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1971-1974, from the ever-changing and multicolored charm of "Summer Side Of Life" to the smokier, introspective, and discreet allure of "Sundown": Gordon Lightfoot opens a cycle of gradual metamorphosis in his music that passes through the two albums of 1972, "Don Quixote" and "Old Dan's Records". The first of these two is the initial step in this process: "Summer Side Of Life" is the base of the recipe, "If You Could Read My Mind" and to a lesser extent his albums of the '60s are the additional ingredients to be blended, and with raw materials of such high quality, the final result can only be positive; "Don Quixote" is a further consolidation of the Lightfoot-sound, the great ideas and inspiration are not lacking here either. Like snowflakes, these albums follow one another seemingly similar, yet never identical to themselves.
Compared to his wonderful predecessor "Summer Side Of Life", "Don Quixote" is undoubtedly more homogeneous and much more tied to purely country/folk roots, "Alberta Bound" and "Second Cup Of Coffee" offer a classic sound, pleasant and carefree: the former, more rustic and "country-like", fits into a well-established line of fun up-tempo scattered throughout the 70's albums of the Maestro, the latter hides between the lines a subtle and bitter self-irony stemming from Lightfoot's own failed marital experience, which had already inspired "If You Could Read My Mind" at the time; similar feelings surface also in one of the album's highlights, "Ordinary Man", where the simple background orchestrations and the canonical bass-acoustic guitar mix enhance the beauty of the melody and the smooth and passionate interpretation of the Maestro, in a more poignant way in the heart-wrenching orchestral ballad "Looking At The Rain" and also in the single "Beautiful", which is already a window to the artist's near future, with its soft and bluesy atmosphere foreshadowing the style of "Old Dan's Records", "Sundown" and "Cold On The Shoulder", besides being one of the signature songs of his repertoire.
One of the recurring topos of Gordon Lightfoot's songwriting is that of the sea; in its more tragic aspects ("Ballad Of Yarmouth Castle") as well as in the lighter and folkloric ones ("High And Dry"), or as simple poetry and contemplation ("Ghosts Of Cape Horn"), this theme has inspired some of the songwriter's most beautiful and evocative songs, and "Don Quixote" offers two of them; both refer to the sober simplicity of '60s acoustic Lightfoot, the sweet and dreamy ballad "Christian Island" and a deliberately sparse song with an epic and unsettling atmosphere, "Ode To Big Blue", which in its elegiac and legendary tones conceals a sharp denunciation of whale hunting. These two acoustic gems are undoubtedly among the album's highest points along with the title track "Don Quixote", which revives the orchestral and evocative stylistic features of "Minstrel Of The Dawn" by narrating a mythical and idealized figure, far from the grotesque character of Miguel de Cervantes' novel, mixing lofty images with decidedly more earthly ones: ("See the soldier with his gun who must be dead to be admired", "See the man who puts the collar on the ones who dare not tell, "See the youth in the ghetto black, condemned to life upon the street").
Like "Summer Side Of Life", "Don Quixote" also closes by going beyond the simple song form, and it does so with the powerful anti-militarist message of "Patriot's Dream", in the apparent cheerfulness and carefreeness of the opening "The patriot's dream is as old as the sky, it lives in the lust of a cold callous lie, let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills" and in the dark and
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Don Quixote (03:41)
Through the woodland, through the valley
Comes a horseman wild and free
Tilting at the windmills passing
Who can the brave young horseman be
He is wild but he is mellow
He is strong but he is weak
He is cruel but he is gentle
He is wise but he is meek
Reaching for his saddlebag
He takes a battered book into his hand
Standing like a prophet bold
He shouts across the ocean to the shore
Till he can shout no more
I have come o'er moor and mountain
Like the hawk upon the wing
I was once a shining knight
Who was the guardian of a king
I have searched the whole world over
Looking for a place to sleep
I have seen the strong survive
And I have seen the lean grown weak
See the children of the earth
Who wake to find the table bare
See the gentry in the country
Riding off to take the air
Reaching for his saddlebag
He takes a rusty sword into his hand
Then striking up a knightly pose
He shouts across the ocean to the shore
Till he can shout no more
See the jailor with his key
Who locks away all trace of sin
See the judge upon the bench
Who tries the case as best he can
See the wise and wicked ones
Who feed upon life's sacred fire
See the soldier with his gun
Who must be dead to be admired
See the man who tips the needle
See the man who buys and sells
See the man who puts the collar
On the ones who dare not tell
See the drunkard in the tavern
Stemming gold to make ends meet
See the youth in ghetto black
Condemned to life upon the street
Reaching for his saddlebag
He takes a tarnished cross into his hand
Then standing like a preacher now
He shouts across the ocean to the shore
Then in a blaze of tangled hooves
He gallops off across the dusty plain
In vain to search again
Where no one will hear
Through the woodland, through the valley
Comes a horseman wild and free
Tilting at the windmills passing
Who can the brave young horseman be
He is wild but he is mellow
He is strong but he is weak
He is cruel but he is gentle
He is wise but he is meek
03 Alberta Bound (03:07)
©1972 by Gordon Lightfoot
Oh the prairie lights are burning bright
The Chinook wind is a-moving in
Tomorrow night I'll be Alberta bound
Though I've done the best I could
My old luck ain't been so good
Tomorrow night I'll be Alberta bound
No one I've met could e'er forget
The Rocky Mountain sunset
It's a pleasure just to be Alberta bound
I long to see my next of kin
To know what kind of shape they're in
Tomorrow night I'll be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
Oh the skyline of Toronto
Is something you'll get onto
But they say you've got to live there for a while
And if you got the money
You can get yourself a honey
With a written guarantee to make ya smile
But it's snowin' in the city
And the streets and brown and gritty
And I know there's pretty girls all over town
But they never seem to find me
And the one I left behind me
Is the reason that I'll be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
Alberta bound, Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
It's good to be Alberta bound
09 Beautiful (03:23)
©1972 by Gordon Lightfoot
At times I just don't know
How you could be anything but beautiful
I think that I was made for you and you were made for me
And I know that I will never change
'Cause we've been friends through rain or shine
For such a long, long time
Laughing eyes and smiling face, it seems so lucky just to have the right
Of telling you with all my might, you're beautiful tonight
And I know that you will never stray
'Cause you been that way, from day to day
For such a long, long time
And when you hold me tight, how could life be anything but beautiful
I think that I was made for you and you were made for me
And I know that I will never change
'Cause we've been friends through rain or shine
For such a long, long time
Well I must say it means so much to me, to be the one
Who's telling you, I'm telling you, that you're beautiful
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