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

“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."

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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