On Tour with Lightfoot
Eleanor invited me to the annual Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent to America’s Grammys. I had no appropriate evening dress, so the dark purple gown sewn by my mother for the New York concert had to suffice. Sitting humbly among the throngs of glitzy executives, agents, promoters, and artists, I wondered where, if at all, I fitted into this “music business” scene. After the show, Eleanor introduced me to one of my teenage music idols, Gordon Lightfoot, who jokingly suggested that I give him a few guitar lessons. How thrilling to actually shake hands with the famous singer whose voice Vivien and I had taken with us to San Miguel, and how exciting to hear that he had enjoyed listening to The Guitar.
In March 1975 Gordon Lightfoot played his annual concert series at Toronto’s Massey Hall; I was invited by his sister Bev. After the performance (I had taken my brother, Damien — also a great Lightfoot admirer), I was invited to a private party at Gordon’s Rosedale mansion, which was filled with his buddies from the music industry: his band, friends, hangers-on, press agents, and a good sprinkling of adoring female fans. He approached me with his old classical guitar, thrusting it into my arms as he motioned to his friends to gather round. “Liona Boyd is one hell of a classic guitar player. She’ll play for you if you’ll all keep quiet!” he yelled. At this point, I realized how totally unprepared I was, as my velvet blouse had terribly tight sleeves. Quickly managing to tune the old strings, I launched into “Una Lágrima,” a haunting tremolo piece by Gaspar Sagreras. Halfway through the selection, I felt my right arm start to tingle; the sleeve was cutting off my circulation at the elbow. Only prayers and a fierce determination helped keep my fingers moving to the end. My luck held until Gordon’s friends started applauding. Somehow I pulled off a couple more selections, with my arm feeling as if it were in the grip of a blood pressure cuff. The curly-haired singer seemed immensely pleased by my impromptu performance. “One day, Liona, I’m gonna take you on the road,” he said, smiling. Surely it was a courteous compliment rather than a real promise; my simple guitar playing could never be compatible with his folk pop band.
Several months later, while I was in San Francisco, the phone rang. Gordon was on the line, asking if I could fly to Minneapolis in a couple of days’ time; his opening act had just cancelled. Desperate for a quick replacement, he explained that there would be two sold-out shows of five thousand people and absolutely nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about! I had not even played for an audience of one thousand, never mind ten thousand in the same evening! But I knew this could be the break all aspiring performers dream about. At a loss as to what to say, I breathlessly told him I needed time to think.
In a terrible dilemma I ran to find Cal, beseeching him to help me decide what to do about this fantastic offer, which required a decision within the hour. Surely Gordon’s audience would boo me right off the stage, as they would not be expecting a classical guitar performance. Could I be running the risk of ruining my classical reputation by playing for a pop crowd? I agonized over the imagined ramifications of accepting such an offer, but after much vacillation realized that I would never know the consequences without actually playing the shows. Two days later I arrived, with much trepidation, in Minneapolis.
Gordon was wonderfully kind, striding on stage to introduce me to the audience. “Here’s a girl from my home town of Toronto, Canada, who plays beautiful classical guitar and looks like an angel,” he spoke into the microphone, as five thousand people listened in silence. His petrified “angel” was frantically trying to warm her trembling hands on a hot water bottle, attempting to calm her pounding heart, and wishing she was anywhere else in the world but in the wings of Northrop Auditorium at that moment. The next minute, Gordon was beckoning me onstage. I tried to force a smile as the deafening thunder from ten thousand hands welcomed me. Playing “La fille aux cheveux de lin,” “Campanas del Alba,” “Rumores de la Caleta,” and “Sounds of Bells,” I realized that my fears had been unfounded when the crowd gave me a tumultuous ovation.
For the second show I felt more relaxed, and Gordon brought me out to take additional bows at the end of his set. The great reviews in the next day’s papers reassured me that it had been a wise decision to accept. “There’ll be more concerts for you soon,” Gordon promised. I flew back to California bursting to tell Cal of my triumph before a pop audience.
In May 1975 I was contracted to play with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and quickly learned the piece they requested, Fantasía para un gentilhombre by the great Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to study the concerto thoroughly; never having played with an orchestra before, I was not even sure how to interact with a conductor. CBC Radio was taping the performance — my first CBC broadcast! I was terrified at the prospect. We had two brief rehearsals, which only made me furious with myself for not being more prepared. In contrast to opera singers, ballet dancers, and even concert pianists, guitarists are solitary creatures who never indulge in music coaches. Once our studies are finished, we are on our own. Although Pavarotti would not dream of tackling a new opera without the assistance of a coach, we guitarists would not think of asking for help. In a sold-out hall, intimidated by the CBC’s array of microphones, I ploughed through the concerto, only just grabbing some of the notes and missing certain chords and runs altogether. Backstage, I wanted to melt into the carpet on my dressing-room floor. A jovial representative from the Classical Guitar Society of Calgary bearing a large bouquet of red roses made me feel even worse! I phoned Cal from my hotel room and sobbed that I intended to quit giving concerts; this would be my last ever orchestral performance. I prayed I would never run into the poor conductor and decided I would succumb to amnesia.
Since that first embarrassing performance, I have often played the Rodrigo concerto and realize just how unprepared I had been for that ill-fated premiere. It is wonderfully exhilarating to feel the power of an entire symphony backing you up, but for many years, given a choice between solo or orchestral performances, I would opt for the former. During solo concerts, I become more completely immersed in my musical interpretations; with a symphony, one has to think about the balance between the guitar and the other instruments, making sure to follow the conductor’s movements out of the corner of one’s eye. As a soloist, I am responsible for the entire concert and can shape the mood and quality of the performance, whereas in an orchestral setting, the total statement is beyond my control.
A six-week classical tour of northern British Columbia and the Yukon was arranged, starting in late November 1975. The program included solos as well as ensembles with flutist Robert Aitken and David Grimes, a performer on the synthesizer, a novel instrument in those days. Our trio gave about fifty concerts and numerous workshops, often playing to three audiences each day after driving hundreds of miles between towns. We performed in high schools, churches, and hotel dining rooms, presenting classical music to the folks in Kitimat, Terrace, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, Prince Rupert, and Whitehorse, to name a few. Cal called from San Francisco every morning and evening. “What the hell are you doing in December freezing your ass off in places with names like ‘Kitty mat’ when you could be in the redwood forests with me?” he shouted into the phone.
On our free days, I occupied myself learning new repertoire, editing, and fingering Milton Barnes’s “Fantasy for Guitar,” based on the theme “Land of the Silver Birch,” which I performed a few months later on a CBC half-hour TV show called Music to See. In the Yukon, the mercury plummeted to -60°F, causing a small split in the back of my Ramírez guitar due to the sudden fluctuation in temperature and lack of humidity. Our audiences never failed to demonstrate their appreciation, but there were times when the travel was unbearable. We often rose at 6:00 a.m. to hit the road by seven for a school concert at nine in the next town. Afternoons required musical workshops, where we taught students on our individual instruments; evening concerts for the community were invariably followed by late receptions. I ruefully concluded that these tours were easier on male flute or synthesizer players than on female guitarists, as every night I had no choice but to stay up restringing the guitar, ironing a concert gown, and washing my hair while my fellow musicians were free to turn in. Tradition has it that folk and pop artists pay their dues playing to rough crowds in smoky bars; I was paying mine in all the remote, snowbound communities of northwest Canada.
An arduous Saskatchewan Arts Council tour the next season took me through waving wheat fields to such enthusiastic rural communities as Rosetown, Yorkton, Weyburn, and Estevan, playing in high-school gyms and cafeterias where various volunteers, including the mother of television host Pamela Wallin, shuttled me along prairie roads. Through the guitar society network, it was arranged for me to perform a concert in Nashville, Tennessee, where Chet Atkins, the legendary country guitarist, found a seat in the audience. Chet was a lanky man in a casual, blue-jean suit who insisted on calling me LI-ona, to differentiate my name from that of his wife, Leona. Every bit the fine southern gentleman, he projected a friendly manner with his slow Tennessee drawl.
Chet invited me to call by his office at RCA the next day to take a look at his collection of classical guitar music and vintage instruments. A reporter from the Canadian magazine, a national weekly that was stuffed into Saturday newspapers across the country, was writing “Scarlatti in Nashville,” a story on my trip, and tagged along to cover my meeting with Atkins. Chet listened attentively to a few of my pieces, offered compliments, then asked if I could teach him how to get his tremolo to sound more even. The legendary country picker, who could also get his fingers around a number of classical pieces, seemed pleased to share guitar tips and exchange stories about classical players we both knew. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship based on respect for each other’s artistry, even though our styles and repertoire were different. The Canadian magazine put my photo on their cover and dubbed me “The First Lady of the Guitar,” a title that has accompanied me ever since. My star had begun to ascend.
Television appearances on everything from talk shows hosted by Juliette, Elwood Glover, Laurier LaPierre, and Bob McLean, to Celebrity Cooks and Good Morning Seattle helped expand my audiences. But Chet Atkins was responsible for my first major U.S. television exposure by recommending me to the Today show, where I was interviewed on my career by Gene Shalit. Just as I was about to step in front of the lights, one of the friendly camera operators whispered, “Play well, Liona, twenty million people are watching you.” I could have hit him with my fretboard for his poor sense of timing! The CBC gave me a primetime TV special, on which I played Saint-Preux’s “Concerto pour une voix” and duets with Hagood Hardy and Chet Atkins, and bantered with the Canadian Brass and David Clayton-Thomas. Television had become a great way for my classical guitar to reach a wider public than even Segovia could have imagined.
Ed Oscapella, having been offered a position with the Canada Council, disbanded his office. I decided to sign on with Haber Artists, an ambitious new agency formed by the former manager of the National Ballet of Canada. David Haber, who entertained hopes of becoming Canada’s answer to Sol Hurok, made the mistake of taking on too many artists, leaving himself insufficient time to dedicate to our individual careers. He booked Canadian and American dates for me, plus a few international appearances, although most foreign offers came through contacts I had established on my own. Constantly writing letters, especially on planes, I spent hours corresponding with colleagues, agents, and music impresarios or penning articles for music magazines. There was so much more to a career, I was discovering, than just playing the guitar.
Eleanor Sniderman had had a falling out with Boot Records, so the agency suggested I produce a new album myself: The Guitar Artistry of Liona Boyd. I chose the music of Lauro, Pescetti, Cimarosa, Besard, and Mussorgsky — twelve previously unrecorded works for guitar, including my own “Cantarell” and three pieces written for me by a young Transylvanian composer, Robert Feuerstein. Through a contact established after a concert in Washington, D.C., I mailed President Jimmy Carter one of my albums. To my surprise, he responded, and over the next few years, I received three personal letters from the White House. He wrote, “I really enjoyed hearing you play, and thank you for affording me the privilege…. Rosalynn and I appreciate your kindness and send you our best wishes…. I particularly appreciate your thoughtful gesture of including ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra.’ It’s great! Sincerely, Jimmy.”
Gordon Lightfoot decided he would present a concert at Maple Leaf Gardens to benefit our Canadian Olympic athletes in June 1976; he invited Sylvia Tyson, Murray McLauchlan, and his opening act from Minneapolis to share his stage and the national television broadcast. At first I felt intimidated at the thought of playing my classical guitar in the middle of such a vast hockey arena, but Gordon assured me that I would have no trouble being heard. My music boomed out of speakers stacked like skyscrapers on either side of the stage. With millions of viewers, what a great way to expand my audience! Never before had I seen such lavish backstage provisions: huge bowls of fruit salads, vegetable and deli plates, sandwiches, and champagne — a veritable feast compared with the humble cup of tea I always requested prior to my guitar society recitals!
Shortly thereafter, Gordon offered me the chance to participate in his U.S. summer tour. As my experiences in Minneapolis and at Maple Leaf Gardens had been so positive, I was eager for more. Meeting up with the balladeer and his band at Innotech Aviation’s private aircraft hangar, I clambered into the Learjet for the flight to our first gig in Colorado. Gordon had neglected to warn me that there was only one small toilet, which had been stuffed full of guitars and baggage, rendering it inaccessible during the flight. After four long hours, we arrived in Denver, where it started to pour with rain, which certainly did not help my predicament. Our plane was kept sitting on the tarmac for half an hour while obnoxious immigration officials fired questions at us about U.S. work permits. Gordon became more and more impatient, as we were already late for our sound check, and I was increasingly desperate to release the three or four soft drinks I had blithely consumed on the trip down.
Finally, we were ordered to get off the plane and unload all our equipment for inspection, but I made a beeline for the ladies’ room. After the immigration formalities were over, we sloshed through puddles into waiting limousines. Remembering Eleanor’s predictions, I smiled to myself. “Your concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre has been washed out and relocated to the Denver Coliseum,” an anxious looking promoter informed us. “Don’t worry. We have provided buses to transport the crowd over to the new venue. The Lipizzaner Stallions were there last night, but everything has been cleared up for your show.” We were ushered into the cavernous stadium, which retained a distinctly horsey aroma, dumped our baggage in the locker rooms, and hurried onto the huge, hastily erected wooden stage. It was already six-thirty and the show was due to start at eight, so time was in short supply. Just as we began to test our microphones, the stadium doors gave way and thousands of screaming kids flooded into the arena, determined to lay claim to the front seats. Gordon had to beat a hasty retreat from the stage without doing a proper check or he risked being mobbed by excited fans. The promoter assured us that the sound men could set the mike levels themselves. Back in the change room, I zipped up my lacy cream dress, trying to control my agitations over our aborted sound check.
I will never forget the agonizing feeling of having to walk onstage to play for twelve thousand restless kids who had been rained out and were not anticipating an opening act. To my horror, as my fingers struck up the first chords of “Asturias,” no sound came through the speakers. I leaned into the voice mike to say, “Good evening, everyone,” hoping to explain that the sound system needed to be adjusted, but nothing could be heard except my own tiny unamplified voice, which in a stadium built for thousands hardly made it to the first row. “Just keep on playing, honey!” the engineer yelled. I could see Lightfoot running around the speakers shouting at the technicians. Valiantly, I played on with a sinking heart as the audience shuffled uneasily and a few whistles could be heard. Why, instead of “If You Could Read My Mind,” were they being subjected to an inaudible classical guitarist? How thankful I was that no one could read my mind at that moment!
After an excruciating eternity, the massive speakers boomed forth with my chords and the audience relaxed. Once the set was over, I groped my way offstage, blinded by the Super Trouper lights. What a total catastrophe! Gordon was already striding onstage to the loud cheering of fans as I hid in the locker room ready to burst into tears, convinced I had just ruined my career. Even Gordon’s words of comfort later that evening did nothing to console me. Fortunately, this mortifying scenario was never repeated. The many concerts Gordon and I shared were well received, with very few technical hitches. After that Denver disaster, however, I always raced onstage first to make sure that my microphones were working.
We played so many different cities on both sides of the border, including Philadelphia, Traverse City, Peterborough, Hamilton, Montreal, and Boston, that tours dissolved into a blur of Learjets, limo rides, hotel check-ins, press interviews, and jammed concert venues. I studied my sheet music while sitting beside Gordon on the plane, and he used to glance over at the jumble of notes and numbers, amazed that I could hear the sounds of music from the written page. “Why don’t you write your own stuff instead of playing all these tunes by composers who died hundreds of years ago?” he asked. “Classical guitarists don’t write their own music, they play the works of the great guitar composers or else transcribe pieces by famous masters like Bach, Scarlatti, and Albéniz,” I smugly replied. It was however, Gordon Lightfoot, with that casual remark, who first made me think about trying to write my own music. The seed had been planted.
Gordon and I became good friends, but avoided any romantic entanglements. He was routinely approached by beautiful women with stars in their eyes — from eighteen-year-old groupies and poetry-loving college students to older married women. Our curly-haired Canadian troubadour impressed the ladies with his romantic ballads and blue-jeaned, rugged good looks. Sometimes one of his female conquests would accompany us in the plane, but Gordon did not enjoy being away from home for long stretches of time, and the band appreciated shorter tours, as they had wives and children in Toronto. Pee Wee Charles played steel guitar, Terry Clements acoustic and electric guitars, Barry Keane drums, and Rick Haynes bass: a good-natured group who amused themselves with practical jokes to make life on the road more tolerable. We usually played Thursday, Friday, and twice on Saturday and Sunday, rarely staying away for more than a week. Backstage, Gordon made a habit of popping his head into my dressing room to wish me good luck before the show. That quick hand-squeeze or pat on the shoulder as I waited in the wings to make my entrance meant a great deal. He probably never realized how appreciated those small gestures of support were. Gordon always invited me to join him in press interviews, and he insisted that my name be up on the marquee with his. “You just can’t get Liona off the bottle!” he used to joke as I warmed my hands on a hot water bottle, one of my standard pre-concert routines.
But Gordon was a temperamental man. I witnessed frequent altercations between him and various road managers, light and sound technicians, and promoters. Even his band members occasionally came under fire. I was sure that my turn would come; it was only a matter of time. Amazingly, however, during the two years we toured together, Gordon never uttered a harsh word in my direction, always treating me with utmost consideration. One night, as we wearily flew home in the Air Canada first-class section on the red-eye from Edmonton after playing for the Klondike Days festival at the Coliseum, Gordon saw me trying to sleep curled up in two adjoining seats and came over to tuck me in with a couple of extra pillows and a warm blanket. It was those small thoughtful gestures I will never forget. Lightfoot found himself under considerable pressure in 1977, signing, then unsigning, with superstar manager Jerry Weintraub and disputing with Warner Bros. Records. Here was a taste of the tough side of the music business that Pastore had warned me about.
We were booked in all the major summer festivals and outdoor venues from Tanglewood and the Merriweather Post Pavilion to the Pine Knob Music Theater in Michigan, and the Garden State Arts Center. Playing before these massive audiences gradually became routine, until I felt quite at home in front of the ten to twenty thousand people that Gordon drew each night. The most difficult concerts to endure had been those early student recitals with friends, family, and teachers sitting in the front row; twenty thousand people dissolve into a massive sea of blackness from which I could detach and concentrate solely on the music. After some Spanish selections, I used to announce, tongue-in-cheek, “Now for something completely different. I’d like to play for you two pieces from the top ten in Europe — in 1780.” The crowd invariably laughed before I launched into Bach’s Prelude and Gavotte. It was astonishing how receptive and attentive Gordon’s audiences were to my rather specialized music. The people who came to hear “Sundown” or “Early Morning Rain” listened with fascination to the contrasting sounds of Villa-Lobos and Granados.
One evening I was coerced by Gordon to join a few fans and the band for a drink in the hotel bar in Fort Worth, where we had performed to a sold-out crowd at the Tarrant County Convention Center. As we sipped our margaritas, a power failure forced us to resort to candles. Tiring of the noisy, smoke-filled lounge, I decided to head up to my room carrying a candle. “No candles allowed in the rooms, ma’am,” the waitress admonished in her Texan drawl. Knowing that without a candle or flashlight my room would be totally dark, I tried a second time to abscond with an unlit candle in my handbag, but she intercepted me and I had to hand it back. Feeling angry and desperately tired, I groped my way up the outdoor staircase and stumbled into a pitch-black room, hoping I would not trip over my guitar case. Striking a match from a package I had been given by a sympathetic Pee Wee Charles, I proceeded to carefully light a corner of what felt like the standard Hertz Rent a Car sign on top of the television set. This provided enough light for me to find my way into the bathroom, where I could wash my face and brush my teeth. My next target was a green American Express Card folder, which burned brilliantly in the tub, followed by the room-service menu, dry-cleaning slips, and the Do Not Disturb sign. It was the only way to light the room and was certainly much more dangerous than a candle. I hoped that no other late-arrival guests were busy creating bonfires in their bathtubs!
After falling asleep at around one-thirty, I was startled by the sound of someone knocking on the door of my room. The alarm clock glowed two-thirty. Blearily feeling my way to the door in the dark, I heard Gordon asking to be let in. My God, I thought, has Gordon finally decided that his groupie scene has become boring in comparison to a blackout romance with his opening act? He had never before come to my room, so I was caught off guard by the unexpected visit. Gordon explained that he was concerned I would be afraid to be alone in the dark. Standing at the doorway in my nightgown, with my hair in curlers and cream on my face, I was very thankful for that Texas blackout. To my disbelief, Gordon entered the room, and I heard him taking off his socks and shoes. Before I knew it, he had climbed into the far side of my king-sized bed, mumbling, “Goodnight, sweetheart, I’ll be gone by the morning. Weird smell of smoke in this room, eh?” I tried to fall asleep, slightly uneasy knowing that Gordon’s head was lying a few inches away from my pillow. Suddenly I felt him jump out of bed. What next? I thought. Is he having to use the bathroom every few minutes after all those beers and margaritas? “I forgot, my guitars are in my own room,” he explained, zipping up his leather jacket. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” Sure enough, a few minutes later, there was Gordon banging open the door with his two guitars. I eventually fell asleep and woke around nine to find a pile of ashes in the bath, an empty bed, and no guitars. Had I dreamed it all?
At breakfast Gordon looked a little sheepish and inquired if I had slept well that night. The band, busy wolfing down their scrambled eggs, paid no attention to the loaded question. Later I wondered if perhaps Gordon himself had been afraid to be alone in the dark. Whatever his reasons, I thought it most chivalrous of him to have kept me company. The one night Gordon Lightfoot and I shared a bed was not quite as people might have speculated!
On my birthday, July 11, we had just arrived to play at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. While I was having lunch in a restaurant with Gordon and the band, a beautifully lit birthday cake approached us, carried on high by two smiling waiters singing “Happy Birthday.” “Oh, Gordon, you shouldn’t have!” I exclaimed. “No, it’s nothing to do with me,” he insisted, as the cake drew near. “Oh, how sweet of you guys,” I said, addressing the band, who looked puzzled, until the creamy concoction headed straight past us to the very next table! Gordon must have felt badly that my birthday had not been acknowledged; he excused himself from the table for a few minutes. Later, beside my dessert plate, I found a little wrought-iron cannon about four inches high. “Where did this thing come from?” I queried amusedly, not realizing it was for me. “Well, that’s the best present I could find in the gift shop,” Gordon mumbled. I thanked him with a hug and kiss while the band cheered. Later that night, when our plane was boarded by Canadian customs officials on our return to Toronto, we were asked if we had anything to declare. “Oh, nothing at all,” Gordon answered confidently, until Barry chirped up, “Except for Liona’s cannon.” “What cannon, miss?” the unsmiling official demanded, making me unpack my entire suitcase until he satisfied himself that I was not importing illegal firearms into Canada.
As often happened, Gordon drove me home from the airport, since I lived en route to his house in Rosedale. At 4:00 a.m., when we pulled up in front of my parents’ Paragon Road house, he asked if he could use our toilet facilities for a moment. “By all means,” I replied, “but creep into the house quietly ’cause my parents’ bedroom is quite near the bathroom on the main floor.” After pointing him in the right direction, I tiptoed back down the hall. Suddenly I became aware that my mother had woken and, without a stitch on, was sleepily stumbling toward the bathroom door, thinking it was me in there. Our family has always been unselfconscious about nudity, and on summer nights we always slept au naturel. I reached the bathroom door just as she was about to enter. She had already turned the door handle, pulling it slightly ajar. In an urgent whisper, I emphasized, “Don’t go in the bathroom!” My mother, seeing my panicked eyes and being in a somnambulistic state, had a vision of a monstrous bear that I had locked in the bathroom. Letting out a blood-curdling scream and pulling the door shut fast, she ran off confused to her bedroom, howling all the way! At this point, Gordon was convinced that my mother had seen him standing there taking a leak and shrieked at the sight of a naked man. Gordon fled from the house, embarrassed by what he presumed my mother had seen. By now, Mother was back in bed fully awake, laughing uncontrollably about the impact she must have had on the unfortunate Mr. Lightfoot, who while peacefully relieving himself had been abruptly interrupted by a naked woman backing into the door and letting out hysterical shrieks. Never again did Gordon dare come into our house on the way home from the airport, even though I assured him that my mother would not be giving any repeat performances. He was not taking any chances.
New York’s International Creative Management booked Gordon and me four concerts in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. This was to be the Big Time in the Big Apple; both of us were excited and apprehensive about how we would be received by the New York critics. Cal decided to smuggle himself into the luxurious Pierre Hotel, where Gordon’s entourage was staying. It was the first and almost the last time that I took a boyfriend on tour. Whenever I sat down to practise the guitar, I felt guilty for neglecting Cal, who would stretch out on the bed and tell me my pieces sounded so good they did not require rehearsing. “Why don’t you come over here and let me give you a cuddle instead of going over and over that same old music?” he would complain. If I decided to oblige, I immediately felt guilty for neglecting the guitar, which was, after all, the reason we were in New York. Cal’s amorous demands were not allowing me enough rest; these conflicts left me feeling unfocused and distracted. I resolved that, in future, I must separate my personal and professional lives.
Variety gave us a great review, saying, “Liona made the guitar sound as if it were invented for her alone.” Hopefully no other guitarists read Variety! During a couple of meetings with London Records, who had taken over the international distribution of my albums from Boot, I tried to convince them that the Lightfoot tour was exposing me to massive audiences. Why could they not make a stronger effort at record distribution in the cities where I would be appearing? It was all rather futile, as the ultra-classical executives at London had their heads so buried in operatic negotiations and symphonic scores that they neither knew nor cared who Lightfoot was. Regrettably, they missed a unique marketing and sales opportunity for my albums because of their narrow classical outlook. As soon as my Boot contract expired I signed a five-album deal with CBS Masterworks in New York, which released The First Lady of the Guitar and Spanish Fantasy. At last I had a strong label with better international distribution.
Gordon and I flew off to Texas to woo sold-out crowds in large venues, including Fort Worth’s Tarrant County Convention Center. The Texans, our most ebullient and enthusiastic audiences, loved us both. In the border town of El Paso, Mexicans whistled and shouted loud bravos after my Spanish pieces. Two fierce Dobermans had been released into Gordon’s Learjet to sniff out any drugs, but luckily no illicit substances were detected. In Cincinnati I asked one of the backstage organizers for a Coke; he returned twenty minutes later and whispered that the supply would be arriving with the promoter within the hour. I gave him a puzzled look, explaining that all I wanted was a Coca-Cola! Somehow I always felt too ingenuous for the tough world of rock and roll with its leather-jacketed promoters and macho crews.
Gordon was honoured in October 1976 by the city of Duluth, Minnesota, home to many of the sailors who had drowned on the Edmund Fitzgerald when it sank in Lake Superior. The ship’s tragedy had been chronicled by Gordon in his epic ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which was then number one on all the charts. In every city we played, arenas and hockey stadiums were jammed to capacity. I was becoming accustomed to large crowds and stages on centre ice. Vivien, studying dentistry in Chicago, came to see us in Kalamazoo, Michigan, incredulous that her sister was about to pluck her guitar pieces before twelve thousand people.
It was an exciting time in my career, offering me a taste of the lifestyle shared by major performing stars — backstage introductions to John Denver and Kris Kristofferson, private jets, limos, post-concert parties, and wild applause. In between my Lightfoot tours, I continued to play smaller recitals — Powell River, British Columbia; Wolfville, Nova Scotia; Cape Breton; Lennoxville, Quebec. I played Fantasía para un gentilhombre with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Mario Bernardi at two concerts in Ottawa, relishing the contrasts between the large and small concerts, and appreciating each situation for its individual satisfactions; the variety of experiences kept everything fresh and stimulating.
In Seattle, after giving a private guitar lesson to the chief design engineer of Boeing, Murray Booth, I was invited on a fascinating tour of his plant, where he recklessly allowed me to clamber into Air Force One, the U.S. president’s plane, which was being refitted in one of the hangars. As I sat in the pilot’s seat and snapped a photo, a silent alarm was triggered; the next thing we knew, two Boeing officials in cars with blaring sirens raced up to the plane to reprimand him and confiscate my film.
In August 1976, Gordon accepted four dates at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. Having never been to the City of Angels, I was elated at the prospect of visiting Beverly Hills and Hollywood. We stayed at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard, and every evening, were driven over the twists and curves of Laurel Canyon to Universal Studios. The evenings were so chilly that, wearing only a thin cotton gown, I froze on the outdoor stage during my first show. For the remaining three performances, I warmed my fingers on a hot water bottle hidden behind my chair. On a whim, I looked up my lost love from 1966, Paul Koslo. He came to hear the concert and later partake in my feast of fruit, cheese, and wine in the private Winnebago I had been assigned on the amphitheatre back lot. Following his dreams, Paul had pursued his acting career in Hollywood. Even more spacey and dissipated than he had been during his acid-tripping days in Toronto, my romantic teenage heartthrob had become a movie star. I preferred to remember the hippie idealist passionately strumming his guitar in my parents’ living room. Memories are sometimes better left shrouded in the past.
Gordon had developed a drinking problem, which was becoming harder and harder to conceal. At the slightest provocation, he exploded at his employees. Some evenings our headliner was decidedly tipsy before the shows, causing his promoters acute consternation. The making and breaking of management deals, combined with a series of erratic romances, was exacting its toll from the troubled troubadour from Orillia. Wisely, Gordon overcame his drinking habit in the early eighties. One day he asked what I was doing with the cheques he generously paid me every week. I explained that I was saving up to help my parents buy a larger house. Paragon Road could no longer contain all the Boyd gang, and I was embarrassed to have only a small basement room to call my own. Gordon introduced me to his accountant, who set up my corporation, Liona Boyd Productions Inc. Little did I know that, twenty years later, this relationship would cost me all the fees I had earned from Gordon, as the accountant involved me, along with many others, in poor real estate investments. That same year, we relocated to a more spacious house in Etobicoke, on the shoreline of prehistoric Lake Iroquois, which is now part of Toronto.
While on the road with Gordon, I used to listen from the sidelines to his endless problems with lawyers, agents, and managers. I had always reasoned that everything would become easier once I “hit it big” as a recording artist, but money and success complicate life; within a few years, I was experiencing the same professional headaches.
Toward the end of my Lightfoot tours, my sporadic life with Cal had become a daily roller-coaster ride and I was increasingly afraid of his emotional ups and downs. His volatile nature was too much of a contrast to my more even temperament. On several occasions, I flew back to Toronto only to find that my disconsolate lover had put himself on the next plane and turned up on the doorstep of my parents’ house begging forgiveness. Finally, I decided that his ongoing jealousy toward my career was intolerable. The situation was exacerbated by the knowledge that he had countless contacts in the music world, yet refused my requests for introductions. One night he screamed at me for wanting to play on a telethon. The next moment he was in tears, telling me I was the love of his life. The dizzying see-saw of feelings grew unbearable, and one December evening in 1976, after a dispute, he started to hit me uncontrollably. Terrified by his aberrant behaviour, I fled to a neighbour’s house, where I spent the night wrapped in a blanket on the carpet after calling the police. Physical violence was something I had not anticipated. The next morning, I packed all my belongings while an officer observed, and caught a plane to Mexico, where my parents were spending Christmas.
It was a terrible trip. I cried on the plane, knowing it was finally over between Cal and me. On arrival in Mexico City, I learned that the airline could not locate my guitar; bad enough to lose my boyfriend, but losing my guitar was even worse! A girlfriend of Mexico’s famous actor Cantinflas, whom I had met on the plane, tried to ameliorate my distress, inviting me to stay in her sumptuous Camino Real suite while the airline searched for my missing guitar. I could not have been the best of company. After three days of anxious waiting, I was thrilled to see Cantinflas’s chauffeur miraculously materialize with my guitar, exclaiming triumphantly, “She is found in Seattle!” I fought my way through the crowded bus station to the only available transportation — a third-class Flecha Amarilla bus crammed to the roof with peasants and bleating goats. I had to support a wizened peasant woman with a tubercular cough on my knees, who dumped a basket containing her squawking rooster at my feet. After four interminable hours of bumping along mountain roads and lurching to an uncertain halt at every dusty village, the bus deposited me in the darkened market streets of San Miguel de Allende. I struggled my way to the central Jardín, where I knew my anxious parents had been waiting for hours, expecting me to arrive on the first-class bus, La Estrella del Norte. The bells of the Parroquia started to ring as I dragged my guitar case over the familiar cobblestoned streets. It was midnight on Christmas Eve. The stresses of the preceding week left me so enervated that I spent the next week in bed, cursing the emotional maelstrom that Cal had put me through.