Photo credit: Lorne Bridgman
I was a bit of an odd one. In the late 70s and early 80s most teenagers listened to New Wave, punk or the last vestiges of 70s heavy rock. I did too, but supplemented these with a steady side-diet of acoustic singer-songwriters: Bruce Cockburn, John Prine, Harvest-era Neil Young, early Dylan, and Gordon Lightfoot. I started playing guitar during summers at camp, and when we weren’t playing bluegrass or working through an epic version of “Hotel California,” those were the musicians whose songs we played. They were halcyon years, when the unspoken signs, signals, and understandings between two, three, and four people playing acoustic instruments was a really key thing for me.
So, you can imagine the sense of occasion I felt arriving for one of Lightfoot’s legendary March Break shows at Massey Hall: seeing the instruments arranged on the dimly-lit stage; scanning the room looking for (and even finding) familiar faces; the feeling of awe as the lights dropped and Gord strode out carrying — quite probably — the old Gibson twelve-string.
I got to play that same guitar just last month, when we did a photo shoot with Gord at Massey Hall. He didn’t know: he’d dropped his equipment off and headed out for a couple of hours while we set lights for the shoot. And I had only the flimsiest of excuses: obviously, we’d need the guitar in the test shots, and maybe I should just tinker with its positioning a little first? I think I might have played the opening chords to “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It doesn’t really matter. Here I was, looking out from centre stage in Massey Hall thinking, first, this is very weird, and second, do not drop the guitar!
Once Gord returned we were consumed with the job of capturing images that somehow rooted him in the Hall, and yet also conveyed a sense of the larger-than-life presence he’s brought to the space. All the while my stream of consciousness ran something like this: “Sundown,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” — think of what’s come out of this man’s mind —”Beautiful,” “Early Morning Rain,” “The Way I Feel” — o.k., look just a little more to the left —”Black Day in July,” “Pussywillows, Cattails,” “The Circle is Small” — this is our Tuesday afternoon with an icon.
Lorne Bridgman photographed RTHMH’s 09 | 10 Season Brochure cover image.
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