Laughing Len strikes again: ILM Artist Poll #81 - Leonard Cohen

https://sonicmoremusic.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/kc-devo-scaled1000.jpg

Hello, friends.

Barring any last-minute morning entries, we have 20 ballots to draw from. The rollout starts Monday morning-ish in slightly unorthodox fashion, and will continue until Friday, or Saturday, depending on how things shake out.

For those of you who submitted cover rankings: I didn't get enough cover lists to merit their own rankings, so instead I'll be noting covers that were voted for along with their originals as they appear in the rollout. Sorry if any of you agonized over the particulars.

As for quotes, photos, etc that were sent in: I will be including those as we go.

As you will see, I have chosen to throw a certain degree of suspense out the window in favor of unadulterated celebration. It seemed the better way.

*21 lol

For today, I thought it would be a fitting exercise to spotlight the (mostly) deep cuts that got one vote each. They make up 29 of the 89 songs that received votes. There are a lot of seriously great songs in here, spread out over very nearly his whole discography.

Spotify playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/suckerblues/playlist/6I6lVTrm1lrplrGv39NT94

Slow
Here It Is
Love Calls You By Your Name
Always
Is This What You Wanted
A Street
Ain't No Cure For Love
Almost Like the Blues
Iodine
Lullaby
Our Lady of Solitude
Please Don't Pass Me By
The Lost Canadian (Un Canadian errant)
Death of a Ladies' Man
On the Level
That Don't Make It Junk
Light as the Breeze
Samson in New Orleans
Love Itself
Tonight Will Be Fine
Field Commander Cohen
Fingerprints
Jazz Police
Winter Lady
Heart With No Companion
Come Healing
Leaving Green Sleeves
Different Sides
Anyhow

just heard iodine for the first time, it's lovely

Earth 2 Essential Leonard Cohen

i voted for "on the level" (my fav off the new one) and "fingerprints"

You Want It Darker is probably the most consistent of his closing run - if nothing else, it has the best sonics.

"Love Calls You By Your Name" deserved better, it's a masterpiece

Come Healing deserved more and I would have voted for it if I'd noticed this poll.

Would love to know who voted for Jazz Police though.

6 of these are mine lol

Would love to know who voted for Jazz Police though.

I would never vote for it but I was delighted when it turned up.

i almost voted for "Is This What You Wanted", too

it's very death of a ladies' man-ny

Voted for "Love Calls You By Your Name". It's anonymity always confuses me.

it's melodically undistinguished but the lyric is a thing of beauty

I was the one who voted for Jazz Police. It makes me pretty happy.

Had I voted "Is This What You Wanted" would have been top 5.

Xp Yeah. I guess something has to be the deep cut on sol&h

Didn't vote for it but "love itself" is lovely

damn, i should have included Iodine on my ballot.

goes without saying but DoaLM is a fine album for self loathing solo drinking, like one of the best companions imaginable

xxp Huh, it's one of Cohen's most melodically distinguished songs to my ears? A rare Cohen song that is driven primarily by the melody.

I am amused that anyone missed this poll cause I bumped the thread way more times than I was comfortable with

"A Street" has some serious swagger despite the particularly tinny canned horns

"Love Calls You By Your Name" deserved better, it's a masterpiece

^^^^ But I didn't vote so I can't complain.

goes without saying but DoaLM is a fine album for self loathing solo drinking, like one of the best companions imaginable

also, it has one of the most insane personnel lists of any album ever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Ladies%27_Man_(album)#Personnel

I'm saving my "deserved better" complaints for songs I didn't vote for that got no votes

skip the redundancy if you wish

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bo1Et7DCcAA3sHO.jpg

lol

I was the sole voter for 3 from that list. I can live with that, and I appreciate someone acknowledging Love Itself a few posts up. It's a wonderful song.

I'm most upset I didn't get to vote for "Un Canadien errant."

Aw crap, forgot to vote in this. Would've given Samson in New Orleans and Is This What You Wanted a second vote!

I like to think of "Death of a Ladies' Man" (the song), which I gave its sole vote, as his weird distended riff on the end of Dark Side of the Moon, though I know that's temporally impossible.

While I did vote in this, I really should have voted Tonight Will Be Fine. Surprised it only got the one vote.

Same, that and Winter Lady and Loves Call You and Leaving Green Sleeves and yeah Cohen has just too many good songs.

That live version of "Field Commander Cohen" (the specific version that got the vote) is so fucking good

i'm the only vote for "that don't make it junk" and "come healing" and that's a bummer

no one is allowed to be sad in the leonard cohen thread

I voted for "Iodine," "Un Canadian errant," and "Field Commander Cohen." And yeah, the live 1979 version of "FCC" totally smokes the New Skin for the Old Ceremony version.

I love his awkward vocal performance on "Canadian"

Albums list will roll out this evening (EST).

love the elaboration of the calypso interpolation on the live fcc

i never dug him much but never knew too much of his stuff either so i'm stoked for the roll out all the same.

excited for this rundown, even the albums portion of it.

i came to leonard cohen pretty late, like mid-2000s, and for a couple years all i had was a run of the mill compilation of his 60s/70s songs, along with Songs of Leonard Cohen. i really didn't introduce myself to his mid-period, starting with death of a ladies' man, until a few years ago, and even now albums like The Future are pretty much fresh and new to me. but it seems like other people know him primarily from his Various Positions and I'm Your Man era? i'm curious if the early stuff will dominate this poll or if it will be spread out.

Here we go!

Throughout this poll, I'll be including excerpts from Sylvie Simmons' I'm Your Man and Ira Bruce Nadel's Various Positions.

http://cdn-s3.allmusic.com/release-covers/500/0000/287/0000287593.jpg
10. Death of a Ladies' Man (21 points, 5 votes)
Released November 13th, 1977

Various Positions:

Stories differ as to how Cohen and Spector became partners. The liner notes on the album state that Marty Machat, who was Spector's lawyer as well as Cohen's, introduced them. According to Cohen, this occurred backstage after one of his performances at the Troubadour in L.A. Spector had uncharacteristically left his well-protected home to see Cohen, and at the show was strangely silent. Spector then invited Cohen back to his home, which, because of the air-conditioning, was very chilly, about "thirty-two degrees," Cohen recalled. Spector was also very loud, and the more people he had around him, the more wild and theatrical he became. Spector locked the door and Cohen reacted by saying, "As long as we are locked up, we might as well write some songs together." They went to the piano and started that night. For about a month they wrote (and drank) together and Cohen remembers it as a generous period, although he had to wear an overcoat almost constantly to work in Spector's freezing home.

Cohen accepted Spector's eccentricities, and found that period "very charming and hospitable." As for Spector's genius? "I thought the songs were excellent," Cohen said. In the studio, however, it was a nightmare. Spector was menacing and paranoid. "He kept a lot of guns around, armed bodyguards; bullets and wine bottles littered the floor." With Spector brandishing a bottle of wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, the atmosphere was tense. At one point Spector pointed the loaded pistol at Cohen's throat, cocked it, and said, "I love you, Leonard."

I’m Your Man:

The sun was starting to come up by the time the first recording session ended. The Kessels checked that the tapes had been correctly catalogued and oversaw the loading of them onto a dolly, which was wheeled out to Spector’s car after every session under armed guard. Phil always took his tapes home, says Dan Kessel. “He didn"t single Leonard out, that’s just the way Phil conducted his business. Studios don’t protect your tapes with the same stringency you do.” George, Phil’s bodyguard, was a retired U.S. federal marshal. Like Spector, he wore a gun in his shoulder holster. The difference, says Dan Kessel, was that “the bodyguard’s gun was always loaded. Phil"s never was.” Leonard joked about getting his own armed bodyguard and having a shoot-out on Sunset Boulevard. He asked Malka Marom, who was visiting him in L.A., to come to the studio with him. He told her that Spector was afraid of her because he thought she was an Israeli soldier. Marom agreed to go to the studio. She found the atmosphere œvery scary ”because Phil Spector was sitting there with bottles of Manischewitz wine and a gun on the table. I said to Leonard, ˜Why are you recording with this madman?" He said, ˜Because he"s really very good at what he does."

lol that second 'graph is also from VP, didn't take long for a formatting fuckup

incredible album, the only Leonard I own tbh

http://cdn-s3.allmusic.com/release-covers/500/0000/284/0000284376.jpg

9. Songs From a Room (23 points, 6 votes)
Released March 24th, 1969

Various Positions:

The recording of Songs from a Room went well. Bob Johnston understood the fragility of Cohen's songs and their blend of poetry with music and, like John Hammond, helped him to overcome his nervousness in working with other musicians. They worked in Columbia's large, new 16th Avenue studio, which Johnston had had refitted. Johnston chose the sidemen, including Charlie Daniels, an imposing Texan and a fiddle player who had worked with Dylan and would go on to his own successful career. The first session though, was unfocused. Cohen came in and asked, "What do you want to do?" Johnson said, "Let's get some hamburgers and beer." When they returned, Cohen again asked, "What do you want me to do?" Johnston replied, "Sing." After the first taping, Cohen came into the control room and asked, "Is that what I'm supposed to sound like?" "Yeah," said Johnston.

I’m Your Man:

The reviews in the U.S. were not good. Rolling Stone's Alec Dubro wrote, "In 'Story of Isaac,' he is matter of fact to the point of being dull. When he's not being matter of fact, but rather obscure, as he is in ˜A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes," he"s just irritating. Other singer-poets are obscure, but generally the feeling comes through that an attempt is being made to reach to a heart of meaning. But Cohen sings with such lack of energy that it"s pretty easy to conclude that if he"s not going to get worked up about it, why should we?’ The New York Times’ William Kloman was kinder, remarking that “as a story-teller Cohen is superb, even when he tacks self-effacing morals onto the end of his tales,” but he disliked the album"s more understated production and concluded, “Cohen"s new songs are short on beauty.”

what? ONLY 9TH ?

Like a beast with it's horn/I have torn everyone who reached out for me

this is a devastating lyric

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, December 11, 2016 10:52 AM (one hour ago

and the stanza starts out with "like a baby, stillborn" !! the song is amazing

Finishing the countdown shortly. One more quote re: BotW:

One song whose recording did not come easily was “Bird on the Wire.” Leonard tried it over and over, in countless different ways, but every time he listened back, he thought it sounded dishonest somehow. Finally he told Johnston he was done, and the musicians were sent home. “Bob said, okay, let"s forget it,” said Leonard. “I went back to my hotel to think matters over, but got more and more depressed.” He was determined to get this song right. It was as if the song, as well as being a letter to Marianne, were a personal treatise of sorts, a “My Way,” but without the braggadocio (Leonard was never a big fan of Sinatra; he did have a fondness for Dean Martin, though). “In a way the history of that song on the record is my whole history,” Leonard said. “I’d never sung the song true, never. I"d always had a kind of phony Nashville introduction that I was playing the song to, following a thousand models.”

Four days before his last recording session on November 25, 1968, Leonard asked everyone to leave except Zemel, McCoy and Johnston. “I just knew that at that moment something was going to take place. I just did the voice before I started the guitar and I heard myself sing that first phrase, ˜Like a bird," and I knew the song was going to be true and new. I listened to myself singing, and it was a surprise. Then I heard the replay and I knew it was right.

11. Take This Longing (123 points, 12 votes, 1 #1 vote)
from New Skin for the Old Ceremony

Judy Collins: https://goo.gl/hGhl6b
Hole: https://goo.gl/nIjHKQ

Various Positions:

The infatuated Cohen followed Nico around the city, but she was clearly not interested in him. He was madly in love with her though, and persisted: "I was lighting candles and praying and performing incantations and wearing amulets, anything to have her fall in love with me, but she never did." A journal entry from the Chelsea Hotel dated March 15, 1967, highlights Cohen's fascination with Nico, his entanglement with depression and his art: "Terrible day, hopeless thoughts of Nico. The guitar dead, voice dead, tunes old and fake, Nico in terrible mood. Tried to reach her, tried to make her stay beside me for a second, impossible." The journal that day also records a visit by Phil Ochs, Henry Moscovitch, a young Montreal poet, and the advice of a friend to see a psychiatrist, prompting this notation: "poet maudit ca. 1890. Cut the call short. Visited Judy Collins, taught her ˜Sisters of Mercy.'"

Overwhelmed by Nico's beauty - she had modeled in Paris and had had a bit part in Fellini's La Dolce Vita -Cohen wrote "Take This Longing" for her. She sang it to him several times but never recorded it. He also wrote a confessional prose piece about his longing for her...

This goes on a bit. He was fucking obsessed with Nico.

10. Anthem (125 points, 10 votes)
from The Future

Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen: https://goo.gl/czrHGr
Will Sheff: https://goo.gl/r9a7kW

Various Positions:

"Anthem" was borrowed from Kabbalistic sources, especially the sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria. It was one of the most difficult songs Cohen had ever written, taking almost a decade to complete. He recorded it three times, with one version for Various Positions and another for I'm Your Man, mixed with strings, voices, and overdubs. It was finished, he explained, "but when I listened to it there was something wrong with the lyric, the tune, the tempo. There was a lie somewhere in there, there was a disclosure that I was refusing to make. There was a solemnity that I hadn't achieved." Only when he reworked it for The Future did he "nail it." Songwriting begins for him not in the form of an idea, but in the form of an image. He explained:

"...the way I do things is that I uncover the song and discern what it's about through the actual writing of it. Every song begins with that old urgency to rescue oneself, to save oneself. And it's quite a powerful gnawing at the spirit. It's not at all evident at the beginning of the process what it [the song] is about."

9. First We Take Manhattan (131 points, 11 votes)
from I'm Your Man

R.E.M: https://goo.gl/ikV9dr
Jennifer Warnes: https://goo.gl/rbzmCV

Various Positions:

The album opens with "First We Take Manhattan," originally called "In Old Berlin." It plays with certain geo-political ideas then in the air, he explained to an Oslo interviewer: "extremism, terrorism, fundamentalism. They are all attractive positions because they lack ambiguity; such dogmatism is always seductive," he added, "because of its total commitment to a position without any qualifications, without any conditions - there is some kind of secret life we lead in which we imagine ourselves changing things, not violently, maybe gracefully, maybe elegantly in a very imaginative way and with the shake of a hand. The song speaks of longing for change, impatience with the way things are, a longing for significance; we deal in the purest burning logic of longing." Two years later, he referred to the song as a "demented manifesto," although he also reported that it became so popular in Athens that people were greeting each other in Greek by saying, "First, we take Manhattan," the other person replying with "Then we take Berlin!"

I'm Your Man:

"First We Take Manhattan" is very likely the only Eurodisco song to reference the war between the sexes and the Holocaust.

Something almost Badalamenti like about the synths playing a similar melody line to that in I'm Your Man later in the album on First We Take Manhattan.
Has one of my favourite Cohen Moments: the way he sings the section starting "You loved me as a loser now you're worried that I just might win". The beautiful loser turned bad winner. His delivery sounds more unhinged than anywhere else in his back catalogue besides Songs of Love and Hate.

errr, whoops. that should be:
8. First We Take Manhattan (131 points, 11 votes)

========

9. Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (129.5 points, 10 votes)
from New Skin for the Old Ceremony

Rufus Wainwright: https://goo.gl/7yzr7n
Meshell Ndegeocello: https://goo.gl/7m9IBh
Carissa's Wierd: https://goo.gl/bONqDs
Lloyd Cole: https://goo.gl/4E3CXZ
Anonymous Choir: https://goo.gl/hVnxgW

I'm Your Man:

Leonard has claimed in several interviews, and confirmed it in the closing verse of "Chelsea Hotel #2,” that he is not a sentimental or a nostalgic man, that he does not look back. Religion would validate this as a healthy position: when Lot's wife looked back at Sodom she was turned into a pillar of salt. As a writer, although he tended to look inside himself or at his immediate environs, Leonard also looked back at lovers from whom he had parted. In The Favourite Game, Leonard's fictional alter ego writes to the girl he loved in fond anticipation of their separation: "Dearest Shell, if you let me I"d always keep you 400 miles away and write you pretty poems and letters. I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation." As a writer Leonard seemed to thrive on this paradox of distance and intimacy. As a man, it was more complicated. Often it seemed to make him wretched, and, as a wretch, he turned to God. But as Roshi told him, "You can"t live in God"s world. There are no restaurants or toilets."

Various Positions:

In his well-known concert introduction to the song, he outlines his first encounter with Janis Joplin:

"Once upon a time, there was a hotel in New York City. There was an elevator in that hotel. One evening, about three in the morning, I met a young woman in that hotel. I didn't know who she was. Turned out she was a very great singer. It was a very dismal evening in New York City. I'd been to the Bronco Burger; I had a cheeseburger; it didn't help at all. Went to the White Horse Tavern, looking for Dylan Thomas, but Dylan Thomas was dead. Dylan Thomas was dead. I got back in the elevator, and there she was. She wasn't looking for me either. She was looking for Kris Kristofferson. "Lay your head upon the pillow." I wasn't looking for her, I was looking for Lily Marlene. Forgive me for these circumlocutions. I later found out she was Janis Joplin and we fell into each other's arms through some divine process of elimination which makes a compassion out of indifference, and after she died, I wrote this song for her. It's called the Chelsea Hotel."

During a more recent performance in Norway, Cohen revised the story of the original meeting between Joplin and himself: in the elevator Cohen asks, "Are you looking for someone? "Yes,she replies, "I'm looking for Kris Kristofferson." "Little Lady, you're in luck. I'm Kris Kristofferson." He was significantly shorter than Kristofferson, but as he says, those were generous times. Yafa Lerner recalls that at the Chelsea it was common for women to offer themselves to Cohen as he rode the elevator. Cohen began writing "Chelsea Hotel #2"in a Polynesian bar in Miami in 1971 and finished it at the Imperial Hotel in Asmara, Ethiopia, in 1973.

To recap/correct this slightly confusing last stretch

10. Anthem (125 points, 10 votes)
9. Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (129.5 points, 10 votes)
8. First We Take Manhattan (131 points, 11 votes)

7. Everybody Knows (137.5 points, 11 votes)
from I'm Your Man

Rufus Wainwright: https://goo.gl/dj69Jt
Don Henley: https://goo.gl/Sp4BB4
Concrete Blonde: https://goo.gl/LnY0wS (<--hilariously overwrought video alert)

The rest will be up tonight. Sorry for the weird post timing and knuckle-dragging.

i'm enjoying it anyway!

"everybody knows" contains at least like five perfect stanzas

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8o32o7T5Q1qfirpxo1_500.gif

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

6. Suzanne (145 points, 12 votes, 2 #1 votes)
from Songs of Leonard Cohen

Nina Simone: https://goo.gl/VHdgZi
Roberta Flack: https://goo.gl/1TvLu2
Francoise Hardy: https://goo.gl/3V1UAh
Jorane: https://goo.gl/hYhsJY
Nick Cave: https://goo.gl/8cmqwt
Judy Collins: https://goo.gl/7EK5DO
Fairport Convention: https://goo.gl/lpw50y
Nana Mouskori: https://goo.gl/qiQOML
Fabrizio de Andre: https://goo.gl/G27qPM
Pearls Before Swine: https://goo.gl/g788ef

Various Positions:

While in Montreal, Cohen met Suzanne Verdal, a dancer who was one of the inspirations for two poems that would appear in Parasites of Heaven in 1966. He first saw her dancing flamboyantly with her husband, sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, at a place in Montreal called Le Vieux Moulin. The first poem, beginning "Suzanne wears a leather coat, celebrates her dangerous beauty." The second, better-known poem is a version of his well-known song "Suzanne," from his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. He wrote the poem in the summer of 1965, although it lacked focus until Suzanne took Cohen to her loft near the St. Lawrence river. She remembered that they would spend hours talking by candlelight. Cohen maintained that they "were never lovers, but she gave me Constant Comment tea in a small moment of magic."

Images in the song were drawn from a visit to the seventeenth-century La Chapelle de Bonsecours, the mariner's church in old Montreal with the figure of the golden virgin at the top with her body turned away from the city to bless the departing mariners. Inside the sanctuary, hanging from the ceiling of the triple-steepled church, are votive lights suspended in model ships. Yafa Lerner can remember walking with Cohen in September 1965 and his excitement about the poem.

I wanted to link the Young Galaxy cover(!) but it's not on YouTube.

5. So Long, Marianne (146 points, 13 votes)
from Songs of Leonard Cohen

Bill Callahan: https://goo.gl/einRtz
Straitjacket Fits: https://goo.gl/HdThC0
scoring Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana: https://goo.gl/OJEDnV

Well, Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart, and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.

And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.

4. Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (159.5 points, 13 votes, 1 #1 vote)
from Songs of Leonard Cohen

Lianne La Havas w/ Chilly Gonzales: https://goo.gl/SmoU1K
Judy Collins: https://goo.gl/4ObX5y
Roberta Flack: https://goo.gl/xRp9WI

^ my #1. I hadn't listened to LC in eons, but on November 7th I woke up with "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" in my head and I spent all that morning playing his albums on Spotify. As we found out later that week, November 7th was the day LC died.

3. Avalanche (167 points, 13 votes, 1 #1 vote)
from Songs of Love and Hate

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: https://goo.gl/iJgjMz
Nick Cave, mk ii (2015): https://goo.gl/vDkXiA

"hey, that's no way to say goodbye" would have been mu #1 had i voted

If anyone hasn't heard those Roberta Flack versions, they're really something

i don't really have the musical vocabulary to describe this intelligently but there's something jarring, surprising about the refrain every time, like the way the pitch undulates makes it seem like there's at least one more line before the refrain comes but it just jumps right out at you

(talking about HTNWTSG)

“It’s best to have your eyes open – and to lighten up. I think that’s what enlightenment means: you’ve lightened up.”

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeJPzh2XIAE2KCm.jpg

Thanks to all who commented, voted, and played along.

2. Tower of Song (171 points, 15 votes, 1 #1 vote)
from I'm Your Man

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: https://goo.gl/nBDBb0
Tom Jones: https://goo.gl/o1TkBj
The Jesus and Mary Chain: https://goo.gl/C6dPV8
Ofer Golany (in Hebrew): https://goo.gl/DVTmec

I'm Your Man:

"Tower of Song" is about the hard, solitary, captive life of a writer (going so far as to evoke a concentration camp in the line "They"re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track") but substitutes self-mockery for the usual self-indulgence of this type of song: he was still "crazy for love" but now he ached "in the places where (he) used to play" and in spite of all his hard work, none of it was of any significance to women, to God or even to pop-music posterity; his writing room was still a hundred floors below Hank Williams'.

Various Positions:

"Tower of Song" is the keynote work on I'm Your Man. With it Cohen wanted to "make a definitive statement about this heroic enterprise of the craft of songwriting." In the early eighties he called the work "Raise My Voice in Song." His concern was with the aging songwriter, and the "necessity to transcend one's own failure by manifesting as the singer, as the songwriter." He had abandoned the song, but one night in Montreal he finished the lyrics and called an engineer and recorded it in one take with a toy synthesizer. Jennifer Warnes added some vocals and Cohen attempted some "repairs," which was difficult since there were only two tracks. It was initially felt that the quality was too poor and the musicality too thin. Warnes, however, "really placed it, putting it in the ironic perspective it needed; she was a real collaborator on it more than anything she ever did, and she's done wonderful things for me but this was the most wonderous thing she ever did for me...this doo-wop kind of perspective; she really illuminated the song with that contribution," Cohen said.

(...)

When he had written the song and completed the album, Cohen realized for the first time that he was an entertainer: "I never thought I was in showbiz. Until then, he had held on to the notion of being a writer. Now I know what I am. I'm not a novelist. I'm not the light of my generation. I'm not the spokesman for a new sensibility. I'm a songwriter living in L.A. and this is my record."

1. Famous Blue Raincoat (275 points, 18 votes, 7 #1 votes)
from Songs of Love and Hate

Jennifer Warnes: https://goo.gl/avceB2
Marissa Nadler: https://goo.gl/gyRZME
The Handsome Family: https://goo.gl/mDHCNi

Various Positions:

On the day he arrived in London, Cohen bought a typewriter, a green Olivetti 22, for £40, which would remain with him for years. He also acquired his "famous blue raincoat," a Burberry with epaulets. That, too, remained with him until it was stolen from a New York loft in 1968. In London, these objects acted as amulets, arming him to combat the world. His Olivetti broke only once in twenty-six years, when he threw the machine against the wall of his Montreal apartment after an unsuccessful attempt to type underwater. It was eventually repaired, and he used that Olivetti to type most of his best-known songs and novels.

His raincoat was memorialized in the song "Famous Blue Raincoat," recorded on Songs of Love and Hate, his third album... The song has become a signature of sorts, the raincoat embodying Cohen's early image of mystery, travel, and adventure.

I'm Your Man (in reference to a concert at a mental hospital):

There appeared to be quite a few Leonard Cohen fans in the audience. One called out a request for "Famous Blue Raincoat," a song, he said, "that I didn't know anybody knew about, that we have only sung in concerts. It's a song that I wrote in New York when I was living on the east side of the East Side, and it"s about sharing women, sharing men, and the idea that if you hold on to somebody..." Leonard let the conclusion drift away. During the songs, the audience was silent, entranced. When the band stopped, the applause was loud and rapturous. "I really wanted to say that this is the audience that we've been looking for," said Leonard, who sounded moved and happy. "I've never felt so good playing before people." People who were mentally damaged seemed to make Leonard and his songs feel at home. They performed other mental hospital concerts later that year, "and those shows were one of the best things about the whole tour, every one of them," said Donovan, "just the way the audience locked in on what Leonard was doing and how he just interacted with them."

======

FULL RANKINGS:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W8U7zi4jcHzL0IxEyzoeSfmOZisCOz0ZKdRMGMW1m00/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for doing this! R.I.P. LC

I feel a bit dopey for suggesting this poll and then not voting in it (life got in the way). Would have had "Joan of Arc" as a #1 and would also have boosted some of those one-voters ("Fingerprints" and "Tonight Will Be Fine" come to mind).

Anyway, fantastic rollout, and here's something else special, The Vogues (yes, the "Five-O-Clock World" dudes) in their waning days addressing "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye": https://youtu.be/BBO2AMMnhOQ

That's a good one - I spotted it, but I was cover'd out by "Suzanne" (for which I easily could have posted another 10)

Also, did the gap between the stuff from the debut and the title track You Want It Darker make this the widest spanning artist poll, placement-wise? Dylan had it before, but IIRC his newest countdown track was from the 00s vs. Freewheelin' in '63.

Not sure, but it's a mighty impressive span, especially when you consider that he released Songs of Leonard Cohen at 33, whereas Dylan was 21/22 in the Freewheelin' era.

I forgot to vote, but thanks to everyone who did - only surprise to me was 'Closing Time' missing out on the top 40 altogether.

I was a little surprised that "I Can't Forget" didn't place, but I suppose the version on I'm Your Man is one of the synthiest on a very synthy album (which I like, but I get that not everyone does). The one I hear in my head is probably spliced with the great Pixies version:

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

So is it OK to post our ballots now? That's normally a thing on ILM polls, right?

seems ok to me! here's mine (non-placers in bold)

The Partisan
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye
Paper Thin Hotel
First We Take Manhattan
Hallelujah
Suzanne
Who by Fire
Famous Blue Raincoat
The Master
Waiting for the Miracle
Ballad of the Absent Mare
On the Level
The Law
Lover, Lover, Lover
So Long, Marianne
Fingerprints
You Want It Darker
Story of Isaac
I Can’t Forget
Lady Midnight

Here's mine then, bold didn't place. Interestingly (or maybe not), all four of my non-placers are from Recent Songs.

1. Famous Blue Raincoat
2. Joan of Arc
3. Suzanne
4. Take This Longing
5. The Window
6. So Long Marianne
7. Bird on the Wire
8. The Guests
9. Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye
10. Chelsea Hotel #2
11. The Traitor
12. Alexandra Leaving
13. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
14. Sisters of Mercy
15. Take This Waltz
16. Stranger Song
17. Avalanche
18. Ballad of the Absent Mare
19. Anthem
20. If It Be Your Will

a very enjoyable poll, great blurbs

your mini-essay on Paper Thin Hotel made me listen to that song anew and the Dulli rendition is too beautiful

did not vote, had I voted there is a chance that "Darkness" had been my #1 (surely top 3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bxbw0wfDOI

no grand statement on life, but a HELLA cool blues

weirdly I am not a huge fan of the Dulli PTH, I had to include it tho obviously

playlist finally updated with the entire top 40:
https://open.spotify.com/user/suckerblues/playlist/58W5K0QfbwWu3nbvaf009k

listening to "Field Commander Cohen" rn. weird that he mentions Fidel Castro in this song. he's the only named person in the song other than Cohen. they both died Nov 2016.

man, the title track of Death of a Ladies' Man got robbed in this one

It's a strange song, with a kind of off-putting, aloof quality... The lyric is wonderful (though I don't know whether it would stand on its own as poetry), & kinda reminds me of some early mock-ballads of T.S. Eliot (the line about the "working-class mustache" in particular... I couldn't say why)

But the production job -- striking though it is -- seems to lack some necessary dynamic or textural variation, with the result that listening to it just wears me out.

Karl otm

love that drums-less ending that just stretches on, twinkling in the heavens.

haha yeah the coda just goes ooooonnnnnnnnn

Spector's penchant for leaving in drumming mistakes is sort of endearing, shows up most prominently on this song and Dion's "Born to Be With You"

i think about Dion and Cohen's albums all the time. 70s Phil Spector is an odd beast, lots of string synths, leaving in mistakes, etc. DOALM is pretty much an unfinished record, using rough vocals cos the tapes were basically taken at ransom (???) and Cohen never got to finish the record on his terms. from what i have read, Cohen never really hated this album or cursed Spector for doing that. it was a totally unique experience for him, which is a big part of why he wanted them to work together in the first place.

so we have live bands and endless rehearsal replaced by...ethereal multi-track symphonies? it used to be teenage symphonies, now it's middle aged symphonies, fat and bloated, drunk, still lusting after young women and pining over lost loves, trying to deconstruct your persona or fall in love yet again after failing at both so many times. a pop Dark Night of the Soul. fwiw i feel like The Beach Boys "Love You" fits neatly into this category. another attempt at synthesized studio pastiches of 60s doo wop.

love in space. it is not simply a wall of sound anymore, it is a swirling, churning galaxy. in the 70s Spector sort of got into space rock. the lilting keyboards on the intro to "Paper Thin Hotel" is very Spacemen 3. (also see Dion's phaser-drenched cover of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands".)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN6H3B42j1k

Jason Pierce loves BTBWY iirc. You can def hear 70s Spector in the S3/Spiritualized stuff.

George Harrison's "Let It Down" also belongs on a Phil Spector-Spiritualized mixtape

Excellent posts.

nah the whole DOalM album is horrible, by some way LC's worst album

challops

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/24/drank-a-lot