[LINK] "How Gordon Lightfoot wrote 'If You Could Read My Mind'"

[rfmcdonald]

I remember hearing Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" when I was young; I remember watching the video for Stars on 54's house version in 1998. The Canadian Press' Victoria Ahern writes about the processes that inspired the song and its legacy.

The illustrious singer-songwriter says the words to "If You Could Read My Mind," released 40 years ago, came to him in a couple of hours in a vacant Toronto home that was up for sale at a time when he was experiencing marital problems.

"I was of course going through some emotional trauma leading up to a separation, so that of course manifested itself in that particular song on that particular afternoon," Lightfoot, 71, said by phone from his Toronto home.

"I'll never forget the afternoon."

[. . .]

The story behind the making of "If You Could Read My Mind" – a song that's been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash and Don McLean – was a typical one for Lightfoot as he emerged from Toronto's Yorkville coffee-house folk scene in the 1960s.

That empty home in the Forest Hill neighbourhood where he wrote the tune was one of several that he'd scouted at the time so he could find lyrical inspiration, he said.

"I would go in there with a chair and a table. I have a Quebec table here that fits in the trunk of my car that I take with me – just the chair and the table and the pad and the manuscript."

The song title is being used for a series of concerts and talks, with Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip, about songwriting.