THE 31-year gap since Canadian folk-pop legend Gordon Lightfoot last toured the UK has proved to be costly to the performer who dominated the album and singles charts in the 1970s. “Gordon who?” greets my excitement at getting an interview with the singer who is touring to Newcastle City Hall. Just the over-60s appear to remember the international impact of a string of hits like If You Could Read My Mind (1970), Sundown" (1974), Rainy Day People (1975) and the based-on-truth The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (1976).

The self-effacing 77-year-old alludes to his diminished fame outside North America by opening with: “We need to be talking to the biggest newspaper in the North-East. So, we’re exactly in the right place. We haven’t been to England for 31 years and the idea just came around. The invitation came a couple of times and, finally, I said, ‘Let’s go for it... none of us is getting any younger. I’m bringing a great little band with me, and they’re all professionals. I’m the only amateur guitarist.”

The comment refers to Lightfoot’s self-taught status. He started to play at the age of 14, “the first time I heard Elvis Presley on the radio”.

He’s pretty sure he’s played Newcastle before and recalls visiting the region as part of a ten-gig tour.

“I love coming over because my roots are all British and my great-grandparents all came from the Midlands and that’s where the Lightfoot name comes from. I think I was born to perform and, as a songwriter, I was always adding to my repertoire. For a long time I covered songs and was finally able to do my own material like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and other people who were coming out of the folk revival of 1963,” he says.

Lightfoot also accepts that his three marriages, six children and need to finance “family matters” kept his focus on North America, where he’s in constant demand, rather than maintaining links elsewhere.

“I have a fairly extended family. I’m on my third marriage as we speak. I’ve got a whole bunch of kids and I really like to look after them. A couple (Meredith and Miles) are also musicians and I spend a lot of time ensuring that I keep the whole thing rolling,” says the singer, who is supporting the pair’s efforts to follow in his footsteps.

Lightfoot’s fame has led to many awards in Canada, Grammy nominations, a place in the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in New York, in 2012, and, last year, a four-metre bronze sculpture was erected in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

“It’s one of those things where you know they are working on something, but you don’t know what it is until it’s time has come. All of a sudden, there’ s an unveiling and I go up to my little home town, and there’s about a 1,000 people there and I was overcome with the whole situation. It’s also on the site of one of the most important folk festivals in North America. It’s also got a whole bunch of my 1970s tunes on it and it’s based on the cover of my Sundown album... and you’re going back to an era that I’d almost want to forget. All through that whole period I’d been on my own, just writing and I drank a lot and had a blast until about 1982. I did a lot of records and wrote eight or nine albums and then I got married for the second time... and it all stopped,” jokes the man, who has regularly played 50 concerts a year for decades.

The turn of the century brought new challenges. He underwent surgery for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm in 2002 and was in a coma for six weeks.

“It probably took 28 months to work through that, but I managed to get back on stage. I was getting ready for a show when it happened in the dressing room at about 4pm. I was on the floor and couldn’t get up. I was terrified of the thought that I couldn’t work and for a long time it appeared that I had good grounds for being concerned.

“Then I had an ischemic attack in 2006 and couldn’t use my right hand to play the guitar. That, too, happened during a sound check in the afternoon and I got through the rest of the tour by just fingering the chords with my left hand. It was quite an experience and my hand started coming back and right now it’s about 98 or 99 per cent. I don’t play now exactly like I did, but I’m happy to play as well as I do. I like to keep up with the other guys in the band. I like to participate.

“When I was lying on the dressing room floors I was more worried about the people working for me. I really was. As it turned out, I didn’t miss any payments that I recall, let’s put it that way,” Lightfoot jokes.

Asked about whether he prefers new material to his 1970s hits, he offers the “oblique” response of: “Too many tunes. Too many women. We’ve never missed the standards in a setlist. We rotate songs and hack out verses here and there because we try to get in as many songs as we can. I don’t like to bore people or keep them too long. I have a 20-minute intermission and the whole thing takes about two hours and five minutes. But I could never shorten a song like The Edmund Fitzgerald, which is six minutes and 15 seconds,” he says.

In November 1975 the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior during a severe storm with the loss of all 29 crew members.

“I sometimes say that If You Could Ready My Mind is my favourite song, but the Edmund Fitzgerald is a true story and I’d have to say that it’s the one I’m proudest of. I was at Whitefish point in November, because it was the 40th anniversary of the sinking, and I was able to meet the family members and there have been many other times when I’ve been able to participate in events. Certain people have stayed in touch constantly and whenever the song was used we’d always clear it with the Ladies Community up in Wisconsin,” says Lightfoot.

“This is the one song which caused my career to flourish,” he adds.

* Saturday, May 21, Newcastle City Hall. Box Office: 08448-112121 or 24-hour hotline 0844-338-0000,

BookingsDirect.com or theatreroyal.co.uk