The one musician Bob Dylan calls his “mentor”
From the outside looking in, it seems as if Bob Dylan has always known the answers to any music-related question. However, even Dylan has occasionally needed to call upon a wiser, older head for advice, and his first port of call was his peer, the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
Lightfoot was born in Canada in 1938, three years before Dylan’s birth, and was raised by folk music, like his friend. He’s a self-taught musician who began performing regularly as a teenager. Then, in 1958, Lightfoot made the ambitious move to America to study jazz composition and orchestration at Hollywood’s Westlake College of Music.
It wasn’t an immediate success story for the singer-songwriter, but he did make a slight name for himself in the United Kingdom and toured Europe in the early 1960s. His talent was finally discovered in 1965, a time when he received a management contract with Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, and initiated himself within the folk scene.
Although Dylan established himself in the mainstream before Lightfoot, he always looked up to the Canadian as though he was a household name. Lightfoot was unsurprisingly on his list when asked about his favourite songwriters during a 2011 interview with Bill Flanagan. Dylan said: “Buffett, I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.”
This compliment wasn’t the first time Dylan had publicly expressed his love for Lightfoot’s work, and he’d even claimed the Canadian had crafted the perfect back catalogue. He famously said: “I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like. Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever… Lightfoot became a mentor for a long time. I think he probably still is to this day.”
When asked by Forbes if there were any songs that he never grows tired of hearing, he replicated the love Dylan showed him. Lightfoot commented: “[Kris] Kristofferson’ Sunday Morning Coming Down.’ Which song do I really love by Bob Dylan? There are so many. He’s a huge influence on me, actually, although my writing is nothing like his at all. It’s totally different, And yet he was such a huge influence on me. I’d have to go back to ‘Blowin’ In The Wind,’ I’m just gonna go standard with this guy.”
Meanwhile, Lightfoot said of their relationship in 2009 to Now Toronto: “I’ve known him for a long time, and I think he plays me on his satellite radio show. We had the same management for a time, so through the years, we reconnected. We had several great parties over in Rosedale when I lived there. I haven’t seen him in a while, but nobody’s getting any younger.”
Listen below to the audio of Dylan covering ‘Shadows’ by his “mentor” while on tour in Canada.
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