Outside Influeces - Gordon Lightfoot... 07/12/2020 06:13 p.m.
Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind
In the early days, I enjoyed all of Lightfoot’s hits, when they would play on the radio, but as I was into heavier music at the time, I never thought of buying any of his records. It was only in 1978, that I bought my first Gordon Lightfoot LP, Endless Wire, with the song Daylight Katy, which pretty well tempted me into buying it. Not a bad album either.
The one song however that has always stood out in my mind and memory, and thus became my favorite, has been If You Could Read My Mind.
Released in 1970, when I was 13 years old and going through all the uncertainty of early adolescence, I found it haunting, but in a good way, and thus reassuring. Simply, beautiful poetry put to music.
If You Could Read My Mind
Gordon Lightfoot
If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
About a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost you can see
If I could read your mind love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstore sells
When you reach the part where the heartaches
Come the hero would be me
Heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take
I walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script
Enter number two, a movie queen
To play the scene of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now love lets be real
I never...
