Leonard Cohen: Album by Album Thread

Since his debut in 1967, Leonard Cohen has sporadically released a catalogue of studio albums that -- as one would expect over almost four decades -- has shown great variety in its scope, whether sonic or lyric. The "gift of [his] golden voice" has also changed in that time. Like fellow word machine Bob Dylan, without whom then-poet and novelist Cohen may never have had the opportunity to record, Cohen is one of those songwriters who is vaunted to almost the same degree his "limited" voice is derided but who, once you absorb its flavor, it is almost inseparable from the finest qualities of his material. Hopefully, folks will focus on the nuance and/or personal experience.

Mea Culpa: My own posting habits are not conducive to "running" a thread like this but, especially with his late resurgence, I think it is long overdue, so rather than coaxing someone else to launch it, I thought I'd get it started just the same. My hope is that folks will spur conversation that sheds light or personal perspctive on Leonard Cohen's works.

So, with that said, let's begin with his 1967 debut, anassumingly entitled Songs:

Side one

1. "Suzanne" – 3:48
2. "Master Song" – 5:55
3. "Winter Lady" – 2:15
4. "The Stranger Song" – 5:00
5. "Sisters of Mercy" – 3:32

Side two

1. "So Long, Marianne" – 5:38
2. "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" – 2:55
3. "Stories of the Street" – 4:35
4. "Teachers" – 3:01
5. "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" – 4:23

Bonus tracks on 2007 reissue

1. "Store Room" – 5:06
2. "Blessed Is the Memory" – 3:03

[Edit: I began a second, longer post about my own hazy thoughts on this album, but my wifi timed out so it'll have to wait until I have more than my phone to tap.]

 

I have no heard his whole catalog, but I can recommend the following:

Songs by Leonard Cohen
The Future

I am sure there are other great records as well, but these are the ones that I know.

 

Great idea for a thread, and I agree it's long overdue! Cohen has been a fixture in my household since I was a child (the cassette tape of The Future was always in the car when I grew up). My mom was also particularly obsessed with his collaborator Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat album, where she sings much of his back catalogue. It's still a favourite of mine, too, but for my money Leonard's voice with all its quirks and limitations is still the best interpreter of his powerful music.

As for the debut LP, "Suzanne" is evidently a masterpiece; one that will never be topped, as far as most amazing opening track on a debut album by a singer-songwriter. Still brings chills just thinking about it. I saw Leonard play at the Benicassim festival in 2008, where he played that track and closed with "So Long, Marianne". Incredible staying power in those songs.

 

Though not familiar with most of Cohen's well-regarded oeuvre, I know Songs of Leonard Cohen intimately. I was turned on to the record via Robert Altman's sublime 1971 western "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," which uses three of the LP tracks to haunting and powerful effect.

 

Mr. Cohen has certainly had a long and distinguished career. And his debut has some real gems on it. I was actually introduced to his work during the early 90s when "Everybody Knows" was featured in a film. I looked it up, and bought the album 'I'm Your Man' shortly thereafter and loved it. So, I went back to the beginning, and I've gradually worked my way through his catalogue ever since. His debut is a stunner for sure, but what's amazing about his catalogue is the diversity of the music throughout. His debut is a collection of beautiful folk ballads which should be in the collections of any fans of the genre.

In 1971, director Robert Altman used several songs from Leonard Cohen's debut in his anti-Western film 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller.' Cohen even wrote some additional guitar music to accompany scenes in the film. His music works to great effect in the film. The three songs chosen from the debut are "The Stranger Song," "Sisters of Mercy" and 'Winter Lady." Prior to even seeing this film (around 10 years ago, give or take) those songs were already among my favorites on the album. So, not only was I surprised and excited to hear his music in the film, but they had chosen some of my favorite Leonard songs as well.



Edit: It looks like @skybluestoday beat me to the punch.

 

Cohen flew against trends from the beginning. He was "old" when he started releasing albums, 33 ..."never trust anybody over 30" was a common phrase at the time.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Leonard_Cohen

 

Checking the discography, I first heard Cohen in late 1974 or early 1975 with Live Songs and New Skin For the Old Ceremony. It would be several years, probably 1988 with I'm Your Man, before I got "hooked" and even longer before obtaining this first album.

Just listened to Songs of Leonard Cohen for the first time in ages, having been listening to his recent albums, especially Live In London, and am startled at how youthful he sounds.

 

I'm a big fan, and have all of his studio output, mostly on vinyl. His last two albums are incredible, even more so given that he is getting on in years.

I still regard Songs Of Leonard Cohen as his best work, and among the greatest debut albums released by anyone. I recently paid an arm and a leg for a UK mono first pressing of this record.

 

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I own his first album but haven't listened to it enough to form a strong opinion of most of the songs. (I do know most of his other albums quite well, not sure why this one never quite grew on me.) I do love "So Long Marianne" and "Sisters of Mercy".

 

This thread is right on time! I just got the Complete Studio Albums Collection and have been listening to Mr Cohen's albums for the last few days.



Great Collection btw and very reasonably priced.

 

I've been meaning to start a thread like this myself for some time, but couldn't find the time to get things together and commit to it, so I'm glad to see this get started!

I did begin putting together some material for the thread I was planning, so I'll post my draft of what I wrote up about the first album as my first post here:

Songs of Leonard Cohen

Released in December 27, 1967 (CBS 63421); reissued and remastered for CD with 2 bonus tracks in 2007, mastered by Mark Wilder. Recorded over several months from May 19th through November 9th, 1967 at various Columbia Studios in NYC.

As has already been mentioned, Cohen had already had a reasonably successful 10 year career as a poet and a novelist by the time he decided to try his hand at songwriting, and then at performing and recording. He published 4 collections of poems and 2 novels between 1956 and 1966, and he was a celebrated figure in the Montreal literary scene of the ‘50s and ‘60s, with a growing reputation in Canada at large (a more limited one abroad). There were a number of reasons for the switch to music, the most commonly stated by Cohen and others being a frustration with the marginal living he was able to make as a writer—mostly he lived on Canadian government grants—and Cohen’s own desire to reach a wider audience, especially one outside of Canada. Some accounts indicate that his hearing of Dylan’s electric work in 1965 was a key turning point, showing him that his craft as a poet could be linked to popular musical forms in a way that could reach a wide audience and still maintain its artistic integrity. He went to NYC, thinking it would be a way station on the way to Nashville, where he hoped to write songs for others and not really perform them himself. His encounter with Judy Collins and how she helped set in motion the events that led Cohen to end up in a remarkably short space of time with a recording contract and in a Columbia Records recording studio with the same guy who had discovered Dylan 7 years earlier has been told many times.

Here’s an account of the making of the record itself stitched together mostly from Sylvie Simmon’s I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen and Anthony Reynold’s Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life:

Columbia A&R staff producer John Hammond signed Cohen to the label and served as the initial producer for the sessions in May, June, July, and September. Hammond, fell ill after only a handful of tracks were recorded (with Willie Ruff on acoustic bass and Cohen on vocal and acoustic nylon string guitar). These included the basic vocal, guitar and bass tracks for “Suzanne,” “Master Song,” and “Sisters of Mercy.” Before he left, he had just begun having Cohen work with a larger ensemble of session musicians (the two bonus tracks on the 2007 reissue come from these ensemble sessions, which brought organ, electric guitar, electric bass and drums into the picture—a Bob Dylan-like electric sound, but quieter). After this, Hammond was replaced by another Columbia A&R staff producer named John Simon (producer at that point most prominently of Cykle’s version of Paul Simon’s “Red Rubber Ball”). Over the course of 11 sessions October 11th to November 9th, John Simon continued to have Cohen work, both solo and with session musicians, pushing ultimately for a more pop-oriented, rather than “folk” or “folk-rock,” approach. We don’t have many details, but it seems he continued to have Cohen record basic vocal tracks with simple accompaniment (it seems almost always to have been, again, Cohen’s own acoustic guitar and an acoustic bass). Other elements (orchestral arrangements, female back-up vocals, piano, percussion, etc.) were then overdubbed. Two tracks (“The Stranger Son” and “One of us Cannot be Wrong”—at least until the whistling, “la, las,” and ocarina playing at the end of the latter), present nothing but Cohen singing and playing the nylon string guitar with bass accompaniment. The rest of the tracks present at least some overdubbed elements. Sylvie Simmons reports that all told, Cohen recorded 25 original songs for both Hammond and Simon, only 10 of which ended up on this album (she notes that 4 others were later rerecorded for Songs from a Room and Songs of Love and Hate, although she doesn’t say which ones, two more provided the bonus tracks for the 2007 reissue, and she lists 9 others that have never been released) (see Simmons, 186-7).

Cohen was reportedly unhappy with some of the results of Simon’s arranging and overdubbing, and when Simon left for a vacation, he left the multitrack tapes in Cohen’s hands and told him to do what he wanted with them. Exact details are scarce, but it seems that Cohen felt this gave him freedom to alter the mix and to add or subtract particular elements. It seems that he did remove some elements of Simon’s production and arrangements (we have one report, for example, that he removed a piano part that Simon himself had played on “Suzanne”) (Reynolds 69). Simmons also discusses this and quotes Cohen himself on disagreements over “Suzanne” and “So Long Marianne” (Simmons, 187-8). The lack of adornments on “Stranger Song” and “One of us Cannot be Wrong” may also be the result of Cohen’s remix. We also know that Cohen employed three players from a west coast folk rock ensemble called Kaleidoscope after hearing them play behind Nico at a NYC club. Reynolds reports, from an extensive interview with the three men (Chris Darrow, Chester Crill, and David Lindley), that Cohen was intrigued by their use of “world music” elements, especially middle-eastern instruments and motifs, and he wanted that flavor in the music. Over the course of 3 sessions, they overdubbed improvisations on many of the albums cuts, but it’s unclear exactly how much of their playing remains on the released versions and what exactly they may have replaced (Reynolds 69-74). The flute, and acoustic lead guitar parts on “Winter Lady,” and perhaps the chording on either a harpsichord or a tack piano on that cut, may be examples of elements added by the Kaleidoscope musicians. Also the accordion, glockenspiel, and the bits of harmonica and percussion on “Sisters of Mercy,” and perhaps what sounds like a hammer dulcimer of some kind (maybe a cimbalom) on “Hey, That’s no Way to Say Goodbye,” the steel-string acoustic guitars and organ on “Stories of the Street,” and the eastern sounding lead stringed instrument on “Teachers” (perhaps an oud, a saz, or a bouzouki?). The background vocals and orchestrations on “Suzanne” and “Master Song” seem clearly elements created by Simon. The basic folk rock arrangement of “So Long, Marianne” seems, also, to have come from Simon (especially the drums and the background vocals), but certain elements, like the fiddle and mandolin (or mandola) that come and go, might be Kaleidoscope elements. The background vocals on “Hey, That’s no Way to Say Goodbye,” are also clearly a Simon touch. Simmons reports (p. 191) that the Kaleidoscope musicians also played on “Stranger Song,” but if that’s so their contributions may not have been included in the final version (I think that’s just Cohen’s own guitar on the track).

It is safe to say that the record we have is the result, therefore, of 3 layers of production effort: 1) a set of basic acoustic guitar and vocal tracks with perhaps some other simple accompaniment (usually simply acoustic bass); 2) a layer of pop vocal and ensemble elements in a late ‘60s period style (the most prominent and effective of these being the female backup vocals on “Suzanne” and the subtle 20th century classical orchestral elements on “Master Song”); and 3) some “world” folk elements overdubbed near the end by the three members of Kaleidoscope. Of all of these, it is the back-up vocals that Cohen would retain for good, along with his nylon stringed guitar, of course, which would be central to his sound and his composing until he turned to electronic keyboards in the 1980’s, and the intimate approach to the recording of his vocals. He would, however, later also return to the world folk elements, which later producers would help him to finally integrate more successfully into his music. But that’s something we’ll discuss later.

L.

 

I've read the former but not the latter. How do they differ, and would you recommend the Reynold's book?

 

I would not recommend Reynolds' book as a whole, but it does contain some very interesting and useful interview material with musicians who worked with Cohen over the years (some stuff that's not reflected in Simmons, except in passing). Right now, Simmons' is the only biography we have that's really worth reading. The older one by Nadel still has some value, especially for the way he treats the early literary years, but it's been superseded in most other ways by Simmons.

L.

 

I discovered Leonard Cohen in high school from the post-punk world. Echo and the Bunnymen's singer, Ian McCulloch, cited him as a huge influence, The Jesus and Mary Chain covered "Tower of Song", and Sisters of Mercy took their name from LC's song. With that endorsement by 3 of my favorite bands at the time, I picked up this debut album. It was not at all what I expected, but I did like it and was taken by his lyrics. This passage below from "Suzanne" knocked me out.

"And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"

Wow!!!

All these years later, I still have a nostalgic fondness for those bands I mentioned, but LC ranks among my very favorite artists of all time and is still in regular rotation. Looking forward to following this thread.

edit: The 2 bonus tracks are good, too. I especially like "Store Room".

 

Is it just me or does Songs Of Love And Hate rank at least close to his best work?

 

Songs of Love and Hate is one of my less-favorites of his, although "Famous Blue Raincoat" alone is worth the price of admission.

 

This first album of Cohen's stands up remarkably well all these years later. It still has the power for me of casting a spell from the first plucked notes of the guitar on "Suzanne." There are weaker and stronger songs on the album, I think, and the textures vary because of the way the album got made, but a handful songs remain central to Cohen's canon and have become part of the larger culture. I think "Suzanne" and "Sisters of Mercy" are the two masterpieces on the record as songs, but the tracks themselves are also just beautiful realizations of those songs. I still marvel at the gentle, intimate feel of the way the vocal is captured and set in the mix on "Sisters..."). The other really strong songs/tracks are, to my ear, "Stranger Song," "Winter Lady," "So Long Marianne," and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." I like the other songs, too (and the two bonus tracks on the 2007 reissue), but these are the ones that stand out for me.

They're each worth commenting on at length, but I'll just start with a few things about "Suzanne:"

First of all, the lyric, which began life as a poem called, "Suzanne Takes You Down," in Cohen's 1966 volume, Parasites of Heaven (with some variants, at least in the copy I have of the poem in Selected Poems 1956-1968), is a beautiful evocation of an event that seems suspended in time--or at least it feels like time has slowed the way light might pour down like honey. There's desire, but also rest, it rises and falls like breathing. It's erotic, but not sexual or not fully so or centrally so. There's a "not yet" or maybe sex itself is just beside the point of the kind of desire the song is expressing, a desire to follow or give oneself over. Part of this is created by the sense of the reciprocal exchange suggested by the change in the chorus from "You know that she will trust you/ For you've touched her perfect body with your mind" to "and you know you can trust her/ For she's touched your perfect body with her mind" and the way that happens after the speaker/singer passes himself through the fulcrum of the middle Jesus verse: "and you think maybe you'll trust him/ For he's touched your perfect body with his mind." It also has something to do with what has perhaps passed (or not) in the course of the night that might have passed, depending on how you read the suggestions about time in the lyric, between the leading down and the tea and oranges of the 1st verse, which seem to look forward to the night the singer/speaker says he knows he can spend beside her, and the leading to the river and the harbor and church in the morning of the last verse. This, with the Jesus verse in the middle, is a perfect example of how Cohen can unite or superimpose the erotic and the transcendent, mastery and submission, past and present, allusion or allegory and concrete representation.

It's also in part created by the sensual details of the descriptions of Suzanne's "place near the river," her clothes, of Jesus as sailor, and of the harbor and church and heroes and children of the last verse, and also by the music, which is beautifully structured to evoke the rising and the falling to rest of desire (but not the climaxing of it), using what's sometimes called a "step-wise" progression. The chord sequence, which Cohen maybe in part learned and in part discovered by just moving a basic barre chord form up and down the neck in the wake of his very basic early lesson in flamenco technique, goes from the tonic chord of the key, (I, or E in the album version--"Suzanne takes you down/ To her place near the river"), up to the second, a minor chord in the key (ii or F#m--"You can hear the boats go by/ You can spend the night beside her"), then back to the I for "And you know she's half-crazy/ but that's why you want to be there," before then jumping up to the 3rd, a minor chord in the key (iii or G#m) for the tea and then to the IV chord (A) for where the tea and oranges come from ("China," that's the first peak in the harmonic movement). The rest of the verse just goes back and forth between I and ii, and then the chorus begins with that same leap up to iii and IV ("and you want to..."), giving the line about traveling blind (a slant rhyme with "China") that same feeling of harmonic tension, before things come to rest again in the oscillation between I and ii, ending back on the I. I think it's important that the song never goes the next step higher to the V chord. Things never get that hot. It's a matter of perfect bodies and minds, not just bodies touching bodies, although as I said, that perhaps happens too.

L.

 

It was the first album of Cohen's I ever owned. Some of it scared the hell out of me at 16 or 17, but I kept coming back to it....

This may seem strange, but "Famous Blue Raincoat" has been one of my son's favorite songs since he was about six (he's 13 now). God knows what possessed me to sing it to him as a lullaby, but he requested it after hearing me practice it on guitar from the other room. He wanted to know what "my brother, my killer" meant. I'm still explaining.....

L.

 

The talk seems to be slow in coming, so I'll ask a question:

Do people feel that the original side two of Songs of Leonard Cohen is weaker than side one? It starts off strongly enough with those two lovely valedictions, "So Long Marianne" and "Hey, That's no Way to Say Goodbye," but the last 3 cuts are much weaker, I think.

It also lacks the structure that side one has. The first side goes back and forth in a tight patterns between songs of chaste longing and songs about erotic degradation and power/compulsion:

Side one

1. "Suzanne" – 3:48
2. "Master Song" – 5:55
3. "Winter Lady" – 2:15
4. "The Stranger Song" – 5:00
5. "Sisters of Mercy" – 3:32

The Winter Lady (a song that seems to have originally about Joni Mitchell) is at the cold, chaste heart of the side, with the sisters and Suzanne at the beginning and end. Master and stranger occupy the tortured middles of the patterns two wings. Side two has nothing like that shape, with two much warmer love songs at the start, then two tortured songs about making sense of the world (a simplification, but good enough for now), followed by a tortured, and rather unchaste, song about desiring another wintery lady. That last song does uneasily combine the two sensibilities of side one, but the second side itself doesn't have as strong a shape--or it goes from its valedictions into shapeless searching.

L.

 

hit me up when you get to Death of a Ladies Man.

 

I've got two posts turning around in my head (one about my exposure to the album and another about a few of the songs) but the last few days have given me less time than normal for typing.

Thanks, Louis, for the incredible amount of substance, about which I'll respond when I can do so reasonably. I'm especially fascinated by your missive on "Suzanne," which I think is arguably a perfect song.

In the meantime, here are a few "Suzanne"-related nuggets.

1. I read a quote by Cohen years ago that he does not own the publishing rights to this song (I don't know the details).
2. You can read about the "real" Suzanne (Suzanne Verdal McCallister) who apparently inspired the song directly here.
3. On his Live in London CD/DVD, he sings the second and third verses in reverse order (if memory serves).
4. R.E.M. co-credited him on their song "Hope" since they (un?)consciously used Suzanne's melodic and lyric structures (the song and lyrics are here; a more Cohen'esque here). The lyric intensity and spiritual crisis also echo some of Cohen's preoccupations while the electronic (over?)production echoes Cohen's own flirtations with industrial sounds in the '80s and '90s.

 

Indeed. I've always thought that those those final three songs and "Winter Lady" are the weakest tracks on the album, though they've all grown on me during the 10 or so years that I've owned the album, and I never feel compelled to skip them.

I don't want to get ahead of the discussion, but I'll add that I think most of Cohen's albums (or at least the eight that I own) begin stronger than they end. For me, that's particularly a problem with The Future, where the combination of front-loaded material and a long disc time make the album seem interminable (insert "Always" joke here) if I'm not in the right mood, and Old Ideas, whose great final track is immediately preceded by the album's weakest four songs. But even my favorite Cohen album, the near-perfect I'm Your Man, achieves a higher level of near-perfection on side one than on side two.

 

The mono mix of Songs of Leonard Cohen is absolutely essential. I have a clean rip from a Columbia promo LP.

 

It's true that Cohen gave away the rights to "Suzanne" (also "Master Song" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag") to a music published named Jeff Chase, who was trying to "help" him shop around his songs in '66 or '67. Reynolds claims that Cohen didn't get the rights back until the early '90s, but I don't know if that part's true.

L.

 

I stumbled on this quote from Leonard Cohen about "Suzanne"**:

Source: http://www.leonardcohen-prologues.com/suzanne.htm

** After writing a sloppily overlong and unresearched "analysis" of Suzanne (that I'm deciding whether to revise, post or delete),