Lying in bed one morning in Boulder, Colorado, in late 1976 or early 1977, I was immediately mesmerized when an unknown but beautiful song came on the radio. It was “Lord of the Starfields” by Bruce Cockburn, a Canadian artist few Americans knew at that time.
The song triggered me to follow Bruce’s music and the 34 albums he has recorded to this day. Cockburn is now performing throughout North America on his 50th Anniversary Concert Tour 2nd Attempt and celebrating the release of his double album Greatest Hits (1970-2020). The tour is a second attempt, because the first attempt in late 2020 was derailed by the pandemic.
Lord of the starfields
Ancient of days
Universe Maker
Here’s a song in your praise
Wings of the storm cloud
Beginning and end
You make my heart leap
Like a banner in the wind
O love that fires the sun
Keep me burning.
Lord of the starfields
Sower of life,
Heaven and earth are
Full of your light
Voice of the nova
Smile of the dew
All of our yearning
Only comes home to you
O love that fires the sun
keep me burning
“I’ve always thought of that song as an attempt to write a psalm,” Cockburn explains to me. “In May 1976, I happened to be visiting a friend’s cabin near Killaloe, Ontario. It was situated in quite a remote area, densely wooded with mature evergreens. I went for a walk, by myself, on the nearby gravel road. It was fully dark. All that was visible was the star-strewn sky, framed by the black silhouettes of the trees that lined the road. As sometimes happens, the immensity and depth of space filled me with a kind of ecstatic awe. The phrase ‘Lord of the starfields’ came to me. Back home a few days later, I was able to spin that into a song. For me, it’s still a celebration of the Divine — of love as a cosmic force.”
“Lord of the Starfields” is just one of many songs that have established Cockburn as one of music’s greatest songwriters. TrouserPress.com, an online outgrowth of the influential 1970s and 1980s rock and roll magazine Trouser Press, says Cockburn is “pretty much worshipped as a deity” in Canada — “a widely respected songwriter and guitarist of distinction” who has “been overlooked or taken for granted” most of his career.
Cockburn’s “Wondering Where the Lions Are” from the 1979 album Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaw is his most well-known song, peaking at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980. Other popular songs include “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” both from 1984’s Stealing Fire, and “If a Tree Falls,” a song from 1988’s Big Circumstance that reached No. 20 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Cockburn tells me he has recorded about 300 songs through the years. Choosing the contents of Greatest Hits (1970-2020) was “pretty easy,” he says. “We decided to put together all the songs we released as singles, starting with the first one.”
The first song on the 30-song album is “Going to the Country,” which Cockburn wrote in 1968 while traveling from Ottawa to Montreal and released on his self-titled 1970 debut album. “Lord of the Starfields” wasn’t a single on 1976’s In the Falling Dark, but another song on that record, “Silver Wheels,” is included on the Greatest Hits album. The song is “Going to the Country” on amphetamine, Cockburn writes in the Greatest Hits liner notes, and the lyrics stem from his notes on “a headlong westward plunge across the prairies” with a “head full of (Allen) Ginsburg’s The Fall of America (Poems of These States, 1965–1971).”
High speed drift on a prairie road
Hot tires sing like a string being bowed
Sudden town rears up then explodes
Fragments resolve into white line code
Whirl on silver wheels
About four years after I inadvertently discovered Cockburn’s music on a Boulder radio station, I saw him perform at a Long Island club, My Father’s Place. Again, I was mesmerized. I had expected to hear top-quality songs from an excellent singer-songwriter, but, besides that, I watched an incredible acoustic guitar player whose playing may have topped the songs themselves that night. “I remember playing at My Father’s Place a couple of times,” Cockburn says. “The audiences were friendly. My shows, especially the solo ones, have always been a lot about words and guitar. Some nights, there’s more guitar than others. I like to think that my playing has developed and matured over the years.”
Trouser Press writer Brad Reno was apparently also aware of Cockburn’s guitar prowess when he attempted to sum up the musician’s career. Reno writes at TroueserPress.com: “Cockburn’s career has progressed through many stages — Nick Drake-style hippie folkster, jazz-rocking Christian mystic, left-wing art rocker wanting to blow shit up, roots rocker. What’s been consistent throughout are his sometimes moving, sometimes clunky, poetic lyrics; his distinctive baritone voice, and his outstanding guitar playing, which impresses more through intricacy and imagination than it does through power or showboating.”
Besides his songwriting and musicianship, Cockburn has been known for his political and social activism, including initiatives to champion human rights and improve the environment. Reno’s “blow shit up” reference pertains to Cockburn’s “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” an angry song he wrote after visiting Guatemalan refugee camps in Mexico.
I ask Cockburn whether his views of America have changed since the 2016 presidential campaign and election.
“The USA was a crazy place when I was studying in Boston in the 1960s, and it still is,” he responds. “How obvious that is and how much it’s on people’s minds comes and goes. Right now, I’d say it’s about as obvious as it could be. Trump and company found the crazy vein and pumped it full of toxic shit to the point of overdosing. It would be gratifying if we could get the pendulum to swing the other way and rediscover how much there is to love about the country and each other.”
I ask Cockburn about his love of music and the best albums he has ever heard.
“Maybe (John) Coltrane’s A Love Supreme or (Charles) Mingus’ Tijuana Moods,” he says. “Maybe Pablo Casals’ recording of the Bach cello suites, maybe (Bob) Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. Hard to choose only one.”
What about the best concert he ever attended? “I don’t go to many concerts that I’m not in, though I’ve been to a few great ones,” he says. “Laurie Anderson at Massey Hall in Toronto in the 1980s, Leonard Cohen in Oakland a few years ago, Jimi Hendrix in Montréal in the 1960s when my band opened for him. Sinead O’Connor in San Francisco right before the COVID shutdown was pretty darn good, too.”
It’s been quite an illustrious career for Cockburn since those days long ago opening for Hendrix. So, I ask him whether there are any prevailing messages he has tried to covey to the world throughout his career or would like to share now, a turbulent time amidst a pandemic.
“Love, love, love and love,” he replies. “And respect for ourselves, each other and the planet that gives us life. Don’t lose hope, and don’t give up.”
Website: http://brucecockburn.com/