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.

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