This is the most magical of the Lightfoot songs I grew up with in the '70s (and they were all pretty magical to me at the time).
In the head of a kid on the shores of Lake Erie... "wait, there's a legend of these Great Lakes?, from the INDIANS?" "and there's history, you mean stuff HAPPENED here? Even RECENTLY?" Which it was, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald occuring when I was eight.
I think this amazing ballad not only forever commemorates the grim reality for the 29 victims of the wreck (and their families), but catches the imagination in so many ways of those not personally affected by the loss.
It has a timelessness to it - like others have said here, this could've been about a famous wreck 100 years ago - or, drop a few of the technicalities - and it could be about a famous wreck of 500 years ago. It picks up a single thread of dark reality (one recent deadly shipwreck) and we add it to the constant - man's historic fight against "the sea" - or in this case, the Lake.
This is the most magical of the Lightfoot songs I grew up with in the '70s (and they were all pretty magical to me at the time).
In the head of a kid on the shores of Lake Erie... "wait, there's a legend of these Great Lakes?, from the INDIANS?" "and there's history, you mean stuff HAPPENED here? Even RECENTLY?" Which it was, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald occuring when I was eight.
I think this amazing ballad not only forever commemorates the grim reality for the 29 victims of the wreck (and their families), but catches the imagination in so many ways of those not personally affected by the loss.
It has a timelessness to it - like others have said here, this could've been about a famous wreck 100 years ago - or, drop a few of the technicalities - and it could be about a famous wreck of 500 years ago. It picks up a single thread of dark reality (one recent deadly shipwreck) and we add it to the constant - man's historic fight against "the sea" - or in this case, the Lake.