Leonard Cohen: Classic or Dud

I'd get the oral sex first and then write the song after...

Still classic though.

Since this LP doesn't mark any kind of a departure for Cohen, I wonder how he can be classic but this record shite? I say it's real good, and fits comfortably in with the rest of his catalog.

It goes like this/the fourth, the fifth

first few albums is classicz, sez I. "The Partisian" is fucking badass, even when 16 Horsepower covered it.

after all that, it gets a bit dodgy. the man should never have been introduced to the synthesizer. and "Don't Go Home With..." is a classic example whenever one needs to explain the concept of "overproduction" to a neophyte.

the funny bit: i got into the guy after hearing the snippet of "If It Be Your Will" that's played in "Pump Up the Volume".

Oh, CLASSIC btw, especially the first decade or so.

Suzanne is exempt from this, though. It's always great.

my fave is typically whatever i'm listening to at the point but i tend to listen to "love and hate" and "new skin" most of all

The lyrics to Avalanche are sheer genius. Ditto fer Dress Rehearsal Rag, Susanne, Lady Midnight and Story Of Isaasc. He totally fuckin' rocks dude.

Also other great songwriters seem pretty inconcise or repetitive compared to Lenny the Great.

The arrangements are good to. The eighties stuff is kinda weird. Although Tower of Song has a nice production effect. At least he didn't go techno.

-- Leonard Cohen, Rolling Stone interview 2003.

all-time classic, no doubt.

The ladyfriend is watching The Backwoods on TV now, which features a number of songs by Leonard (also features Gary Oldman...).

Got me back in the mood for him again.

I had the honor of interviewing him many years ago and what stuck out beyond his modesty was how when I transcribed the tape it read like third draft English. He spoke so eloquently and with a natural poetry. It didn't feel like a put on. He wasn't trying to be something or putting on airs (is that the right use of that word?). He was generous and really made it hard for me to interview a 20-something year old hipster after that without thinking, "listen, dude, you can't be giving me this much attitude if a man of LC's accomplishment can treat people with greater respect."

jazz police amazing

I had the honor of interviewing him many years ago and what stuck out beyond his modesty was how when I transcribed the tape it read like third draft English. He spoke so eloquently and with a natural poetry.

When I see questions like this I always think of the Steve Wright gag: 'I got a tape for my car, Best of Music. I only like the first side.'
Is there really anyone out there for whom Len is on side 2 of that tape?

he just played a 3 1/2 hour show, pretty epic

Love his music but it always bums me out when smart people fall for gurus.

He's a Buddhist monk. That hardly makes him the follower of some wacky new age guru.

Classic, of course. I'm Your Man is my favourite. I think Jazz Police is really funny. Great Thelonius Monk as derange cocktail bar pianist solo too.

Beautiful Losers is far and away the best novel ever written by a rock musician. Granted, the competition isn't exactly fierce, so let's put it another way: it's one of the best transgressive novels of the 1960s, up there with Burroughs, Trocchi, Baldwin et al and a great piece of postmodern fiction too.

This thread SUCKS

uh, yeah.

leonard cohen is basically god. so there.

oh man, confession time...i've tried really hard, but makes my skin crawl....someone direct me to something to change my mind

iago how much do you care about lyrics? I can't imagine anybody feeling more than "that's pleasant" about any LC unless they are very into lyrics.

yeah, i haven't sit down and focused, just put it on and did other stuff...always figured the way in was the words.

is it early stuff you've heard or later stuff? because I always kinda liked his so-called classic early stuff, but it wasn't til I dug into the 80s albums that I became convinced of his genius.

yeah I mean Leonard Cohen is specifically for people who are listening for the lyrics. The music can be quite compelling but it's only in the context of the lyrics.

iago how much do you care about lyrics? I can't imagine anybody feeling more than "that's pleasant" about any LC unless they are very into lyrics.

― gross rainbow of haerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Friday, July 30, 2010 9:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i fucking hate this notion. lyrics and music ARE NOT TWO SEPARATE THINGS. they are fundamentally intertwined.

also the idea of people being uniquely "into lyrics" seems kind of absurd to me.

there's lots of ppl who dont care abt lyrics?

all i wanna say is that they don't really care about lyrics

naw some of the music's great - fuck it, all of the music's great; the arrangements on the first record are other worldly, the mellotron-rising strings, the jankity faraway fairground sounds, etc; there's a sensitivity and detail akin to the first nico record maybe. they're all such closely recorded, imtimate records, like it's a man's world or something. and there's such gallop to some of them - the partisan, fingerprints, the rowdy ones on love and hate.

anyway: thought this might've been bumped re: bird on a wire, the little seen thought-lost documentary that just got found and is showing again in a couple of weeks (dvd forthcoming etc). my mom saw it at the cinema in the seventies and - i forget whether this is from the docu or from something someone who saw him in concert said - still laughs at the memory of leonard's singers coming on stage to their 'ooooo's, and then leaving the stage until the next oooos.

oooh sweet didn't even know about that, thanks.

also, best comment on leonard's appeal came from the singer out of lamb, appearing in some documentary: "he's like isaac hayes, for poetry girls"

i fucking hate this notion. lyrics and music ARE NOT TWO SEPARATE THINGS. they are fundamentally intertwined.

that's a nice opinion, but it's not true; one can reproduce the lyrics of a song on paper, and there you go, the lyrics, all by their lonesome; one can do an instrumental version of a song, and what do you know, the music, a totally separate thing. you can argue that they're best together but your present argument is that there's no such thing as a hot dog or mustard, just a dog with mustard because the flavors intertwine

of course you could always say "for me, the two are fundamentally intertwined, and it's hard for me to imagine how people don't think of it that way," and who could argue with you there?

Of course most people don't care about lyrics. Consider the fact that the hot new thing is Best Coast, while Simon Joyner probably couldn't sell out an in-store. Even (relatively) popular artists who happen to be excellent lyricists - like Bill Callahan, Will Sheff, Sam Beam, etc - are celebrated more for their eccentricities, their 'style,' or the fact that this song or that song features a harpsichord or, God forbid, has good 'production' (which I'm still convinced most indie fans don't know from 'engineering' anyway).

Sorry for the rant. Leonard Cohen rules, duh.

Melody is where they intertwine. But Cohen is such a formal poet (other than his actual poetry, which is often free verse) that the lyrics aren't dependent on the specific melody. Never Any Good has great lyrics, is a great "song" from the lyrics alone, but has a crazy arrangement that doesn't serve it well. "A Thousand Kisses Deep" has an identical meter to "Coming Back to You," and so the melodies could be switched on them as well. Once you get into free verse, harder to impose a melody on individual lyrics without changing the "song."

Consider the fact that the hot new thing is Best Coast, while Simon Joyner probably couldn't sell out an in-store.

these aren't really an ideal comparison, though; simon joyner is not jumpin' electric guitar music excised of the woos and wailing. arguments that discount the lyrical value of 'simple' lyrics blow, ignoring the poetry and articulacy of chuck berry. i think equating 'don't care about lyrics' with 'eschew bill callahan's meditations on faith' is wrong - people get a lot of wisdom and communion out of shangri-las records. if it's that leonard cohen is a guy who writes esoteric meandering verses and doesn't throw a lot of bones to foot-tapping hip-swingers, maybe that's so.

You raise some very good points. I didn't say lyrics need to be meaningful or 'deep' to resonate - "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah' is as good a pop lyric as any, I reckon. My issue is that a lot of contemporary bands barely try, and worse, no one seems to mind. The new Black Keys album would be terrific if it were instrumental, but as it is I can barely enjoy it because it sounds like the lyrics were improvised on the spot. You'll say lyrics aren't the point of Black Keys's specific brand of juke garage blues, and fair enough, but, I mean, these make your average Fat Possum also-ran sound like Balzac.

I guess I just don't see why a band like Best Coast, with all their bone-throwing to foot-tapping hip swingers (who prefer their vocals obscured by cowardly reverb, anyway) can't ALSO feature lyrics as devastatingly great as Simon Joyner's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIR5ps8usuo

does anyone not want to grow up and be leonard cohen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_223jKXKgQ

p.s. new album is predictably dope as hell.

Meantime:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0413-cohen-verdict-20120413,0,3990744.story

oh no biggie, my manager threatens to kill me all the time! come on, leonard.

she looks like a GOP lawyer.

Also: this man is an asshole:

http://www.lowtimespodcast.com/the-insufferable-adam-cohen/

Which man, the author or the subject?

This is brilliant:

http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2012/pc/pod-v-29031207m26stjmsquiz2-pid0-446376_audio.mp3

It's a clip from an LC competition ("Knowin' your Cohen") held on Ireland's RTE 1. The contestants are hopeless.

Hey how's that Isle of Wight reissue thingy with the DVD? Want it but it's 'spensive

The cd is good - you get the concert in full, with great sound.

The dvd - not so much... It's a standard Murray Lerner botch job. Most of the songs don't appear and those that do are edited down. Instead you get a few dull interview clips (Joan Baez...) and some footage of the festival

Thanks dude. That sounds about right.

seeing leonard tonight at home.

You paid the Kickstarter to get him to play your living room?

That was, what, $500? Deep pockets!

"Hello, I'm Leonard. What do you have in the way of snacks?"

magnificent live performer

"Any tea? Oranges even? From China?"

Really wanted to ee him in Cicago last week but wasn't around. 3.5 hiur show.

That's because he sings very slowly.

(sorry for the typos above)

3.5 hrs

how was it
other than in length

210 minutes

Does he still recite a couplet from the song he's about to sing before it starts?

what insights did you glean
about the soul of a poet

Does he still recite a couplet from the song he's about to sing before it starts?

― 2 Chain Pizzas (to go) (Eazy), Thursday, November 29, 2012 12:36 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he did that a bunch, as well as some poetry. it was awesome.

i love the bootleg where he intros sisters of mercy w/ an improv -- "i love to spend the night with two girlssssss...it's better than one ... and it's better than none."

has he acknowledegd that democracy is not coming to the USA?

in a brief powerpoint presentation

HEH. HEH HEH. THE MONKEY.

he has a song where he talks about rosicrucianism and it was the only place or time or association i have with that word and then last weekend i was reading something and it mentioned rosicrucians ('money', maybe? now i cant remember where) and i was caught off-guard, i think i half-thought leonard cohen had made them up

they can give you back your hope

recent songs is a masterpiece, I am a little in love tbh, what an amazing album that I have overlooked for all these years

this is has been one of several nights recently when I have gotten a little drunk and put on some leonard cohen and marvel at the man

"The Window," "Ballad of the Absent Mare," and the rest. It's really the bridge between his early style and his mature style.

In the sleevenotes of this album Cohen thanks his mother, "for reminding me of the kind of music she loved before she died"

tonite is i'm your man and various positions, these are so amazing despite their imperfections, the title track on im your man and everybody knows and then dance me to th end of love are just so perfect

oh shit and then coming back to you

everything is all so good, wow leonard you've been there all along and I've finally noticed

:-)

when I saw him the 2nd time in london he had a few various positions songs in his set inc. night comes on!

marcos if you haven't already you need to hear the field commander cohen album

it is my desert island album probably

me + a couple of friends discovered i'm your man in high school and our callow instinct was to mock it (keyboards, 80s production, intensely serious vocals, this waltz this waltz this waltz this waltz) and put it on 4 lulz etc., but as time passed we realized we were listening to it all the time. it's the best. you know you can. i like its disreputable moments too (you can imagine how much i liked them then). turtle meat.

(was also obsessed at the time w "don't go home with your hard-on" -- this is a pretty sour song, in retrospect, isn't it, like contemporary dylan. what happened to arty singer-songwriters in the late 70s? just divorce? at least this has the grace iirc to also sound as sour as possible.)

Progress with Cohen was:

- Reading Suzanne in the Norton Anthology of Poetry in high school
- "Everybody Knows" in Pump Up The Volume
- "Ain't No Cure for Love" in Love at Large
- Buying a ticket last-minute to see him in 1993, knowing only those two songs. Still probably my epiphany concert of any.
- Ending up living in Montreal on a study grant, finding he has novels in addition to the rest. Devouring everything except Death of a Ladies Man, which I still haven't heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG9zED01DuA

"Paper Thin Hotel" is one of my fave lyrics ever

lately new skin has been the favorite

"New Skin" remains the ultimate! Was at a Newbury Comics on Sunday & an employee was playing it straight through, which was so unexpected & awesome.

Has been one of my favorite albums ever for 20 or so years. They're all great but "Field Commander Cohen" has always struck a nerve.

NYers, last weekend for this

https://thejewishmuseum.org/index.php/exhibitions/leonard-cohen-a-crack-in-everything

Loved this show ^^.

FWIW I really disliked the show. I think I just can't with art shows about musicians. It felt overly worshipful or something -- I didn't find anything all that engaging on its own merits in an artistic sense, the whole thing was just "WOW LEONARD COHEN GENIUS WOW." Although the thing with the mens choir was sort of fun.

was it the Conspiracy of Beards? (there can't be more than one all-Leonard Cohen men's choir...)

i thought it was mediocre too

xp no it was a video installation that included the mens choir from his synagogue on one screen and then a bunch of rando fans who I think responded to an ad on other screens in a different room

The best part of this show was the room with the slideshow of his self-portraits.

If you ever visit L.A. you can easily track down his old apartment here, the one where he was photographed on the front lawn for the cover of Old Ideas. I believe that apartment is where he passed away.

1033 S Tremaine Ave is the address.

my w1fe, who adored him, is bummed that she never knew he lived only three blocks away from her during her time living on Mansfield Ave at 8th St.

https://pitchfork.com/news/new-leonard-cohen-album-thanks-for-the-dance-announced-listen-to-the-goal/

already get the feeling from that short tune that it feels weird/wrong to consider it a "Leonard Cohen album"

dud

you're a dud

with due respect

He's good!.

Best mismatched inner sleeve EVER? pic.twitter.com/h0aS9K6g3B

— Laurie’s Planet of Sound (@lauriespos) November 9, 2019

Lol

I can picture Roger Sterling picking up both those records for his pad in 1972.

fuck New Skin For Old Ceremony is just devastating

so many good lines on "Happens to the Heart", album out today
https://open.spotify.com/track/2DkpoHJ1h88e9dyc6SFIm2?si=MHmybq37SN-uG5U0iWNIQw

new album is wonderful

Ranking his openers!

You Want it Darker is such a perfect opener.

I knew this thread had to exist. To me, he is THE classic, but he is definitely not for everyone--which makes him even more of a classic.

He might not be for everyone, en toto, but everyone likes at least something he's done. Like, who really besides him and Mariah Carey have had a song become a standard in the last few decades?

They do, but most often when it's done by someone else. Everyone loves the Jeff Buckley cover of Hallelujah, even though it's missing an entire stanza.

Dylan's Make You Feel My Love probably goes in there too, some big ass versions of that

I wasn't a big Leonard Cohen fan (of his own recordings that is) until I got the DVD Live in London. IIRC the audio is exactly the same as what was used for the CD of the same name, but I usually prefer live DVD's over CD's. Charmed the hell out of me, it sent me back to his earlier albums, but except for his debut and I'm Your Man, I had mixed feelings about how most of those albums were recorded, so the live DVD is still my favorite Cohen release. I also loved how his music was used in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, probably my favorite Altman film.

I was lucky enough to see him before he died, back in 2013. It was, and remains, the single best show I've ever been to. When he played "Famous Blue Raincoat," which is my favorite song, to start his second encore I felt that my concert going career was complete. Everything after is gravy.

And yes, seeing him live was another level from listening to his albums.

Agreed: Live In London is my favourite Cohen release, his Manchester Opera Show performance in the first week of his comeback tour is my favourite gig of all time, and the DVD is a wonderful record of the same tour.

Everyone loves the Jeff Buckley cover of Hallelujah, even though it's missing an entire stanza.

Never heard it. I've heard about a dozen other versions of it though.

I love cohen to the point that I have two Leonard-related prints in my flat, but speaking of that London gig (which I attended!) the fact that he was packing stadia at the end of his career shows that he was pretty well rated for a not-for-everyone fellow

Everyone has a Phil Spector story.

xp totally! Also Cohen returning to live performance due to his shitbag manager spending all of his money may be the greatest case of turning lemons into lemonade in rock history.

Those comeback shows were too smooth and Vegas-y for my liking. There were too many band introductions and too much scripted patter. I was lucky enough to see him in the 1980s and 1990s, which were much rawer and off-the-cuff affairs.

Love Cohen, but would gladly never hear Hallelujah again

Anyone see "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song," 2021 movie doc . I have not yet. Just curious about

I have not but they're screening it at Film Forum in NYC and I believe Alan Light and Larry "Ratso" Sloman are doing separate discussion/Q&A's for it.

Had not heard of that, thanks!
"Hallelujah" has been used in too many already-weepy scenes on TV, and is frequently over-sung, seems like. My favorite version is Willie Nelson's, where he seems to be thinking out loud:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58UjoiSP2wM

Think he also does "Tower of Song" on his new alb, which I haven't heard yet---here's my fave cover of that, by Marianne Faithfull:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS_zzwLgTbE

Stone cold "Famous Blue Raincoat"---this live rendition, from Living (1971), has been stuck in my head for most of my life, and will see me out, no doubt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS_zzwLgTbE

Damn, sorry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE6e9n1HuuM

classic voice, classic diction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVp8JlT1oo0

this Blue Note tribute looks promising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaKR_4S5O7U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugh8Xe6hX7U

2009 interview so good

Has anyone been watching the TV series So Long, Marianne? Wondering if I should give it a shot.

I wish I could, but it's not available in the United States without some VPN trickery.

Just to confuse things further, there's also a feature film with the same title sans comma that came out last year, but it doesn't look very good. Tagline: Behind every great love there is a story.

Not sure if this sort of thing is frowned upon, but...
https://putlocker.pe/tv/watch-so-long-marianne-online-114835

I’m holding out for a biopic with Jeremy Strong.

Cobra Verde recorded a good sing-along, drink-along rendition of that song.

But was there ever a good version of"Bird on a Wire"?

Johnny Cash's and Joe Cocker's?

What's wrong with Cohen's original? If you mean was there ever a good *cover* version, Jennifer Warnes's is excellent.

The Lilac Time also covered "Bird on a Wire" in a 1991 tribute album called "I'm Your Fan" released by Les Inrockuptibles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiJTv92K5uU

That album is full of oddities like John Cale doing Hallelujah and Lloyd Cole doing Chelsea Hotel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2qisdKKMpU

Jennifer Warnes' "Bird on a Wire" is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xsJXDwIL2k

I favour the Willie Nelson version, it sounds very natural when he sings it

I already mentioned that one. xp

Oh, haven't that one, thanks---seems likely, considering his refreshing version of "Hallelujah."
But otherwise, it's always seemed the most abject, sympathy or pathos-seeking dirgethon---the failed twin of "After The Gold Rush," a masterpiece, because it builds that "transcendent" fantasy of escaping ruined Mother Earth---then honestly keens," all in a dreeam"--earns its pathos like "Bird" doesn't,in my ears----but I'll check Willie and some of those others, thanks.

(Also "Gold Rush" honestly and still has the appetite for "There was a band, playing in my head, and I felt like getting high," and honestly, inexorably ties that into "I was thinkin' about what a friend had said, and hopin', it was a lie." What have we come to, when that's what we hope of our friends! It's--the 70s, a new mornin'.

"Bird On The Wire" ain't got none of that, or not enough.

This is the only Joe Cocker track I really enjoy, "Marjorine" (1968):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYtb5vEk3FA

"Bird on a Wire" is miles better than "After the Goldrush".

I think those two songs are attempting v different things, written in different songwriting languages. A closer cousin for me, to “Bird On A Wire”, is Buffy’s “Until It’s Time For You To Go”, ballads that occupy a space between Tin Pan Alley and country

“After The Goldrush” is charming in its hippie-ness, a song-length version of the last chapters of Canticle For Leibowitz (which I assumed was the song’s inspiration, and a Google concludes I’m not the only person to make that assumption)

xp Stoney Edwards has a pretty good version if you like 70s country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHxwyHr1kps

Stoney Edwards! I should have known that; he didn't get to make many records.
Wild about Canticle, I only knew that the song was named after (and maybe other connections to) Dean Stockwell's screenplay of same title. Thanks yall!

This thread led me to find this version with the 1979 Recent Songs band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDJ3Rts_XMA

And then that led to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh6zyJyrrQI

there'll be fires on the road / and the white man dancing

— el Cohen (@ElCohenSincere) November 5, 2024

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCF8ExQuIB8/

that's wonderful!

great stuff

It's the same location as this one:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91dsne9AZsL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg