I’m Your Man – Leonard Cohen

I felt such sadness at the passing of Leonard Cohen last week. He was first and foremost a poet capable of creating such beauty, but also a man who relished in exploring the darker side of human nature. For a long, long time he was unfairly misunderstood as a kind of prophet of gloom, but recently his popularity had grown to unprecedented levels as more and more people came to appreciate the genius of his work, largely through the belated popularity of Hallelujah, but also through a series of world tours undertaken in his 70’s as he was forced to come out of retirement and go back on the road to recover his life savings, of which he’d been robbed by his former manager.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have seen Leonard in concert on the first of those 3 world tours back in 2009, it was without question one of the concert highlights of my life. To see this peerless artist hold a captivated audience in the palm of his hand with grace and humility as he repeatedly took his bows with his hat clutched to his chest like a grateful Jewish shopkeeper was something I’ll never forget. He was humbled by the adulation, but indeed it was the audience who were humbled by his mighty presence.

My introduction to Leonard Cohen was in the late 1970’s courtesy of a guy who lived up the street. He was a couple of years older than me so we didn’t really hangout at school, but from time to time we’d get talking on the bus and often about music. This guy was an avid reader with a worldly demeanour so I enjoyed engaging with his well travelled mind. One day he told me that he’d bought a copy of The Best of Leonard Cohen, an album I’d seen in the record shops, but not knowing who Leonard Cohen was I never gave it much attention. The amusing part was that this guy’s surname was also Cohen so I began giving him some stick suggesting that the only reason he bought it was because of some narcissistic self interest. After much mock protesting he suggested that I should come around and have a listen to it because it was a really interesting record. What choice did I have? I had to allow him to defend his claim, so that afternoon I got off the bus at his place and we listened to the album over some fine green leaf tea.

The criticism that’s often thrown at Leonard Cohen by those who don’t appreciate his music is that it’s the kind of music that makes you want to slit your wrists. Sadly those people have never delved into the beauty, wisdom or wit of Leonard’s words, but then if you can’t be wooed by the charms of his music first, how can you ever succumb to the man’s magnificent poetry? I won’t claim that I fell in love with Leonard Cohen on my first listen that afternoon, the mood of the music was stark and sombre yet also strangely beguiling – I’d never heard anything like it before so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. His voice wasn’t melodic and it had very limited range, so it was hard to warm to what sounded like a man battling with terminal nasal congestion, but then a lack of a good voice hadn’t hurt the likes of Dylan so I wasn’t averse to the idea of it either. In retrospect I was too young to appreciate Mr Cohen – at that point my emotional maturity was about zero, but a seed had been planted.

As the years passed I began to realise that Leonard Cohen was a superb songwriter through other vocalists who were able to bring his songs to life, like Joe Cocker’s soulful rendition of Bird On A Wire and Jennifer Warne’s chillingly clinical First We Take Manhattan – other than that Leonard Cohen the artist continued to elude me. But then I had a revelation through the strangest vehicle. I went to see Oliver Stone’s graphically violent Natural Born Killers at the cinema and I was mesmerised by an extraordinary piece of music from that film. It was Leonard’s Waiting For The Miracle, a song with a hypnotic, rhythmic, plodding beat accompanied by a sonorous voice that had been conceived deep in the earth and sounded older than time. My God! Who was that? I came out of that film not thinking about the disturbing imagery of what I’d just witnessed, but being totally absorbed by that song:

“I don’t believe you’d like it, you wouldn’t like it here. There ain’t no entertainment and the judgements are severe. The maestro says it’s Mozart, but it sounds like bubble gum, when you’re waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come”.

It was prescient, dangerous and humorous all at once. Other Cohen songs were also used in that soundtrack including Anthem and The Future. Later I would discover those songs had been taken from Leonard’s 1992 album The Future, a record loaded with visual imagery that challenged our world, referencing the actions of our past and the notion of tomorrow, which of course made those songs the perfect choice for Stone’s film. It wasn’t until I rushed out to buy the Natural Born Killers soundtrack that I discovered who this mysterious artist was – but what had happened to his voice? It was the most extraordinary transformation – gone was the nasally unconvincing tone of the poet come singer, in its place was the inescapable presence of a baritone delivering some wonderful writing that demanded your attention.

Not long after I saw Natural Born Killers Jeff Buckley released his stunning debut album Grace and with it his extraordinary reading of Cohen’s Hallelujah. Like Leonard’s own career Hallelujah had a slow burn of recognition, although after Buckley’s exquisite take on the song numerous other cover versions appeared in quick succession, but nothing surpassed Buckley’s. It was at that point I realised I had been missing something truly magnificent in the shape of Leonard Cohen’s work and I was at long last paying attention.

Apart from the sheer poetry of Leonard Cohen’s writing the thing I really love about his work is his sense of humour and it’s the key aspect critics who moan about his gloomy disposition fail to notice. With I’m Your Man it begins on the album’s cover with a simple black and white photo of a very stylish, sophisticated, urbane man wearing dark sunglasses and a pin stripe suit with his gaze fixed on something out of view. He looks like the coolest man on the planet, apart from the fact that he’s eating a banana. In that one shot Cohen mocks his serious reputation as a writer’s writer. Then with his own name plastered across the top half of the cover in a massive font to emphasise the weight of his identity the album title appears written above his photo in small print, which, combined with that visual gag gazumps the validity of the album’s title and questions the legitimacy of the entire album. Very funny and very clever.

Leonard Cohen has admitted that prior to I’m Your Man he was never truly satisfied with his voice, but with the release of this album in 1988 he could “at long last deliver the songs with the authority and intensity required”. Obviously a seismic shift had taken place vocally for Leonard Cohen in between the time I first heard him back in the 70’s and before this album was recorded, although it’s evident the maturation of his vocal chords had already begun prior to this album when listening to its predecessor Various Positions (1984) with tracks like Dance Me To The End Of Love and the aforementioned Hallelujah.

The first thing that struck me about this album was Cohen’s use of his dinky Casio keyboard, something he’d begun using on Various Positions. On the one hand it sits very comfortably within the 1980’s production values dominated by the synthesisers of that era, on the other hand it’s so cheesy that it threatens to undermine the gravitas of some of the lyrics, yet somehow it never does. I’m Your Man contains some of Cohen’s best loved (and known) songs, many of which became staples in his live performances – First We Take Manhattan, Ain’t No Cure For Love, Everybody Knows, Tower Of Song and of course the title track. Not a bad percentage for an album that only contains 8 tracks.

I don’t want to get into a detailed analysis of Leonard Cohen’s song writing on I’m Your Man because I could never come close to doing this wonderful collection of songs justice when so many others have already done that far better than I ever could. As an exercise that seems somewhat pointless, but at the very least it would be remiss of me not to mention a couple of highlights.

Everybody Knows is often seen as a pessimistic view of the world and that there’s little hope for any of us. On the surface that pretty much sums the song up, but as always with Leonard there’s far more to it than that. Take the opening verse:

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.”

Almost every line of the song starts with the title. The obvious take is that it’s a jaded and cynical view, but it’s also disingenuous because everybody doesn’t know, that’s why they keep getting taken for a ride or cop the short straw, but of course the twist is that because Leonard is pointing it out to us he’s doing his best to tell the world that this is the way it goes and that one day maybe everybody will know, but then deep down he knows that can never be. It’s a cynical conundrum disguised by a simple device and an example of the playfulness within the language that Leonard was fond of employing in his work.

The song gets wickedly funny too when the narrative moves from the political to the personal:

“Everybody knows that you love me baby. Everybody knows that you really do. Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful, give or take a night or two. Everybody knows you’ve been discreet, but there were so many people you just had to meet without your clothes. And everybody knows.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lin-a2lTelg

The other track I have to mention is Tower of Song, Leonard’s tribute to the craft of what he does so eloquently. On numerous occasions Leonard Cohen referred to the agony and frustration of writing, a ruminating process that could take an extraordinary amount of time for him, often years. No wonder Leonard saw himself as an ageing artisan in what is his most poignant and deliciously funny opening verse:

“Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in the places where I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song”

But really, how do you write a song about the process of song writing without getting caught up in the idea of engaging in the worthiness of the craft and elevating it into a lofty art form that others could potentially see as a conceit? With a wordsmith like Cohen it might be an obvious trap, but his self-deprecating humour kept his feet on the ground as he made sure we knew where he saw his place within the big picture:

“I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet. But I hear him coughing all night long, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song.

Then he hits you with the next line:

“I was born like this, I had no choice. I was born with the gift of a golden voice…” 

When Leonard sang that line on the night I saw him back in February 2009 the audience erupted with delight and I’ve no doubt it was the same reaction everywhere else he played, but the joke is that with few exceptions Leonard was never comfortable or satisfied with his voice until the recording of this album. So once again he makes a mockery of himself in writing the song, only to find that his voice would continue to deepen as it aged in the years that followed like an exquisite bottle of red. Regardless the audience lapped it up all the same 20 years later, but how many were aware of the irony?

So much has been said about Leonard Cohen in these past few days it seems as though every superlative has been exhausted. In a year when we’ve lost so many gifted artists, including Leon Russell who died just a few days after Leonard, the world can seem like an unforgiving place that can test even the most optimistic among us. Who better to provide insightful perspective in our darkest moments? Vale Mr Cohen.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in”.