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Rating: The circle closes here: it all began in 1966 with acoustic and unadorned folk, with a simple yet ingenious anthem from a wandering minstrel, "Early Morning Rain"; that minstrel, album after album, masterpiece after masterpiece, had continued to gradually evolve: a volcano of ideas, an extremely prolific songwriter, a genius of melody, capable of writing simple, popular songs without ever slipping into banality, an eclectic lyricist, attentive to both personal and more social and committed themes. Gordon Lightfoot from Orilia, a town in Ontario not far from Toronto, lived ten years as an authentic legend, many artists much more known and celebrated than him would not be able to achieve anything remotely similar even in a hundred years of career. Sooner or later this formidable cycle had to end, and by 1976, Gordon Lightfoot was almost ready to return to earth, but not before delivering the final blow, the fitting conclusion to a fantastic and unrepeatable story: "Summertime Dream."
After the great commercial success achieved with "Sundown" in 1974, the next step for the Canadian singer-songwriter was "Cold On The Shoulder," a calm and introspective album, consisting mainly of ballads with an at times bucolic atmosphere, almost representing a final step in the journey that began in 1972 with "Old Dan's Records" and continued with "Sundown." "Summertime Dream" is therefore an album marked by discontinuity with its immediate predecessors: eclecticism returns, vitality returns, the colors of that great masterpiece that was "Summer Side Of Life" from 1971 return, with one important difference: "Summertime Dream" is essentially a singer-songwriter folk rock album, that emphasizes the electric component more decisively than its predecessors. This shift is noticeable right from the single "Race Among The Ruins," an extremely radio-friendly and catchy track, punctuated by a rhythm curiously identical to that of Queen's contemporary "We Will Rock You," where acoustic and electric guitars go hand in hand, intertwining to create a bright and immediately recognizable sound texture, a trademark also found in the more composed and vaguely melancholic "Never Too Close" and in "I'd Do It Again," which is pure and simple folk-rock, driving and paced, less creative than the rest of the album but very enjoyable and well-played, with a brief but incisive steel guitar solo. This characteristic style also adapts to slower episodes like the bleak "Protocol," very intense and dramatic, where Lightfoot delivers one of his career's best texts of bitter reflection, almost resigned before the barbarity of the war that repeats itself unchanged throughout human history, and the concluding, very refined "Too Many Clues In This Room," which with its fascinating bluesy sound, highlights the songwriter's elegant vocals and the enigmatic nature of an allegorical, not easily interpreted text, directly recalling the atmospheres of "Sundown," reinterpreted in a more electric key.
As in all Gordon Lightfoot albums, in "Summertime Dream" there’s also room for lighter and more carefree episodes, primarily the delightful title track, cheerful and breezy, an almost nursery rhyme as simple as it is successful and effective, a bit like "Go My Way" from "Summer Side Of Life" was, then "I'm Not Supposed To Care," the album's only true ballad, well-interpreted and enhanced by languid guitar phrases, and the evocative "The House You Live In" and "Spanish Moss," characterized by very relaxing and meditative semi-acoustic sounds, especially the latter, a true jewel of bucolic and meditative poetry.
All this would be enough to make "Summertime Dream" one of Gordon Lightfoot's best albums for immediacy, creativity, and inspiration, but there's an added value, there's a song that alone would deserve a separate review: just as "Early Morning Rain" was the symbol of the essential Gordon Lightfoot of the '60s, a simple country songwriter, so this song is the highest point reached by the mature and eclectic songwriter of the following decade: "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald." The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an impressive cargo ship employed in the transport of iron ore, which sank in the waters of Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, in the grip of a violent storm, with no survivors among the twenty-nine crew members. This theme is not new for Lightfoot, who already in 1969 wrote "Ballad Of Yarmouth Castle," a vivid and haunting ballad about the tragic end of an aging steamship sunk following a fire, but "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" is much more: a metallic, screeching guitar riff that repeats endlessly, drums and bass enter at a later stage, marking a hypnotic and immutable rhythm, the singing is solemn, almost declamatory, from a precise and omniscient narrator, apparently detached but with a higher objective than narrating a news event: the atmosphere of this song is epic, tense, solemn, gray and stormy like the sky above Lake Superior on that sad day, and its circular and unchanging structure implies the presence of an inexorable fate, of a superior power of Nature capable of overcoming the man who ventures to challenge it, even capable of sinking into the lake's waters a fourteen-thousand-tonne colossus, the pride of the naval engineering of the time.
"The church bell chimed ‘til it rang twenty-nine times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee, Superior they said never gives up her dead when the gales of November came early."
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Race Among the Ruins (03:21)
©1976 by Gordon Lightfoot
You think you had the last laugh
Now you know this can't be true
Even though the sun shines down upon you now
Sometimes you must feel blue
You make the best of each new day
You try not to be sad
Even though the sky falls down upon you
Call it midnight feelin' bad
When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin' true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin'
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon
The road to love is littered
By the bones of other ones
Who by the magic of the moment
Were mysteriously undone
You try to understand it
But you never seem to find
Any kind of freedom comin' clean
Is just another state of mind
When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin' true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin'
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon
So take the best of all that's left
You know this cannot last
Even though your mother was you maker
From her apron strings you pass
Just think about the fool
Who by his virtue can be found
In a most unusual situation
Playin' jester to the clown
When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin' true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin'
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon
When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin' true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin'
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon
02 The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (06:32)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
Then later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?
The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
When the wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T'was the witch of November come stealin'
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin'
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck
Sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At seven p.m. a main hatchway caved in
He said, "Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below, Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early
05 Never Too Close (03:04)
I remember when best friends were jealous lovers
Lyin' warm asleep beneath the covers
Dreaming of belonging to each other
And so we tried, never too close
Never too near, dyin' in time
And so we cried but that is alright
We meant no one no harm
I remember when best friends were not mistaken
Long before that freedom was forsaken
Learnin' 'bout all the good things
In the world worth believin'
And so we tried, never too close
Never too near, dyin' in time
And so we cried but that is alright
We meant no one no harm
I remember when jealous lovers would stick together
When the days were warm and the nights more tender
When the bonds of truth were not made to measure
And so we tried, never too close
Never too near, dyin' in time
And so we cried but that is alright
We meant no one no harm
Try, try as you will
Following dreams never fulfilled
And so we cried but that is alright
We meant no one no harm
09 Spanish Moss (03:51)
Let go darlin'
I can feel the night wind call
Guess I'd better go
I like you more than half as much
As I love your Spanish moss
Spanish moss hangin' down
Lofty as the southern love we've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Memories of Savannah summertime
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
So I'm rollin' north thinkin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
Spanish moss hangin' down
Lofty as the sycamore you've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Kisses mixed with moonshine and red clay
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
So I'm rollin' north thinkin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
Let go darlin'
I can feel the night wind call
The devil take the cost
I like the way your kisses flow and I love your Spanish moss
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