Gordon Lightfoot – Carefree Highway

I was walking around for days with the words “Every Highway” chorus in my head which I knew was Lightfoot but I had forgotten the name of the song. The mystery was solved when I got on youtube.

Lightfoot said he was influenced by a road sign he saw just north of Phoenix, Arizona. Lightfoot was traveling between Southwest concert tour stops in the early 1970s, and jotted the name of the Carefree Highway down on a piece of paper after reading it on a roadway sign. Interstate 17 had just been completed around that time between Phoenix and Camp Verde.

He kept the piece of paper with the song’s lyrics for a long time before turning it into a tune. “I thought it would make a good title for a song, I wrote it down, put it in my suitcase and it stayed there for eight months.” Just in case you want to know… The Carefree Highway is an east-west segment of State Route 74 in Maricopa County that connects I-17 to Tom Darlington Drive near the town of Carefree.

He had said that the song was about Ann, an old girlfriend of his when he was 22. She dropped by to see Gordon much later after the song had been released at a concert. After the concert, he didn’t say a word about the song and he never knew if she knew it was her he was talking about in this song.

The song peaked at #11 in Canada, #1 on the Canada Adult Contemporary Charts, #1 on the Canadian Country Charts, #1 on Billboard 100, and #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary in 1974.

The song was off the album Sundown released in 1974. It peaked at #1 in Canada, #1 on the Billboard Album Charts, and #45 in the UK. This was Lightfoot’s only number 1 album in the Billboard Album Charts.

Gordon Lightfoot: “I thought it would make a good title for a song, I wrote it down, put it in my suitcase and it stayed there for eight months.”

Gordon Lightfoot: “There was a real Ann, it reaches way back to a time when I was about 20 or so. It’s one of those situations where you meet that one woman who knocks you out and then leaves you standing there and says she’s on her way.” 

“She stopped by to say hello, I don’t think she knew that she is the one the song was about, and I wasn’t about to tell her.”

Gordon Lightfoot: “I’m not an act that just sits around and waits for inspiration to hit. Making record albums takes a lot of work and a lot of sweat. To borrow a phrase, 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

 “Writing takes application of your talents. A lot of people think songs pop off the top of your head while you’re walking down the street, but that is not the case. Ideas may come this way, but not songs.

Carefree Highway

Pickin’ up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream
I wonder how the old folks are tonight
Her name was Ann and I’ll be damned if I recall her face
She left me not knowin’ what to do

Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you

Turnin’ back the pages to the times I love best
I wonder if she’ll ever do the same
Now the thing that I call livin’ is just bein’ satisfied
With knowin’ I got no one left to blame

Carefree highway, I got to see you my old flame
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you

Searchin’ through the fragments of my dream-shattered sleep
I wonder if the years have closed her mind
I guess it must be wanderlust or tryin’ to get free
From the good old faithful feelin’ we once knew

Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen the better days
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you
Let me slip away on you

Carefree highway, I got to see you my old flame
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

51 thoughts on “Gordon Lightfoot – Carefree Highway”

  1. A great selection today. Many a Canadian songwriter has found inspiration below the border for song names and lyrics. The Canadian RPM chart was pretty unforgiving at times, #11 is the best that song could do? Anyway lot’s other #1 positions for that tune.

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    1. I thought it would have been higher also. You know…I had a greatest hits of him but I didn’t know the name of this song I’m ashamed to say….but I knew the song.

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  3. I loved this song when it came out. It’s still lovely to hear. It’s cool to know where ‘Carefree Highway’ is located. I wouldn’t have guessed the Phoenix area. The B-side, Cotton Jenny, is so easy to sing along to. I loved it when I heard it on Gord’s Gold, but I don’t remember it ever getting played on the radio when it was the Carefree Highway B-side.

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  4. I love this song, one of Gord’s best and that’s saying something. I didn’t know the background of it though, that’s cool to learn about him seeing a ‘Carefree Highway’ in Arizona giving him inspiration. In Canada ‘Cotton Jenny’ got played on AM some as well, though I seem to think the Anne Murray version was more popular or at least more played.

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    1. Oh yea…like I told someone else…I can’t remember what I did yesterday hardly…but trivia from the 60s and 70s I can remember.

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      2. I was born in 1967 but those two decades is almost the only music I listened to through the 70s and 80s…and through now.
        I agree…when his quizzes hits the 90s until now…I’m toast….and I answer from what I learned off of blog sites.

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      4. Buddy Holly….not many of the 50s artists did real well in the 60s…I believe if he would have lived…he would have been much more successful than his 50s peers.

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      1. It’s funny you should mention Neil. I literally thought about him while writing the comment!😀

        Of course, there’s also Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, Sarah McLachlan and other great Canadian songwriters. This place is a true music treasure trove!

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  8. One HELL of a swell song. Delighted to hear that Carefree Highway and Ann really exist. Imagining when she came to see him and he “re-remembered” her face. Nobody writes them like Gordon Lightfoot. Nobody. Wonderful choice for a beautiful Friday afternoon, Max.

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    2. Those songs that have a real heart to them resound with a real sense of pain, lost opportunities, hurt. You write ’em because they cut so deep, they need some release. And I can also imagine why he never told his Anne it was about her. (Man, we are such conflicted but proudly unyielding fools at times.)

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      2. LOL…I only wish I was that good. The guy has worked with everyone.
        Off topic…. tell me if you want to trade anytime soon….man I’ve hit the skids

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