In many ways, this is a strange and rather old-fashioned song for the mid-seventies, even though the events which it describes were then only a year old. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was for over seventeen years a Great Lakes freighter, transporting pellets of iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great Lake ports. On the afternoon of 9 November 1975, under the command of its Canadian captain Ernest M McSorley, the ship set sail from Lake Superior, bound for Detroit. But an early storm broke the following day; the ship filled up with water and then capsized – or possibly split – and sank, and although the wreck of the ship was found a few months later, none of the bodies of its twenty-nine-strong crew has ever been found. It sank in Canadian waters.
Lightfoot read an article about the disaster in Newsweek, which helped unlock his long-standing writer’s block and inspire the song. He tells the story as simply as possible, though according to the record’s co-producer (with Lightfoot himself) Lenny Waronker, he agonised for some time over the lyrics, wanting to get the facts as right as possible. His story is not entirely accurate – the ship, as noted above, was heading for Detroit, not Cleveland, and the Detroit hall in which the mourners congregate was not “musty” (he later changed it, in concert, to “rustic old hall”) – but in itself, as a song, it became its own legend.
This is a distinctly Canadian record in ambience, approach and delivery, and it is perhaps not fully understood just how important a figure Gordon Lightfoot is in Canadian music. To the outside world he was this bearded folkie who had a few thoughtful hits in the seventies, but in Canada, where his work has been known since the late fifties, he is as revered as Cohen, Mitchell or Young. In its way “Wreck” is the melancholy other side of the “Four Strong Winds” coin, and, as 1966’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” proves, Lightfoot has always been deeply minded when it comes to his country’s history and character.
The record itself (and it must be heard in the context of its parent album, Summertime Dream; avoid re-recordings) is six minutes and twenty-eight seconds of brisk yet melancholy – and late autumnal – folk-rock (in the Dorian mode) with the breeze of the faint gales whistling through the song’s bones. Little wonder that Waronker would go on to sign R.E.M. – there is definitely something of the song’s aura permeating Automatic For The People – but for at least two generations of tyro-guitarists, this, like Rush’s “Closer To The Heart,” has been a song that they have to learn and be able to play before they can call themselves a guitarist. As anyone who’s been there will tell you, it’s a Canadian thing - where else would you hear the extra syllable in "Detroit"?
Date Record Made Number Two: 20 November 1976
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)” by Rod Stewart
UK Chart Position: 40
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