Endless Wire

Gordon Lightfoot | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 28, 1994)
• Original Release Date: 1978
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002MSQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,128 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

CD reissue of this 1978 album from the legendary Canadian Folk/Rock singer/songwriter who has had numerous Billboard charting albums throughout his career, which began in the mid '60s. His most commercially successful period ran through the '70s, although he remains one of the most influential and admired songwriters of the Rock era. Wounded Bird. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yet Another Terrific Album By Gordon Lightfoot!, August 19, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Endless Wire (Audio CD)

I have always been a fan of Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's music. From the first time I heard Peter, Paul and Mary's wonderful covers of Lightfoot songs like "Early Morning Rain" and "For Loving Me", I knew anyone who could write songs like that was a huge talent. So when I got turned onto his own voice and music I was astonished by just how good he was (and still is). This is a terrific album, one including a number of personal favorites. From the opening number of "Daylight Katy", a pensive number with a interesting backbeat, Gordon reminds of why he is such a perennial favorite. Like most of his releases, each of the included songs is something you smile at as it first comes on because it is a special favorite you always want to hear. From "Endless Wire" itself to "Dreamland", Lightfoot is consistently terrific, and seldom disappoints.

So it is with each of the songs here. My personal favorites are, first, "I Children had Wings", a wonderful albeit somber recollection to any of with children how mightily everyone involved in marital dissolution suffers. The second is "The Circle Is Small", a winsome warning to a lover that he knows about her wandering affections. Lightfoot has always been prolific, and in this sense it is an easy bet to get any of his dozen or so albums produced during the seventies, as they were so consistently terrific that a listener is sure to be pleased what is discovered on the album.

In fact, if one listens to all of the similarly terrific albums Lightfoot put out over a seven or eight-year period one comes up with literally dozens and dozens of wonderful and memorable songs that could fill several double albums. This guy was far more prolific than anyone else producing work in the sixties and seventies. Buy this album, and after listening to it for a week or so you will be back for "Sundown", "Summertime Dream", "Cold On The Shoulder" and "If You Could Read My Mind". They are all great. Enjoy this one of a kind artist and his amazingly consistent flood of terrific and appealing mainstream folk albums.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Endless Pleasure, October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Endless Wire (Audio CD)

Through the years, Lightfoot's lyrics are like old friends, and the sincerity of his delivery is even more moving and refreshing at the turn of the century than it was a generation ago. I especially love this album. It contains a mixture of his story songs,("Daylight Katy" and "Sweet Guinevere" are lovely) and the beginnings of his evolution to his more autobiographical, more urgent, more haunting style, ("Songs the Minstrel Sang","Endless Wire"). "If Children had Wings" is probably his most underrated song. It is worth the price of the album to have access to its lyrics. Enjoy! Endlessly

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lightfoot evolves his sound, with good results, July 14, 2002

By 

Francis King "Frank King" (Calgary, AB, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Endless Wire (Audio CD)

By the time Endless Wire came out in 1978, Canadian folk-pop singer/songwriter/guitarist Gordon Lightfoot had been on a seven-year-roll of exquisite recordings and larger-than-life status in his native land. So he shook things up just a bit, bringing a gentle electric guitar sound to the proceedings and more strings. Not everybody liked it, of course, but I sure did, because his songwriting and arranging skills were still amazingly consistent. So we get Daylight Katy, a wonderful mid-tempo composition, the whistle-along-with-the-guitar-melody of Dreamland and the poignant, wispy If Children Had Wings. Listen to the lyrics on this latter track; they're definitely autobiographical.

Here's an interesting tidbit on the album: in his book Lightfoot: If You Could Read His Mind, author Maynard Collins says of Endless Wire: "the proceedings were stormy and continued what was to become yet another repetitive pattern, that of throwing away expensive tapes and re-recording material until he was totally satisfied." Well, when Lightfoot was finally satisfied, so was I. I'll have Endless Wire in my collection forever.