Influenced By Gordon Lightfoot

Compiled by Wayne Francis

When Lightfoot signed with Linus Entertainment, they asked me to provide some quotes by contemporaries to use in their promotion of Harmony. Here is a sampling of some of those quotes:
“Gordon Lightfoot, everytime I hear a song of his, it's like I wish it would last forever. " - Bob Dylan

"Gordon Lightfoot has created some of the most beautiful and lasting music of our time. He is Bob Dylan's favorite singer/songwriter - high praise from the best of us, applauded by the rest of us." - Kris Kristofferson

"I don't think anybody before or since has had the impact on Canadian culture, through popular music or folk music, that Gordon Lightfoot has had." - Ian Tyson

"I've always been trying to write songs like Lightfoot. A song of mine like 'Come Monday' is a direct result of me trying to write a Gordon Lightfoot song." - Jimmy Buffett

"Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting. " - Johnny Cash

"Gordon Lightfoot looms pretty large in my life as a writer and an artist in general. I never travel anywhere without at least two of his records with me." - Ron Sexsmith

"Lightfoot's voice is such a part of the fabric of Canada, I know it almost as well as I know my own voice." - David Foster

"When my first album came out in 1986 my manager called and said that we're really big in Canada. I thought it all had to do with that great singer-songwriter tradition up there and when you have that discussion, it all comes back to one guy, Gordon Lightfoot, it all has to come back to Gordon Lightfoot." - Steve Earle

 "I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song." - John Prine

"I was a Gordon Lightfoot fan before he ever had a song out. You just knew he was pure talent and he was going to be successful. Gordon has written and recorded some of the greatest music ever." - Ronnie Hawkins

"He's a great, great songwriter and a great man. I love everything about him and he's eccentric on top of that. I don't know him real well, but I feel like I do. He did a show at my high school, in fact, I was walking to the show and a Cadillac pulled up, window rolled down and it was the man himself who said, 'How do we get to the Ancaster High School?' I said, 'Follow me.' And it was a beautiful show. It was ever so simple. It was in the gym."  - Daniel Lanois

CHRONOLOGY