The Peculiar Truth about the Woman Who Killed John Belushi
Published in
3 min readJan 24, 2023
- 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 Johnny Cash, 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 and backup singer on the Canadian music scene.
- She had a love child with one of the members of the Canadian band known 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. Her main clients were celebrities, most notably rock and roll legends Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
- March 4–5, 1982: John…
