Song – Four Strong Winds

Also 60 years ago, another Canadian singer-songwriter Ian Tyson (1933-2022) penned and performed “Four Strong Winds”. He wrote it in 1962 – he claimed it was the first song he wrote and that he did so in about 20 minutes – and first performed it in 1963 with his partner Silvia Tyson, performing as the duo “Ian & Silvia” (see photo). They were part of the folk music revival of the early 1960s. In 1978 – in the album “Comes a Time” – it was covered by Neil Young, another Canadian (by birth at least). The song is a lament concerning a faltering – or probably failed – relationship. So much is highlighted in the lyrics below, some, in character, affectionate (“still I wish you’d change your mind, if I ask you one more time”, and “you could meet me if I sent you down the fare”) but others insensitive, albeit in the minds of some also resilient (“but our good times are all gone, and I’m bound for moving on ..” and “all those things that don’t change come what may”):

[Chorus]
Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change come what may
But our good times are all gone
And I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

[Verse 1]
Think I’ll go out to Alberta
Weather’s good there in the fall
I got some friends that I can go to workin’ for
Still I wish you’d change your mind
If I asked you one more time
But we’ve been through that a hundred times or more

[Chorus]
Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change come what may
But our good times are all gone
And I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

[Verse 2]
If I get there before the snow flies
And if things are goin’ good
You could meet me if I sent you down the fare
But by then it would be winter
There ain’t too much for you to do
And those winds sure can blow cold way out there

[Chorus]
Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change come what may
But our good times are all gone
And I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

Despite its vintage, “Four Strong Winds” has become a national ballad of Canada, and is often voted there as the most popular song of all time. Ian Tyson and another celebrated Canadian singer and songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot (“If you could read my mind”, “Sundown”, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), performed the song at the opening ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. In 1989 Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1994 he was awarded the Order of Canada. He died on 29 December 2022, aged 89.

Neil Young’s haunting 1978 cover – which he sings in a duet with Nicolette Larson, and which is linked below in a 2016 remastered version – is one of Young’s best performances, in an otherwise lengthy and impressive discography.