If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot, Grammy Nomination

A version of this review appears in Friday'southward Weekend Life department of The Oklahoman. 3 1/2 of 4 stars.

Film review: Stone doc 'Gordon Lightfoot: If Yous Could Read My Mind' tells singer-songwriter's story through his songs

In the opening scenes of the engrossing documentary "Gordon Lightfoot: If Yous Could Read My Mind," you don't have to be a mind reader to know exactly what the superstar singer-songwriter thinks almost his younger self.

Lounging at dwelling with his third wife, Kim, Lightfoot, now 81, watches old TV footage of him crooning his 1965 vocal "For Lovin' Me," an unabashedly big-headed ode to womanizing, with disdain. He admits "I hate that (expletive) song" and ponders the hubris it took to write and sing such lyrics as "I ain't the honey you thought I'd be/I got a hundred more like y'all," when he was married with children.

Writer-directors Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni capitalize on both Lightfoot'southward blunt honesty and legendary vocal catalog, creating a captivating and pleasingly unconventional stone doc.

Their insightful portrait of the Songwriters Hall of Famer features incorporates the requisite documentary cloth: They've nerveless an impressive plethora of archival footage of Lightfoot performing, recording and talking about his songcraft; they recount his ascension from a pocket-sized-town Canadian choirboy (complete with sweet audio of his youthful warbling) to an international hitmaker; and they have assembled a solid lineup of celebrity admirers to wax eloquent near the singer-songwriter, including Sarah McLachlan, Steve Earle, Alec Baldwin and Anne Murray.

Simply the filmmakers eschew the usual pigment-by-numbers chronicle then oftentimes employed to laud musical icons, instead using Lightfoot's beloved songs to create a construction for telling his story. The film's championship rail frames his rising from Toronto'southward folk scene to his debut on Warner Bros.' Reprise Records with 1970's "Sit down Down Immature Stranger," which was a bomb until a DJ started playing the B-side "If You Could Read My Mind" and the label promptly renamed and reissued the album. It then became a smash that fabricated Lightfoot a global star.

Lightfoot's international success turned him into a national treasure in his native Canada. The flick has Tom Cochrane on record calling him the country's "poet laureate," while Blitz's Geddy Lee lauds that "He sent the bulletin to the world that we're not just a agglomeration of lumberjacks and hockey players upwardly here. We are capable of sensitivity and poetry." But the indelible success of his often-covered "Early Morning time Rain" shows his worldwide influence, with the clips of Peter, Paul & Mary, Judy Collins, the Grateful Dead, Neil Immature, Elvis Presley and more crooning the carol transcending words of praise.

His menacing 1974 hit "Sundown" provides insight into his fraught relationship with 1-fourth dimension girlfriend Cathy Smith, who later became notorious injecting John Belushi with the drugs that killed him, while his 1980s tune "Blackberry Wine" provides the soundtrack for his struggles with alcoholism. An unabridged segment is defended to his unlikely Grammy-nominated 1976 smash "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," a fact-based epic that his longtime bandmates recall playing together for the first time in the studio, which ultimately became the take that was released.

"Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Listen" provides plenty of intimate insights, from scenes of him "watering" and tuning the guitars he is all the same renowned for playing with meticulous prowess, to him sharing his thoughts on Canada's current international music star, Drake. Just information technology's the songs that tell the story - and rightly so.

"Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Heed" is playing in Oklahoma Metropolis at Rodeo Picture palace. For tickets and information, become to world wide web.rodeocinema.org.

-BAM

lenzwittaloo.blogspot.com

Source: https://oklahoman.com/article/5671341/movie-review-rock-doc-gordon-lightfoot-if-you-could-read-my-mind-tells-singer-songwriters-story-through-his-songs

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