triumph in and of itself- that certainly comes through.įor all of the nits picked here, If You Could Read My Mind still lands as a satisfying (if not resonant) watch. It innercuts with vintage footage of him performing it, only spotlighting how weakened his exceptional voice has become. When we finally do get to hear Lightfoot singing the song, it’s at finale of the film, depicting him taking the stage once more at eighty-plus years-old. Not hearing him actually sing it at this crucial point in a documentary of its namesake is yet another misstep. It’s a vital moment, being the song that propelled him to stardom. The decision to withhold footage of the subject singing the title song until the end is all but telegraphed when instead of Lightfoot, we get a montage of the many covers of “If You Could Read My Mind” when its moment arrives mid-film. The decision to veer into Lightfoot’s childhood years at the thirty-minute- point just as the story of his career is taking off- is a momentum killer. That said, the chronology is shuffled, if only tightly shuffled. Whatever promise there initially was of If You Could Read My Mind painting outside of the lines evaporate pretty quickly in favor of it being quite by-the-numbers. Gordon Lightfoot, currently.įrankly though, the praise gets to be a little much after a while. Indeed, Gordon Lightfoot is a songwriting genius and a folk music luminary. The one thing that they all have in common is their unreserved gushing admiration of the man and his music. Fellow singer-songwriters Steve Earle, Randy Bachman, and Tom Cochrane, chime in with their Lightfoot observations, as well as some voices from outside of that sphere such as Anne Murray, Sarah Mclachlan, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush, and Alec Baldwin. Two of this film’s great strengths are the quantity and quality of the interviews which they did get. Alas, Drake does not appear in If You Could Read My Mind, though probably not for any lack of trying on behalf of the filmmakers.

The moment is one of nothing but respect for this next-generational artist, to the degree that one half expects the film to cut to Drake, returning the compliment.

One such moment comes early in the film as Lightfoot drives through downtown Toronto, musing on “Toronto sound” pioneer Drake, who’s likeness he spots on a passing billboard. And while it never quite satisfies that query in any profound or memorable way, this otherwise-standard-issue survey of an important and prominent musician of the late twentieth century does manage to serve up at least a few keeper moments. How did he arrive to this point of reconsideration, to such a higher level of sensitivity than even his poetic hits of yore reflected so potently? That’s the question that the new documentary Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind posits pre-opening titles. Until, “TURN IT OFF!” And with that, old man Lightfoot swears off his song and, by extension, his former self. It goes on, and, in the offensive sense, gets worse. “Where did I get off writing a song like this?” Considerably older, stringier, and physically withered compared to the upright and barrel-chested version of himself singing on screen, the Lightfoot of today can barely take it anymore. Gordon Lightfoot watches, practically through his fingers, as Gordon Lightfoot performs “For Lovin’ Me”, one of his many hits from back in the day.

Gordon lightfoot if you could read my mind