283: Leonard Cohen // Songs of Leonard Cohen
Songs of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
1968, Columbia
It seems foolish to say about one of the hundred or so acknowledged “peaks” of ‘60s music, but because I listen to it so seldomly, I often fail to clock the direct influence of Songs of Leonard Cohen on other artists until I come back to it: the breathless estrangement of “Teachers” on Townes Van Zandt’s most desolate visions; the opiate-swaddled arrangement of “Suzanne” on Mickey Newbury’s floating progressive country; the minimalism and baroque eroticism of “Master Song” that Momus made a career of. I prefer other, sillier Cohen records, like the blaring cocaine blizzard Death of a Ladies’ Man, but there’s no denying the hypnotic allure wreathing this landmark set. The words tumble out of him without cease, romantic (and Romantic) fables, this man with huge black eyes staring at himself playing guitar in the mirror, his feet bare, his soul naked.
Still, would it have killed him to write a few instrumental sections? During the recording of Songs, Cohen feuded with his producers, whose orchestrations and fancy session players clashed with the artist’s vision of a spare poetry recitation accompanied by a guitar or a two. In a glorious New York Times hatchet job on Cohen’s posthumous poetry collection The Fire, notoriously meanspirited critic William Logan observed:
“Cohen was not a poet who accidentally became a lyricist; he was a lyricist who for years fooled himself into thinking he was a poet. As poems these squibs are worthless; as lyrics, even sung in that lizardy groan, they often moved millions. His voice, that broken, battered thing, could make almost any song—even 'God Save the Queen,' perhaps—sound lonesome, miserable, profound.”
That analysis is laughably cruel but contains at least a hint of truth (the Logan classic). Cohen’s lapses into corniness glare on the page, but when he sings and strums, his carnal presence and the seductions of song let him get away with nearly anything. Despite his obvious knack for melody and mood (how gorgeous is “The Sisters of Mercy”?), Cohen treats the music as at most a tonal accompaniment to his words. It’s not a fatal error, but there are songs here that might’ve thrived with a little less of Leonard the Poet and a little more of Leonard the Musician.
Still, Songs of Leonard Cohen establishes the foundation of the man’s legend and contains many of his greatest classics. Whatever quibbles I may have with the record, there are few finer examples of the writer’s craft than “Master Song,” or softer words of parting than “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” Bless ‘im.
