Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian pop/folksinger who had several musical hits in the early 1970s, including If You Could Read My Mind, Carefree Highway, and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
His songs have been covered by a who’s who of 20th Century music acts, such as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, The Grateful Dead, and Eric Clapton.
Lightfoot’s biggest hit song was Sundown (1974).
The song was reportedly inspired by Lightfoot’s tempestuous - and sometimes violent - affair with his mistress and backup singer Cathy Smith.
Cathy Smith was a groupie on the Canadian music scene.
She had a love child with one of the members of the Canadian band know as The Band.
However, it was unclear which musician was the father - Levon Helm, Rick Danko, or Richard Manuel. They had all slept with her.
So had Gordon Lightfoot, which was why his wife left him. That led to the most costly divorce in Canadian history (at that time).
Cathy Smith eventually moved to Los Angeles.
She became a drug dealer. She sold to celebrities, most notably rock and roll legends Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
March 4-5, 1982: John Belushi, star of movies and Saturday Night Live, was at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel on Sunset Boulevard known for celebrity guests.
Belushi was visited that evening by Robin Williams and then by Robert DeNiro. Cathy Smith was also in Belushi’s bungalow. The actors left, but Smith remained.
At noon the next day, a friend found Belushi dead in his bungalow.
The Los Angeles Police and Coroner did not immediately reveal the cause of death, but he died from receiving a speedball, a combination of heroin and cocaine.
That day, Cathy Smith was arrested on a drug charge. LAPD let her go after questioning.
Why the police released her is unclear. They might have mistakenly thought that Smith was a police informant involved in a sting operation gone awry.
Regardless, Belushi was dead and Smith was a free woman. She split for Canada.
Two months later, she confessed to the National Enquirer magazine that she had injected Belushi with the speedball that took his life.
Authorities had Smith extradited to the US to stand trial. She took a plea of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
She then returned to Canada and lived in obscurity as a legal secretary.
Smith died in 2020 at age 73. Smith outlived Belushi, Helm, Danko, and Manuel.
As of this writing, Gordon Lightfoot is still alive.
He said the following about Cathy Smith after her death: “Cathy was a great lady… Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don’t have a bad thing to say about her.”
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