A few months ago, I wrote a story about the play “Ten November,” which is based on Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I was certainly a fan of the song along with Gord’s Gold, but I had never dug into the lyrics and structure of “Wreck” before writing this story. It’s a downright poetic masterpiece. It’s as dense and dark as a Longfellow poem. There’s no chorus but the three times he recounts the ship’s name are enough to etch it in your memory forever. We go up to Gitche Gumme at least two times a year, and it's impossible not to think of this song each time we see it. https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_thisweek/free/the-wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-mystery-resonates-in-lakeville-play/article_41af5066-a8c5-11ed-9973-176b425bd6b0.html
All the more impressive because it was literally a "ripped from the headlines" creation, repurposing, sometimes verbatim, phrases from a short Newsweek article about the sinking. Probably the most resonant Newsweek article in history thanks to Gord recasting it in song, like the best tales of the oral tradition handed down from one generation to the next.
A few months ago, I wrote a story about the play “Ten November,” which is based on Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I was certainly a fan of the song along with Gord’s Gold, but I had never dug into the lyrics and structure of “Wreck” before writing this story. It’s a downright poetic masterpiece. It’s as dense and dark as a Longfellow poem. There’s no chorus but the three times he recounts the ship’s name are enough to etch it in your memory forever. We go up to Gitche Gumme at least two times a year, and it's impossible not to think of this song each time we see it. https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_thisweek/free/the-wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-mystery-resonates-in-lakeville-play/article_41af5066-a8c5-11ed-9973-176b425bd6b0.html
All the more impressive because it was literally a "ripped from the headlines" creation, repurposing, sometimes verbatim, phrases from a short Newsweek article about the sinking. Probably the most resonant Newsweek article in history thanks to Gord recasting it in song, like the best tales of the oral tradition handed down from one generation to the next.