EDITORIAL: Gordon Lightfoot The immortality of a shipwreck

May 4—Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

That evocative lyric — some claim it to be the greatest in popular music — comes from Gordon Lightfoot's epic retelling of a Lake Superior disaster, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which Lightfoot regarded as his greatest work.

Which is saying something. Lightfoot, who died Monday at age 84, was a prolific writer and performer, with at least 20 albums released in a career that made him an national icon in his native Canada.

"Sundown," an invocation of jealousy and desire inspired by the woman who would go on to inject comedian John Belushi with his fatal overdose, topped the U.S. charts in 1974, a height "Fitzgerald" narrowly missed.

But Lightfoot's 1976 saga of the giant freighter's shipwreck barely a year earlier achieved something greater — a level of immortality for the Edmund Fitzgerald's 29 crew members, all of whom perished in the sinking.

Lightfoot's enduring song has preserved the Fitzgerald disaster from obscurity; it will always part of the legend "of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee."

Which is no small part of the troubadour tradition — telling the stories, preserving the legends, transmitting the history. It is music as journalism and history. Lightfoot took seriously the responsibility of telling the shipwreck story as accurately as artistically possible; at least twice he revised the lyrics for his live performances to be more factually correct.

Lightfoot's song tells of ringing the church bells in Detroit 29 times to honor the lost men of the ship. On Tuesday, the Mariners Church rang the bells 30 times — once for "each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald," with one more for for the songwriter who chronicled their passing. It was a fitting tribute to all.