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Leonard Cohen - BiographÕ
"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a
remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that
possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of
love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind
of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve
the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I
do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself,
for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a
man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that
is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course
is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a
moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock.
Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to
the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the
angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the
state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous
and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the
shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the
heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing
monsters of love."
L. Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)
From a mountain in Montreal, to an island off the coast of
Greece, through an endless succession of sterile hotel rooms to a
modest house in a decidedly unfashionable section of Los Angeles,
Leonard Cohen has explored that "remote human possibility," with
an appetite that is sometimes swollen and sometimes spartan. For
the last thirty-odd years, over the course of eight volumes of
poetry, two novels, and now eleven record albums, Cohen has
shared his vision with those among us who realize the mysteries of
the interior life is a project never fathomed by the characters of
"L.A. Law."
Which is not to say that Leonard's audience is insubstantial. He
is revered in Europe, where his albums consistently reach the top
ten. There is an annual Leonard Cohen festival in Krakow, Poland,
a country where he outsells Michael Jackson. In England, pop
noirists like Nick Cave, Ian McCulloch and Morrissey
acknowledge his influence; the Sisters Of Mercy even
appropriated their name from one of his early songs.
Perhaps Europeans relate easiest to Leonard's incomparable
sense of loss, his formal, dignified, decorous surrender of self. But
now, with the deficit mounting by the hour and foreign investors
owning everything in sight, America seems to be catching up. I'm
Your Man, Leonard's 1988 album received rave reviews from the
critics, who for the first time actually allowed praise for his
single-edged razor of a voice. And they finally discerned a sense of
humour, too, the same ones who cautioned that it was impossible
to listen to a Leonard Cohen album while the sun was shining.
And now we have The Future, A Record By Leonard Cohen.
And it's no anachronism to call this work a record, for it is an
amazing aural document of our current cultural malaise. From the
boardrooms to the bedrooms, Cohen's vision is all-inclusive. At
times declaiming like some old testament prophet ("I'm the little
jew who wrote the bible," says one lyric), and at times begging like
a penitent ("Just be for real oh, baby"), Cohen always has his eyes
on the prize: the healing power of love.
The record begins with "The Future" as he starts his opening
arguments like some spin doctor for the Apocalypse: "There'll be
the breaking of the ancient western code/Your private life will
suddenly explode/There'll be phantoms/there'll be first on the
road/and the white man dancing. Given the cultural dislocation of
"the white man dancing," Cohen acknowledges one of its dangers:
a slouching towards authoritarianism: "Give me back the Berlin
Wall/give me Stalin and St. Paul/Give me Christ or give me
Hiroshima... I've seen the future, brother, it is murder."
"Waiting for the Miracle" poses another alternative to our
spiritual crisis: accommodation to a world that's a shadow of what
it could be: "The Maestro says it's Mozart/but it sounds like bubble
gum." On top of a sinuous, slinky arrangement, Leonard sings with
the rueful experience of a front line soldier in the spiritual wars:
"Nothing left to do when you know that you've been
taken/Nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb/Nothing
left to do when you've got to go on waiting for the miracle to
come."
"Be For Real," a cover of a song by Frederick Knight (of
"Everlasting Love" renown), finds Leonard at his world-weary
best. Crooning like Frankie Laine over a haunting organ, Cohen is
Everyman whose world can be instantly shattered by the caprices
of his companion.
He goes back to his childhood country-western roots for a
rollicking ride to "Closing Time." This is the End Times set in a
honky tonk. Women tear off their blouses, men change partners
right and left, but there's hell to pay when the music stops and the
lights come up. It's a wonderfully sardonic evocation of love
gained in youth and misspent over time.
The hauntingly brilliant "Anthem" reconciles all the pain and
suffering that we experience. Like an answer to Bob Dylan's
"Everything Is Broken," Leonard goes one step further,: everything
is broken but the seeds of our regeneration sprout from the weeds
of our decay. Borrowing from Kabbalistic sources, especially 16th
century
Rabbi Isaac Luria, Leonard soars over the shards of our
predicament: "Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect
offering/There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in."
"Democracy" is one of Leonard's most ambitious songs, nothing
less than an attempt at a new national anthem; Neil Diamond meets
de Touqueville. Coming on the heels of a presidential campaign
where the issues are astoundingly trivialized by the media, this is
the real stuff, the CNN of the soul: "It's coming through a hole in
the air; from those nights in Tienenman Square... From the wars
against disorder, from the sirens night and day; from the fires of the
homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy is coming to the
U.S.A."
If Democracy is the New Covenant, it becomes possible here:
"It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the
worst... It's here the family's broken and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way."
Over a military march beat and propelled by stunning
background vocals from Jennifer Warnes and Julie Christensen,
Leoanrd delivers a chorus that is positively Whitmanesque: "Sail
on, sail on O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need/Past
the Reefs of Greed/Through the Squalls of Hate/Sail on, sail on,
sail on..."
"Light As the Breeze" is a respite, a song of love and hate, a wry
autopsy of a love affair, where in the end the regenerative power
of sex, like a blessing from heaven, can heal, at least "for
something like a second." The album ends with a deliciously ironic,
boozy version of Irving Berlin's "Always," followed by "Tacoma
Trailer," an instrumental piece that serves as a bittersweet coda to
the staggering scope of this work.
Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934. His
father, an engineer who owned a clothing concern, died when
Leonard was nine. He went on to attend McGill University, where
at 17 he formed a country-western trio called the Buckskin Boys.
He also began writing poetry and became part of the local
boho-literary scene, a scene so "underground" that it was bereft of
"subversive intentions because even that would be beneath it." His
first collection of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was
published in 1956, while he was still an undergrad. The Spice Box
Of Earth (1961), his second collection, catapulted Leonard
Cohen to international recognition.
After a brief stint at Columbia University in New York, Leonard
Cohen obtained a grant and was able to escape the confines of
North America. He travelled throughout Europe and eventually
settled on the Greek island of Hydra, where he shared his life with
Marianne Jenson, and her son Axel.
Cohen stayed in Greece on and off for seven years. He wrote
another collection of poetry, the controversial Flowers For Hitler
(1964); and two highly acclaimed novels, The Favorite Game
(1963), his portrait of the artist as a young Jew in Montreal, and
Beautiful Losers (1966), described on its dust jacket as "a
disagreeable religious epic of incomparable beauty." Upon its
publication, the Boston Globe trumpeted, "James Joyce is not
dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen." To date,
each book has sold more than 800,000 copies worldwide.
But Cohen's restless spirit couldn't be contained, even by the
warmth of Hydra. "For the writing of books, you have to be in one
place," he told Musician magazine in 1988. "You tend to gather
things around you when you write a novel. You need a woman in
your life. It's nice to have some kids around, 'cause there's always
food. It's nice to have a place that's clean and orderly. I had those
things and then I decided to be a songwriter."
Leaving behind his domestic scene, Cohen returned to America,
intent on settling near Nashville and pursuing a musical career.
Championed by Judy Collins, who recorded both "Suzanne" and
"Dress Rehearsal Rag" on her In My Life album, Cohen appeared
at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, where he came to the
attention of legendary Columbia A&R man John Hammond (who
also recruited Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to
the label). By Christmas, Columbia had released his first album,
The Songs of Leonard Cohen.
It was a remarkable debut, as songs like "Suzanne," "Hey, That's
No Way To Say Goodbye," "So Long, Marianne," and "Sisters of
Mercy" propelled Cohen to the top of the pop-confessional
pantheon. The songs had such power that Robert Altman's 1971
film, "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" became, in effect, the first
long-form video for Cohen's soundtrack.
Songs From a Room (1969), his second album, and Songs of
Love and Hate (1971) further reinforced Cohen's standing as the
master of mortification and the sentry of solitude. With "Bird On a
Wire," "The Song of Isaac," "Joan of Arc," and "Famous Blue
Raincoat," he continued to stretch the borders of the pop song
landscape.
1972 brought with it the release of Live Songs, Cohen's only
live album, which featured an amazing 14-minute improvisation,
"Please Don't Pass Me By," along with live versions of songs from
his first three albums. New Skin For the Old Ceremony (1973),
was a bit of a stylistic departure. Featuring a more orchestrated
sound (thanks to producer John Lissauer), Cohen continued his
investigations into the hottest crucible of the human spirit -- the
muffled battles in the boudoirs.
Cohen took a sabbatical from the musical wars for the next few
years, releasing only a greatest hits album, Best of Leonard
Cohen (1975). In 1977, he was back with what was certainly his
most curious album, Death of a Ladies' Man. It started as a
collaboration with famed producer Phil Spector, but ended with
Cohen being excluded from the final stages of recording. "It was a
catastrophe," Cohen remembers. "Those are all scratch vocals,
and Phil mixed it in secret under armed guard. I had to decide
whether I was going to hire my own private army and fight it out
on Sunset Boulevard, or let it go. I let it go."
Recent Songs (1979), the next album, was another stylistic
departure from its predecessor. Gone was the Spectorian
wall-of-sound, replaced with a more delicate musical patina partly
due to the influence of co-producer Henry Lewy (who had
previously worked with Joni Mitchell). The songs continued
Cohen's dissections of the vicissitudes of the male-female union,
but also began to reflect his long-standing explorations into the
religious arena.
Various Positions (1984) was the full flowering of these
religious concerns. Songs like "Hallelujah," "The Law," Heart With
No Companion," and "If It Be Your Will" are contemporary
psalms, born of an undoubtedly long and difficult spiritual odyssey,
so difficult that its conclusion left Cohen literally "wiped out."
"I had a lot of versions of myself that I had used religion to
support," Cohen told L.A. Style in 1988. "If you deal with this
material you can't put God on. I thought I could spread light and I
could enlighten my world and those around me and I thought I
could, but I was unable to. This is a landscape in which men far
stronger than you, far braver, nobler, kinder, more generous, men
of extremely high achievements have burnt to a crisp on this road.
Once you start dealing with sacred material you're gonna get
creamed."
I'm Your Man (1988) was the culmination of Cohen's
professional and personal reintegration, an amazingly crafted work
that speaks eloquently to the experience of one of our musical
elders. Buoyed by now-classic songs like "First We Take
Manhattan," "Tower of Song," and "Ain't No Cure For Love," it
was no surprise that the album went to #1 in several European
countries.
While Cohen's painstaking meticulousness has led to many long
passages of time between albums, artists as diverse as Neil
Diamond, Nick Cave, Diana Ross, Joan Baez, Rita Coolidge, and
Joe Cocker have kept Cohen's music on the airwaves with their
own interpretations of his songs. Long-time musical colleague
Jennifer Warnes released the critically acclaimed "Famous Blue
Raincoat" in 1986, an entire album of Cohen's work.
Last year, a number of contemporary recording artists
collaborated on an evocative tribute to Leonard Cohen. "I'm Your
Fan" was the brainchild of Christian Feuret, the editor of Les
Inrockuptibles, the most popular rock magazine in France.
Originally intended for release on the magazine's small offshoot
label Oscar, the project mushroomed into an 18-song cover
collection released by Atlantic, featuring such prominent musicians
as REM, John Cale, Nick Cave, Ian McCulloch, Pixies, the
House of Love, and Lloyd Cole.
Cohen's output does not exist solely on paper or on disc. He
conceptualizes his own videos and, in 1984, scripted, directed and
scored "I Am A Hotel, a half-hour short feature that won first prize
at the Festival International de Television de Montreux
(Switzerland) and was submitted for Academy Award
consideration. He collaborated with singer/songwriter Lewis Furey
on Night Magic, a rock opera movie for which he won the
Canadian Juno award for "Best Movie Score" of 1985. His work
in front of the camera even included a memorable cameo as the
head of Interpol on NBC's "Miami Vice."
From a man who only "aspired to be a minor poet" early in his
career, Leonard Cohen has produced a body of work that has
withstood the passage of time. With the release of The Future, his
eleventh album, he continues to bring to us, through the musical
idiom, a documentation of maturity and survival. He has become
an elder.
"If there is anything in my own work it's because how I cop to
my own experience," Cohen told L.A. Style. "That's what I
became. I became a writer and as my friend Irving Layton always
said, a poet is deeply conflicted and it's in his work that he
reconciles those deep conflicts.
"That place is the harbour. It doesn't set the world in order, you
know, it doesn't really change anything. It just is a kind of harbour,
it's the place of reconciliation, it's the consolumentum, the kiss of
peace."
Leonard Cohen has taken us down to that place by the harbour
and our world has become that much richer for the journey.
* Copyright Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Gm
Am E Am Am E Am
And who by fire, who by water
C G C C G C
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
Who in your merry, merry month of May, who by very slow decay
Am F E
and who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
Who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger
and who shall I say is calling?
And who by brave assent, who by accident
who in solitude, who in this mirror
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand
who in mortal chains, who in power
and who shall I say is calling?
ôhe FuturÅ film "Natural born killers"
Give me back my broken night
My secret room, my secret life
It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give back the Berlin Wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder
CHORUS
Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent
I wonder what they meant
You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future
It is murder
CHORUS
There'll be the breaking of the ancient
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires in the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see the woman
Hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
Give me back the Berlin Wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder
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ðÏÐÕÌÑÒÎÏÓÔØ: 1, Last-modified: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:06:40 GmT