Connect with us

Celebrity

Folk Singer-Songwriter Gordon Lightfoot Dies At 84

Avatar for Kiara Grace

Published

on

lightfoot

TORONTO, Ontario — Gordon Lightfoot, the folk singer-songwriter known for songs like “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown,” as well as songs on Canadian identity, died on Monday. He was 84.

According to Representative Victoria Lord, the musician died at a Toronto hospital. His death cause was not immediately known.

Lightfoot was one of the most well-known voices to emerge from Toronto’s Yorkville folk club scene in the 1960s, recording 20 studio albums and writing hundreds of songs, including “Carefree Highway,” “Early Morning Rain,” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Lightfoot had five Grammy nominations, three platinum records, and nine gold records for albums and songs in the 1970s. He played almost 1500 shows and recorded 500 songs.

He toured in his later years. He recently canceled future gigs in the United States and Canada, citing health concerns.

“We have lost one of our greatest singer-songwriters,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Twitter. “Gordon Lightfoot captured the spirit of our country in his music, and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape.” May his music inspire future generations, and may his legacy live on in perpetuity.”

Numerous musicians, including Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Cash, Anne Murray, Jane’s Addiction, and Sarah McLachlan, have recorded Lightfoot. Bob Dylan even referred to him as a “rare talent.”

Most of his songs are extremely autobiographical, with lyrics that frankly probe his experiences and discuss topics surrounding Canadian national identity. “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” depicted the railway’s construction.

“I just write songs about where I am and where I came from,” he previously explained. “I take real-life situations and write poems about them.”

Lightfoot’s music had its distinct style. “It’s not country, folk, or rock,” he declared in an interview in 2000. Nonetheless, it contains strains of all three.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is a mournful homage to the 29 men who died in the ship’s sinking in Lake Superior during a storm in 1975.

lightfoot

Lightfoot had five Grammy nominations, three platinum records, and nine gold records for albums and songs in the 1970s. He played almost 1500 shows and recorded 500 songs.

While his parents recognized his musical abilities early on, Lightfoot did not set out to become a famous balladeer.

He started singing in his church choir and aspired to be a jazz musician. At 13, the soprano won a talent competition at Toronto’s Massey Hall’s Kiwanis Music Festival.

“I remember the thrill of being in front of a crowd,” Lightfoot remarked in an interview in 2018. “It was like a stepping stone for me…”

The appeal of those early days lingered, and his barbershop quartet, The Collegiate Four, won a CBC talent competition in high school. In 1956, he strummed his first guitar and began dabbling in music in the following months. He flunked algebra the first time, possibly due to his musical tastes. He graduated in 1957 after retaking the class.

Lightfoot had already written his first serious work, “The Hula Hoop Song,” inspired by the popular toy at the time. Attempts to market the tune were futile, so at 18, he moved to the United States to study music for a year. The trip was partially sponsored by money saved from a job transporting linens to resorts near his hometown.

However, life in Hollywood was not for Lightfoot, and he soon returned to Canada. He promised to travel to Toronto to pursue his musical dreams, accepting any job he could find, including a job at a bank, until obtaining a role as a square dancer on CBC’s “Country Hoedown.”

His first job was at Fran’s Restaurant, a downtown family-run café that appreciated his folk inclinations. He met fellow musician Ronnie Hawkins there.

The singer was living with a few buddies in a condemned building in Yorkville, which was then a bohemian neighborhood where future stars like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell learned their trade in smoke-filled bars.

lightfoot

Lightfoot made his radio breakthrough with the single “(Remember Me) I’m the One” in 1962.

Lightfoot made his radio breakthrough with the single “(Remember Me) I’m the One” in 1962, which led to a string of hit tunes and collaborations with other local performers. Lightfoot bonded with the Mariposa Folk Festival in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario, that same year and became the festival’s most devoted returning artist.

By 1964, he spread positive word of mouth around town, and audiences began to assemble in greater numbers. The next year, Lightfoot’s song “I’m Not Sayin'” became a smash in Canada, helping to expand his popularity in the United States.

Several other artists’ covers didn’t hurt, either. Marty Robbins’ 1965 rendition of “Ribbon of Darkness” achieved No. 1 on the country charts in the United States, while Peter, Paul, and Mary charted Lightfoot’s original, “For Lovin’ Me,” in the United States. Hundreds of other musicians have covered the tune, which Dylan once claimed he wished he had recorded.

Lightfoot performed at the Newport Folk Festival that summer, the same year Dylan shocked audiences by ditching his folkie character in favor of an electric guitar.

As the folk music boom ended in the late 1960s, Lightfoot was already easing into pop music.

He earned his debut Billboard chart appearance in 1971 with “If You Could Read My Mind.” It peaked at No. 5 and has generated a slew of covers since.

Lightfoot’s success peaked in the mid-1970s when “Sundown,” his song and album, topped the Billboard charts for the first and only time.

Lightfoot won 12 Juno Awards during his career, including one in 1970 when it was known as the Gold Leaf.

He was inducted into the Canadian Recording Industry Hall of Fame, now known as the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, in 1986. He was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001 after receiving the Governor General’s Award in 1997.

lightfoot

SOURCE – (AP)

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Patrick Stewart, A Shakespearean Actor Who Soars In Sci-Fi, Looks Back On His Life In Memoir

Avatar for Kiara Grace

Published

on

stewart

NEW YORK — Famous “Star Trek” captain Patrick Stewart has boldly gone into his past where no one has gone before.

The actor spent most of the pandemic at his computer composing his memoir, which will be released this autumn under “Making It So,” a phrase he borrowed from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“My long-term memory is extremely robust. Memory after memory and sensation and sensation and feelings all scuttled back the moment I turned the key on day one, Stewart, 83, said in a Zoom interview from his residence in Los Angeles.

It is a remarkable tale of a child who grew up poor in northern England, became a great Shakespearean stage actor, and then a sci-fi movie icon aboard the USS Enterprise and in the “X-Men” film series.

He grew up in a home without a lavatory or a bathroom, sold furniture as a young man, and worked his way up the regional theatre ranks in England — including touring and a crush on Vivien Leigh — before a 14-year run with the Royal Shakespeare Company and a rise to fame in Los Angeles.

Stewart says in the interview that authoring the book has been a highly therapeutic experience. “I know my therapist is among those anticipating the book the most. I anticipate hearing, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

stewart

Patrick Stewart, A Shakespearean Actor Who Soars In Sci-Fi, Looks Back On His Life In Memoir.

If there is one shadow, it is that of Stewart’s father, a former British Army regimental sergeant prone to violent eruptions against his mother.

Stewart writes about how he and his elder brother, Trevor, braced for nights when their dad came home drunk and angry. “Sometimes with an outstretched hand, and sometimes with a closed fist. He consistently targeted her cranium.”

Stewart wonders if the violence initiated his career. “The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life, in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time,” he writes.

Other portraits emerge of those who were kind to Stewart along the way, such as Paul McCartney, Rod Steiger, and Kirk Douglas, as well as those who were not: Stewart commanding one of Gene Roddenberry’s starships was never acceptable to “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry or “Dune” director David Lynch.

“I wanted to be truthful, but I also wanted to be respectful and cautious. The most difficult aspect of the experience was determining how much I should say. What should I refrain from saying?

“It’s almost certain that someone will come forward and say, ‘How dare you?'” That is ludicrous.’ I’ve brought this upon myself. But I took it extremely seriously.”

stewart

Patrick Stewart, A Shakespearean Actor Who Soars In Sci-Fi, Looks Back On His Life In a Memoir.

Stewart, preparing to portray Hamlet in 1966, is given an hour-long tutorial by the late great director Peter Hall, widely regarded as the most influential figure in modern British theatre.

Stewart says, “When the hour was up and I checked my notebook, it contained nothing but scribbles.” “I realised that he had opened up this text to me in ways that no one else had ever done before.”

The grace with which he dealt with premature receding is a further example. Stewart would audition with a hairpiece, then remove it and make his case: two actors for the price of one.

Stewart dedicates the book to two influential instructors who instilled in him a passion for Shakespeare and inspired him to pursue a career in acting. Later in his 40s, when he was asked to portray Jean-Luc Picard, a 24th-century starship captain, his appreciation for Shakespeare would prove beneficial.

“The etiquette of their speech and demeanor reminds me of numerous Shakespearean situations in which I had participated onstage. I realized that I should portray Jean Luc as if he were a character from “Henry IV,” which is about courageous men.

Later in life, Stewart explored his sense of humor by donning crustacean costumes and lending his voice to Seth MacFarlane cartoons. People believed it would be entertaining to watch me play against type, he writes.

Throughout the memoir, Stewart is just as critical of himself as anyone else. Again and again, he confesses to mistakes or being unnecessarily stiff, at one point calling himself a “pompous ass.” Stewart explains that his relationship with his offspring is “a work in progress.”

“I needed to do better by the women with whom I was romantically involved,” he writes in one section. My two unsuccessful marriages are my greatest regret in a life filled with happiness and accomplishments.

Writing the book became “some of the happiest days of my life,” he says, despite pausing the audiobook a few times because he was weeping.

Sunny, his wife, observed that he appeared lighter and cheerful after a writing session. “She said I would come down smiling and kind of glowing because of the whole experience of going back.”

SOURCE – (AP)

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour Is Over. But It’s Coming To Movie Theaters Soon

Avatar for Kiara Grace

Published

on

beyonce

NEW YORK — Monday, AMC Theatres announced that a documentary chronicling Beyoncé’s recently concluded 39-city Renaissance World Tour will premiere in North American theatres on December 1.

The film adds a second blockbuster from a music superstar to a fall film lineup that the ongoing screen actors’ strike has marginally diminished. As with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which premieres on October 13, “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé” is released directly by AMC, without studio involvement.

Tickets cost a minimum of $22 plus tax. AMC stated that the film will broadcast for a minimum of four weeks.

Beyoncé’s previous films include “Homecoming,” a 2019 Netflix film that captures her 2018 Coachella performance. Beyoncé and Swift are rumored to receive at least 50 percent of ticket sales in their agreements with AMC.

beyonce

Beyoncé and Swift are rumored to receive at least 50 percent of ticket sales in their agreements with AMC.

The film chronicles her tour supporting her Grammy-winning album “Renaissance” from 2022. It mixes concert footage and elements of a visual album while trailing the tour from its beginning in Stockholm, Sweden, in May to the finale Sunday night in Kansas City, Missouri.

Approximately 2,7 million concert-goers attended over five months. According to Billboard, the tour has garnered close to 500 million dollars.

The film’s description states, “It is about Beyoncé’s intention, hard work, involvement in every aspect of the production, her creative mind and purpose to create her legacy and master her craft.”

The singer posted a trailer to her Instagram account with the message, “Be careful what you ask for, because I just might give it to you.”

SOURCE – (AP)

Continue Reading

Celebrity

Taylor Swift Watches Travis Kelce’s Chiefs Take On The Jets At MetLife Stadium

Avatar for Kiara Grace

Published

on

VOR News

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — Taylor Swift could not pass up another opportunity to observe Travis Kelce play football.

The 12-time Grammy Award winner arrived at MetLife Stadium approximately forty minutes before Sunday night’s kickoff to witness Travis and his Kansas City Chiefs defeat the New York Jets 23-20.

Swift, wearing blue jean shorts, a black long-sleeved top, and a leather jacket, entered the stadium’s security area with actors Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Hugh Jackman, as captured by SNY. NBC’s broadcast cut to Swift multiple times during the game, including a shot of the pop star with her arm around Donna Kelce, who was donning her son’s No. 87 jersey.

Swift’s appearance comes a week after she attended Arrowhead Stadium, dressed in red and white, to witness the Chiefs’ 41-10 home victory over the Chicago Bears with Donna Kelce. Swift accepted the All-Pro tight end’s invitation to observe the game and had to see more of Travis and the Chiefs in action.

Taylor Swift is on a break from her Eras Tour, which resumes on November 9 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Travis acknowledges Swift’s daring appearance at the Chiefs game but remains tight-lipped about their relationship. Twenty minutes before commencement, NBC aired a tour advertisement.

kelce

Taylor Swift could not pass up another opportunity to observe Travis Kelce play football.

Swift is familiar with MetLife Stadium, having performed three sold-out concerts there in May. Two of those performances were attended by Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who returned to the team this past weekend after tearing his left Achilles tendon on the fourth play of his September 11 debut.

Rodgers attended a squad meeting on Saturday evening and was at the stadium to observe player warmups on Sunday evening.

Swift and Kelce have not disclosed details about their relationship. Kelce stated on his podcast “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” earlier this week that Swift “looked amazing” at the contest.

Regarding her time spent in the suite, Kelce stated, “Everyone was speaking positively about her.” “Moreover, the day proceeded flawlessly for Chiefs fans. Naturally, we plan everything, ladies and gentlemen.”

Kelce invited Swift to that game after failing to present her a friendship bracelet during the Kansas City stop of her Eras Tour.

SOURCE – (AP)

Continue Reading

Recent News

Trending